Wisconsin representative calls for UFO clearinghouse, no penalty for reporting sightings

Pursuing a lifelong interest, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman has proposed legislation establishing a federal clearinghouse to collect and report sightings of unidentified flying objects and protect civilian airline personnel from repercussions for reporting such phenomena.

The proposal comes amid a surge of interest in Congress into UFOs — increasingly referred to by the blander but more all-encompassing phrase “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAPs — including a high-profile public hearing last summer.

There, commercial pilots, former armed forces personnel and proponents of UFO research described seeing a UFO accelerate to supersonic speeds and even claimed the government had recovered “nonhuman biologics” from crashed aircraft. (The claim, by a former intelligence officer, was not substantiated.)

“Since I was a child, unidentified objects in our airspace have been a topic of interest,” said Grothman, R-Glenbeulah, who wrote the bill with Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.

“With the majority of Americans believing that the government has suppressed information on UAPs, our bipartisan effort highlights our need for transparency from the federal government regarding UAPs to better protect the safety and security of American citizens,” he said.

The bill would establish procedures for the government to collect, investigate and report out incidents including “adverse physiological effects, or the disruption, interference, or interaction with flight instruments, potentially caused by an unidentified anomalous phenomena reported by civilian aircrew, air traffic controllers, flight attendants, aviation maintenance personnel, aviation dispatchers, air carriers or operators, and airports.”

Critically, the legislation would prohibit the Federal Aviation Administration from taking into account the reporting of such phenomena when evaluating the competency or medical fitness of pilots or other civilian aviation employees. Airlines would also be barred from retaliating against employees for reporting them.

“Pilots are trained observers of our skies, but I have heard from dozens of frustrated pilots for major airlines who witnessed UAP yet had no confidential way to report them to the government,” Ryan Graves, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and the executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, said in a statement to Congress last summer.

Just under 60% of Americans think the U.S. government has more information about UFOs and aliens than they’re publicly willing to share, a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found. Just over a third of Americans think the federal government possesses nonhuman vehicles, while 36% said they didn’t know.