Documents / Hearing transcript

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency (hearing transcript)

U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability · 2023-07-26 · 54 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is the printed transcript of a July 26, 2023 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. Glenn Grothman. Ryan Graves, David Grusch and retired Navy Commander David Fravor testified on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Members pressed for transparency, whistleblower protection and better pilot reporting. Graves described a near mid-air collision with a dark cube inside a clear sphere off the Eastern Seaboard.

  • p. 6 …Congress should work to ensure that knowledge is not driven by fear. Today, we are not…
  • p. 8 …We need to tell the folks at the Pentagon they work for us, daggum it. We…
  • p. 9 …In being an active-duty service member working on an airfield, I have had conversations with…
  • p. 11 …I am proud to say that this hearing builds upon bipartisan work by Members of the…
  • p. 12 …I want to thank, obviously, committee staff and their staff work- ing on this on a…
  • p. 13 …And, finally, retired Navy Commander David Fravor, squadron leader who worked as a naval aviator for…
  • p. 18 …They work with Leslie Keane, who is present today, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper to publish…
  • p. 20 …If you had one, you captured one, you reverse engineered it, you got it to work…
  • p. 21 …And so can you just briefly—you mentioned that you are working with 30 pilots right…
  • p. 22 …be an outcome that this Committee can work on. Is there anything else just for the…
  • p. 23 19 particularly by the 30 folks that you are working with, are essen- tially outside the…
  • p. 27 …To your knowledge, are NHIs working with adversarial foreign governments in either technology exchange programs or…
  • p. 29 …Grusch, as a result of your previous govern- ment work, have you met with people with…
  • p. 32 …marketplaces, and I think NASA’s work, as they work to identify and highlight specific parameters…
  • p. 33 …I have been working with the American Institute of Aero- nautics and Astronautics to help them…
  • p. 35 …hammered, but seems like it does not work the other way, right. Mr. BURCHETT. If you…
  • p. 40 …a theo- retical framework at least to work off to kind of espouse crashes. Regardless of…
  • p. 41 …did not have a FLIR system that worked. Here is what he said. They were out…
  • p. 45 …Got a Master’s from Univer- sity of Houston and I have worked in the private…
  • p. 48 …Do you have any personal knowledge of someone who has possibly been injured working on legacy…
  • p. 50 …we had at the entrance to our working area. One of these objects was completely stationary…
  • p. 51 47 exact entrance to our working areas, not only geographically but also altitude. So, it was…
  • p. 52 …I do want to thank the Committee staff on both sides for the amount of work…
  • p. 53 …the broader issue as it relates to working with our Republican counterparts on this Committee. I…
  • p. 54 …I need to compliment the folks in my office that did a lot of the work…
8
We will hear testimony from witnesses today with a long record
of service to the American people and with subject matter exper-
tise.
Our witnesses have a unique opportunity to share their perspec-
tive, insights, and their experiences with the American people and
I encourage all of my colleagues to engage with these difficult ques-
tions with an open mind and to follow the facts on behalf of our
country.
I also just want to say, more broadly, that we should look at this
hearing and believe that everything is on the table as it relates to
UAPs. I think an open mind is absolutely the best.
I want to yield the two and a half minutes, the remainder of my
time, to the representative from Florida, Representative
Moskowitz, for an opening statement. He also has been very much
engaged in this issue and I want to thank him for his leadership.
Congressman?
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Thank you, Ranking Member Garcia. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank Tim Burchett and Anna Pau-
lina Luna for their leadership in pushing this hearing forward.
I want to thank, obviously, committee staff and their staff work-
ing on this on a bipartisan basis because many Americans are
deeply interested in this issue, and it should not take the potential
of nonhuman origin to bring us together.
Additionally, I want to thank the witnesses for coming forward
to share your perspectives, your thoughts, and the sightings of
UAPs. Unlike other hearings many times in Congress you are not
here to help a political party, but you are here to share information
with the American people, and it is not something that is just going
on in this Administration.
It is something that has spanned many administrations. For dec-
ades many Americans have been fascinated by objects mysterious
and unexplained and it is long past time that they got some an-
swers.
The American public has a right to learn about technologies of
unknown origins, nonhuman intelligence, and unexplainable phe-
nomena. Those are not the words of a UFO Twitter account. That
is a direct quote from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, that the
American public has a right to learn about technologies of un-
known origins, nonhuman intelligence, and unexplainable phe-
nomena.
In an interview with Fox News, recent former Director of Na-
tional Intelligence John Ratcliffe confirmed the U.S. Government is
aware a lot more sightings of UAPs and that they have not made
that information public. I quote, ‘‘There are a lot more sightings
that have not been made public,’’ Ratcliffe said to Fox News.
For me, this hearing is about transparency. We, unfortunately,
live in a time in which many people distrust government and our
institutions and over classification of information away from the
American public or even Congress contributes to today’s politics.
The American people have regular questions. What are UAPs?
How come the media does not report more on them? Are they for-
eign adversaries? Are they U.S. technology? Are they something
else?

Cases discussed

About this file

Hearing transcript, from the hearings collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 54 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.