For the first time in more than fifty years, Congress is pointing its attention toward uf foes. That's right, floating green triangles, and a sphere like object flying past a fighter jet. These are just a few of the photos and videos shown today on Capitol Hill at an unusual congressional hearing.
They're calling them.
The touchy subject of unexplained aerial phenomena, also known as UAPs, has been all over the news lately, in part because of reports by military pilots and others who say they've encountered objects that they cannot explain. Of course, we used to call these unidentified objects UFOs, but that term has apparently fallen out of fashion of those connotations with little green men. A US Congressional committee put UAPs front and
center at a hearing in July. It featured Navy pilots talking about seeing what they described as aircraft of an unknown origin, and members of Congress asking whether the Pentagon should ease public concern by disclosing more about these reports.
How do you know that these were not our aircraft?
Some of the behaviors that we saw in a working area, we would see these objects being at zero point zero mack, that's zero air speed over certain pieces of the ground. So what that means, Just like a river, if you throw a bobber in, it's going to float downstream. These objects were staying completely stationary and category four hurricane wins. These same objects would then accelerate to supersonic speeds one
point one to one point two mock. They would do so in very erratic and quick behaviors that we don't I don't have an explanation for.
Many of those unexplained phenomena turn out to have simple explanations, like weather, balloons or satellites. But the hearing got a little weird when it veered into age old claims of a government cover up. A former Air Force intelligence officer alleged with out evidence that the US has recovered non human remains from crashed alien spacecraft and has kept it secret for decades.
Were they I guess human or non human biologics?
Non human?
And that was the assessment of people which re acknowledge on the program I talk to that are currently still on the program.
And was this documentary Reverence's video photos eyewitness like, how would that be determined?
The specific documentation I would have to talk to you a skiff about.
So why is this all bubbling up now? Is it a substantive inquiry or just a summertime Washington diversion. Bloomberg's Congress editor Megan Scully and Pentagon reporter Roxanna Tyrone are bravely here to help answer that question.
You have your true believers, those in Congress who have said they've seen UFOs or UAPs and who are really pushing this, and then you have others who just are curious.
I think they're acting more from a protect the military perspective than from there might be extraterrestrial life out there.
And later astronomer Seth Shostak tells us how seriously the government and the rest of US should take claims of possible visitors from other worlds.
This is just Okham's razor.
If you have an unknown phenomenon, you can jump to the conclusion that it must be alien, or you can consider the possibility maybe it's not alien, it's just something you've not seen before.
I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take, Congress puts its eyes on the skies, Rexana, what is the difference between a UFO and a UAP.
Everybody knows about UFOs, it's unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon is trying to change the understanding of that because military aircraft pilots have seen not just flying objects, but things that they cannot explain. So the term is changing to unidentified aerial phenomena because it could be anything from flying objects to flares from satellites.
Megan, why is Congress looking at this so closely right now?
Well, it's been really interesting to watch, and in Congress that is very divided and where lawmakers can agree on very little, this UAP issue seems to be one issue that has some bipartisan support. So you have Chuck Schumer in the Senate and he's really pushing for requiring the federal government to collect and also make public this information.
UAPs generate a lot of curiosity for many Americans, and with that curiosity sometimes comes misinformation.
You're seeing a similar effort underway in the House. Basically, what Congress wants is they want the Defense Department to be more forthcoming about the information that they're collecting. Everything is heavily classified, and their safety concerns. There's national security concerns. I think the Chinese weather balloon, you know, earlier this year certainly was kind of a precursor to this broader conversation.
Congress, of course, has the power of.
The purse, so there's this push to know what do d spending his money on, how it's allocating this, what defense contractors might be involved. And they're saying, essentially, you know, the public has a right to know.
And what is it that they think the Pentagon is doing that they want to know.
Well, it depends on who you ask, right, you have your true believers, those in Congress who have said they've seen UFOs or UAPs and who are really pushing this, and then you have others who just are curious that there's all these unexplained instances, and it's not just military pilots who've seen them, it's alsocial pilots. And there's also concern that, well, if there's stuff in the air that we don't know what it is, it's incumbent upon us
to know what it is. So our commercial planes aren't in a position of danger certainly that our military planes aren't. So it's sort of this complex, multifaceted approach.
The latest report has about a total of five hundred and ten of these unexplained events, but they also found that more than half of them are exhibiting unremarkable characteristics.
What does that mean?
It means they're not something that they're worried about, basically, and then.
They un explain them, but they don't seem so strange that they're alarming exactly.
And then the other ones are you know, twenty six of them were drones, one hundred and sixty three of them were balloons or balloon like entities, and then another six were clutter.
So we have these unremarkable events. Have there been remarkable ones?
