In scenes that felt reminiscent of a science-fiction movie, the US Congress this week held a public hearing on claims the government is covering up its knowledge of UFOs. Claims of UFOs, and of the government covering up aliens, have a long history in the US.
In the 1940s and 50s, reports of UFOs, usually in the shape of a “flying saucer”, were commonplace. It wasn’t until the past couple of years, however, that Congress really began to take notice.
Unsurprisingly, the hearing generated huge interest in the US and around the world as it heard from three key witnesses, including David Grusch, a whistleblower former intelligence official who in June claimed the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.
Grusch has suggested – although not in Wednesday’s hearing – that Pope Pius XII negotiated the transfer of a UFO from Mussolini’s Italy to the US in 1944. UFOs have become a high-profile news story in recent years.
The US military says it is actively trying to investigate the small number of sightings for which there is no obvious explanation.
As the hearing unfolded there were no new revelations about aliens, but there were startling allegations from witnesses, and a general sense that a cover-up exists somewhere in the US government – as well as skepticism that that has anything to do with “little green men”. Here are the key takeaways:
Claims of a cover-up
The US government conducted a “multi-decade” program which collected, and attempted to reverse-engineer, crashed UFOs, David Grusch told the hearing. Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency until 2023, claimed he had been denied access to secret government UFO programs, said he has faced “very brutal” retaliation as a result of his allegations. He claimed he had knowledge of “people who have been harmed or injured” in the course of government efforts to conceal UFO information.
Hints of violence
Congressman Tim Burchett asked Grusch if he has any personal knowledge of people who have been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal extraterrestrial technology. Grusch replied: “Yes.” Burchett asked Grusch if he has heard of anyone being murdered. The former intelligence official answered: “I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.”
Pentagon denials
But the Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a cover-up. In a statement, a defense department spokesperson said investigators had not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.
Other witnesses, other claims
Other witnesses at the hearing were David Fravor, a former navy commander who recalled seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004. Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has since founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a UAP non-profit, claimed that he saw UAP off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.
The sightings were “not rare or isolated” and were being witnessed by military aircrews and commercial pilots “whose lives depend on accurate identification”, Graves said. Graves said UAP objects had been detected “essentially where all navy operations are being conducted across the world”. Asked if there were any common characteristics to the UAPs that have been cited by different pilots, Graves says sightings were primarily of “dark grey or black cubes inside of clear sphere” where “the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of the sphere”.
Doubts linger
Not everyone was convinced by Grusch’s testimony. At times, he appeared less forthcoming under oath than he had been in media interviews. In the interview with NewsNation in June, Grusch claimed the government had “very large, like a football-field kind of size” alien craft, while he told Le Parisien, a French newspaper, that the US had possession of a “bell-like craft” which Benito Mussolini’s government had recovered in northern Italy in 1933.
On Wednesday, he was reluctant to go into details on those claims, citing issues of security. Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian who is writing a book on the government’s hunt for UFOs, tweeted: “Very interesting to me that Dave Grusch is unwilling to state and repeat under oath at the #UFOHearings the most explosive – and outlandish – of his claims from his NewsNation interview. He seems to be very carefully dancing around repeating them.”
Legislation to come
In his closing remarks, Republican congressman Glenn Grothman described the hearing as “illuminating” and said he believed legislation would follow. Grothman, the chair of the House subcommittee on national security, the border and foreign affairs, said: “Obviously, I think several of us are going to look forward to getting some answers in a more confidential setting. I assume some legislation will come out of this.”
Not everyone, however, was impressed with the new disclosures. Grusch has not personally seen any of the things he described, and his claims are based on interviews with people “with direct knowledge” of governmental goings on, which has raised eyebrows among skeptics.
“Fravor and Graves for years have been telling this story pretty much as best as they can. And Grusch: I suspect he believes his story,” said Mick West, author of Escaping the Rabbit Hole. How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect.
“So it didn’t really change that aspect of it for me. I already believe that they thought they were telling the truth, what I don’t think is that what they’re describing is an accurate representation of the facts.”
West, a longtime investigator of alleged UFO encounters and claims, said sightings like the ones Fravor and Graves described could be attributed to radar issues or clutter, including balloons in the air. In terms of proving, unequivocally, that the US government has alien craft, and indeed aliens, West said it “will come down to the physical evidence”.
“They say they know the exact locations of where these alien craft are. So if you want to tell the American public about the whole program, if Congress wants to do that, then they can just go and look at these craft,” he said.
The next things to look out for include a Nasa report due to be published this month, while the Department of Defense is due to issue a report of its own this summer. There will probably be more congressional hearings when representatives, who are about to leave Washington on a month-long recess, return in September.
