A House subcommittee will hold a hearing next week about UFOs, the first open congressional hearing about UFOs in more than 50 years. “Congress hasn’t held a public hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UFO’s) in over 50 years,” Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana, tweeted Tuesday morning.
“That will change next week when I lead a hearing in @HouseIntel on this topic & the national security risk it poses. Americans need to know more about these unexplained occurrences.” The hearing will be held Tuesday, May 17 in front of a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by California Rep. Adam Schiff. Schiff told the New York Times that the committee is holding the series to explore “one of the great mysteries of our time and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”
Two current Pentagon officials will testify at the hearing. After the New York Times published an article about the existence of a Pentagon UFO project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in 2017, government disclosures about UFOs have come repeatedly.
The House Intelligence Committee’s subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation will hold the public hearing on May 17 at 10 a.m. ET. It will be followed by a closed, classified hearing on the Pentagon program, known as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.
The two witnesses are Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security Ronald S. Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott W. Bray. “The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks — especially those we do not fully understand,” said Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson, the chairman of the subcommittee holding the hearing, in a statement.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, added that the hearing would “give the public an opportunity to hear directly from subject matter experts and leaders in the Intelligence Community on one of the greatest mysteries of our time, and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”
