Hiding UFOs: the biggest story in history or delusional fantasy?

Bombshell revelations from former US pilots and intelligence officials about the existence of UFOs and reprisals against those who report them take us closer to the truth over alien life.

If we are not alone in this universe, we came closer to that realisation this week after a bombshell hearing in Washington into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, US government speak for UFOs.

Three former US pilots with unimpeachable credentials accused the US government of covering up knowledge of UAPs, and systematically punishing government personnel who sought to reveal the truth.

One even claimed alien space craft, and the ‘pilots’ inside them, had been retrieved by the US government, injuring human investigators in the process, the House of Representatives Oversight Committee heard.

This is either the biggest story in history, or a large number of US senior defence and intelligence officials, some with top security clearances, are delusional.

“The world today is a step closer to understanding the validity and seriousness of the UAP issue,” said Christopher Mellon, former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Intelligence, as the hearing wound up.

Hundreds of alleged UAP sightings around the world over generations have kept the idea of extraterrestrial life alive in the public mind, but not until the last few years have political leaders so publicly acknowledged the possibility of their existence.

Video taken by Navy pilots show interactions with "unidentified aerial phenomena". Picture: DoD via AFP.

In 2021 the US government whetted the public appetite with a rare official report: “UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion,” it claimed, leaving open the possibility the objects could be “breakthrough aerospace technology” developed by Russia or China.

In May last year pentagon officials told a congressional committee that UAPs were both real and a national security threat – indeed, US pilots had almost collided with them at least 11 times.

“Pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. Defence Department officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a sceptical national security community,” the Committee chairman Andre Carson said at the time.

That stigma of reporting UAPs has started to crumble.

David Grusch, a former intelligence officer with 14 years experience, shot to prominence last month after giving an explosive interview to Australian journalist Ross Coulthart, where he laid out the whistleblower claims he had made in 2022 to the Intelligence Community Inspector General.

“I was informed in course of my official duties of multi decade of crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. To which I was denied access,” he told congress on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

Mr Grusch, whose had served on a Pentagon UAP task force until 2021, said “absolutely” the US government had retrieved UAPs from at least 12 crash sites, including what he called “non-human biologics”, “based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over 4 years”.

Former US Intelligence agent David Grusch confirms under oath that ALIENS exist pic.twitter.com/iQgnCLogjX

— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) July 26, 2023

“And I know the exact locations [which] were provided to the Inspector General,” he told an intrigued panel of congressmen.

His claims, and those of the two other witnesses, had been published in media before, but not in a congressional setting, where knowingly making false statements carry serious penalties.

Mr Grusch, a decorated former officer who served in Afghanistan, revealed that he personally had faced “very brutal” reprisals from former colleagues since as part of a regime of “administrative terrorism” that still had him in “fear of his life”.

The 36-year-old, who said he came forward only in the interests of transparency, also suggested Americans had been murdered as a result of attempts to cover up US government knowledge of UAPs, which had existed, he said, since the 1930s.

David Grusch gives evidence at the House Oversight Committee hearing on ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

The second witness, former F-18 navy pilot Ryan Graves, estimated that only five per cent of UAP sightings were reported formally, for fear of career repercussions.

“UAPs are in our airspace but they are grossly underreported. These sightings are not rare or isolated – they are routine,” he told the hearing, recalling one of his own experiences in 2014 off Virginia Beach, where he saw a “black cube inside of a clear sphere … five to 15 feet in diameter”.

“These objects were staying completely stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds, then would then accelerate to supersonic speeds, 1.1, 1.2 Mach,” he said, adding that the encounters “became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular pre-flight briefs”.

In his new role as executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, a military pilot-led non-profit, Mr Graves also claimed that Boeing contractors to the military had seen “a large red square hover over Vandenburg air force base” in 2003 “for approximately 45 seconds before disappearing”.

The third witness, David Fravor, a retired US navy commander, recalled “the most credible UFO sighting in history”, when he was flying near the USS Nimitz off the coast of California in 2004.

He described a ‘tic tac’ ship with no wings that could stop mid-air and travel 60 miles in less than a minute using technology that was “not of this world … moving very abruptly over the white water, like a ping-pong ball”.

“I’m not fanatic, but I will tell you what we saw with four sets of eyes over a five minute period, we have nothing close to it, it was amazing to see … It’s not a joke,” he told the committee.

In July a spokesman for the defence department said it had “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.

White House Spokesman John Kirby speaking in the hours immediately afterwards said he had “no information to provide one way or the other” about the claims.

Tim Burchett has tried to amend a bill to require commercial pilots to report UAP sightings. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Despite official denials, members of congress on both sides of the political aisle, were indignant about their lack of access to relevant classified material about UAPs, and flagged legislation to make it easier for pilots, commercial and military, to register sightings without their careers suffering.

“I think it‘s time for this country to take back our country. We need to tell the folks at the Pentagon they work for us, god dammit, we don’t work for them!” fumed Republican congressman Tim Burchett, who had tried a few days earlier to amend a bill to require commercial pilots to report UAP sightings

“I was told by our leadership that it was blocked by the intelligence community, so we have bureaucrats telling us in congress what to do,” he said.

Others were more sceptical. Congressman Eric Burlison said “the concept that an alien species is technologically advanced enough to travel billions of light years and gets here, and is somehow incompetent enough to not survive Earth, and crashes, is something I find a little far-fetched”.

Regardless, Congress is shaping up for a fight with the Pentagon in coming months.

A video, posted on the Pentagon's website, of a UFO incident it said took place in the Middle East on July 12, 2022.

A UFO incident the Pentagon said occurred over South Asia on Jan. 15, 2023.

Representative Andy Ogles threatened to dust off the Holman rule, whereby the House of Representatives can sack, demote or defund particular individuals or departments in the US bureaucracy without White House approval.

Earlier this month Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced legislation that would give federal agencies 300 days to hand over UAP-related documents to a newly established review board with the power to declassify them.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said at the time.

Frustratingly, for congressmen and viewers alike, Mr Grusch declined to elaborate on many of his answers, arguing it would breach classified information that he was barred from discussing. He promised to provide greater details about who, what and where in closed door session in coming days and weeks.

“I’ve known Dave Grusch for years, and can say without hesitation that he is sincere, authentic, and someone who most certainly deserves a fair hearing,” Mellon later said in a statement.

The claims of the three men were dramatic indeed but without evidence to back them up — beyond the grainy videos we’ve all seen, dribbled out over the years — they are far from universally persuasive.

The Inspector General in July last year said Grusch’s claims were “credible and urgent”, but hasn’t commented further.

Whether UAPs are alien life or not, some people are lying, either senior government officials, or the growing batch of whistleblowers. The stakes are high.

“Most of these people … have held very high clearances and high positions within our government, so you do ask yourself: ‘What incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification … have to come forward and make something up?” noted Senator Marco Rubio earlier this month.

The US isn’t the only government potentially keeping UAPs quiet.

A study conducted between 1997 and 2000 by the British government, known as the Condign report and obtained by Freedom of Information laws in 2006, said the existence of UAP was “indisputable”.

“Several aircraft have been destroyed and at least four pilots have been killed chasing UFOs,” the report said, referring to information the authors had obtained from Soviet, Russian and Chinese research programs.

The French government declassified its own research in 2021, concluding “their reality is indisputable even if hoaxes exist”, positing a possible relationship between the development and testing of nuclear weapons and sightings of UAP.

The resurgence in UAP chatter will inevitably fuel more ‘sightings’. In July 2021 more than 40 per cent of Americans agreed with the statement that some UAP sightings had been alien spacecraft, up from 33 per cent in 2019, according to a regular Gallup poll.

“The American people deserve to know what is happening in our skies. It is long overdue,” Mr Graves told the committee. The bigger question is whether they, and we, would be ready for the truth.