How did we get here?
Adam Gabbatt
In June, David Grusch, a former intelligence official, shocked people in the US and beyond when he claimed the US government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.
Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US department of defense agency until 2023, alleged in a series of interviews that the government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.
Some of those craft were “very large, like a football field kind of size”, Grusch told NewsNation. He added that there had been “malevolent events” connected to UFOs.
Grusch has not seen the alien craft himself, but said in an interview with the Debrief that his claims are based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”.
Today’s hearing was sparked by Grusch’s allegations that information on these alien vehicles is being illegally withheld from Congress. Grusch said the government had a crash retrieval program which had collected downed UFO craft, and that his investigation into that program was stymied.
That prompted the House Oversight Committee to order an investigation and hearing into what the government knows, or doesn’t know, about UFOs.
Key events
Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican congresswoman from Florida who is co-leading the UFO investigation, said she and Representatives Tim Burchett, Matt Gaetz, Jared Moskowitz, and Eric Burlison all spoke with the whistleblower former intelligence official David Grusch on Tuesday.
She said she and Burchett, her co-lead in the UFO probe, also met with Ryan Graves, the retired navy pilot also expected to appear at today’s hearing.
Luna added:
Based on the info discussed, tomorrows hearing will have a lot of information for the public to digest.
‘We’re done with the cover-up’, say Republican lawmakers
Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, Republican members of Congress from Florida and Tennessee, respectively, are leading the House oversight committee investigation.
In a briefing last Thursday, Burchett said he and Luna had been “stonewalled” by federal officials when asking about UFOs, and prevented from accessing some “information to prove that they do exist”.
Burchett, who declared in early July that alien craft possess technology that could “turn us into a charcoal briquette”, said:
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.
He said the US had evidence of technology that “defies all of our laws of physics”, and angrily railed against a “cover-up” by military officials. He added:
We’re gonna get to the bottom of it, dadgummit. Whatever the truth may be. We’re done with the cover-up.
Adam Gabbatt
Experts in UFO lore have suggested David Grusch’s assertions should be taken with a grain of salt, questioned the veracity of his claims and demanded proof.
“He has not presented anything like the evidence that we would expect to believe something as extraordinary as this,” said Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian whose upcoming book UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here – and Out There will be published in October.
There’s no first-hand knowledge. He didn’t see these things himself. He didn’t touch them. He wasn’t part of the operation to retrieve them and we haven’t heard from anyone who was.
Grusch also said there was a “sophisticated disinformation program targeting the US populace” to suppress information on UFOs, which is a common conspiracy trope in the UFO community.
Graff said:
The story aligns with a lot of similar stories that have played out, going back to the 1980s and 1970s, that together allege that the US government has kept an incredible secret, the literal most extraordinary secret that mankind could have, for not just weeks or months, but years and decades, with no meaningful leak or documentary evidence to ever come forward.
And I think when you look at the government’s ability to keep secret other really important secrets, there’s a lot of reason to doubt the capability of the government to do that.
Which witnesses will appear at the hearing?
The star turn will be David Grusch, the former intelligence official who caused headlines around the world with his claim that the US had been collecting non-human craft for “decades”.
Grusch led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US department of defense agency, and left the government in April after a 14-year career in intelligence. Grusch’s knowledge of non-human materials and vehicles was based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”, according to the Debrief website.
After initially claiming the US government had possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles, Grusch went on to suggest the US has also encountered “malevolent” alien pilots. He said there was a “sophisticated disinformation program targeting the US populace” to suppress information on UFOs.
Other witnesses at the hearing are David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004, and Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has claimed that he saw UAPs off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.
How did we get here?
Adam Gabbatt
In June, David Grusch, a former intelligence official, shocked people in the US and beyond when he claimed the US government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.
Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US department of defense agency until 2023, alleged in a series of interviews that the government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.
Some of those craft were “very large, like a football field kind of size”, Grusch told NewsNation. He added that there had been “malevolent events” connected to UFOs.
Grusch has not seen the alien craft himself, but said in an interview with the Debrief that his claims are based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”.
Today’s hearing was sparked by Grusch’s allegations that information on these alien vehicles is being illegally withheld from Congress. Grusch said the government had a crash retrieval program which had collected downed UFO craft, and that his investigation into that program was stymied.
That prompted the House Oversight Committee to order an investigation and hearing into what the government knows, or doesn’t know, about UFOs.
Congress to hold UFO hearing
Good morning and welcome to our live blog covering a congressional hearing into claims the US government is harboring UFOs.
A House of Representatives committee will meet today in Washington to hold a much-anticipated hearing to examine whether the US government is harboring alien space craft.
The House oversight committee is holding its first public hearing as part of its investigation into UFOs, or unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP), weeks after a whistleblower former intelligence official went public with claims that the government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.
David Grusch, who led analysis of UAP within a department of defense agency until 2023 and who has also suggested that the US has encountered “malevolent” alien pilots, is among the witnesses slated to appear in Wednesday’s congressional public hearing.
Grusch’s allegation that the federal government was hiding evidence of extraterrestrials from Congress sparked a firestorm in June, prompting the Republican-led oversight committee to launch an immediate investigation. Since then the intrigue around what evidence the government has, or doesn’t have, around UFOs has only intensified.
Also slated to appear before the committee is David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004, and Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has claimed that he saw unidentified aerial phenomena off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.
It is doubtful that today’s hearing will prove conclusively whether or not aliens exist. It’s also unlikely that the public will find out whether aliens have visited Earth. What is almost certain, however, is that we’ll be hearing some fairly out-of-this-world claims inside the Capitol building today.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10am EST in front of the House oversight subcommittee on national security, the border, and foreign affairs. We will be following the hearing and reaction live here, so buckle up, folks.
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