Government 'Roadblocks' Are Preventing UFO Information's Release, House Rep Says

Following a landmark committee hearing held last month, a bipartisan group of representatives actively seeking public information on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) is struggling to maintain their efforts. The Hill hosted a panel discussion Thursday titled The Truth Is Out There: UFOs & National Security, during which Mychael Schnell, a congressional reporter, and the event's moderator, featured three of the four members of Congress who have been urging the government to release information about UAP. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) said that unless Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Californica) designates a select committee on UAPs, it is unlikely that he and his fellow group members, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla. ), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) will get another opportunity for a hearing on UAPs.

In such a committee, Burchett said that it would have the power to issue subpoenas to force officials from the Department of Defense and other agencies to testify, as well as to push past the "roadblocks" it has encountered so far in seeing classified material and getting timely responses to questions. "We're running into a lot of roadblocks there, and that's the problem with this whole thing. It just creates more and more conspiracy theories because our federal government is so arrogant and so bloated, and they'll just run out the clock," Burchett told The Hill. "I'm guilty of this as well, but Americans want their pizzas in 30 minutes or less, and that's about our dadgum attention span." According to Burchett and Luna, the Speaker has yet to respond to their request. 

Three witnesses appeared at last month's hearing with information about UAP sightings. Former intelligence officer whistleblower David Grusch claimed that the government was recovering biological pilots from downed UAPs, which the Pentagon denied. As Grusch told The Hill during the hearing last month, he can't speak publicly about much of his knowledge because it is classified, but the members of the probe say they are being slowed down by the Pentagon in obtaining a classified hearing with Grusch. In his testimony at the hearing, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said he was aware of UAPs flying "daily" over the North Atlantic. In his words, the objects looked like a "dark or black cube inside a clear sphere." He is now trying to improve the tracking and transparency of UAP data.

There is a stigma for pilots around reporting the objects to the authorities, he said at The Hill event, and the objects pose a safety risk to them. "Every pilot I've spoken to always said that has been their number one concern when they care to share this information," Graves said, per The Hill. "They're not UFO hunters, they're not necessarily interested in this topic, but they have that responsibility and they're frustrated that they don't have an outlet to be able to safely communicate this information in a way that not only gets it out and is safe, but also something is actually done about it so that we don't have this issue constantly popping up." Several members of Congress proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would provide a reporting framework for releasing materials to the public and regulate the release of classified documents through the establishment of a declassification board. Moskowitz said there are conversations about including transparency measures and new whistleblower safety procedures in the NDAA as it goes through reconciliation between the House and Senate.