The circumstances surrounding UAPs has captivated the attention of the American people for decades, ingrained in even the minds of our nation's leaders, from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio to Chuck Schumer, John Radcliffe to National Security Council officials. Yet from Roswell, New Mexico to the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, the sightings of UAPs have rarely been explained by the people who have firsthand accounts of these situations.
This is largely due to the lack of transparency by our own government and the failure of our elected leaders to make good on their promises to release explanations and footage and mountains of over-classified documents that continue to be hidden from the American people. This isn’t just how I feel: in fact, the American people largely believe that the government has actively covered up the truth about UAPs.
One poll in particular found that 68% of Americans believe that the government is hiding information about UAPs and not being honest about what we know about them. And from my personal experience, I believe the same thing. Another poll found that nearly half Americans believe that the federal government is doing a very bad or somewhat bad job of dealing with reports of UFO sightings.
As Representative Burchett just referenced on the FAA bill that just went through, you can tell that that’s exactly happening. Considering the thousands of testimonies and videos taken on people’s phones and eyewitnesses accounts made by credible witnesses such as doctors, pilots, scientists, and active duty service members, it is unacceptable to continue to gaslight Americans into thinking that this is not happening or that the potential of intelligent life forms exist other than humans.
Even more alarming is the fact that these eyewitnesses are many of times service members and have no assurance that their lives will not be negatively impacted or even harmed by their experiences. In being an active duty service member working on an airfield, I've had conversations with many pilots where they were in fear of coming forward for retribution and or being taken off flight status. How do we know this? Because the government has said nothing to assure us otherwise.
They have also did nothing to calm the concerns of over 20% of Americans who have reported to have seen UFOs or UAPs. We are simply told not to question the government and that the government has it under control. Today is the first hearing of its kind where we will attempt to get down to the bottom of what is actually happening with UAPs, but we will hear from people who have had personal sightings rather than Pentagon bureaucrats who have always been sent us to Stonewaller Investigations.
Just so that the press knows and the people know, we were even denied access to a classified briefing in a SCIF prior to this hearing due to the amount of hoops that we had to jump through to grant temporary clearance to witness Grusch who has knowledge of classified information. It is time to have an open-minded discussion on this topic, to hear the evidence and understand the magnitude of what this means, not just for our nation, but for humanity.
Thank you, Chairman, I yield back the rest of my time.