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Official hearing transcript PDF

U.S. House of Representatives · 54 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is the official transcript of a July 26, 2023 hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. The hearing was titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency." Ryan Graves, David Grusch and retired Commander David Fravor testified. Members pressed for transparency and whistleblower protections, and Graves described a near miss involving a dark cube inside a clear sphere.

  • p. 5 …Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any time. Additionally, without objection, the following…
  • p. 7 …I would say that is the biggest understatement of the decade. He also goes on to…
  • p. 8 …And I yield back the remainder of my time, I think—is it to Rep- resentative…
  • p. 9 …Even more alarming is the fact that these eyewitnesses are, many times, service members and have…
  • p. 10 …Now, some of the earliest reporting on this issue was a groundbreaking 2017 New York Times…
  • p. 12 …I want to yield the two and a half minutes, the remainder of my time, to…
  • p. 13 …I believe more information is known about the 171 instances. It is time for Congress to…
  • p. 15 11 was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings…
  • p. 16 …At the time, due to my extensive executive level intelligence sup- port duties I was cleared…
  • p. 18 …the articles in the 2017 New York Times and it removed the stigma on the topic…
  • p. 19 …for the United States and best for the citizens. I thank you for your time. Thank…
  • p. 21 …Now, that was our personal firsthand experience at the time. Since then, as I have engaged…
  • p. 25 …Like many others in 2017, I saw the New York Times article come out as well…
  • p. 28 …They had official documentation and records from the event that the witness held over the years…
  • p. 29 25 provide precise kinematics on the object as well as the fleet of ob- jects that…
  • p. 31 …I will yield the balance of my time back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. GROTHMAN. Ms…
  • p. 37 …I just—my time is limited. Mr. Graves, one of your main concerns that the FAA…
  • p. 39 …I know for a fact the video or the pic- tures that came out in the…
  • p. 46 …our speed in no time at all. Mr. LANGWORTHY. Now, if the fastest plane on Earth…
  • p. 48 …Chairman, with that, I will yield the remainder of my time to my fellow colleague from…
  • p. 50 …Chairman, I yield the remain- der of my time. Mr. GROTHMAN. OK. We will go to…
  • p. 51 …credibility to the New York Times article. And so after about six times I said OK…
  • p. 53 49 I also want to note for our witnesses and for the public that I am…
  • p. 54 …I need to compliment the folks in my office that did a lot of the work…
31
Mr. GRUSCH. It is a misnomer that there is anything actually
above top secret. Executive Order 13526 delineates the classifica-
tion levels.
Mr. GAETZ. Right. But I draw upon that because we can have ac-
cess to those programs and so the notion that we are not being
given that access sort of defies our typical muscle memory here in
Congress.
Thank you, Mr. Burchett. I will yield back to you.
Mr. BURCHETT. Thank you, Mr. Gaetz.
Along those lines, Title 10—you may not know this or not, but
Title 10 and Title 50 authorization they seem to say they are ineffi-
cient. So, who gets to decide this, in your opinion, in the past?
Mr. GRUSCH. It is a group of career senior executive officials.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. Are they government officials?
Mr. GRUSCH. Both in and out.
Mr. BURCHETT. Be what?
Mr. GRUSCH. Both in and out of government and that is about
as far as I can go there.
Mr. BURCHETT. I got you. All right. Well, that leads to my next
question. Which private corporations are directly involved in this
program? How much taxpayer money has been invested in these
programs, to your knowledge?
I mean, we know—we audit the Pentagon every year and I have
been here 5 years and they fail the daggum thing every year. Lose
over a billion dollars a year, we think, and I was told the Depart-
ment of Defense maybe 60 percent of their assets are unaccounted
for, whatever the heck that means. In the public sector, you go to
jail for that kind of crap. So, tell me.
Mr. GRUSCH. Yes. I know when I am a dollar off on my DTS trav-
el voucher I get hammered, but seems like it does not work the
other way, right.
Mr. BURCHETT. If you sell over—if you sell over $600 worth of
stuff on Ebay now you get a call from the IRS. So, please, what
corporations?
Mr. GRUSCH. Yes. I do not know the specific metrics toward the
end of your question. The specific corporations I did provide to the
committees in specific divisions and I spent 11‡ hours with both
intel committees.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. Has there been any—has there been an ac-
tive U.S. Government disinformation campaign to deny the exist-
ence of unidentified aerial phenomena and, if so, why?
Mr. GRUSCH. I cannot go beyond what I have already espoused
publicly about that.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. I have been told to ask you what that is and
how to get it in the record.
Mr. GRUSCH. Which——
Ms. LUNA. What you stated publicly in your interviews for the
congressional Record.
Mr. GRUSCH. If you reference my News Nation interview and I
talked about a multi-decade, you know, campaign to disenfranchise
public interest, basically.
Ms. LUNA. Thank you.
Mr. BURCHETT. I apologize, Mr. Chairman. I yield back negative
21 seconds.

Cases discussed

About this file

Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. 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.