Five Takeaways about the U.S. Congress’s Interest in UFOs

By Justin Snead

I have compiled an archive and timeline of all recent public actions and statements by the U.S. Congress regarding UFOs. Putting this research all together makes it clear that a core group within Congress is committed to government transparency on this issue and is actively implementing a game plan that will bring that about. Below are five major takeaways.

NOTE: since UAP is their preferred term for UFOs I’m going to use it here. What follows is a summary. For more details, and all of the source links, check out following:

When It All Began, and Why

When did these members of Congress become collectively activated by their interest in what they call UAP? Based on available records, no earlier than 2018. The December 2017 New York Times article that broke the news about the Pentagon’s secret UFO office seems to have been the trigger. However, we know that at least some in Congress were being briefed on UAP/military encounters for at least the prior decade. In 2011 Senator Rubio joined the Intelligence Committee, and Senator Gillibrand joined the Armed Services Committee. In 2021 both senators said that they had been receiving UAP reports for ten years.

Christopher Mellon has revealed that Navy aviators who were direct UAP witnesses, like Dave Fravor and Ryan Graves, briefed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2018. (We know very little about what was going on behind Congress’s closed doors during this year, so if anyone has any details please reach out to me so I can add them to the timeline.)

So Congress was at least partly in the loop, but they took no action that we know of until June 2019. And it was no small step. That summer the Senate Armed Services Committee introduced the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020 with a classified Annex that directed the Pentagon’s USD(I&S) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) to stand up a UAP Task Force “to investigate UAP activity.” This was not known to the public at the time, or much of Congress for that matter. A year later, the directive to draft a UAP preliminary report was attached to the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for 2021, and this was generally considered the first significant congressional action on UAP. But it was 2019 when the core group within Congress very quietly began their formal UAP inquiry. One week after that 2019 Annex was attached to the NDAA, ONI was giving the first publicly announced UAP briefings to Congress. These were widely reported at the time, and they continued with numerous committee members and staffers through December (in fact they continue to this day, and were formalized into regular quarterly briefings in 2022). By October 2019, ONI was showing armed services and intelligence committees detailed powerpoint presentations on UAP, and arranging for expert testimony. It has been reported that Dr. Eric Davis briefed Senate staffers during the time of these October briefings, and his message to them was that UAP were “off-world” vehicles, and that there had been “retrievals of unexplained objects.”

The question of why Congress chose to act is also important. At this early point in the timeline, certain members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate became aware of two interconnected problems that they could not ignore. One was that the military were encountering UAP with some frequency in restricted airspace. Second was that the Pentagon was not organizationally equipped to address this.

Representative Ruben Gallego explains this dynamic in the clearest terms I have heard. Gallego has served on the House Armed Services Committee since 2015, which was when UAP reports must have been flying at him fast and thick. The UAP wave over Oceania training ranges was happening at this time, and the Navy began formal reporting of UAP events in 2014 (see pg. 2 of this FOIA-released Navy email cache). In January 2021 he was appointed chairman of the subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, which he has said has “jurisdiction” over UAP events. In November 2021, when UAP legislation to greatly expand the scope of the UAP Task Force was about to pass, he told Hill TV the following (emphasis mine):

“…we just don’t have enough information, and even the information the Department of Defense has, it is useless information, it is anecdotal evidence, and/or, even film, whatever it is. But we have no reference points to it, and there is no unified way to actually collect this information. Nobody knows what to do with this information… the goal of my legislation is to treat this like a real problem set, and the way you do that when you’re dealing with the Pentagon is you have a system-wide understanding of how to collect this information, how to collect this data, let’s analyze the data and then let’s come up with recommendations about what this is and what we should do about it.”

Gallego’s frustration is palpable. Contrary to the popular self-conception of a can-do military spirit able to tackle any problem it sets its mind to, he describes a military leadership that is hesitant, indecisive, even a little scared. He ascribes this to the UFO stigma, which could block a career path in the Pentagon. As a result: “everyone just avoids the issue. Politicians avoid the issue. So everyone just kind of walks around in circles, saying, ‘Man, there’s something there,’ but nobody wants to do anything about it.”

The classic analogy for the military’s handling of UFOs is the ostrich burying its head in the sand. But Gallego’s image of someone walking in circles has a different connotation and is perhaps more instructive. A person walking around in circles is not ignoring the problem. The problem weighs on them, bothers them. But they cannot decide what they should do about it. They do not act, even though they know someone really must. They need someone to point them in a direction, and kick them in the pants. This is exactly what Congress has done to the Pentagon.

Gallego also touches on an additional problem that the core group in Congress was clearly worried about–that it is just a matter of time until the public gets hard proof of whatever UAP are, and politicians won’t want to be seen as unprepared. In the same Hill TV interview he said, “because we are a more interconnected society, you have a lot of people that are flying, a lot of people can actively use their own drones, they can actually even now rent satellite imagery, more people are starting to discover this.”

