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‘Oh look, UFOs!’ House intel to have a hearing on UAPs for first time in fifty years

May 10, 2022 | | Print Article

With the House of Representatives set to hold its first hearing on UFOs (now UAPs) in more than fifty years, earnest concerns about potential national security threats were overshadowed by the numerous inflationary and supply chain woes facing Americans, with some even suggesting it is an intentional distraction.

Following the release of a preliminary report from the Director of National Intelligence’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, the House subcommittee on counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and counterproliferation announced they would be holding a hearing on the matter May 17. As part of the House Intelligence Committee, subcommittee chairman Rep. André Carson (D-IN) will be heading the effort to understand the 143 of 144 incidents covered in the assessment that remain unexplained dating back to 2004.

“Since this is an area of high public interest,” Carson told The New York Times, “any undue secrecy can serve as an obstacle to solving the mystery, or it could prevent us from finding solutions to potential vulnerabilities. This hearing is about examining steps that the Pentagon can take to reduce the stigma surrounding reporting by military pilots, and by civilian pilots.”

Then-House Republican minority leader Gerald Ford (MI), who was responsible for the decades-ago past hearings, conveyed a similar message in a 1966 letter, “I believe the American people are entitled to a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force to date.” Those hearings concluded with the closing of “Project Blue Book,” a near 20-year U.S. Air Force investigation in 1970.

However, some couldn’t help but note the timing of the hearing comes as the approval of President Joe Biden and his Democrat colleagues has continued to plummet ahead of the midterm elections. With gas prices continuing to rise, the stock market fluctuating dramatically, supply chain issues now impacting mothers feeding their infants, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it is difficult for some to take such a hearing seriously when no viable solutions have been presented to remedy these other problems.

 

However, not everyone sees the hearings through that lens. With the greater accessibility to more powerful video recording devices, it would appear that documented sightings have grown more frequent in recent years. One skywatcher noted a few mysterious lights following a recent SpaceX launch.

Florida Republican Marco Rubio bucked the UFO stigma in March of 2021.

“For me, there’s stuff flying over military installations, and nobody knows what it is, and it isn’t ours. So for me, that’s logical: You want to know what it is. It’s common sense, right? Stuff’s flying over the top of your sensitive installations, and it’s not ours, and nobody knows whose it is. We should find out what it is,” he told TMZ at the time.

The latest report makes note of the “increasingly cluttered air domain” and states, “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to national security. Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said, “The federal government and intelligence community have a critical role to play in contextualizing and analyzing reports.” The hearing’s purpose is to illuminate, “one of the great mysteries of our time and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”

As for Carson, he acknowledges that the public is of two minds on his matter and stated, “I’ve gotten some chuckles but it’s something I’m passionate about and I think I can take the heat. This may be the very thing that brings Democrats and Republicans together, at least for an hour or two.”

Kevin Haggerty
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