Yesterday, The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation held its second hearing on UAPs.
The major themes were transparency (or lack thereof) by the Pentagon and other agencies as well as national security threats.
Chairwoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Glenn Grothman (R-WI) ran the meeting, which featured testimony from multiple witnesses.
Witnesses included:
Dr. Tim Gallaudet, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (RET.), Chief Executive Officer, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC
Mr. Luis Elizondo, Author, and Former Department of Defense Official
Mr. Michael Gold, Former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships; Member of NASA UAP Independent Study Team
Mr. Michael Shellenberger, Founder of Public
Get the backstory on the hearing here:
More To The Story
Here is a rundown of the key moments.
Lack of transparency theme throughout the 2-hour hearing
"The reality is, despite their enormous taxpayer-funded budget, the transparency of the defense department and the intelligence community have long been abysmal," said Mace during the hearing.
Her comments were backed up by the witnesses.
Gallaudet, in his remarks, described a 2015 situation involving an email when he realized UAPs were real while working for the NAVY as its chief meteorologist. In that role he was in charge of making sure training exercises were safe as it related to weather patterns.
The email followed a training exercise off the East Coast of the United states and Gallaudet described it as a warning about "multiple near-midair collisions" with UAPs. The email had a video attached of a UAP captured by cameras on a Navy F/A-18 aircraft, which he said was “exhibiting flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal."
Gallaudet said the email vanished from all personnel inboxes and added that the video, now known as the "tic-tac video" later was declassified.
Gallaudet also testified about images of a "disc-shaped" UAP captured by satellites in 2017 - imagery that has not yet been shared with Congress.
Like Gallaudet, Shellenberger also shared a big item being hidden from Congress. He delivered a report to the committee just prior to the hearing about a new hidden UAP program created in 2017 called "Immaculate Constellation."
This new program was leaked to Shellenberger by a whistleblower and it was set up after the New York Times story on the existence of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
Shellenberger also said sources have told him that the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies are "sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information" about UAPs that Congress is unaware of.
Underscoring the lack of transparency theme, in his opening remarks, Shellenberger held up a ridiculously redacted document he received as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Threats to U.S. National Security and military installations
“Let me be clear: UAP are real,” Elizondo told the lawmakers. “Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe.”
Grothman and Elizondo had an exchange about UAP interactions as it related to military installations.
“I suppose hypothetically, you could have incursions over just regular airports, but is it obvious that these incursions are more likely over military facilities than over a random airport?” Grothman asked.
“There is definitely enough data to suggest that there is some sort of relationship between sensitive U.S. military installations, also some of our nuclear equities, some of our Department of Energy sites,” replied Elizondo. “There is a long historical record that some of your colleagues may have that document this.”
“This is not a new trend, this has been going on for decades and that information has been obfuscated, unfortunately, from folks like you in this Committee and I think that’s problematic because at the end of the day, we have a significant situation here,” said Elizondo. “We have something that can enter into U.S. air space with no attribution.”
Subcommittee member Rep. Timmons later asked Elizondo, “We’ve been hearing about these for years and have not been as consistent and over critical military instillations. Would you say that is fair? Is it happening more and more?”
“Great question, certainly there seems to be some indication that they are being provocative. In some cases they are literally splitting air craft formations right down the middle, so that is an air safety issue,” Elizondo said.
“The question is, is the frequency increasing? The response is it depends,” Elizondo continued. “Yes, it is possible that there is an increase in frequency but there is also a heightened awareness now and there is also more pervasiveness of technology out there that’s collecting this information and recording this information.“
Elizondo also claimed that the Department of Defense/Pentagon definitely has possession of UAP technology and crashed vehicles and that so do U.S. adversaries.
"If this was an adversarial technology, this would be an intelligence failure eclipsing that of 9/11 by an order of magnitude," Elizondo said, adding that he knows many U.S. UAP programs operate with minimal or no congressional oversight.
Elizondo said UAPs observed have vastly out-maneuvered U.S. military aircraft, have flying capabilities that human technology does not possess, and referred to an email he once viewed that used the word "stalked" when it came to UAP interaction with military aircraft.
Workers harmed by UAP crash retrievals
Elizondo affirmed to Mace that the U.S. government has conducted UAP crash retrievals.
Mace also had him confirm that, as he wrote in one of his books, were employees injured by UAP retrievals who were placed on leave and were being compensated for their injuries.
"How can the government deny we have recovered craft if they're paying people because they've been injured by recovered craft?" Mace asked.
"Ma'am, that's a great question," Elizondo replied.
Elizondo's claim lines up with a similar one made by David Grusch at last year's UAP hearing that humans have been "harmed" by aggressive "non-human" entities.
No new answers, More legislation
This past Tuesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) introduced a bill to "provide protections to whistleblowers who bring attention to federal funding that is being used to study UAPs."
Burchett's bill dovetails with one he filed earlier this year requiring declassification of all documents, images, and UAP related materials.
Full hearing video: