Congressional Oversight Committee: Historic Testimony from High-Level UAP Witnesses

United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing on July 26 titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency”, where high-profile government witnesses David Fravor, Ryan Graves and David Grusch provided testimony regarding the current state of government policy regarding UAP reporting, aviation safety and possible illegal activity involving the hiding of UAP back-engineering programs from Congressional oversight.

Organized by Representatives Tim Burchett (R-Tn) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl) and facilitated by the Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, this hearing was important in that the testimonies of Fravor, Graves and Grusch have now been entered into the official congressional record, including their respective professional backgrounds, experience and insight regarding UAP.

Each witness brought to the table a different perspective of the government’s involvement in UAP:

• Commander David Fravor, former Commander of the U.S. Navy’s Black Aces Squadron, offered insight into his first-hand UAP experience, having personally seen—and to a degree interacted with—one of the anomalous objects nicknamed the “Tic Tac” that dogged the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group for weeks as it was conducting maneuvers off of the coast of California in 2004.
• Ryan Graves, currently the Executive Director of Americans for Safe Aerospace and former Navy aviator who was a member of the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” squadron operating out of Naval Air Station Oceana that encountered numerous UAP off of the Virginia coast over the course of 2014 and 2015.
• David Grusch, the former National Reconnaissance Office Representative for the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force, who recently came forward to report the existence of numerous black projects aimed at back-engineering recovered UAP; Grusch became a whistleblower to not only inform the public about the existence of these programs, but also to expose their potentially illegality to Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General.

Graves also pointed out that from an aviation perspective, both commercial and military, “identifying friend from foe is very important to us, and so when we have unidentified targets and continue to ignore those due to a stigma or fear of what it could be, that’s an opening that our adversaries can take advantage of.” Later in the hearing Graves said that he estimates that only about five percent of pilots report their UAP encounters due to these stigmas.

Although Grusch was unable to divulge much in the way of new information regarding what he discovered while he was an investigator for the UAP Task Force, he reiterated his findings about the legacy UAP research programs being run in secret where recovered UAP—along with what he referred to as “biologics” that were recovered with some craft—that are being illegally hidden from Congressional oversight. He stated that the biologics were “non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to, that are currently still on the program.”

He stated that his knowledge of recovered UAP in the possession of the U.S. government is “based on interviewing over forty witnesses over four years,” and that he was told the “exact locations” of where this material is held, information that he has already provided to the Inspector General and Intelligence Committees. Grusch also said that he can provide the Committee with a “cooperative and hostile witness list of specific individuals” that were involved with agencies and contractors that the Committee could question for further information on the nature and funding of these programs.

Grusch also discussed the reprisals that were directed against him, describing them as “very brutal and very unfortunate: some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally.” He also said that he was “personally” aware of individuals that were physically harmed to ensure their silence on the matter; when asked if he was aware of anyone being murdered to that end, Grusch answered that he “directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.” Grusch also alluded to there being at least one individual who was accidentally injured in the course of researching some of the material.

While the hearing itself unfolded smoothly, arranging the event was problematic, with the Committee being denied access to a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) so that Grusch could safely provide additional testimony that would include classified information to be entered into the record. According to Representative Luna, this was “due to the amount of hoops that we had to jump through to grant temporary clearance to witness Grusch, who has knowledge of classified information.” While working for the government, Grusch held Title-50 clearance, one of the highest security clearances, a privilege he no longer holds now that he is a civilian.

“There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America,” opined Representative Andy Ogles (R-Tn). “As members of Congress we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that, if appropriate, we take action.”

Part of the intent behind this hearing is to help encourage more potential whistleblowers to come forward with what they know; as it stands, many with either first-hand knowledge or direct experience with recovered UAP are still afraid of triggering reprisals if they do so, despite protections for UAP whistleblowers being signed into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, and some are also concerned that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) isn’t be as forthcoming as it is mandated to be. Hopefully these developments will encourage more individuals with this secret knowledge to join the effort in unravelling the long-standing veil of secrecy that has shrouded what the government knows—and is outright hiding—about UAP.