House Republicans demand UFO transparency

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and some of President Trump’s most vocal supporters in the House do not agree on much, but they are in agreement that the government is hiding critical information on UFOs — also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP — from the American public.

Schumer and key House Republicans say that the government must come clean on what it knows about this decades-long mystery, which has seen 80 years of highly credible, consistent, multi-witness reporting of objects exhibiting extreme performance characteristics.

On Feb. 11, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced the establishment of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a member of the bipartisan UAP Caucus, will lead the effort.

Comer and Luna sent letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe requesting a briefing on all UAP-related records in their possession, with the ultimate goal of “deliver[ing] transparency to the American people.”

Notably, Rubio and Ratcliffe, along with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Trump himself, have made remarkable statements about UAP in recent years.

Ditto for Schumer. Shortly after Trump signed an executive order declassifying all government records on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., Schumer challenged Trump to extend the same transparency to UAP.

Schumer’s eyebrow-raising social media jab is no accident. In 2023, he sponsored what is arguably the most extraordinary legislation ever introduced in Congress. The bipartisan Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act alleged that shadowy elements of the government have secretly retrieved and are attempting to reverse-engineer craft of “non-human” or unknown origin. Astoundingly, the 64-page legislation defined “non-human intelligence” and would have required the government to take possession of “any and all” recovered craft and “biological evidence of non-human intelligence” transferred to private defense contractors.

Although the House ultimately quashed key elements of the legislation, Rubio was one of five Senate cosponsors of the bill.

In two remarkable 2023 interviews, Rubio stated that multiple officials with “very high clearances and high positions within our government” approached the Senate Intelligence Committee alleging the existence of secret UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering programs. Rubio, who is set to appear alongside more than 30 government officials in a new UFO documentary, characterized the whistleblowers’ claims as potentially “the biggest story in human history.”

Rubio said that the high-level current and former officials who spoke to the Intelligence Committee have “firsthand knowledge” of illicit UAP reverse-engineering activities. Asked about the credibility of the individuals, Rubio asked rhetorically, “What incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification — these are serious people — have to come forward and make something up?”

In January, an Air Force veteran named Jacob Barber alleged in an interview that he participated in these shadowy UAP retrieval efforts. Decorated special forces veterans and a retired Army lieutenant colonel vouched for Barber’s credibility. Barber also spoke to both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Pentagon’s UAP analysis office, known as AARO, behind closed doors.

Responding to an eyebrow-raising question from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) during a November hearing, AARO director Dr. Jon Kosloski made an intriguing revelation. According to Kosloski, his office has spoken to witnesses with “firsthand” allegations of unreported UAP-related activities, an apparent reference to Barber.

Barber is willing to testify under oath to the existence of the UAP retrieval efforts that he alleges he took part in. He would not be the first to do so.

At a Nov. 13 House Oversight Committee hearing, former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo testified under oath to the existence of unreported retrieval and reverse engineering programs. Air Force veteran and former intelligence official David Grusch alleged the existence of a “multi-decade [UAP] crash retrieval and reverse engineering program” during a July 2023 congressional hearing.

The internal watchdog overseeing America’s spy agencies deemed Grusch’s allegations that information on UAP was inappropriately concealed from Congress “credible and urgent,” triggering mandatory notifications to the intelligence committees. The intelligence community’s first inspector general serves as Grusch’s attorney, adding significant weight to the underlying assertions.

In June 2023, Mike Waltz, then in the U.S. House and now Trump’s national security advisor, stated that Grusch “certainly seems to be very credible.” Waltz, an Army colonel with special forces experience, served on both the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

Asked about UAP, Waltz responded in another 2023 interview that “I think we need to take this incredibly seriously.” According to Waltz, “You can’t deny this stuff. [There] is real, hard data that is showing objects that are doing things that can’t be explained.” Indeed, the Pentagon’s UAP analysis office has admitted that it is stumped by several “true anomalies,” while several scientifically perplexing military UAP videos and accompanying eyewitness accounts have emerged in recent years.

Waltz’s comments echo those of Trump’s CIA director. In a 2021 interview, Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, stated that UAP have been tracked by multiple sensors, including satellites, and “engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate [and] that we don’t have the technology for.” Ratcliffe said that UAP exhibit “technologies that we don’t have and, frankly, cannot defend against.” And in 2023, Ratcliffe stated that “there should be more transparency on this issue.”

For his part, Trump frequently recounts how Air Force pilots told him that they were left baffled by mysterious spherical objects that outperformed their advanced fighter jets. Asked during a September interview whether he would release UAP footage if he returned to the White House, Trump responded, “I would do that. I’d love to do that. I have to do that.”

Will Trump and his key appointees follow through?

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation and was an Obama administration appointee at the Department of Defense.

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