A top member of the Senate is adding his political clout to legislation that aims to force the federal government to disclose information it has on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) helped introduce last week a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would create a “UAP Records Collection.” UAP stands for “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” which covers unidentified flying as well as submerged objects.
“For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by objects mysterious and unexplained and it’s long past time they get some answers,” Schumer said in a statement.
“The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena,” he added. “We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena but to create a pipeline for future research to be made public.”
The amendment, which is also being spearheaded by Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity for the Armed Services Committee, gives heads of government offices 300 days to organize records in their possession and give to a review board, members of which would be nominated by the president and approved by the Senate, to determine whether certain documents should remain classified.
Similar to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the president will have the ultimate authority to postpone disclosure of UAP records if there is an “identifiable harm” to national security, but otherwise calls for their release “not later than the date that is 25 years after the date of the first creation” of the documents by the originating government entities.
Among the many provisions in the UAP amendment to the NDAA, which is being debated by the Democrat-led Senate this week, is a section that says the federal government shall “exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good.”
There has been a renewed interest in UFOs on Capitol Hill in the weeks after David Grusch, a U.S. military and intelligence veteran, shared allegations about crafts of non-human origin being retrieved and illegally kept from Congress.
In response to the claims, the Department of Defense has pointed to its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which has been tasked with investigating UFOs, and said that team has “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
Still, there could be revelations with various pieces of legislation being proposed in both chambers of Congress. The House Oversight Committee is set to hold a hearing on UAPs on Wednesday, July 26, according to Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). “We’re done with the cover-ups,” he said in a tweet on Monday.