Congress to Hold First Public Hearings on UFOs Since 1970

After several decades, Congress will hold its first public hearing on UFOs next week. The hearing will include evidence of “unidentified aerial phenomena” and testimony from top officials from the Pentagon.

The hearing, which will be held on Tuesday, comes after Congress requested a report on UFO sightings across the country in June of last year. The report included nearly 150 reports of UFO sightings, only one of which could be explained.

That report, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was meant to shed light on the mystery of those dozens of flying objects spotted from 2004 to 2021. Instead, it was determined that, as a result of inadequate data, only one of the sightings could accurately be categorized.

That one UAP—shorthand for “unidentified aerial phenomena”—was a large, deflating balloon, the report said.

Congress to hold hearings on UFOs

“The others remain unexplained,” the report, which was required by Congress, added. In 143 of the reported cases, they “lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations,” it was reported.

Crucially, the UFO report said there were “no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation” for the aircraft but also did not rule it out.

The report does not mention aliens or even vaguely hint at an extraterrestrial explanation for the reported sightings but makes clear that much of the phenomena may be beyond the existing means the government has to identify such objects.

The Pentagon then established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force last August to look into the reports.

The group’s job was to “detect, analyze and catalogue” these events, as well as to “gain insight” into the “nature and origins” of UFOs, the Pentagon said.

Significantly, the report ruled out the possibility that the UFOs could have been secret technology from the US military. Many posited that they could be advanced military technology from other countries, but this could not be confirmed either.

Tuesday’s report will include data and testimony from individuals involved in investigating the UFO-related phenomena in the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

Notably, Ronald S. Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, and deputy director of naval intelligence, Scott W. Bray, will provide testimony at the hearing.

California Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, stated ahead of the hearing that “the federal government and intelligence community have a critical role to play in contextualizing and analyzing reports.”

Schiff, who also serves on the House Intelligence Committee, argued that the hearing will be essential to uncover “one of the great mysteries of our time and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”

The last time Congress held hearings on the subject of UFOs was in 1970 after an investigation into the phenomena called Project Blue Book.