In the May 17 UAP hearing the ranking member of the subcommittee, Representative Crawford, asked Pentagon leadership, “how can [the UAP office] lead to prevention of intelligence surprises?” Christopher Mellon, who advises members of Congress on UAP, made the same point this month when he said that if government disclosure happens soon “it will happen most likely because it’s impossible to contain it any longer.” If UFO confirmation comes from a source other than the Pentagon’s vaults, and our leaders are made to stammer “We had no idea!” under the klieg lights, it will be seen as a massive failure of not only intelligence but basic leadership. At least now they will be able to say that they have been working on this problem since 2018.

There is much we still do not know about when and why Congress went down this path. But it seems clear that around 2018 the core group on the national security committees saw a national security and political problem brewing on the horizon that they could not ignore.

A Concerted Effort

During that freshman UAP year of 2019, dozens of individual members of Congress requested UAP briefings, as well various committees. You can see a partial list of the hodgepodge group of congresspeople and hill staffers who were requesting and receiving UAP briefings just in July, on pgs. 10-17 of the Navy emails. The four main committees that have worked in concert are the House and Senate intelligence and armed services committees. Every year since 2019, they have inserted UAP requirements into the NDAA or the IAA. These have been authored by numerous members, and ushered through committees by at least eight chairmen of both parties. These committees passed UAP directives and legislation when Republicans as well as Democrats held the chairmanship:

Senate Armed Service Committee

Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) – Chairman in 2019 and 2020; Ranking Member in 2021 and 2022
Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) – Chairman in 2021 and 2022; Ranking Member in 2019 and 2022

Senate Intelligence Committee

Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) – Chairman in 2020; Ranking Member in 2021 and 2022
Mark Warner (D-Va.) – Chairman in 2021 and 2022; Ranking Member in 2020

House Armed Services Committee

Adam Smith (D.-Wash.) – Chairman in 2021 and 2022
Mike Rogers (R.-Mich.) – Ranking Member in 2021 and 2022

House Intelligence Committee

Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) – Chairman in 2021 and 2022
Mike Turner (R.-Ohio) – Ranking Member in 2021 and 2022

Senator Gillibrand has said repeatedly, in 2021 and 2022, that there is no “opposition to this on any level” in Congress.

There is circumstantial evidence that the committees are engaging in some strategic membership placement that might be related to their overall UAP efforts. Senator Gillibrand has sat on the Armed Services Committee for over a decade, and in 2021 she was given a rare dual placement by being appointed to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Nine months after this appointment, Gillibrand authored her now-famous UAP amendment to the 2022 NDAA, which created a new, more comprehensive UAP investigative office inside the Pentagon.

In the House, Representative Gallagher has sat on the Armed Services Committee since 2017, and in 2022 he was also appointed to the House Intelligence Committee. Five months after this appointment, Gallagher, with Ruben Gallego, authored a major UAP amendment to the 2023 NDAA.

Is it a coincidence that two major UAP trailblazers in Congress were appointed to both national security committees just months before they helped shape major UAP legislation? As the saying goes: personnel is policy. Coincidence or not, the dual placement allows them unique access to and influence over Congress’s UAP efforts.

Building the Record (and a Case)

Congress’s UAP inquiry has expanded year after year. Take the following representative examples of information they have been mandating the military and Intelligence Community cough up over the last four years:

2019 – Congress asks the Pentagon to form a task force to “investigate UAP activity” and produce a memo.

2020 – Congress calls for a “unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena.” It also mandates that the task force produce a comprehensive UAP report, which ended up revealing that the military knows of 143 cases of mysterious aircraft exhibiting unexplained “breakthrough aerospace capabilities” since 2004.

2021 – Congress requires a more detailed report, due annually every October through 2026. Here are just some of its requirements:

An updated tally of recent UAP events
Analysis of all UAP restricted airspace incursions
U.S. military attempts to capture and exploit UAP
Health-related effects UAP have had on people
U.S. nuclear technology and UAP

2022 – Congress requires that the government “compile and itemize” all of its records on UFOs dating back to January 1, 1947–which is the date when the Pentagon began formally collecting UFO reports. This would presumably include any UFO-related activity on or around the Roswell Army Air Force Base that year. Congress also requires the “complete historical record of the intelligence community’s involvement” with UFOs, including any attempts “to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide unclassified or classified misinformation.” Oh, and they are also offering immunity that would allow any government agent or contractor to share with Congress what they know about secret UFO programs.

In other words, in the span of four years, Congress transitioned from its strictly national security interest in restricted airspace to going after the full UFO enchilada. They have been widening their scope every year, and there is no indication their reach won’t go farther in 2023 and 2024.

It stands to reason that Congress intends to use this information for some purpose. It’s almost like they have decided that at some point in the near future they will go before the American people to explain the U.S. government’s involvement with UFOs. They are doing their homework now in preparation for the greatest political test of their careers.

