During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, a team of experts testified before lawmakers, claiming that the US is running secret Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) programs. The hearing, titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," featured testimony from four experts, including Tim Gallaudet, a retired rear admiral, and Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense official, reported NPR.
Mr Elizondo claimed that the US government has been conducting secret UAP research and has retrieved materials from non-human craft. "Advanced technologies not made by our government – or any other government – are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the US has UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries," he said.
He also alleged that individuals who provided classified testimonies to government officials have faced threats to their careers. Mr Elizondo remarked that excessive secrecy has led to "grave misdeeds" against loyal civil servants, military personnel, and the public, all to hide the fact that "we are not alone in the cosmos".
We are "in the midst of a multi-decade, secretive arms race  — one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies," Mr Elizondo stated during his testimony.
Other experts, including Tim Gallaudet and Michael Shellenberger, a journalist and founder of the news site Public, also shared their insights during the hearing. Mr Gallaudet said he first encountered UAPs during his career as a Navy meteorologist and has since advocated for transparency, pushing back against secrecy surrounding these incidents. He also expressed a moral obligation to support whistleblowers who have shared their UAP experiences, often facing ridicule and scepticism.
"Unelected officials in the US government do not have an exclusive right to this knowledge about the nature of reality. The American people have a right to that knowledge," Mr Gallaudet said.
Meanwhile, Mr Shellenberger shared his findings on the alleged "Immaculate Constellation" secret government program, claiming it's a Pentagon-led initiative to collect and quarantine UFO sighting information. According to Mr Shellenberger, a whistleblower revealed the program's existence, which has been denied by Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough. He further highlighted the need for Congress and the White House to address UFOs, Space.com reported.
"What the American people need to know is that the US, military and intelligence community are sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information: still photos, video, photos, other sensor information, and they have for a very long time. And it's not those fuzzy photos and videos that we've been given. There's very clear, high resolution [files]," Mr Shellenberger said.
Michael Gold, a former NASA associate administrator, also emphasised the importance of overcoming the stigma surrounding UAP discussions to facilitate open and scientific dialogue.
Notably, the hearing comes over a year after whistleblower David Grusch accused the Pentagon of running a secret UFO retrieval program. However, no concrete physical evidence has ever emerged to support these claims.
A statement from a Pentagon spokesperson said the department "has not found any verifiable evidence that any UAP observation represented extraterrestrial activity nor has the department discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."
