Following a July Congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs, previously known as UFOs), both sides of the aisle in the House are asking for expanded subpoena power and the formation of a special investigative committee. The committee will examine the claims of former intelligence official David Grusch that the U.S. government is back-engineering alien technology.
Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) attended the UAP hearing in July and thinks that subpoena power would break up the logjam of government information. “When you subpoena these folks, they’ll have their lawyers there, but they will not be prosecuted under law,” Burchett told The Hill’s congressional reporter Mychael Schnell, who moderated The Hill-sponsored virtual event,” The Truth Is Out There: UFOs & National Security.
Burchett said the expanded powers would help overcome roadblocks they’ve run into when trying to secure a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), in which they could hear the rest of Grusch’s testimony.
Luna said Congress is “actively being stonewalled” in its efforts to ensure Grusch has the security clearance he needs to brief them.
“It just creates more and more conspiracy theories because our federal government is so arrogant and so bloated,” Burchett said of the roadblocks. “They’ll just run out the clock.”
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which Congress established to investigate the incidents, has investigated roughly 800 reports of UAPs as of May. While military officials have said most cases have innocuous origins, many others remain unexplained.
It’s very difficult to believe anything the government says about UAPs for the simple reason there are so many agendas being promoted by those who are investigating the phenomenon that it’s difficult to understand where the misinformation ends and the truth starts. Since the Roswell incident, the military has used UAP sightings to misdirect inquiries into classified programs like Stealth and advanced optics. The brass find it useful to keep civilians and nosy reporters busy looking for aliens while it conducts the deadly serious business of protecting the country.
Related: Congress Wants More Transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon
In this specific case, Mr. Grusch may be an unwitting part of a government misdirection program. Or he may be telling the truth. Congress has a perfect right to determine which it is and probably won’t get to the bottom of the story unless a special committee is granted subpoena power.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) thinks that if the government is hiding the existence of aliens, this is the time to tell the American people of their existence.
“If we’re reverse-engineering technology based on stuff that has crashed landed here from other civilizations, we can’t just tell the American people that’s not true forever,” Moskowitz said. “The American people deserve to know.”
The hearing last month featured three witnesses who have first-hand knowledge of UAP sightings. Grusch, a former intelligence officer, claimed the government has recovered “non-human biological pilots” from downed UAPs, which the Pentagon has denied.
In the hearing, Grusch said he couldn’t speak on much of his knowledge because it is classified. But the investigating members told The Hill they are being slowed by the Pentagon on getting a classified hearing with Grusch started.
“The excuse that the Department of Defense is using for us not being able to get a SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] is that Grusch doesn’t have an active [security] clearance. So unless he has active clearance, they’re saying that he can’t divulge that information to us, which, one, I believe is false,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said at The Hill event. “The Department of Defense is literally trying to stonewall us.”
Secrets are a commodity in Washington. The fewer people let in on a secret, the more valuable it becomes and the more stature is given to the individual holding the secret. How much of the UFO secrets are a matter of national security and how much they might be a question of maintaining status for the holder of the secret won’t be known without a congressional investigation.
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