New legislation for creating a commission for disclosing information related to unidentified aerial phenomena is having bipartisan support, as whistleblower claims of governmental agencies withholding critical information attracted public interest recently.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is going to introduce the new legislation as an amendment to the defense policy bill, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) supporting the idea, while House support seems likely. The commission will have the authority to force government agencies to declassify yet undisclosed information on the subject of extraterrestrials or unidentified phenomena, The New York Times reported.
The Senate measure pushed by Mr. Schumer sets a 300-day deadline for the government agencies to declassify any related information, and the results will be presented to a 9-member review board. The nine members of the review board will be selected by President Joe Biden and then approved by the Senate.
Pushing for disclosure, as well as protecting sensitive intelligence information, will be the aim of the nine members, according to The New York Times, citing Senate staff members.
On Wednesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) introduced a narrower measure (pdf) that requires the Secretary of Defense to declassify any Department of Defense documents or records on publicly known unidentified aerial phenomena, in other words, phenomena for which there were sightings. The Defense Secretary has 180 days to do so, counting from the enactment of the Act.
Mr. Burchett said in a July 2 interview with space science podcast Event Horizon that he has been shown footage that has not been released to the public.
“Have you seen compelling evidence that we’re actually seeing something really weird in the skies that might affect national security or global security, that might not be from this Earth?” John Michael Godier, the host of the podcast, asked during the interview.
“One hundred percent. No question,” the Republican congressman replied.
“We’ve been dealing [with government coverups] since at least [the Roswell incident of] 1947, probably since about 1897 in what was the Aurora, Texas, ‘UFO crash,’” the Republican congressman said during the interview.
When asked about a coming House hearing on the matter, Mr. Burchett said he doesn’t expect any Pentagon official to show up with any meaningful information.
The Department of Defense is just a huge bureaucracy,” he said. “All bureaucracies do is to justify [their] existence. I have no time for them.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another longtime advocate for transparency on the U.S. government’s involvement with extraterrestrial phenomena, also revealed last month that he had been approached by several more intelligence whistleblowers with “high clearances,” who said they had ‘first-hand’ knowledge of UAP programs.
“We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can,” Mr. Rubio said in a June 26 interview with NewsNation. “Frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs … fearful of harm coming to them.”
A former Department of Defense (DOD) intelligence officer went public recently with whistleblower claims of covert non-human-origin craft-retrieval programs performed by the DOD.
Former intelligence officer David Grusch, 36, has given to Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General classified information about the craft-retrieval programs, and says he has suffered illegal retaliation because of his disclosure, The Debrief reported.
Grusch was part of the UAP Task Force, a program run by the Office of Naval Intelligence to investigate UAP sightings. From 2019 to 2021, he served on the task force as the representative of the National Reconnaissance Office, one of the “Big Five” U.S. intelligence agencies, which is in charge of designing and operating spy satellites.
Past Developments
In 2022, Pentagon officials showed lawmakers two videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in the first open congressional hearing on the subject since 1966.
The first video, shot in 2021 by military personnel through the window of a U.S. Navy aircraft, showed a white spherical object flying past the aircraft.
“I do not have explanations for what this specific object is,” said Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence involved in the UAP Task Force (UAPTF), the Pentagon body responsible for UAP investigations, at the hearing.
The second video, shot by an SLR camera via night vision goggles, showed a triangular-shaped object moving in the sky while emitting light.
In 2015, the Department of Defense declassified footage of unidentified aerial phenomena seen by pilots during flights. The flying objects were moving at a speed much higher than any known craft.
There is also a plethora of witness accounts of UAP sightings, with many of them recorded in video.
Bill Pan contributed to this report.
