S.Amdt.797 UAP Disclosure Act PDF

Brief

The UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 (S.Amdt.797 to S.2226) was introduced in the 118th Congress and modeled explicitly on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. It would have compelled every government office, including private contractors, to identify and transmit UAP-related records to a new National Archives collection within 300 days, with a statutory presumption of public disclosure. The amendment formally acknowledges that existing classification mechanisms, including the Atomic Energy Act and FOIA as implemented by the executive branch, have proven inadequate for surfacing these records. Statutory definitions explicitly recognize 'non-human intelligence,' 'technologies of unknown origin,' and a 'legacy program' covering past government and private-sector efforts to reverse-engineer unknown craft and examine biological evidence.

Metadata

Agency

U.S. Senate

Release

2023-07-13

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

64 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, Manhattan Project

Tags

Senate amendment, NDAA FY2024, mandatory declassification, National Archives collection, non-human intelligence, technologies of unknown origin, legacy program, Review Board, transmedium, crash retrieval, USO, biological evidence

Key points

• Amendment co-sponsored by Senators Schumer, Rounds, Rubio, and Gillibrand, introduced into the 118th Congress as an insertion into S.2226, the FY2024 NDAA.p.1
• Congress formally declares that FOIA, as implemented by the executive branch, has proven inadequate in achieving the timely public disclosure of UAP records subject to mandatory declassification review.p.3
• 'Non-human intelligence' is statutorily defined as any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin of which the Federal Government has become aware.p.6
• 'Legacy program' is defined to cover all past government, commercial, academic, and private-sector efforts to collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin, or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence.p.6
• 'Technologies of unknown origin' explicitly encompasses crash debris, ejecta, meta-materials, mechanisms, and damaged or intact aerospace vehicles and undersea craft associated with UAP.p.8
• UAP are defined by six specific observables: instantaneous acceleration absent inertia, hypersonic velocity without thermal or sonic signature, transmedium travel, positive lift contrary to known aerodynamics, multispectral signature control, and physical or biological effects on close observers.p.10
• The UAP umbrella term formally absorbs flying discs, flying saucers, unidentified aerial phenomena, UFOs, and unidentified submerged objects (USOs).p.11
• 'Controlling authority' extends to private-sector companies and academic institutions currently in physical possession of technologies of unknown origin or biological evidence of non-human intelligence.p.5
• The Archivist must commence the UAP Records Collection within 60 days of enactment; government offices have 300 days to review and organize their records for transmission.p.14
• No UAP record may be destroyed, altered, or mutilated in any way, a categorical prohibition with no exception clause.p.18

Most interesting

• The amendment explicitly names the Manhattan Project and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the CIA's wartime predecessor) as covered originating bodies, pulling UAP record obligations back to World War II.
• 'Temporarily non-attributed objects', ordinary misidentifications, are defined as mutually exclusive from UAP, creating a statutory firewall against reclassifying genuine UAP events as mundane.
• A 'Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan' is required by a later section of the amendment, indicating the sponsors envisioned managed, phased public release rather than a single data dump.
• The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 is called out by name as a specific legal mechanism that has shielded UAP records from mandatory declassification review.
• The amendment's reach extends to 'any private sector person or entity formerly or currently under contract or some other agreement with the Federal Government,' meaning major defense contractors could be compelled to surrender records.
• 'Prosaic attribution' is formally defined as human origin operating under known scientific principles, making the absence of that label a statutory marker for the phenomenon.
• The six UAP observables listed in the definition correspond closely to the observables described in Navy pilot testimony from the 2004 Nimitz and 2015 Roosevelt encounters, suggesting the drafters built the definition around documented cases.