45224
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: House panel hears of hidden UAP trove
URL: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4989539-house-uap-secrecy-hearing/
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House panel hears of hidden UAP trove, ‘secretive arms race’ by Ellen Mitchell - 11/13/24 7:07 PM ET House lawmakers on Wednesday heard from witnesses who claim the United States government is sitting on a trove of information on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) stretching back decades. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), in his opening remarks, called on President-elect Trump to throw off the veil of secrecy on UAPs. He said the push for transparency has been “bipartisan, bicameral, and as we get into a new administration, the president-elect has talked about opportunities to declassify information on UAPs, and I hope he lives up to that promise.” Speaking during a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing, one previous Pentagon official claimed such a reveal would show a “multidecade, secretive arms race.” “Let me be clear: UAP are real,” Luis Elizondo said in his opening testimony during the hearing. “Advanced technologies not made by our government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries.” Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program charged with investigating UAPs, spoke alongside three other witnesses in a more than two-hour hearing that called into question the U.S. government’s classification process and entered several bombshell claims into the public sphere. “I believe we are in the midst of a multidecade, secretive arms race, one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Elizondo said. Sign up for the Morning Report The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates He later added 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.” Another witness, journalist Michael Shellenberger, who publishes the “Public” newsletter on Substack, said Pentagon sources acknowledged to him the existence of an unacknowledged special access program known as “Immaculate Constellation.” A 12-page report on Immaculate Constellation — delivered to Congress by Shellenberger and authored, he says, by a current or former official and UAP whistleblower — claims that the executive branch “has been managing UAPs without congressional knowledge or authorization for some time, possibly decades.” The report also claims that Immaculate Constellation has gathered high-quality images of UAPs and recorded firsthand observations. “The U.S. 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,” Shellenberger said. He added that he’s been told there are hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of such visual evidence, “and it’s not those fuzzy photos and videos that we’ve been given, it’s very high resolution.” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who led the hearing, at one point held up the report and declared Immaculate Constellation was an “unacknowledged special access program that your government says does not exist.” The hearing, part of a larger effort by Congress to investigate UAPs and whether government sectors are withholding evidence from lawmakers, took place more than a year after a similar hearing held in July 2023. During that gathering, retired Maj. David Grusch, formerly part of the Pentagon’s UAP task force, claimed that the U.S. government has long run a secret program to reverse-engineer nonhuman material from crash sites of UAP vessels. And two former Navy pilots relayed firsthand sightings of unexplained objects routinely violating U.S. airspace. The testimony reignited long-held doubts that the U.S. military and other high-level government agencies have been forthcoming with what it knows about possible extraterrestrial activity. The hearing also set off a push in Congress for more transparency, but lawmakers say movement by the U.S. government has been too slow. The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in March issued a report that said it has found “no evidence” of alien spacecraft. “To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement at the time. Mace said the office “is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to bring forward the truth about the government’s activities concerning UAPs.” “So if there is no ‘there’ there, then why are we spending money on it, and by how much? Why the secrecy if it’s really no big deal and there’s nothing there, why hide it from the American people? Because I’m not a mathematician, but I can tell you that doesn’t add up,” she said. Elizondo on Wednesday repeated Grusch’s explosive claims, telling Mace that the government has conducted secret UAP crash-retrieval programs meant to identify and reverse-engineer alien craft. He even said he had seen documentation on compensation for U.S. personnel injured during a retrieval. Retired Navy Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, meanwhile, testified he first encountered UAPs a few years ago during a strike group exercise aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier. During the military drill, he received an email on the Navy’s secure network urgently asking if anyone could identify non-U.S. objects that caused multiple near-midair collisions, warning the exercise might have to be shut down. But the next day, he claimed, the email had been wiped from his inbox and senior staff would not speak about the event. Elizondo later said that UAPs have flown so close to American fighters in some incidents that they have split aircraft formations “right down the middle.” |
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45225
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Navy Blocks Release of UAP Photos Amid Capitol Hill Hearing on Governm
