{"it":{"id":"REC-HRG2023","name":"House Oversight UAP hearing (26 Jul 2023)","kind":"gov","sub":"Released record","place":"2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, USA","lat":38.887,"lon":-77.01,"date":"2023-07-26","rep":"Hearing at 10 am, 2154 Rayburn.","off":"Testimony, not evidence.","src":[{"t":"House Oversight Committee hearing page, 26 Jul 2023","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-implications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-government-transparency/"},{"t":"Wikipedia: David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims"},{"t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"}],"tags":["Records"],"sum":"On 26 July 2023 a former intelligence officer told Congress under oath that the US ran a secret program to recover and reverse-engineer crashed craft. Months later the Pentagon's UAP office said it found no evidence.\n\nDavid Grusch spoke at a hearing of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Glenn Grothman. Grusch said he had served 14 years as an intelligence officer, including at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2021 to 2023 and as a member of the UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021. He said he had been told of a \"multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program\" and denied access to it, and that he had faced retaliation after filing a whistleblower complaint. Ryan Graves of Americans for Safe Aerospace told the same hearing that \"since 2021, all UAP videos are classified as secret or above.\"\n\nWhat is hard to judge is what cannot be shown in public. Grusch said he was speaking \"to the facts as I have been told them\", not to craft he had seen himself.\n\nIn Volume I of its historical record report, dated February 2024, AARO said it \"found no empirical evidence\" that the government and private companies had been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.\n\nHow can the public weigh sworn testimony about programs no one can show?","nsrc":3,"new":1,"qs":["A sworn witness told Congress about craft-recovery programs; the Pentagon's UAP office found no evidence. Whom do you believe, and why?","Grusch claimed a craft was recovered in Italy in 1933. What evidence would it take to make you take that seriously?","If the key claims can only be discussed in classified settings, can the public ever judge them fairly?"],"yt":"Compare testimony with AARO's report point by point.","rel":["GOV-AARO"],"hook":"On 26 July 2023 a former intelligence officer told Congress the US recovers craft.","why":"A sworn account of crash-retrieval programs, and the Pentagon office that found no evidence."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"REC-HRG2023","qs":["Grusch testified under oath; AARO found no evidence. What would change your mind either way?","Grusch spoke to what he had been told. How much weight should second-hand testimony carry?","Graves said all UAP videos since 2021 are classified. What should be released?"],"gal":[],"ms":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"src":[{"t":"House Oversight Committee hearing page, 26 Jul 2023","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-implications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-government-transparency/"},{"t":"Wikipedia: David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims"},{"t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"},{"id":"VREC-HRG2023-4","t":"House Oversight (2023): David Grusch opening statement (PDF)","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Dave_G_HOC_Speech_FINAL_For_Trans.pdf"},{"id":"VREC-HRG2023-5","t":"House Oversight (2023): UAP hearing wrap-up","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-lack-of-transparency-and-reporting-mechanisms-have-eroded-public-trust-on-governments-handling-of-uap-encounters%EF%BF%BC/"},{"id":"VREC-HRG2023-6","t":"AARO 2024: Historical Record Report, Volume 1 (PDF)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF"}],"pts":[{"p":"Hearing 26 Jul 2023 at 10:00 am, 2154 Rayburn.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"House Oversight Committee hearing page, 26 Jul 2023","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-implications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-government-transparency/"},{"p":"Witnesses Graves, Fravor and Grusch.","g":"VERIFIED","b":"V","t":"House Oversight Committee hearing page, 26 Jul 2023","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-implications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-government-transparency/"},{"p":"Grusch claimed a 1933 Italian craft recovery.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"Wikipedia: David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims"},{"p":"AARO later found no evidence of recovered craft.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"}],"sum":"At ten in the morning on 26 July 2023, in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, a former intelligence officer, speaking under oath, told a subcommittee of Congress that the United States government had been hiding something for decades. \"I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access.\" A moment earlier he had drawn the line that everything else would turn on. \"As I stand here under oath now, I am speaking to the facts as I have been told them.