Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Wednesday that “credible sources” have informed lawmakers that information on UFOs has been improperly kept away from Congress.
The top Democrat made the assertion during a colloquy with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) in the Senate chamber, lamenting how significant parts of their Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023 got nixed during the conference process to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the next National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Hours later, the Senate passed the compromise version of the $886 billion defense policy bill.
“The United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people. That is wrong and additionally breeds mistrust,” Schumer said. “We have also been notified by multiple credible sources that information on UAPs has also been withheld from Congress, which if true is a violation of laws requiring full notification to the legislative branch — especially as it relates to the four congressional leaders, the defense committees, and the intelligence committee.”
Schumer and Rounds bemoaned the elimination of language from their amendment to the NDAA that would establish a review board to advise the president on what records should be released — or kept secret for national security or other serious reasons — taking cues from the JFK Assassination Records Act of 1992.
The House refused to work with us on all the important elements of the UAP Disclosure Act, but we were able to make progress on UAP transparency in the NDAA we just passed.
Watch: pic.twitter.com/5zbmVMh1NN
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) December 14, 2023
“It is really an outrage the House didn’t work with us on adopting our proposal for a review board, which of course by definition here is bipartisan in the Senate,” Schumer said. “Now it means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades.”
In addition, Rounds alluded to the removal of eminent domain authority they sought to place in the NDAA, calling it “a requirement as a transparency measure for the government to obtain any recovered UAP material or biological remains that may have been provided to private entities in the past and thereby hidden from Congress and the American people.” He added, “We are lacking oversight opportunities, and we are not fulfilling our responsibilities.”
Schumer claimed the GOP-led House “refused to work with us on all the important elements of the UAP Disclosure Act during the NDAA conference.” He did not name any House members in particular, but some reporting indicates House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) resisted fuller disclosure. Turner previously knocked whistleblower testimony given to Congress about there being an alleged UAP cover-up and later told NewsNation that he viewed Schumer’s amendment as a “poorly drafted piece of legislation” even though he denied that he was “holding up” the measure.
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The Senate majority leader also acknowledged that “important progress” was achieved with other aspects of their amendment that did not get axed. “For the first time, the National Archives will gather records from across the federal government on UAPs, and have a legal mandate to release those records to the public if appropriate,” Schumer said. “This is a major, major win for government transparency on UAPs and it gives us a strong foundation for more action in the future.”
The U.S. government has started making strides in publicly addressing and studying reports of UAPs with the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and other endeavors. And some retired officials, including whistleblower David Grusch, are coming forward publicly with claims of there being a secret UFO retrieval program while others raise concerns about flight safety.
In a NewsNation interview this week, Grusch called the gutting of the UAP Disclosure Act “the greatest legislative failure in American history.” He also encouraged the president to take executive action to institute a board of advisers and urged Americans to vote out lawmakers who oppose UFO transparency in future elections.
Schumer took a more diplomatic approach in discussing his colleagues in Congress.
“We will keep working. I want to assure the American people, Senator Rounds and I will keep working to change the status quo,” he said, adding later, “We encourage our colleagues to join us in the further investigation of this issue and in advancing legislation that will complete what we have accomplished in this NDAA.”