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Navy Blocks Release of UAP Photos Amid Capitol Hill Hearing on Government Secrecy John Greenewald NOVEMBER 14, 2024 The U.S. Navy has formally denied access to 78 “documents” containing photos marked as “unidentified aerial [anomalous] phenomena” (UAP). The denial, issued yesterday in response to a FOIA request filed by The Black Vault in 2022 and given case number DON-NAVY-2022-012661, highlights the Navy’s continued use of national defense and intelligence exemptions to keep UAP data classified. The response arrived less than an hour before a highly anticipated UAP hearing on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress heard testimony about the government’s lack of transparency on the issue. Journalist Michael Shellenberger holds up redacted UAP Task Force briefing documents, first obtained by The Black Vault The hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” was led yesterday by Chairwoman Nancy Mace and Congressman Glenn Grothman, heads of various Congressional subcommittees on cybersecurity, government innovation, and national security. This marked the second time Congress has convened specifically on UAP matters, with the hearing aimed at addressing the classified veil surrounding government-held UAP data. The witness panel included Navy Rear Admiral Dr. Tim Gallaudet, former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo, NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gold, and journalist Michael Shellenberger. Each expressed concerns about the DoD’s ongoing reluctance to disclose UAP information. The Navy’s response to the FOIA request, ironically timed alongside the Capitol Hill session, raises significant questions about the scope and depth of information kept from public scrutiny. Continue scrolling for more... According to the response letter, 78 “documents” were located following a search conducted by the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare (OPNAV N2/N6). “After the completion of the search,” reads the letter, “it was determined that these documents are exempt in their entirety from disclosure under FOIA 5 U.S.C. § 552,” specifically under Exemption (b)(1) and in accordance with the UAP Security Classification Guide #04-030. Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) Security Classification Guide, ID#04- 030, Naval Intelligence Activity The use of Exemption (b)(1) and the UAP Classification Guide signals the Navy’s position that these photos, or photo-bearing documents, represent materials that could impact national defense or foreign policy if disclosed. Exemption (b)(1) covers “information properly and currently classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,” as specified by Executive Order 13526, which protects military operations, intelligence methods, and national security infrastructure. According to the Navy, the 78 denied “documents” align with Executive Order criteria such as “(a) operations and military plans, weapons systems, and operations set forth by the command; (c) intelligence activities, intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology; and (g) vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans, or protection services related to national security.” As such, none of the responsive records are being released, and the public, along with the media, will remain in the dark on the true nature and specifics of this imagery. The Black Vault’s recent request for Navy-held UAP photographs stemmed from a small array of previous FOIA requests, which began in April 2020. Those requests, filed to different offices in the Navy, sought videos of UAP incidents. The case ultimately wound up at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (N2/N6), and in 2022, they issued a complete denial declaring that all requested UAP videos were classified and therefore “exempt from release.” This disclosure represented a landmark confirmation at the time: the U.S. Navy not only holds an untold number of unreleased UAP videos (the Navy would not confirm how many) but acknowledges that the material is so sensitive it must be shielded entirely from public view. The secrecy surrounding the UAP issue has strengthened ever since, and this newest denial is yet another testament to that reality. The current FOIA request, filed in September 2022, expanded on that string of FOIA cases, to specifically cover UAP-related photographs. The Navy’s latest response suggests that UAP photos, like their video counterparts, remain tightly controlled to this day. The UAP Security Classification Guide, also cited in the denial, was first obtained in redacted form by The Black Vault in December 2021. It serves as the Department of Defense’s blueprint for classifying UAP information, and has since April 2020 when it was first signed by former Director of Naval Intelligence Activity (NIA) Scott Bray. The UAP Security Classification Guide (SCG) is heavily redacted, fully shielding from the public view how, and what, they classify about UAP As described in the guide, these data categories are intended to limit access to information that could expose military vulnerabilities or reveal intelligence sources and methods. The guide has been a central component in the Navy’s consistent denials under FOIA, effectively preventing any direct visual evidence from reaching the public. With the denial of the, at least, 78 photos, the guide remains at the heart of ongoing transparency concerns—a fact underlined during yesterday’s UAP hearing itself, where the witnesses repeatedly pointed to excessive classification as a barrier to public understanding. The withheld photos, whether representing simple stills or part of broader compilations like presentations, constitute a minimum of 78 visuals. However, each “document” could theoretically contain multiple images, possibly escalating the volume of UAP evidence the Navy possesses but withholds. This release—or lack thereof—highlights the tension between government agencies and a growing demand for openness from Congress, the media, and the American public. For those invested in transparency, this denial underscores a critical issue: as long as the Navy adheres to “national security” exemptions in FOIA cases, and cites the UAP Classification Guide in justifying these refusals, a complete understanding of the UAP phenomena will remain hidden. The timing of this denial reinforces that, despite Congressional efforts to expose the truth, the Navy’s commitment to secrecy around UAP data is far from waning. An appeal has been filed by The Black Vault. ### FOIA Response Letter👆 |
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