Witness says U.S. government may have nonhuman bodies during congressional hearing on UFOs

Eliza Anderson, Deseret News

Congressional lawmakers explored the possibility of the existence of advanced, gravity-defying, disc-shaped aircrafts that appear to not be human-made, as well as the government secrecy that surrounds them, at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

A U.S. House committee peeled back the curtain on the possible existence of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, with one witness going so far as to say that the government could have the remains of nonhuman bodies from a UAP crash.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held the hearing to discuss the “implications on national security, public safety and government transparency” of the existence of extraterrestrials.

Since the last hearing on this subject took place a little over a year ago, a preliminary assessment report on UAPs, more commonly known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), from June 2021, found that numerous sightings reported by military personnel and others can’t be explained and allegedly feature unconventional technology.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said these sightings have rarely been explained by those providing firsthand witness accounts.

“This is largely due to the lack of transparency by our own governments, and the failure of our elected leaders to make good on their promises to release explanations and footage and mountains of over-classified documents that continue to be hidden from the American people,” she said.

The latest Ipsos poll found that 1 in 10 people say they have seen a UFO, while more than 2 in 5 believe in UFOs.

“And from my personal experience, I believe the same thing,” said Luna.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member of the National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said in his opening remarks that he understood the hesitancy from the Department of Defense to share information that could put the country’s national security at risk.

“At the same time, many people believe that we’re withholding information from them and that is dangerous,” he said. “I believe in openness and transparency. That is also the role of Congress.”

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Garcia, looking out at a congressional hearing room packed to the brim with general public attendees, said there was “enormous interest” in the hearing.

The hearing briefly touched on the confusion stemming from the appearance of a Chinese spy balloon in American airspace earlier this year.

“After news of the balloon reached the mainstream media, we were assured that the balloon posed no threat to our security,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. said, narrating how the fighter jets scrambled to shoot the object down. “This flip-flopping and obfuscation caused needless confusion, fear and panic across the country.”

Government personnel talks about government disinformation on UFOs

Brian Lindley, the Utah state director at the Mutual UFO Network, a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that researches UFO sightings, told the Deseret News prior to the hearing that viewers should expect “whistleblowers at the highest level of government and military coming forward to testify about direct knowledge of reverse engineering programs as well unknown material and craft well beyond human technology.”

“It is believed that that nonhuman craft and technologies have been buried in special access programs for decades that even our highest officials are unaware of and have been denied access to in years past,” Lindley, a certified field investigator, said.

In fact, lawmakers like Luna and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said last week they were stonewalled by the Pentagon when trying to access information on UFOs.

“We’ve had a heck of a lot of pushback about this hearing. There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” Burchett said.

Ever since the first well-known reported sighting of an alleged flying saucer in the U.S. in June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman, claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects while flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington, ordinary citizens and former military personnel have come forward with tales of humanoid beings, alien technologies and government cover-ups.

But while some believed the sightings were technologies that belonged to foreign adversaries, others believed they were related to UFOs. This led to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which compiled 12,000 sightings — including 6% that could not be explained — until its shutdown in 1969.

Even after a series of inconclusive reports, government investigations into UFOs continued, but more or less in secret.

At the hearing Wednesday, the committee invited expert witnesses, including David Grusch, a former national reconnaissance officer with the Defense Department’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force.

James Clarkson, a longtime ufologist, someone who studies unidentified spacecrafts, told the Deseret News that Grusch gave testimony to an inspector general of the intelligence community on June 5 before he was called in to testify before the congressional committee.

Although “he is not a direct witness to recovered alien technology,” Clarkson, a former police officer and author of several books about UFO sightings, said that Grusch’s initial whistleblower testimony made way for the House hearing.

Luna asked Grusch if there were any instances when he feared for his life since he spoke out on his knowledge of UFOs.

Grusch replied, “Yes.” But he refused to answer many questions about classified subjects in the open hearing — like whether or not he has seen alien bodies.

“As I’ve stated publicly already … biologics came with some of these (UFO crash) recoveries,” said Grusch.

“I’m guessing nonhuman biologics. That was the assessment of people with direct knowledge of the program I talked to,” he said, adding that he is open to sharing video evidence and other information behind closed doors.

He cited an “open whistleblower reprisal investigation” against him as a reason behind his caution during the hearing.

When asked if the government disseminates disinformation to create doubt about UFOs, Grusch said there was a “multidecade campaign to disenfranchise public interest.”

UFO documents come closer to being declassified

The other witnesses — Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot and the executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, and David Fravor, a former commanding officer for the U.S. Navy — also said there were active disinformation campaigns.

Graves said he observed a “Tic Tac” UAP in 2004 and Fravor detailed the time he spotted a mysterious “dark gray cube inside of a clear sphere — motionless against the wind” in 2014.

“Unfortunately, although the two fighter pilots are excellent witnesses, I believe we are all going to be left longing for more detailed revelations about covert UAP Crash Retrievals,” said Clarkson.

“For people who have closely followed the UAP subject, the hearing on July 26 will be a matter of putting on the record information we already knew,” he said, adding, “But it is progress.”

Clarkson is right, there have been many efforts in Congress to declassify information related to UFOs. For example, the Senate’s Intelligence Authorization Act for 2024 includes a provision for creating funding and reporting requirements for UAPs.

Meanwhile, the Senate introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, that will declassify government records related to UAPs — modeled after the legislation used to declassify documents related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

“There is a lot we still don’t know about these UAPs and that is a big problem,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee and a supporter of the amendment.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked Tuesday if the president or the Pentagon have expressed concerns about declassifying these records. She said the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, under the purview of the Department of Defense, has focused on the potential discovery of UFOs in the last year.

“My understanding is that they have not discovered any verifiable information to sustain claims on extraterrestrials, but I would refer you to the Department of Defense for any more information on that,” Jean-Pierre said.

Whether or not that is accurate, Clarkson had noticed some strange wording in the text of the Senate’s amendment. He took his findings to Facebook, where he said he was surprised to see the term “nonhuman intelligence” in the proposed legislation. “Perhaps the Snowball has begun rolling down the mountain!” he said.