WASHINGTON — The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.

Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

doubt

The Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a coverup. In a statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough said investigators have 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.” The statement did not address UFOs that are not suspected of being extraterrestrial objects.

Grusch says he became a government whistleblower after his discovery and has faced retaliation for coming forward. He declined to be more specific about the retaliatory tactics, citing an ongoing investigation.

“It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he said.

Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., chaired the panel’s hearing and joked to a packed audience, “Welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week.” But members of both parties asked Grusch about his study of UFOs and the consequences he faced.

“I take it that you’re arguing what we need is real transparency and reporting systems so we can get some clarity on what’s going on out there,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.

Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.

At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”

can't believe there's still politicians suffering from weather-balloon hysteria. posadist-nuke

  • flowernet [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    here is the run down: it's probably not a psyop by the government, though maybe this landed in their lap and they want to exploit it for more air force funding.what seems initially like a bunch of disparate threads of crazy quickly collapses into a relatively small circle of UFO fanatics who have been working to publicize their hoax for decades. Grusch specifically can only said to be "credible" because he was involved with the UAP task force, which was shut down after they realized it was a complete joke run by luntics.

    good timelines:

    https://twitter.com/MiddleOfMayhem/status/1674818295894274054

    https://washingtonspectator.org/spaceship-of-fools/

    • space_comrade [he/him]
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      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yeah I'm kinda on the fence if it's just UFO grifters grifting where they can or if there's some merit to this, I'm open to both possibilities at this point.

      What this twitter thread doesn't explain is for example David Fravor, the pilot who also testified in congress yesterday about his experience of apparently seeing some pretty weird shit. What's in it for him? Why would he become a UFO grifter all of a sudden after a fairly successful military career?

      Also wouldn't grifting congress have some repercussions? Weren't they speaking under oath?

      Either way until somebody provides actual tangible evidence it's just stories. It's kinda fun to think about tho.