A cadre of U.S. lawmakers in the House Oversight Committee are reportedly receiving a classified briefing on unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, on Friday by the Office of Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
Axios was the first to report the briefing.
For years, the study of unidentified flying objects has been maligned as so much crank pseudoscience and conspiracies about aliens, but the topic has gained renewed interest from both the defense department and the science community as the ability to track, record and identify these anomalous objects becomes more sophisticated.
It’s a distinctly bipartisan issue. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has called for more transparency, and late last year, Congress passed a bill that included a measure requiring the National Archives to collect and release to the public all documents related to UAPs within 25 years. Some said the documents should be made public immediately, unless they could affect national security.
The hearing continues what could be called a theme for 2023. In July last year, former Air Force officer David Grusch testified to Congress that the military is covering up evidence of aliens.
At the time, Grusch claimed that the military had uncovered «nonhuman biological material» at a crash site but was unable or unwilling to provide any proof, saying he could only do so «behind closed doors.»
He also admitted to never having seen any extraterrestrial bodies himself.
Members of the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office — the body responsible for investigating reports of UAPs — have said that Grusch refused to cooperate with them. AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick called Grusch’s hearing «insulting» to him and his colleagues, adding that «AARO has yet to find any credible evidence to support the allegations of any reverse engineering program for non-human technology.»
But the AARO also launched a new reporting tool for people to flag incidents involving UFOs.
And a few weeks after Grusch made his comments to Congress, NASA released its first UAP report — marking the very first time the agency has conducted a comprehensive state-of-the-union style investigation into reports of UAPs and how different agencies gather information about them. It also set up a new office to investigate further, but so far, NASA was clear that there is no evidence to suggest UAPs or UFOs are aliens.
Overall, a key theme for the hearing will likely be transparency. The lawmakers want it as much as the public does, and government agencies are slowly ramping up the ability to lift back the veil on what we do and don’t know about what goes on in our skies — but as this is a private meeting, it may take some time for the general public to learn what was said behind the closed doors.
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