Florida lawmakers demand end to secrecy around evidence of UFOs

Has the U.S. government been hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life? It may have been found at Eglin Air Force base.

While this may sound like a plot for a science fiction film, a congressional hearing probed the prospect of alien aircraft sighting with seriousness. Lawmakers from Florida played an outsized role both in having the hearing held and discussing unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs) with whistleblowers from the Defense Department.

“From Roswell, New Mexico, to the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, the sightings of UAPs have rarely been explained by the people who have firsthand accounts of these situations,” said U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a St. Petersburg Republican.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, spearheaded a push for the House Oversight to explore UAPs. Officials favored the term over the popularized unidentified flying object, or UFO.

While Burchett played a lead role in questioning intelligence and military experts, he credited U.S. Reps. Luna, a St. Petersburg Republican, and Jared Moskowitz, a Parkland Democrat, for helping gather research ahead of the hearing.

He also praised U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican, for pressing the issue at Eglin Air Force Base.

Gaetz, for his part, expressed frustration that even Congress had limited information about the sightings by military pilots just a few months ago during a test flight over the Gulf of Mexico.

“We asked to see any of the evidence that had been taken by flight crew in this endeavor, and to observe any radar signature as well as to meet with the flight crew. We were not afforded access to all of the flight crew. And initially, we were not afforded access to images and to radar,” he said.

“Thereafter, we had a bit of a discussion about how authority flows in the United States of America. And we did see the image, and we did meet with one member of the flight crew who took the image. The image was of something that I am not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States, or from any of our adversaries.”

Moskowitz said Americans of all political stripes want to know if there’s evidence of technology more advanced than anything developed by man. He characterized the interest in UAPs as a bipartisan one.

“Many Americans are deeply interested in this issue and it shouldn’t take the potential of nonhuman origin to bring us together,” Moskowitz said.

While some secrecy may be important when it comes to national security, he said that can’t be used as an excuse for concealing all information.

“We must always protect our national security to maintain our superiority, like when stealth helicopters were only rumored to exist, but were used in the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011,” Moskowitz said.

“But we can’t allow that to be used as a shield to keep the American people completely in the dark from basic truths. The American people deserve to hear more about Special Access Programs. Congress has a right to know if there’s any unsanctioned weapons development, satellite imagery, that has not been provided to Congress.”

Luna echoed that political observers across the political spectrum want an end to total secrecy when it comes to both civilian and official sightings.

“The circumstance around UAPs has captivated the attention of the American people for decades ingrained in even the minds of our nation’s leaders from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio to Chuck Schumer, John Ratcliffe to National Security Council officials,” Luna said.

She said that was largely because of decades of cover-ups by the American government, which she said has done more to quiet government officials with firsthand knowledge. She notes even ahead of the hearing, military leaders questioned clearances for David Grusch, one of the experts testifying to the House Oversight Committee.

Luna pressed former Navy pilot Ryan Graves about an incident at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Virginia. Graves said around 2003, numerous contractors there reported seeing a 100-yard flying red square that came in from the ocean and hovered over a launch facility. Another similar incident was reported later the same day. Graves recommended greater scrutiny on video and radar from that time frame.

Graves also said commercial aviators have received cease-and-desist orders from employers when it comes to similar sightings.

Moskowitz asked technical questions about whether the technology seemed bound by physics. Experts said the reported vehicles moved at G-forces human pilots could not survive with technology known today.

Grusch also told Moskowitz directly that he knows professionals in the U.S. government who had contact with technology clearly not of this world. That’s consistent with 2021 testimony from Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence, that technology has been secured by the government that appears more advanced than any known on Earth.

U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, an Orlando Democrat, noted NASA was not holding an expert panel on UAPs. “The NASA study team is expected to release its first report pretty soon,” Frost said. He asked if that could play a role in safe development of technology going forward. That also proves critical in improving public and private space travel, if nothing else.

He also noted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former U.S. Senator from Florida, had suggested there would be important information gleaned on UAPs from investment in research. And he said revelations from military pilots sharing firsthand accounts helped to lift a stigma on such study.