The 90-minute briefing was presented by Thomas Monheim, the inspector general of the US intelligence community, on Friday at the Capitol in Washington, DC.
Interest in UFOs, which the government calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” spiked in July 2023 when David Grosch, an Air Force veteran, said, “The US government is working se
cretly on this topic.”
A number of those who attended Friday's meeting were disappointed. Representative Tim Burchett, for example, earlier said that the federal government was hiding some of what it knows about UFOs, and described the classified briefing as “more of the same.”
Democratic Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamurthy was also unsatisfied: “Let's just say we were all very interested in the substance of his claims, and unfortunately, I didn't get the answers I was hoping for.”
However, Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative from California, was more positive, saying: “Everyone in the room probably received new information.”
Added Rep. Eric Burleson, a Republican from Missouri: “I think some people were looking for things. This wasn't the place to identify those things, but for me, I got a lot of clarity.”
On July 26, the House Oversight Committee heard from Grosch, former Navy SEAL David Fravor, and Ryan Graves, a former Navy fighter pilot.
During his testimony, which was widely shared online, Grosh said that while working he became aware of secret government efforts around UFOs.
Asked if he had heard of anyone being killed to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial life, Grosh said: “I have to be careful in answering this question. I have directed people with this knowledge to the relevant authorities.”
Grosh added: “I hope that the discoveries we have discovered through the investigations will be an earth-shattering existential shock, and a catalyst for a global reassessment of our priorities.”
Last July, a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to create a new select committee to investigate what the government knows about UFOs.
The term “unidentified flying objects” was replaced with the phrase “unidentified anomalous phenomena”, with the aim of removing the stigma from this topic, which is widely associated with speculation about aliens visiting our planet.
NASA defines these phenomena as “observing events in the sky that cannot be scientifically identified as an aircraft or a known natural phenomenon.”
While acknowledging the existence of such events and the need to take them seriously, NASA has been repeating for a year that there is no evidence that they are of extraterrestrial origin.
During an interim meeting held last May, experts stressed the need to collect more data in a more rigorous way than has been done so far.
According to some experts, new physical phenomena could thus be discovered that explain some phenomena.
The US intelligence services and the Pentagon also discussed the matter, stressing that it relates to US national security and air traffic security.
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