Congress believes it needs more transparency on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) – and perhaps it does. In other words, legislators want to take “U” out of UAPs. The House Oversight Committee's National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee held a hearing on the issue Wednesday, July 25. Inquiries into UAP have gone from the stuff of 1950s “B” movies to a hot topic in Washington, DC.
Witnesses included Mr. Ryan Graves, Executive Director, Americans for Safe Aerospace, and former US Navy aviator flying F/A-18 carrier-based jet fighters; David Fravor, retired US Navy Commander and also an F/A-18 aviator; and retired US Air Force major, David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Office Representative, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, Department of Defense.
The LN Exclusive
In an exclusive interview with committee member Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN), who has been a leader in ferreting out the truth about UAP, Liberty Nation had the opportunity to get more insight on what the congressman took away from the hearing.
Liberty Nation: Other media reports have characterized legislators as being frustrated with the lack of information on UAP coming from the Pentagon, NASA, and other relevant agencies. What would you like to see in the way of more transparency and information flow from these agencies?
Rep. Burchett: I would like to see these agencies declassify all information that doesn’t directly endanger our national security, especially the information the public already knows about through extensive, well-sourced reporting. Because the majority of this information currently remains classified, it makes getting direct, clear answers from witnesses and other informants difficult. Declassifying this information and making it available to share with the public is essential to getting to the bottom of this issue.
LN: During the witness testimony, what were you surprised to hear, and what was the most compelling revelation?
Rep. Burchett: As I stated in another interview, I didn’t ask questions in this hearing that I didn’t know the answers to. Information and testimonies of UAP witnesses have been around for years, but the issue, again, is that we cannot learn more about these details unless more information is declassified. One of the most notable responses during this hearing was Mr. Grusch’s confirmation that “non-human biologics” have been found.
LN: Do you see the establishment of the NASA UAP Independent Study Panel and the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as positive steps forward to bring the whole subject of UAP to the public in an understandable way?
Rep. Burchett: These developments are good steps in the right direction, but we don’t yet know whether they’ll have a real, positive impact on bringing light to this issue. If they actually take action and do something, then they will have an influence. However, high-up Washington bureaucrats tend to block any real information from coming forward. So, I suspect they will do the same with these new establishments.
UAP Sightings and Alien Retrievals
Two themes seemed to recur throughout the witness testimony:
I saw something; it was real, and I can’t explain it.
I had the highest clearances and heard about recovered craft-crash material with non-human remains, but I can’t talk about it – it’s classified.
From the outset, the committee believed the Pentagon and other agencies were engaged in a coverup of information available on UAP. “Frustrated lawmakers are demanding more information on UFOs and UAPs, which grew as a topic of discussion after an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency claimed that the government is holding back information about UFOs,” The Hill’s Mychael Schnell wrote in a recent article setting the stage for the hearing. In a press release by the Committee on Oversight, Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) stated:
“The status quo on the part of the US government has been to leave the American public in the dark regarding information about UAPs, refuse to answer questions posed by whistleblowers, avoid the concerns Americans have about the possible threats UAPs pose to our national security and public safety, and default to extreme and unnecessary over-classification. If the last few months have taught me anything, it is that this is an issue that matters to Americans.”
First-person eyewitness accounts are always the most persuasive. “The UAP we encountered and tracked on multiple sensors behaved in ways that surpassed our understanding and technology. The UAP could accelerate at speeds up to Mach 1, hold their position against hurricane-force winds, and outlast our fighter jets, operating continuously throughout the day,” Ryan Graves said in his written opening statement. “They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines. I am a formally trained engineer and I have no explanation for this.” As evidence of the stigma associated with reporting UAP sightings, Graves estimated 95% of such encounters go unreported.
When the subcommittee chairman, Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-WI), asked the three witnesses if any of them thought UAP represented a threat to national security, David Fravor responded:
“Yes. And here’s why. The technology we faced was far superior to anything we had, and you can put that anywhere. If you had one (UAP); you captured one; you reversed engineered it; you got it to work, you’re talking some thinking, go into space, go someplace, drop down in a manner of seconds, do whatever it wants and leave and there is nothing we can do about it – nothing.”
During his questioning of the witnesses, Congressman Burchett asked Mr. Fravor: “What astonished you the most about the flight capabilities of these Tic Tac (shaped vehicles).” Without hesitation, Fravor responded: “The performance, absolute performance.” Burchett followed up with, “And you’re not aware of any other objects anybody in the world has, in this world, that has those capabilities?” Fravor answered: “No, I think it far beyond our actual material science we currently possess.”
Congress Wants Answers
David Grusch (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
One line of questioning focused on David Grusch’s public statements regarding the government’s attempts to keep secret evidence of the actual recovery of materials and biological remains from unidentified craft. Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) asked Grusch: “If you believe we have crashed craft, as stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?” The witness answered, “As I’ve stated publicly already in my News Nation interview biologics came with some of these recoveries.” Mace followed up with, “Were they human or non-human biologics?” Grusch responded: “Non-human and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge of the program (crash retrieval program) I talked to who are currently still on the program.” It is essential to keep in mind Grusch’s public testimony is based on what others have told him and the media he has seen but did not develop himself.
This hearing will not be the last. There is a growing interest in UAP, especially when according to Pentagon sources there have been over 800 sightings analyzed since the formation of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office and only 2% to 5% of those observations do not have credible explanations. As NASA officials have reported, one of the problems in analyzing the UAP sightings is that sensors and radars on military aircraft, though capable of identifying some airborne and ground objects, are not the right technology to provide more detail about composition, mass, and other characteristics. The good news is the public will have a much better opportunity to know what the government is up to as Congress becomes more involved.
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