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Jul 26, 2023 · July 26, 2023. Even by the extraordinary standards of contemporary political theater, Wednesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on U.F.O.s stood out. There, in a somber chamber of the...
Sep 14, 2023 · 14 September 2023. By Brandon Livesay, BBC News. UFO on camera. A Nasa probe into hundreds of UFO sightings found there was no evidence aliens were behind the unexplained phenomena, but the...
Mar 8, 2024 · United States Department of Defense. First published on March 8, 2024 / 12:09 PM EST. © 2024 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs, now referred to as UAPs,...
- 5 min
- Overview
- What the witnesses said at the UAP/UFO hearing
- Congress pushes for UAP/UFO transparency
Washington — A former military intelligence officer-turned-whistleblower told House lawmakers that Congress is being kept in the dark about unidentified anomalous phenomena, known as UAPs or UFOs, alleging at a hearing that executive branch agencies have withheld information about the mysterious objects for years.
David Grusch, who served for 14 years as an intelligence officer in the Air Force and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, appeared before the House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee alongside two former fighter pilots who had firsthand experience with UAPs.
•Group of House members want a select committee to investigate UAPs
Grusch served as a representative on two Pentagon task forces investigating UAPs until earlier this year. He told lawmakers that he was informed of "a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program" during the course of his work examining classified programs. He said he was denied access to those programs when he requested it, and accused the military of misappropriating funds to shield these operations from congressional oversight. He later said he had interviewed officials who had direct knowledge of aircraft with "nonhuman" origins, and that so-called "biologics" were recovered from some craft.
Members of both parties questioned how Congress should go about investigating the remarkable allegations, a reflection of the increasing willingness by lawmakers to demand the executive branch be more forthcoming about the phenomena.
"We're going to uncover the cover-up, and I hope this is just the beginning of many more hearings and many more people coming forward about this," said Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee.
In addition to Grusch, the panel heard testimony from Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who has spoken out about encountering UAPs on training missions, and David Fravor, who spotted a large object captured in the now-famous "Tic Tac" video during a flight off the coast of California in 2004.
•The story behind the "Tic Tac" UFO sighting by Navy pilots in 2004
All three witnesses said current reporting systems are inadequate to investigate UAP encounters, and said a stigma still exists for pilots and officials who press for more transparency about their experiences.
Graves was an F-18 pilot stationed in Virginia Beach in 2014 when his squadron first began detecting unknown objects. He described them as "dark grey or black cubes … inside of a clear sphere, where the apex or tips of the cubes were touching the inside of that sphere."
He said a fellow pilot told him about one incident about 10 miles off the coast, in which an object between 5 and 15 feet in diameter flew between two F-18s and came within 50 feet of the aircraft. He said there was no acknowledgement of the incident or way to report the encounter at the time.
UAP encounters, he said, were "not rare or isolated."
Wednesday's hearing took place amid a growing willingness by lawmakers to demand the military and intelligence agencies release more about what they know regarding the mysterious incidents, with many members of Congress citing the potential national security threat posed by unknown objects in or near U.S. airspace.
A bipartisan group of senators led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced an amendment to the annual defense spending bill currently making its way through Congress. The measure, modeled off legislation aimed at revealing government records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, would require executive branch agencies to hand over UAP records to a review board with "the presumption of immediate disclosure." Agencies would have to justify requests to keep records classified.
A different House panel heard testimony from Pentagon officials at the first open hearing about the issue in more than 50 years last summer.
At Wednesday's hearing, lawmakers of both parties expressed anger about their inability to get information about UAPs from the military and intelligence agencies, describing a system of overclassification that shields reports of incidents from public view.
"We should have disclosure today. We should have disclosure tomorrow. The time has come," said Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida.
"Several of us are going to look forward to getting some answers in a more confidential setting. I assume some legislation will come out of this," said GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman, the subcommittee's chairman.
- Managing Editor, Digital Politics
- 5 min
- CBS News
- Stefan Becket
An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UAPs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
Sep 14, 2023 · Sept. 14, 2023. Pledging a new, transparent, scientifically rigorous look at U.F.O.s, NASA on Thursday said it had appointed a director of research on the topic — and then kept the name of the...
Jul 27, 2023 · Three military veterans testified in Congress' highly anticipated hearing on UFOs Wednesday, including a former Air Force intelligence officer who claimed the U.S. government has operated a secret...