\"\n\nThe man was David Charles Grusch. He told the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Representative Glenn Grothman, that he had been an intelligence officer for 14 years, in the Air Force at the rank of major and, from 2021 to 2023, at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at a senior civilian grade, where he co-led his agency's work on unidentified anomalous phenomena, UAP, the official term for what most people call UFOs. As an Air Force reservist with the National Reconnaissance Office, he said, he had served on the Pentagon's UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021. In 2019 its director asked him to identify every highly classified program the task force needed to know about, and he was cleared, he said, to \"literally all relevant compartments.\" That was how he came to hear of the program, and how he came to be refused access to it.\n\nGrusch was not the only witness. Commander David Fravor, a retired Navy officer, also testified, as did Ryan Graves, executive director of a group called Americans for Safe Aerospace. Graves spoke about something the committee could check for itself. \"The government knows more about UAP than shared publicly, and excessive classification practices keep crucial information hidden,\" he said. \"Since 2021, all UAP videos are classified as secret or above.\" Asked by Representative Nancy Mace how many sightings pilots actually report, he estimated, from his own conversations, about five percent.\n\nGrusch's story had first appeared in June 2023, in an article by the journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal on the website The Debrief, after other outlets declined to publish it. He had filed a whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General. His testimony, he said, was based on information from people with long records of service, many of whom had shared photographs, official documents and classified oral testimony, and he had spent four years trying to corroborate it. Under questioning, he said the government had recovered what he called \"non-human 'biologics'\" from crashed craft, according to people with direct knowledge of the program. Asked whether he knew of people harmed to keep it secret, he said yes, but that he could give details only in a secure classified setting. Asked by Representative Anna Paulina Luna whether he had feared for his life, he answered, \"Yes, personally.\" He described the retaliation he said he had faced as \"very brutal.\"\n\nWhen Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked where she should look to verify his claims, Grusch replied, \"I'd be happy to give you that in a closed environment. I can tell you specifically.\" In his closing statement he hoped that investigation of what he called \"Non-Human Reverse Engineering Programs\" would deliver \"an ontological (earth-shattering) shock,\" and said that \"our comprehension of humanity's place on earth and in the cosmos\" depended on it.\n\nThe response from those who could look was flat denial. A Pentagon spokesperson said the government's UAP office, AARO, had found no verifiable information that any such program had existed or exists. NASA said it had found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said he had never seen evidence of aliens or a cover-up. AARO's director, Sean Kirkpatrick, wrote that Grusch had refused to speak with his office. After the hearing, lawmakers were told that Grusch no longer had the security clearance needed to discuss the matter even in a classified facility.\n\nIn March 2024, AARO published the first volume of its historical review. \"AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,\" it said. It had interviewed about 30 people, located the programs, officials, companies and documents they named, and found that none was a UAP reverse-engineering program. Many were real, highly sensitive national security programs with nothing to do with alien technology; one, a proposed program called KONA BLUE, was never approved. None of the interviewees, it said, had first-hand knowledge. The story, it concluded, was largely \"circular reporting\" from a small group of people who believed it. Scientists made the same point more bluntly: without data or material, as one member of NASA's UAP study team put it, \"we are at an impasse.\"\n\nWhat remains unresolved is the shape of the gap between them. Grusch never claimed to have seen a craft. By Kirkpatrick's account, he never came in to speak to AARO. Some members of Congress, though unmoved by the specific claims, worried that they had not been briefed on every special access program, and a bipartisan group called for a select committee with subpoena power. Graves's point about the videos still stands on its own: the government classifies what it has, so the public cannot judge it.\n\nThe AARO report deals with its witnesses in a way that captures the whole affair. To protect their privacy, it gave each interviewee a randomly generated number, and kept the key that matches numbers to names stored in a secure manner. Its pages are full of them: Interviewee 1, Interviewee 3, Interviewee 12, each telling what someone else had told them, and the names behind the numbers locked away."},"img":null,"md":{"h":"img/m/REC-HRG2023-16x9.webp","w":1600,"hh":900,"alt":"House Oversight UAP hearing (26 Jul 2023), 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, USA — A congressional hearing on July 26, 2023, under the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, with Ryan Graves…","by":"U.S. House Committee On Oversight and Accountability","lic":"Public domain","lu":"","p":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_congressional_hearing_on_UAPs_on_26_July_2023_with_Grusch_Graves_and_Fravor.png","g":false,"ct":false,"cap":"","sec":[]},"hh":null,"hs":{}}