One that is in particular that's always being brought up. It's called the gimbal. It was observed by a fighter jet that flew off the USOS Roosevelt in Florida, and it's so far the most unexplained. It just flew by the plane and it sort of looks like a tic tac, and it's being brought up as an example of these UAPs.
There's a whole fleet of a book on the afa, My God, Oh, going again for the wind, they win the hunting and playing out to the west, Oh bade.
Megan. Earlier this summer, there were some pretty splashy congressional hearings where these questions were front and center, and people came to testify what happened at those hearings.
So the first one was before the House Oversight Committee. This committee has been torn apart over the last several months by investigations into Hunter Biden, the President's son, by investigations into the cause of the COVID pandemic, and it has been really polarized politically. But you had this UAP hearing and the members on both sides of the aisle
came together. You know, you had Jamie Raskin and James Comer, who were on very different sides of the political spectrum, singing from the same hymn book.
Megan, Whenever we're talking about this, it seems like there's two different things that we're really looking at. One is the possibility of some sort of object that you know, maybe a debris or a weather balloon or maybe even something that another country has flying in our airspace. And then there's this whole question of alien life visiting the US,
and they tend to get all lumped in together. How do you distinguish between those two things when the government is really looking at this, how much of this is Oh, the government is looking for extraterrest in your life or no. The government is just trying to make sure that there aren't things in our airspace that we can identify.
At least two of the witnesses were fighter pilots and another was an intelligence officer who worked for the Pentagon TA for so you know, they came in with some legitimate credentials, and what these fighter pilots were saying was that what they witnessed was something that they had never seen before.
My name is Ryan Fobbs Graves, and I'm a form fateen pilot with a decade of service in the US Navy, including two deployments in Operation and Enduring Freedom in Operation Inherent Resolve. I have experience advanced UAP firsthand, and I'm here to voice the concerns of more than thirty commercial aircrew and military veterans who have confided their similar encounters with me as we convene here. UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly underreported. These sightings are not rare
or isolated. They are routine. Military aircrew and commercial pilots. Trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification are frequently witnessing these phenomena.
There were also asked questions about, you know, did you see any seams on these objects? And they said no, sort of the basics of you know, could this be an aircraft that was built by China or Russia or some actor somewhere, And by and large they said, you know, this was unlike anything that we have ever seen. They had three witnesses to former F eighteen pilots and a former intelligence officer who had worked for this Pentagon task force, and he was sort of the primary whistleblower here, the
one who went public with what he had heard. He himself did not witness any of this phenomena, but he came forward earlier this summer with information that he had and filed a whistle blow or complaint, most of which is classified and we don't know the details of which he made clear repeatedly throughout the hearing.
The basis of his complaint is fairly mundane.
It's not about seeing little green men or even these unexplained phenomena. His complaint is essentially based on government spending, and Congress does not like it when the Defense Department or any other federal agency spends money without them knowing about it. What this intelligence officer, David Gresh said, and what I think perked many members ears up, was misappropriation of funds.
I mean, I don't want to cut you off, but how does a program like that get funded?
I will give you generalities, I can get very specific in a closed session, but a misappropriation of funds.
And does that mean fund Does that mean that there is money in the budget that is set to go to a program but it doesn't and it goes to something else?
Yes, I have specific knowledge of that. Yep.
Do you think US corporations are overcharging for certain tech they're selling to the US government and that additional money is going to programs?
Correct? Through something called I read.
What did this program supposedly do?
He was hinting at the fact that they're trying to basically reconstruct the technologies that they're in possession of, and also that they're in possession of non human remains.
You've said that the government is in possession of potentially non human spacecraft. Based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts, do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?
Something I can't discuss in public.
Setting if you believe we have crashed craft stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?
As I've stated publicly already in my News Nation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries.
Yeah, were they, I guess human or non human? Biologics?
Non human?
And that was the assessment of people which re acknowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program.
Did he present any evidence of this?
He couldn't because it's all classified, and he was very clear about it.
Megan, how do the members of the committee receive this testimony, especially some of the allegations about the US and extraterrestrial life.
They listened very intently. Given that the three officials test fine before them were former military that certainly lent some credence to what they were saying. But nobody really brushed aside these allegations. They were taken remarkably seriously. And the panel, which is a very partisan panel, this was probably, I would say, of all the hearings that I have watched this year by this committee, probably the one with the most bipartisanship.
Why do you think that they were able to come together on this.
I think because they're genuinely curious.
There's enough of these incidences, whether they believe that it is an alien form or whether they believe it is a potential you know, enemy aircraft, there's enough interest in it and enough mystery there that I think that members came with an open mind and actually some good questions.
Roxanna, What is the Pentagon said about all of this? Obviously these would be some pretty serious charges if the Pentagon was spending money without telling anybody.
