5 Takeaways From Congressional UFO Hearing

A bipartisan group of lawmakers hosted a congressional hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly referred to as UFOs, on Nov. 13. Witnesses testified on the threat to national security from potential incursions into U.S. airspace while criticizing the Pentagon for shrouding many UAP documents in secrecy.

The hearing, led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and hosted by the House Oversight Committee, was titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” Former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo, former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, and journalist Michael Shellenberger testified.

Among the topics discussed were congressional lawmakers’ ongoing bipartisan interest in UAP, NASA’s potential role in reporting sightings, the origins of the alleged craft, and the Pentagon classifying and restricting access to UAP documents and materials.

While a previous hearing last year was heavy on speculation into alleged non-human life, or extraterrestrials, this week’s hearing went further into the impacts of the Pentagon’s alleged secrecy regarding UAP sightings and how that might breach congressional oversight.

“One of Congress’s most important responsibilities is oversight of the executive branch in general and the military and intelligence community in particular,” Shellenberger said. He believes the government is unconstitutionally usurping congressional authority by withholding that information.

Here are five takeaways from the Nov. 13 congressional UAP hearing.

1. Ongoing Bipartisan Interest From Congress
The bipartisan UAP caucus—Mace, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), Rep. Anna Paulina (R-Fla.), Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.)—were joined by other House members on Wednesday for the nearly two and a half hour hearing. Mace, concerned that the U.S. government is withholding UAP materials it has officially compiled since the 1940s, said Congress and the public deserve to know what the government’s taxpayer-funded research on the topic has yielded, even if they are dead ends.

“If we’re spending money on something that doesn’t exist, why are we spending the money? And if it does exist, why are we hiding it from the public?” Mace asked. She said national security is at stake if those objects are the technology of foreign adversaries.

The possibility that some UAP, including those in videos released by the Pentagon, could be foreign technology, was echoed by Ogles.

“It is clear, from my experience and what I’ve seen, that there is something out there. The question is, ‘Is it ours, is it someone else’s, or is it otherworldly?’” Ogles asked.

Any attempts to restrict Congress from gaining access to that information would be criminal, he added.

The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which is tasked with studying and cataloging UAP reports, has hundreds of sightings that remain “uncharacterized and unattributed” while displaying “unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said.

“Now, we shouldn’t prejudge what they might be. I’m certainly not going to. We need evidence that we are detecting things, and we know that we don’t understand them, and this is worth investigating,” he added.

2. Elizondo Testifies
Elizondo, one of the key witnesses at the hearing, is famous for feeding the story of the Pentagon’s former UFO program to The New York Times in 2017.

That article resulted in a resurgence of public interest and media reporting on UFOs, and was accompanied by several Department of Defense fighter jet videos that purportedly showed unidentified craft. One video, titled “GOFAST,” showed a tic-tac-shaped craft, which some have speculated to be an advanced drone. One of the pilots who followed the craft when it was spotted in 2004, Commander David Fravor, testified at last year’s congressional UAP hearing that he believed the craft was superior to both contemporary military tech and anything we are “looking to develop in the next 10-plus years.”

Elizondo said on Wednesday that some UAP are “advanced technologies not made by our government or any other government” but that both the United States and its adversaries are in possession of “UAP technologies.”

“I believe we are in the midst of a multi-decade secretive arms race, one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” he said.

Elizondo has claimed since 2017 that he was previously the director of the Pentagon’s 2009 UFO program, which was officially called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program. The Pentagon has said this program, sometimes referred to as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), officially ended in 2012, but that an unofficial group of Pentagon researchers used the AATIP name moving forward. Elizondo says he was the director of AATIP.

“Luis Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP while assigned to OUSD(I) [Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence],” Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told The Epoch Times.

3. NASA’s Role in UAP Reporting
Gold, who was also a member of NASA’s UAP Independent Study Team, told Congress that commercial airline pilots need an official database to report potential UAP sightings. He suggested that his former employer’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) is a good place to start.

“This system, which is administered by NASA and funded by the FAA, provides a confidential means for reporting of safety violations in a voluntary and non-punitive manner,” Gold said. “Over 47 years, the ASRS has collected nearly 2 million reports. ASRS is the perfect tool to collect UAP data, which could then be collated by NASA and shared with the public at large.”

NASA is already one of the most respected U.S. agencies, Gold added, which gives it a unique position in reestablishing the public’s trust in the government and UAP.

“For relatively little cost and effort, NASA could create an AI [artificial intelligence] or ML [machine learning] algorithm that could search the agency’s archives for anomalous phenomena.”

4. Aliens, Drones, or Something Else?
While this year’s UAP hearing was lighter on speculations of non-human intelligence, the topic was still addressed. Mace probed Elizondo about purported UAP crash retrieval programs in the U.S. government, a central topic of discussion in last year’s hearing. Elizondo confirmed that the programs were indeed created to identify and reverse engineer alien spacecraft. Luna inquired about the possibility of these aircraft being piloted by non-human entities using a mind-body connection, to which Elizondo emphasized his focus on the objects’ flight characteristics rather than speculating on their origin, suggesting intelligent control due to their ability to anticipate maneuvers.

When asked about the potential source of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), Gallaudet and Elizondo mentioned nonhuman higher intelligence, while Shellenberger and Gold admitted uncertainty. Gold cautioned against assuming biological intelligence and predicted a surprising revelation in the future.

The Pentagon acknowledged that with better data, most UAP cases could be identified as ordinary objects or phenomena like drones, satellites, or meteorological events. Witnesses and lawmakers agreed that the Pentagon tends to overclassify documents related to UAP sightings, hindering public access through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Possible reasons for overclassification included Cold War policies and reluctance to disclose information on unresolved issues like foreign airspace intrusions. Greenewald’s Black Vault database revealed instances where the government initially denied UAP records’ existence, later admitting to their classification. The Navy’s UAP Security Classification Guide and similar Pentagon policies justify withholding information obtained through classified sources or methods.

Instances like the Pentagon withholding video footage of U.S. fighter jets engaging UFOs in Alaska while releasing footage of a Russian jet downing a U.S. drone raised concerns about transparency and public trust erosion. The Department of Defense assured a commitment to balancing openness with safeguarding sensitive information in response to public interest in UAP.

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