Congressional leaders are increasingly taking seriously the possibility that not only are unclassified objects violating U.S. airspace, but that the military has been secretly collecting these spacecraft for decades to advance its technology.
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The question of whether intelligent alien life is visiting Earth and whether the US government is covering it up is no longer a topic reserved for conspiracy theorists.
Congressional leaders are increasingly taking seriously the possibility that not only are unclassified objects violating U.S. airspace, but that the military has been secretly collecting these spacecraft for decades to advance its technology.
A new group of witnesses provided additional testimony on these concerns at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on November 13. The more than two-hour hearing, titled “Unidentified Paranormal Phenomena: Uncovering the Truth,” marked the latest step forward in the U.S. Congress on the issue, following another hearing on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in July 2023.
The US government now uses the term UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) to refer to unidentified phenomena, arguing that it is less stigmatized than UFOs. The term also includes objects that appear underwater.
In her opening remarks, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina argued that the hearing was necessary to call for transparency from the executive branch and intelligence agencies that have long withheld information about UFOs. She criticized the Department of Defense and the Pentagon, saying their secrecy did not build public trust. Another Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin said that you can’t hide the unknown when lives are at stake.
One of the most notable testimonies came from Timothy Gallaudet, an American oceanographer who served as interim director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who said he had witnessed UAPs firsthand while working for the Navy in 2015. He received an email warning him of several near-misses in the air, along with a declassified video of a UAP captured by a Navy F/A-18.
The next day, the email disappeared without explanation. Mr. Gallaudet described it as a government disinformation campaign, including the Pentagon’s UFO investigation office, to discredit the reports and the witnesses who reported them.
Meanwhile, Mr. Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official, also criticized the intelligence community for keeping UAP reports too secret. He affirmed: “I believe that the American people can accept the truth and I also believe that the world deserves to know the truth.” Mr. Elizondo said that many UAP activities were recorded around military bases and nuclear weapons areas, and he also revealed that the US possesses UAP technology, similar to some of its rivals.
Meanwhile, journalist Michael Shellenberger said that intelligence agencies are holding a large amount of high-quality images and other data about UAPs that are much clearer and sharper than the blurry images the public has seen. Mr. Shellenberger estimated that these images and videos could be in the “hundreds, even thousands.”
In addition, former NASA Administrator Michael Gold called on the agency to invest more in UAP research. He said that NASA’s investment in UAP research would send a strong message to the scientific community that UAPs should be taken seriously.
The hearing underscored the need for more transparency and research from the U.S. government to shed light on the longstanding mysteries surrounding UAP phenomena. Witnesses and members of Congress argued that the public deserves to know the truth about the phenomena and that these objects, if they exist, could pose serious national security risks.
