Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the transcript of a joint hearing held November 13, 2024 by two subcommittees of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. Nancy Mace. The witnesses were Tim Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold. They addressed government secrecy, AARO's transparency, a Pentagon document on the alleged Immaculate Constellation program, threats to pilot safety, and UAP activity near nuclear and military sites. Members also discussed UAP disclosure legislation.
“The Advance”11 pages
25 Mr. Elizondo, what is the last position—your last position with the Federal Government? Mr. ELIZONDO. Sir, I was the Director of National Programs Spe- cial Management Staff, managing a White House special access program on behalf of the National Security Council. Mr. BURCHETT. How would you characterize UAPs? Mr. ELIZONDO. An enigma, sir, and a frustration. We are talking about technologies that can outperform anything we have in our inventory. And if this was an adversarial tech- nology, this would be an intelligence failure eclipsing that of 9/11 by an order of magnitude. Mr. BURCHETT. Are there classified Department of Defense mate- rials related to UAPs that you believe could be safely disclosed to the public without compromising national security? Mr. ELIZONDO. Yes, sir, I do. I would never, ever try to endorse providing some sort of information that could compromise what we call a ‘‘blue force’’ technology or capability, but I do believe there is a lot of information regarding this topic—and I have been very vocal about it—that should be shared not only with the public but, most importantly, with Members of Congress. Mr. BURCHETT. Are you familiar with my friend David Grusch? Mr. ELIZONDO. Absolutely, sir. I had the privilege and honor of working with him myself several years ago at U.S. Space Force. Mr. BURCHETT. Last year, as you know, he testified that the U.S. has run a multi-decade UAP crash, retrieval, and reverse engineer- ing program. Would you agree with that? Mr. ELIZONDO. Yes, sir. Mr. BURCHETT. Are there UAP programs operating without— without—proper congressional oversight? Mr. ELIZONDO. One hundred percent. Mr. BURCHETT. What are they? Mr. ELIZONDO. Unfortunately, sir, I would have to have that con- versation in a closed session. Mr. BURCHETT. I know you said that, and a lot of people are frus- trated with those kind of answers, but we are asking those kind of questions so you all know what the heck we’re up against. You also mentioned in your opening statement that the Penta- gon’s Public Affairs Office employs a psychological operations offi- cer as the singular point of contact for UAP-related inquiries. Why the heck would they do that? Mr. ELIZONDO. Sir, that is a great question. I would ask the Pen- tagon. There is a long history here of that individual providing mis- leading and false information to the public through various news outlets and media outlets in order to discredit this topic. I have personally been victim to it. We have the documentation to substantiate where this informa- tion has been absolutely inaccurate that has been provided time and time again. And it turns out that that individual was also working with former leadership of AARO at the time as well. Mr. BURCHETT. And we punish them by giving them multimillion dollars more than they ask for every year.
Hearing transcript, from the hearings collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 52 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.