The Pentagon basically sort of brushed aside the allegations and said, you know, we are not aware of any of these
you know, non human technology or remains. And the Pentagon really does operate on this mantra it is a national security issue because it could be various things that could harm the US military and its operations or impede their operations, and so I think they're acting more from a protect the military perspective than from like, you know, there might be extraterrestrial life out there.
And then members of the committee have also said they've been denied information from the Pentagon, that they had requested information, and that the Pentagon rejected their requests. So while some members of Congress might have more details, maybe members of the Intelligence Committee. Members of this particular committee were saying that they weren't getting the information that they demanded.
After the break. Where does the government's inquiry go from here? Roxanne? In twenty twenty two, the Department of Defense created this thing called the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, very pentagon sounding office. It's supposed to investigate and keep records of sightings.
What exactly is.
This so, actually this office was renamed by the Pentagon, but it was created by Congress in Defense legislation because they wanted to know more and they wanted to have a centralized agency at the Pentagon dealing with these issues. This office is basically tasked to work with other federal agencies, including NASA, to review these UAPs and to then file reports and talk to Congress about what they found. But they're sort of the central office for these.
Events, Megan, what are the next steps from Congress and asking for clarity for answers from the Pentagon on this question.
There's this amendment from Senator Schumer that's attached to the National Defense Authorization Bill, this must pass piece of legislation that's been enacted for more than six decades now, and it's in the Senate version of the bill, and it would essentially ramp up oversight of this area. It would require the Defense Department to make information public. It would also give Congress more ability to see what it exactly
it is that the Pentagon is doing. That is in the Senate version of the bill, it's not in the House version. So the two chambers need to negotiate differences in the measure before they come to a final The House.
Measure has a sort of similar provision also an oversight provision by the Tennessee Republican by Timbership as well. It's not the same as Senator Schumer's, but in sort of a similar vein. But they would have to sort of melt the two versions together.
And if that passed, and say Joe Biden signed it, what would be different from now.
The Pentagon would be required to declassify some of this information to make it public. So what you've seen essentially is many of these incidences get witnessed and then it isn't until years later that the public becomes aware, whether it be through a whistleblower or from a story in the media. So this would essentially force the Pentagon's hand, but we would be seeing more and more information about these unidentified aerial phenomena.
Did anyone express any kind of skepticism on the committee about these kinds of questions.
No, and I was somewhat surprised by that.
I think that those who maybe skeptics took a route of asking about this missile appropriation of funds. And we're more procedural in nature as opposed to talking about what these objects might be, because remember, these are members of Congress, and they don't want to isolate voters in their district who may be true believers in UAPs.
It's going to be a long process because they've just not talked about this for years. Like so the first hearing on NEUFOS was in the sixties, and then the next hearing was last year. I mean, it took forty years to talk about this in Congress an open session. So I think it's just like a very slow moving train here.
Megan Roxanna, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thanks, it's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having us.
It's novel for Congress to take out the question of extraterrestrial life, but other organizations have been on the lookout for years, like the SETI Institute. SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It's a nonprofit research organization that's been around since the nineteen eighties. I asked, said he's senior astronomer Seth Shostak, what he needed of the hearings.
Of course, the most I should say remarkable thing about the hearings from me was when this former intelligence officer, David Grush, claimed that the government had teams of experts who routinely went out into the field to recover crashed alien spacecraft and occasionally crashed aliens.
That struck me.
What did you think of that testimony as somebody who studies this all the time, did you find that intriguing or did you meet it with a certain amount of skepticism?
A lot of skepticism.
Actually, it's sort of like my next door neighbor claiming that he's had ghosts living in his attic for the last twenty years. I mean, you know, it would be important if true.
What was it about his testimony that struck you as implausible?
He didn't say anything that was impossible. Nothing he said would violate physics, But he didn't offer any any evidence to back that up. You just saying it. So regarding him as an authority, people who like to think the aliens are here would say, see, that's proof.
And that was just one part of the hearing. It certainly was the splashiest, But there was an entirely different line of questioning, and that was around pilots who have seen things while they were flying that they just can't explain.
I mean, I don't doubt them.
I don't think that the pilots are deliberately fabricating anything. I think that they're you know, telling it like it is. So they see something in the sky and they don't
understand it. Well, there are things in the sky that maybe they wouldn't understand, right, And there's a whole laundry list of things that you know are up in our airspace that have nothing to do with aliens, but you know, they might not be instantly recognizable, even aircraft at a distance might not be instantly recognizable.
Well, there had been any number of these things that the Pentagon was eventually able to identify what they were, but quite a few of them where they still haven't. And I think people's minds immediately go to alien spacecraft or something from outer space. Is that where your mind immediately goes No.
That's about the last thing I would consider, because this is just Okham's razor. If you have an unknown phenomenon, you can jump to the conclusion that it must be alien, or you can consider the possibility maybe it's not alien, it's just something you've not seen before.
