Join Ross Coulthart for a LIVE Q&A on NewsNation’s YouTube, X and Facebook pages at 4p/3C Wednesday following a House hearing on UAPs. Coulthart will break down testimony from former NASA administrator Michael Gold, Pentagon insider Lue Elizondo, journalist Michael Shellenberger and Retired Navy Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet.
(NewsNation) — At a House of Representatives committee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena Wednesday, lawmakers will hear from a number of witnesses about what they have seen and heard about UFOs.
Held by the House Oversight Committee, the hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” will begin at 11:30 a.m. ET.
Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon insider, veteran and investigator; retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet; journalist Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold, a former NASA administrator, are scheduled to give their testimony.
This hearing is the first since the summer of 2023, which was sparked by career intelligence official David Grusch‘s allegations that the Pentagon has been operating a secret UFO retrieval program.
“If the UFO hearings catch on with the public, we could be in for quite a ride,” Bryce Zabel, UFO author and cohost of the podcast “Need to Know” with Ross Coulthart, told NewsNation. “Back in 1973, all of America was riveted to the Senate Watergate hearings, and the cover-up Nixon orchestrated will seem small compared to the one that would have been necessary to hide the truth about alien contact for nearly eight decades now.”
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What will UAP witnesses say at hearing?
Elizondo’s book “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs” alleges that the United States military has been running a UAP retrieval and reverse engineering program for years, even recovering nonhuman specimens.
“Let me be clear: UAP are real. Advanced technologies not made by our Government – or any other government – are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe,” Elizondo will say, according to testimony published the day before the hearing.
He will talk about what actions the government should be taking regarding the UAP issue.
Gallaudet, in his testimony, plans to repeat a claim he’s made before to NewsNation: that an email that contained what is known as the “Go Fast” video, disappeared from his and his colleagues’ email servers. “Go Fast” shows a fighter pilot’s encounter with a UAP.
Shellenberger will detail his reporting on the alleged “Immaculate Constellation” secret government program. A whistleblower revealed the alleged UFO program, in which the Pentagon collects and quarantines information on UFO sightings, Shellenberger says.
Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough has previously denied records of the program.
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Shellenberger will highlight the need for Congress and the White House to address UFOs.
Michael Gold, a former NASA administrator, will outline new ways for NASA to be helpful on the UAP issue. Currently Chief Growth Office at Redwire Space, Gold stresses in his testimony that he is speaking on his own behalf, and not for any other organization.
“Agencies such as NASA have much to offer when it comes to understanding UAP,” Gold’s prepared testimony reads.
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Much of the current conversation surrounding UFOs started when Grusch came forward last year with his claims that the government was operating a secret program dedicated to retrieving crashed UAPs and was in possession of nonhuman craft and biological remains of nonhuman beings.
The Defense Department has denied these allegations.
Still, they sparked the 2023 congressional hearing on the subject — the first in more than 50 years —where Grusch testified with former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and Navy Commander David Fravor.
Fravor talked about his experience encountering a UAP. Both Graves and Fravor said they were concerned about the risks UAPs pose to the military, regardless of origin.
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Lawmakers asked about the secret program referenced by Grusch, and eventually, the hearing led to the formation of a bipartisan UFO Caucus, informally led by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
An official report issued by the Pentagon from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office found no evidence of a secret program. Furthermore, it said the government has no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin. However, the Department of Defense did admit to a proposed program known as Kona Blue, which was developed to reverse-engineer any alien technology recovered by the government. This never got off the ground, the DOD said, as no such technology was ever located.
NASA, in a report of its own, said there’s no evidence for extraterrestrial contact with Earth, though the agency said there needs to be more rigorous research in the area and less stigma around the topic as a whole.
NewsNation digital producer Steph Whiteside contributed to this article.
