Things have gotten exceedingly weird in America lately so it’s par for the course that our government is holding a hearing about unidentified flying objects next week.
The House Oversight Committee is planning a little get together on July 26th to tackle the topic of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon), formerly called UFOs. The hearing will be headed by Republican Representatives Anna Paulina Luna, of Florida, and Tim Burchett, of Tennessee. What exactly will be discussed at the hearing is unclear but Burchett has made it known that he will be filling in for Fox Mulder as resident paranormal investigator hardass. On Monday, he merely tweeted out: “We’re done with the cover-ups.” Later, when questioned by reporters about the upcoming hearing, he portrayed the event as an authentic example of defiance against the murky national security state. “We’re going to have professionals in here and we’re getting blowback from some of the alphabet agencies…I’m sick of government … that does not trust the people,” he said.
America has seen renewed interest in UFOs largely as a result of David Grusch, a former counterintelligence official who claims that the U.S. government is hiding evidence of crashed aircraft that are not of this world. Grusch’s claims, which were originally published in the outlet The Debrief, allege that there are numerous longstanding “black” programs within the government that deal with retrieving unidentified flying aircraft. Grusch says that these highly secretive programs have been “nested” within other classified projects and programs and likely involve illegal activity. The article quotes numerous high-ranking government officials, all of which seem to corroborate what Grusch has said.
Grusch has at least some cause to commentate on this topic because he previously served on an internal Defense Department team, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, that studied UFOs. Grusch claims he left government service in April to “advance government accountability through public awareness.”
As part of that public awareness campaign, Grusch has made a number of eyebrow raising claims, including that the U.S. may have retrieved dead UFO “pilots” as a result of its covert UFO retrieval programs, that Americans may have been killed to protect said programs, and even that the U.S. recovered an alien spacecraft from fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933.
When asked for comment on Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not seem to take the upcoming hearing particularly seriously. “I think if we had found a UFO…the Department of Defense would tell us because they would probably want to request more money,” he quipped to a reporter.
John Kirby, a National Security Council communications official for the White House, was decidedly more serious about the matter. “We wouldn’t have stood up an organization at the Pentagon to analyze and try to collect and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously,” Kirby said during a press conference on Monday.
Huh, okay. I kinda thought the government had always considered UFOs a goofy topic that would be met with a perpetual eye roll when broached by a member of the public. Apparently we’re switching things up now? Strange days. Better tune in next week to see what the government has to disclose.