What are some of the things that you would think would explain things that experts who are looking on this, they just can't figure out what they are, especially craft that seem to move in ways that defy anything that we currently know exists.
Yeah, that argument is always a little bit suspect in my eyes, because they say, oh, this thing was moving and accelerating in ways that you know no earthly craft could out. Surely if it goes from a parent standstill to mock eight in a second or two, you would say, well, that's really remarkable. But how do you know that it's
mock eight? In order to do that, you need to know the speed, And in order to know the speed, you need to know the distance to these objects, right, because otherwise, I mean, look, you know, a fly buzzes across my face here and it's moving so fast, you know, I say, man, that the fly is going it up mocked six right, No, it's just very close to me. So you do need to know the distance. And they
don't have any distance estimates that I've ever seen. And actually it's quite hard to understand how they would have any distance estimates. They just have cameras that are giving you imagery of what's in front of you, but they don't know how far in front of you.
It's a crucial bit of information.
When we come back. What would it take to persuade Seth Shostak that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. Another one of the questions that came up in this hearing was the idea that the Pentagon has a duty to disclose more about what they know. This feeling like there's information the public doesn't get to see, and even the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been pressing that the Pentagon should tell people more. What do you think of that?
No, I'm all for that. I mean, more information is not going to be dangerous. I mean, if the aliens were really some sort of threat, if there were something that the Department of Defense would have to worry about I think that there would be real investigation into it. But I don't notice that United Airlines is canceling any flights because it doesn't know what's up in our airspace and they would too much liability fly around if there
are alien craft that haven't filed a flight plan. So I think that all speaks to the fact that there really isn't terribly much good evidence, if any good evidence here for visitation. It's a very appealing idea, and poles show that the majority of the American public believe it's happening.
But you know, as I say, when I look.
At the activity at Laguardian, I don't see any provision being made for the fact that, you know, the skies might not be empty, keep them behind that there are something like eight thousand satellites in orbit around the Earth that are making images all the time of what's below them. And they don't need to see these things either. Now you can say, oh, yeah, they do, but the government just scrubs all that imagery away. But it's not just
the US government that has these satellites. Many governments have them. And it's hard for me to believe in a worldwide conspiracy to keep the most important science news of probably this century from the public.
I think a lot of our listeners might be surprised to hear the way you're talking about this. You spend all your time looking for the possibility of life beyond Earth, and yet you seem to be very skeptical of the idea that we've already seen it.
Yeah, well, I think the evidence just doesn't support that conclude very straightforward. I mean, if I thought, and I'm sure you can ask just about anybody involved in any field related to this, if they thought that there was even the one percent chance that what's reported to be in the sky or you know, photograph with these cameras and so had an alien origin, it's spent one hundred
percent of their time working on it. But they don't do that, And I think that that's a real indictment of the quality of that evidence.
You know, it may.
Puzzle a casual observer, but there's no reason to think that it's extraterrestrial.
What would you consider to be valid evidence that would make you think, okay, this is something to look into.
Well, I mean, it could be evidence, just pictorial evidence such as it's been presented. But the evidence that's been presented is ambiguous.
Right.
If you had, for example, a very simple thing, some observatory on the ground, whatever it is is, somebody in the backyard with a camera, or you know, something a little more classy observed something flying in the sky. Oh, lights above Arizona, right, I think, but not just one camera, but several cameras observing simultaneously to begin with.
That would tell you it's not local.
And knowing the distance between those two observing sites, you know, you'll probably figure out how far away these things were and consequently how big they were, So that would give you some real hard numbers, and that would, I think change the nature of our assessment of how important those things are.
In the years that you've spent looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life, have you ever seen it?
If we had, you'd know about it, right, And besides, we're not looking to see it, right because the assumption is Okay.
You know, they're on the order of one hundred.
Billion star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. Most of those, almost all of those will have planets. So the idea that there's some other societies out there is neither far fetched nor implausible. I mean, I think you know, Earth developed intelligent life. Other planets could do that too. There's no reason to think that Earth would be the only place where intelligence would arise. So yeah, the existence of
aliens is really not what's at stake. The question is is there any good evidence that we've found such a society, if you will, or the location of such a society, or in artifact. I mean, you know, you could imagine seeing some giant construction around a nearby star and you'd say, well,
that doesn't look like something nature made. You could do that, So you know, I'm not against to the idea in theory, but when it's simply arguing on the basis of videos or photographs that can be explained in far more prosaic terms, then you've got to say that isn't very good evidence.
Seth Shustak, thanks so much for talking with me, My pleasure. Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. For more shows from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot Net. The supervising producer of the Big Take is Vicky Virgalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Shasson
is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Raphael i'm Sieli is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin I'm west Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.