A classified briefing on UFOs delivered to members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee triggered a mixed response from attendees, with some saying they were dissatisfied by the answers, while others said they were grateful for new information.
The 90-minute briefing was given by Thomas Monheim, inspector general of the U.S. intelligence community, on Friday at the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.
Interest in UFOs, which the government calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), surged in July 2023 when Air Force veteran David Grusch said “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight” on the subject at an earlier House Oversight Committee hearing.
A number of those who attended Friday’s meeting were left disappointed. House Republican Tim Burchett has previously said the federal government is hiding some of what it knows about UFOs, and he branded the classified briefing as “more of the same,” according to The Hill.
Speaking to reporters after the event, Burchett said: “It’s very compartmentalized; it’s like looking down the barrel of a .22 rifle. All they know is just right in that little circle.
“Now it’s just whack-a-mole—you go to the next [briefing], until we get some answers,” Burchett added.
Illinois Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi was also dissatisfied: “Let’s just say that all of us were very interested in the substance of his claims, and unfortunately, I didn’t get the answers that I was hoping for.”
However, Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative from California, was more positive. He said: “Everyone that was in the room received probably new information.”
Rep. Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, added: “I think that some people were looking for things. This was not the venue to determine those things, but, for me, I got a lot of clarity.”
On July 26, the House Oversight Committee heard from Grusch, ex-Navy commander David Fravor and Ryan Graves, a former Navy fighter pilot.
During his testimony, which was widely shared online, Grusch said that, while working for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), he became aware of a confidential government effort to recover and reverse-engineer UFOs that had crashed or landed in the United States.
Drew Angerer/GETTY
Asked whether he had heard of anyone being killed to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial life, Grusch said: “I have to be careful [answering] that question. I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.”
Grusch added: “It is my hope that the revelations we unearth through investigations of the Non-Human Reverse Engineering Programs I have reported will act as an ontological (earth-shattering) shock, a catalyst for a global reassessment of our priorities.”
However, a Pentagon spokesperson said it has not found “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.”
In July, a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to establish a new select committee to investigate what the government knows about UFOs, with the power to subpoena witnesses.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.