Takeaways from the congressional hearing on the UAP on Wednesday

On November 15, 2024By Littum

On Wednesday, a new slate of witnesses gave new testimony to Congress about UFO sightings and what the government may (or may not) know about them.

The hearing, which lasted two hours, represented Congress’ latest foray into the subject of UFOs after another round of testimony in July 2023.
Lawmakers have spent the past year pushing laws to increase UAP transparency, with one seeking to create a civilian reporting mechanism and one directing the executive branch to declassify records.
But elected officials and UAP transparency advocates say that’s not enough, and that the military and intelligence communities have been dragging their feet on releasing what they know.
One witness, Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence officer, made it clear: “We are not alone in the cosmos.”

The question of whether intelligent alien life is visiting us here on Earth – and whether the government is covering it up – is no longer a topic reserved exclusively for conspiracy theorists to debate.

Congressional leaders continue to take seriously the possibility that not only are unexplained objects violating US airspace, but that the military has spent decades covertly recovering the craft to bolster its own technology.

On Wednesday, a new slate of witnesses testified about these very concerns during a joint hearing of a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. The hearing, which lasted two hours, represented Congress’ latest foray into the subject of UFOs after another round of testimony in July 2023.

The title of the hearing? “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Revealing the Truth.”

The UAP acronym is the official term the government now uses to refer to the unexplained phenomena, claiming it is less loaded and stigmatized than “UFO”, but it also explains the fact that many sightings that witnesses reinforced Wednesday, is of items. in the water.

Lawmakers have spent the past year pushing for new laws that would increase UAP transparency, one seeking to create a civilian reporting mechanism and one directing the executive branch to declassify certain records. But elected officials and UAP transparency advocates say that’s not enough.

In her opening remarks, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) laid out precisely why another hearing was needed: to call for transparency from the executive branch and intelligence agencies that have long been guarded over classified UFO information.

Of the Defense Department and its Pentagon headquarters, Mace said the organization’s reputation for secrecy is “not a track record that inspires confidence” among the public.

“The reality is, despite their enormous taxpayer-funded budget, transparency in the Defense Department and the intelligence community has long been abysmal,” Mace said.

Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin), whose subcommittee held the hearing along with Mace’s, had this to add: “We cannot shy away from the unknown when the stakes are so high.”

Here’s a look at some of the most compelling testimony given by each of the four witnesses:

Email about UAP deleted from account, says retired Navy rear admiral

Timothy Gallaudet, an American oceanographer who was once the acting administrator of NOAA, said he got first-hand confirmation that the UAP was real in 2015 while working for the NAVY.

During a training exercise that year off the East Coast, Gallaudet described an email he received while serving as the U.S. Navy’s chief meteorologist. The email warned of “several near-mid-air collisions” and attached a now-declassified video of a UAP captured by a Navy F/A-18 aircraft.

Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, testified that it was clear the email was intended to ask if anyone was aware that classified technology demonstrations were taking place. But the next day, he said, the email disappeared from his account without any explanation.

Gallaudet described a disinformation campaign among high levels of government, including the Pentagon’s Office to Investigate UFOs, to discredit reports and the whistleblowers who make them. This office, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO,) issued a report in March says it has found no evidence that UAP are aliens.

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Gallaudet also testified about satellite images of the UAP taken in 2017 that have not yet been shared with Congress. He refused to say where the photo was taken, but when asked described it as a “disc-shaped object”.

The pressure over what he thinks the objects that have been observed could be, Gallaudet said, “non-human higher intelligence.”

Elizondo: ‘We are not alone in the cosmos’

When former Pentagon intelligence officer David Grusch testified in 2023, what he had to say under oath set off a firestorm.

Among Grusch’s claims, made without evidence, was an alleged shadowy “multi-decade” Pentagon program to retrieve and study not just downed spacecraft but alien pilots. Grusch also accused the Pentagon under oath of being aware of extraterrestrial activity since the 1930s and of hiding the program from Congress while misappropriating funds to run it.

Although congressional leaders said they have not substantiated those claims, a witness on Wednesday confirmed much of what Grusch said.

Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence officer who retired and went public in October 2017 after 10 years running a Pentagon program to investigate UFO sightings, still made it clear that much of his work remains classified, limiting where much he could say.

In his opening remarks, Elizondo lamented the intelligence community for its decades of “excessive secrecy” surrounding UAP reports “all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos.”

“I believe that we as Americans can handle the truth, and I also believe that the world deserves the truth,” he said.

Elizondo’s concerns relate to national security and rest on the fact that much of the reported UAP activity has been around military bases and nuclear weapons sites. He also claimed that the United States possesses UAP technology, as do some of its adversaries.

“If this was an adversarial technology, this would be an intelligence failure that eclipsed 9/11 by an order of magnitude,” he said, adding that, as Grusch argued, many of the government’s UAP programs operate without proper congressional oversight.

And as many have testified before, Elizondo reiterated that the observed objects have often outmaneuvered US military aircraft and flown in ways beyond the capabilities of known human technology. In fact, he alluded to a secure email he observed that used the word “stalked.”

Witness: Gov. sitting on troves of UAP photos

One of the more compelling revelations was a report shared by journalist Michael Shellenberger about a shadowy UAP program created in 2017 after a New York Times story reveal another top secret Pentagon program.

Shellenberger, who publishes “Public” newsletter on Substack, sources claimed to have told him that the intelligence community is “sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information” about the UAP.

“And they’ve been doing that for a very long time, and it’s not the blurry pictures and videos that we’ve got, it’s very clear, high resolution,” he added.

Asked how many photos or videos, Shellenberger said “hundreds, maybe thousands.”

NASA encouraged investment in UAP research

As NASA released its own UAP report last September, Michael Gold, a former administrator at the space agency, urged the organization to do more.

NASA’s investment in UAP research “would make a strong statement to the scientific community that UAP should be taken seriously,” testified Gold, who is part of an independent NASA UAP study team.

Many UAPs can often be explained as drones or weather events, Gold admitted. But for the few reports that defy explanation, Gold insisted they would be better caught with instruments tailored to study the phenomena to prevent us from relying on cell phones and fighter jet cockpit gun cameras.

The proposal was among the recommendations in NASA’s report.

This article has been updated to add new information.

Eric Lagatta covers the latest and trending news for USA TODAY. Contact him at [email protected]