Michael Shellenberger will join Elizabeth Vargas Reports at 5p/4C to recap today’s hearing. Find out how to watch at JoinNN.com.
(NewsNation) — At a House of Representatives committee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena Wednesday, lawmakers spoke to a number of witnesses about what they have seen and heard about UFOs.
Watch the Q&A with NewsNation’s Ross Coulthart following the UAP House hearing:
The hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” opened with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., laying out the goals including finding out the extent of Pentagon programs investigating UAPs and any information that may have been recovered, including any information or lack thereof on alien life or technology of nonhuman origin.
Mace noted a lack of trust in agencies, including the Defense Department, due to a reluctance by those entities to declassify information.
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“As we continue to investigate these phenomena, we must do so with the mind of protecting our country, advancing scientific discovery and upholding the trust of the American people, who right now I don’t think have trust, which is obvious. I don’t have trust,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wisc.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., also addressed the stigma around the subject, pointing to a lack of official information that pushed UFOs and UAPs to the fringes.
“A void of information has allowed conspiracy theories to fester,” Moskowitz said.
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Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet said in his opening statement that he first became aware of UAPs during his career as a meteorologist with the Navy and pushed back against secrecy about UAPs.
“We should boldly face this new reality and learn from it,” Gallaudet said.
He also said he felt a moral obligation to vouch for the credibility of whistleblowers who have come forward with their UAP experiences, many of whom have faced ridicule for their claims.
Pentagon insider Luis Elizondo accused a small group of government officials of keeping the truth about UAPs from the public.
“Excessive secrecy has led to grave misdeeds against loyal civil servants, military personnel and the public, all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos,” he said.
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When asked directly if the government has secret UAP craft retrieval programs, Elizondo gave an unequivocal yes but declined to answer if he had been read into such programs in a public setting.
Former NASA administrator Michael Gold pushed back against the stigma about UAPs, noting that it discourages scientific efforts to determine what is happening.
Elizondo described UAPs as “an enigma and a frustration,” noting that the technology outperforms anything the U.S. currently has.
Much of the testimony rehashed previous claims about secret programs with an emphasis on national security, the need for scientific research without stigma and concerns about why information is being kept from both the public and Congress.
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Elizondo, a former Pentagon insider, veteran and investigator; retired Navy Rear Adm. Gallaudet; journalist Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold, a former NASA administrator, gave their testimony.
This hearing is the first since the summer of 2023, which was sparked by career intelligence official David Grusch’s allegations that the Pentagon has been operating a secret UFO retrieval program.
“If the UFO hearings catch on with the public, we could be in for quite a ride,” Bryce Zabel, UFO author and cohost of the podcast “Need to Know” with Ross Coulthart, told NewsNation. “Back in 1973, all of America was riveted to the Senate Watergate hearings, and the cover-up Nixon orchestrated will seem small compared to the one that would have been necessary to hide the truth about alien contact for nearly eight decades now.”
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Elizondo’s book “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs” alleges that the United States military has been running a UAP retrieval and reverse engineering program for years, even recovering nonhuman specimens.
“Let me be clear: UAP are real. Advanced technologies not made by our Government – or any other government – are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe,” Elizondo said, according to testimony published the day before the hearing.
He spoke about what actions the government should be taking regarding the UAP issue.
Gallaudet, in his testimony, repeated a claim he’s made before to NewsNation: that an email that contained what is known as the “GoFast” video, disappeared from his and his colleagues’ email servers. “GoFast” shows a fighter pilot’s encounter with a UAP.
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Shellenberger detailed his reporting on the alleged “Immaculate Constellation” secret government program. A whistleblower revealed the alleged UFO program, in which the Pentagon collects and quarantines information on UFO sightings, Shellenberger says.
Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough has previously denied records of the program.
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Shellenberger highlighted the need for Congress and the White House to address UFOs.
Michael Gold, a former NASA administrator, outlined new ways for NASA to be helpful on the UAP issue. Currently Chief Growth Office at Redwire Space, Gold stressed in his testimony that he is speaking on his own behalf and not for any other organization.
“Agencies such as NASA have much to offer when it comes to understanding UAP,” Gold’s prepared testimony read.
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Much of the current conversation surrounding UFOs started when David Grusch came forward last year with his claims that the government was operating a secret program dedicated to retrieving crashed UAPs and was in possession of nonhuman craft and biological remains of nonhuman beings.
The Defense Department has denied these allegations.
Still, they sparked the 2023 congressional hearing on the subject — the first in more than 50 years —where Grusch testified with former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and Navy Commander David Fravor.
Fravor talked about his experience encountering a UAP. Both Graves and Fravor said they were concerned about the risks UAPs pose to the military, regardless of origin.
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Lawmakers asked about the secret program referenced by Grusch, and eventually, the hearing led to the formation of a bipartisan UFO Caucus, informally led by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
An official report issued by the Pentagon from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office found no evidence of a secret program. Furthermore, it said the government has no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin. However, the Department of Defense did admit to a proposed program known as Kona Blue, which was developed to reverse-engineer any alien technology recovered by the government. This never got off the ground, the DOD said, as no such technology was ever located.
NASA, in a report of its own, said there’s no evidence for extraterrestrial contact with Earth, though the agency said there needs to be more rigorous research in the area and less stigma around the topic as a whole.