Congress orders release of UFO records, but drops bid for broader disclosure
Congress passed legislation Thursday directing the government to eventually reveal at least some of what it knows about UFOs to the public, but stopped short of taking more aggressive steps. Lawmakers sought to enforce greater transparency around unidentified phenomena and extraterrestrial activity.
The size, which is in the annual defense policy bill which received final approval with a bipartisan vote, directs the National Archives to collect government documents on “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence.”
Under the provision, which President Biden is expected to sign into law, all documents that have not yet been officially made public must be made public within 25 years of their creation, unless the president decides that they should remain classified for national security reasons .
Lawmakers in both chambers have stepped up efforts to increase government transparency regarding UFOs and extraterrestrial affairs, as conspiracy theories spread and suspicions remain that the government is withholding information from the public. They have said that Congress has reason to believe that the The executive branch has concealed information about UFOs that should be made public.
“This is a major victory for government transparency about UAPs, and it gives us a strong foundation for more action in the future,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, using the acronym for “unidentified abnormal phenomena.” . term for UFOs and unidentified objects.
But the measure is much weaker than what Mr. Schumer and other lawmakers in both parties had intended. Mr. Schumer succeeded this summer in attaching a bipartisan measure to the defense bill that would have created a presidential commission with broad power to release government documents on UFOs, modeled after the panel that reviewed documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy reviewed and released. .
The Republican-led House added a proposal by Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, who would have skipped any review and simply ordered the Department of Defense to “retrieve data regarding publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena that do not reveal sources or methods or otherwise endanger the national security of the United States to declassify. States.”
Failing to reconcile the two competing approaches, negotiators who brokered a compromise on the defense policy bill between the House of Representatives and the Senate ultimately dropped both Schumer’s and Burchett’s measures.
“We got ripped off,” Mr Burchett said. “We were completely impressed. They took out every part.”
Mr Burchett said the “intelligence community rallied” to quash his proposal and suppress more aggressive proposals to force wider disclosure. Another person familiar with the talks, who insisted on anonymity to describe them, noted that the Defense Ministry had also forcefully pushed back on broader measures.
The measure that was ultimately included in the defense bill gives government agencies wide leeway to keep data secret.
It allows government agencies to determine whether disclosing certain documents would pose a threat to national security that outweighs the public interest in disclosure. For example, documents whose release would “demonstrably and substantially harm the national security of the United States” or “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” would be exempt from disclosure. Classified documents must be checked periodically for declassification.
“It is truly a shame that the House of Representatives did not work with us in passing our review board proposal,” Mr. Schumer said. “It means that the declassification of UAP records will largely be up to the same entities that have blocked and covered up their disclosure for decades.”
Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota and a cosponsor of Mr. Schumer’s proposal, reiterated his disappointment on the Senate floor on Wednesday, just before the defense bill passed.
“We lack oversight capabilities and we are failing to meet our responsibilities,” Mr Rounds said.
The Pentagon has begun to increase the number of explanations it provides for recent videos showing unidentified phenomena, indicating that Congress’s push for more transparency has produced some initial results.
These videos of unidentified phenomena, captured by military sensors and released in recent years, and reports from naval aviators about strange objects have fueled speculation about UFOs and alien activity. Some of those videos have been explained as optical illusions or drones, but others remain unexplained and have become the subject of widespread and conspiratorial interest.
Julian Barnes reporting contributed.