Practicing their Lines

And make no mistake, the political test of UFO disclosure will be enormous. Right now, about 30 members of Congress have made public statements on UAP. Most of the politicians in my statement archive are what I call UAP Advocates. They are only comfortable discussing UAP within the narrow range of national security and air-space-sovereignty. They talk about the need for more data and less stigma, but many of them retreat to the stance that UAP are “probably” foreign spy technology. The fact that the conversation has advanced this far is a testament to the national security tactic pioneered by former government insiders like Christopher Mellon and Nick Pope. It’s almost like “national security” has been used as a Trojan Horse to sneak UFOs into the mainstream of our body politic. At minimum, for the small but growing group within Congress it has supplied the words to begin the conversation.

Still, moving beyond that to a fuller discussion of what is really going on with the UAP of today, and of 1947, will require more of our politicians. Frankly, they’re going to have to get comfortable talking about aliens. As of now, only 5 members of Congress are willing to do that. I call them Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Advocates because of their willingness to move beyond the talking points about unknown objects in restricted airspace. They have used words like aliens, other intelligence, other worlds, and other solar systems.

The quintessential example of a politician who has learned to talk about extraterrestrial visitors with smooth, confident banality, akin to discussions of constituent services like job fairs and potholes, is André Carson. In 2022, while chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation, Carson deployed this masterclass in understatement:

“If it is otherworldly we will have internal controls in place to protect us and to engage, in the event that that happens, in a healthy and safe way.” [Source: End UAP Secrecy]

Others in the House have gone farther out the E.T. limb than Carson, but none with his level of power. Arguably there is no greater Extraterrestrial Hyopthesis Advocate than Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, who has repeatedly accused the U.S. military of a coverup and called for public disclosure of everything from Roswell forward. He has frequently referred to the Pentagon’s gestures toward UAP disclosure as “a joke.” Burchett has also knowingly admitted “that’s why people like me never get on intelligence committees.” Position and amount of power is a factor in who is willing to say what about UFOs.

Speaking of power…

A Tale of Two Senators

The only Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Advocate in the upper chamber is Mitt Romney of Utah. One of the only members of Congress to be openly cynical and stigmatizing about UFOs is also in the Senate–Mark Kelly of Arizona.

In 2021, Romney told CNN: “If for some reason these [UAP] came from another system, if you will, another alien society,… that would be fascinating, interesting…. That would make me more fascinated, not fearful.” He categorically denied the possibility that UAP are Russian, Chinese, or American technology. No U.S. politician of his stature has gone this far.

On the other hand, Senator Kelly responded this way to a reporter who asked a sincere question about the Pentagon’s UAP investigation: “Well on the alien subject, you know I could confirm that they exist, they’re really small, they have sharp teeth, and they live under your bed.” He went on to explain how easy it is to misidentify objects seen in the sky.

What accounts for this difference? Romney’s stance is remarkable because so few politicians are willing to say what he did (only 5 have, and he is the only Senator). There is clearly a perceived political cost to expressing an openness to the possibility of alien visitors, no doubt due to the long-standing UFO stigma. If we take Romney at his word, he is persuaded by the scientific consensus on the sheer amount of planets and potential for life in the universe, and he seems comfortable with the idea that some of that life is intelligent and has visited the Earth.

Kelly, conversely, has extensive experience in space, and with the tricks of perception that its vastness can play on the human psyche. For all we know, his years at NASA may have caused him to internalize the consensus of so many space scientists: UFOs are bunk because interstellar travel is not possible. His cynicism about UFOs may be genuine and heartfelt.

But there is also a major political dynamic that could be driving these two divergent responses, which needs to be understood because it could affect how Disclosure continues to unfold.

Romney is an elder statesman with fewer years ahead of him than behind. He suffered the greatest defeat that modern politics has to offer when he lost a winnable presidential election in 2012. He is a popular Republican senator in Utah, where the partisan lean skews toward his party by 26.3%. He will keep this seat for as long as he chooses to hold it. All of this adds up to a man who has nothing to fear. He can and does speak his mind.

Kelly is younger and newer to politics. He is the Democrat senator in Arizona where the partisan lean is 7.6% in favor of Republicans. When he blew off the reporter’s question about UFOs, he knew he would soon be in a tight race for his first re-election that he could easily lose. Being a former astronaut is not without its political liabilities–there is nothing quite as far removed from work-a-day Arizonans’ daily lives than circling the planet in a space shuttle. He may not be eager to add UFO-enthusiast to that identity.

We don’t know how politicians will react as more UFO revelations come out. We don’t know if they will follow the Romney model or the Kelly model. But make no mistake, these are the only two models available: stigmatization and willful ignorance, or open-mindedness and leadership. Twenty-eight members of Congress have chosen to lead. We have yet to hear from the remaining 506.