WASHINGTON – Multiple witnesses criticized the U.S. government for its lack of transparency regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) information and called for greater accountability from the Executive Branch on Wednesday during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee Hearing.
Michael Shellenberger, a journalist and one of the witnesses, released a 12-page report to Congress on Wednesday written by a current or former U.S. government official.
“The Executive Branch has been managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades,” the report reads.
UAPs, previously referred to as Unidentified Flying Objects, are objects that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.
Shellenberger’s government source also detailed an active Department of Defense Unacknowledged Special Access Program called Immaculate Constellation, which includes classified photos and videos of UAPs. Shellenberger’s whistleblower detailed interactions between UAPs and U.S. aircraft, including a 2023 incident during which an F-22 was forced out of its patrol area by an orb.
Shellenberger said another source recently came forward to tell him about a 13-minute video discovered on DOD’s secure network that shows “a white orb UAP coming out of the ocean approximately 20 miles off the coast of Kuwait.”
Then, the source said, “the orb is joined by another orb that briefly comes into the frame from the left before rapidly moving again out of the frame.”
The hearing, attended almost exclusively by Republicans, was held jointly by the subcommittees on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation and National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs.
Michael Gallaudet, a retired rear admiral for the U.S. Navy, began his testimony by describing a 2015 email he received from the operations officer of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command. The email included a now-declassified video of a UAP, and the officer expressed concern over near-collisions with U.S. aircraft. But the email disappeared from Gallaudet’s account the next day, and the Commander of Fleet Forces and his operations officer never discussed the incident.
“It was evident that no one at the Flag Officer level was addressing the safety risks posed by UAPs,” Gallaudet said. “Instead, pilots were left to mitigate these threats on their own, without guidance or support.”
Another UAP committee hearing was held in July 2023, with testimonies claiming the United States government took part in a concerted effort to hide information about encounters with UAPs and to discredit those coming forward as UAP whistleblowers.
In 2023, Congress passed the UAP Disclosure Act, which directed the National Archives to collect government documents about UAPs, including technologies of nonhuman intelligence. But major provisions were deleted before the bill passed, and the witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing called for Congress to strengthen the bill by establishing an independent UAP Records Review Board.
Luis Elizondo, an author and former Department of Defense official, testified that advanced technologies not made by any government are currently monitoring military installations around the world. “We are not alone in the cosmos” he said, later defining a UAP as “an enigma, and a frustration.”
Elizondo also said he believes the U.S. government and its adversaries possess UAP technologies. After questioning from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who co-chaired the hearing, Elizondo testified that the government has conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs designed to identify alien craft.
“I believe we are in the midst of a multi-decade, secretive arms race— one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” he said.
Advocates for public access to UAP research expressed optimism about President-Elect Donald Trump’s commitment to transparency on behalf of the Executive Branch.
“President-elect Trump ran on and was elected with a mandate to make government more transparent and release long-held secrets,” Shellenberger said.
