US House panel plans hearing on UFO claims

US House panel plans hearing on UFO claimsJune 9, 2023

Washington, June 9 (IANS) A panel of the US House of Representatives is planning to hold a hearing on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) after a former intelligence official claimed that the Washington government has allegedly found crashed alien spacecraft, the media reported.

According to an ABC News report on Thursday, the powerful House Oversight Committee is in the “early stages” of preparing the hearing.

When asked about the unconfirmed claims, Committee Chairman James Comer told a reporter on Tuesday: “I’ve heard about it, I don’t know anything about it… We plan on having a hearing.”

In a statement to ABC News the following day, Committee spokesman Austin Hacker said: “In addition to recent claims by a whistleblower, reports continue to surface regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena. The House Oversight Committee is following these UAP (unexplained anomalous phenomenon) reports and is in the early stages of planning a hearing.”

Meanwhile, Republican Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett have confirmed on Twitter that they will lead the Committee’s investigation into the UFOs.

On Monday, the former intelligence official, David Grusch, had said that the government has a covert program focused on recovering debris from crashed, non-human origin spacecraft and is attempting to reverse-engineer the technology, online tech outlet The Debrief reported.

The former official has said he gave evidence of such a program to Congress and the Office of the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community.

Grusch said that for a little more than six months, until July 2022, he was assigned to the Department of Defense’s UAP task force, reorganised since 2022 as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

He told The Debrief that his task force did not have access to the alleged program related to crashed spacecraft but said he became aware of it through his work.

But in response, Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough said that the AARO “has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate” the Grusch’s claims.

“To date, AARO has not 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,” Gough told ABC News on Monday night.

During a hearing in April, AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his agency was reviewing 650 incidents dating back decades but “found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics”.

But last week, Kirkpatrick said that the total number of incidents had grown to “well over 800 cases”.

–IANS

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