Grusch/Fravor/Graves Full Transcript, July 2023

Brief

The hearing marked the first congressional session of its kind to receive direct sworn testimony from military and intelligence personnel on UAP encounters and alleged government concealment. Opening statements from Chairman Grothman, Rep. Burchett, Rep. Luna, and Ranking Member Garcia collectively documented classification barriers, witness intimidation, and institutional interference, including a disclosed pre-hearing denial of a classified SCIF briefing for Grusch. The session placed on record competing official positions: AARO Director Kirkpatrick's Senate finding of no extraterrestrial evidence versus Grusch's whistleblower allegations, which are contained in the 42 pages of witness testimony not included in this excerpt.

Metadata

Agency

U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Release

2023-07-26

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

54 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

AARO, UAP Task Force, National Reconnaissance Office, NASA UAP Study

Tags

whistleblower, retrieval program, reverse engineering, multi-sensor detection, congressional testimony, AARO, UAP Task Force, NRO

Key points

• AARO's budget remains classified, which Chairman Grothman noted directly prohibits meaningful congressional oversight of the office mandated to investigate UAPs.p.6
• Rep. Luna disclosed that Congress was denied access to a pre-hearing classified SCIF briefing because of procedural obstacles to granting Grusch temporary clearance.p.9
• Rep. Burchett stated that his FAA reauthorization amendment, requiring airline pilot UAP sightings to be forwarded to Congress, was killed before committee vote after intelligence community objection.p.8
• Ranking Member Garcia read into the record that AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick testified before the Senate that his office found no evidence of extraterrestrial activity, placed directly against the framing of Grusch's pending testimony.p.11
• Garcia simultaneously acknowledged that multi-sensor detections of unexplained objects have occurred, stating that 'sometimes even multiple types of sensors detect things that we cannot explain.'p.11
• Rep. Grothman noted the U.S. Government spent $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars on missiles to shoot down airborne objects following the Chinese spy balloon incident earlier in 2023.p.6
• Rep. Moskowitz quoted Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asserting the public's right to know about 'technologies of unknown origins, nonhuman intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena,' and former DNI Ratcliffe confirming undisclosed sightings.p.12
• A Defense Intelligence Reference Document on 'Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metric) Engineering' was entered into the hearing record as an unclassified public exhibit by Rep. Burchett.p.7
• Rep. Luna cited polling showing 68 percent of Americans believe the government is hiding UAP information, and nearly half believe the federal government is handling UFO sighting reports poorly.p.9

Verbatim

• I think the cover up goes a lot deeper than that.

  p.7

• We cannot trust a government that does not trust its people.

  p.8

• Now, we have incidents when sensors, sometimes even multiple types of sensors, detect things that we cannot explain.

  p.11

• There are a lot more sightings that have not been made public

  p.12

Most interesting

• Chairman Grothman noted on the record that both President Gerald Ford (1966) and President Jimmy Carter (1969 in Georgia) claimed to have personally witnessed UFOs.
• The table of contents lists a DoD Defense Intelligence Reference Document on 'Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metric) Engineering' as a submitted exhibit, entered into the congressional record as unclassified.
• Rep. Burchett stated that sitting Members of Congress privately confided to him, requesting anonymity, that they had personal UAP sightings of their own.
• The hearing drew an attendee who traveled from Denmark specifically to attend, cited by Burchett as evidence of the issue's global reach.
• Rep. Luna characterized the hearing as the first of its kind to hear from firsthand witnesses rather than Pentagon officials who had historically been sent to 'stonewall' congressional investigations.
• Grusch held a former National Reconnaissance Office representative role on the UAP Task Force, an intelligence-tier position, not strictly a military one, distinguishing his testimony from the pilot witnesses.
• The hearing transcript was published under Serial No. 118-53 by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, making it a permanent, indexed congressional record.