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…
27
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK. Do you have any information that the U.S.
Government is involved in a disinformation campaign to deny the
existence of certain UAPs?
Mr. GRUSCH. I cannot go beyond what I have already stated pub-
licly in my News Nation interview because it touches other sen-
sitivities.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK. I will yield the balance of my time back.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Ms. Foxx?
Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank our witnesses
for being here today.
Mr. Grusch, in your sworn testimony you state that the U.S.
Government has retrieved supposedly extraterrestrial spacecraft
and other UAP-related artifacts. You go so far as to state that the
U.S. is in possession of, quote, ‘‘nonhuman spacecraft,’’ end quote,
and that some of these artifacts have circulated with defense con-
tractors. Several other former military and intelligence officials
have come forward with similar allegations albeit in nonpublic set-
tings.
However, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the Director of AARO, previously
testified before Congress that there has been, and I quote, ‘‘no cred-
ible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity’’ or of, quote, ‘‘off-
world technology brought to the attention of the office.’’
To your knowledge, is that statement correct?
Mr. GRUSCH. It is not accurate. I believe Dr. Kirkpatrick men-
tioned he had about 30 individuals that have come to AARO thus
far. A few of those individuals have also come to AARO that I also
interviewed.
Ms. FOXX. OK.
Mr. GRUSCH. And I know what they provided Dr. Kirkpatrick
and their team.
Ms. FOXX. OK.
Mr. GRUSCH. I was able to evaluate that information.
Ms. FOXX. OK. I need to go on.
Mr. GRUSCH. Sure.
Ms. FOXX. But my understanding—this—his statement is accu-
rate. Came from a direct quote, and this contradiction is a perfect
example of why we need to inject transparency into our govern-
ment.
And for another example, look no further than the pitiful re-
sponse to the Chinese spy balloon debacle earlier this year. You
may remember the mass confusion that ensued when the balloon
was first spotted over Montana 4 days after it first entered U.S.
airspace over Alaska.
The Biden Administration’s initial inability to address the object
grew into a continuous series of embarrassments. After news of the
balloon reached the mainstream media, we were assured that the
balloon posed no threat to our security.
However, after the balloon was allowed to transit the entire con-
tinental United States, fighter jets were scrambled off the coast of
South Carolina to shoot it down. This flip flopping and obfuscation
caused needless confusion, fear, and panic across the country.
It is my hope, Mr. Chairman, that this sort of confusion will not
be repeated. We should investigate the extent to which elements of

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.