Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the official transcript of a July 26, 2023 hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. The hearing was titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency." Ryan Graves, David Grusch and retired Commander David Fravor testified. Members pressed for transparency and whistleblower protections, and Graves described a near miss involving a dark cube inside a clear sphere.
16 Mr. GRUSCH. I think one of it is acknowledging a vulnerability both from a collection and I will just say, you know, a counter- measure perspective. So, it is a nut we have not cracked for many years. Mr. GROTHMAN. Even, say, 20 years back. Is there any reason why when you go back that far things should not be made public? Mr. GRUSCH. Unless it shows a specific national security vulner- ability as it relates to a weakness in a particular defense system. Mr. GROTHMAN. OK. Mr. Fravor, the Tic Tac incident that you were engaged occurred in 2004. What kind of reporting took place after that incident? Commander FRAVOR. None. We had a standard debrief where the backseaters went down to our carrier intel center and briefed would have happened and that was it. No one else talked to us and I was in the top 20 in the battle group. No one came. That captain was aware. The admiral was aware. Nothing was done. Mr. GROTHMAN. Did your commanding officers provide any sort of justification? Commander FRAVOR. No, because I was the commanding officer of the squadron. So, no. Mr. GROTHMAN. Was this incident the only UAP event that you encountered while you were a pilot? Commander FRAVOR. Yes, it was. Mr. GROTHMAN. OK. This is for any one of you. Based on—based off of each of your experiences and observations do you believe UAPs pose a potential threat to our national security? Commander FRAVOR. Yes, and here is why. The technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had, and you could put that anywhere. If you had one, you captured one, you reverse engineered it, you got it to work, you are talking something that can go into space, go someplace, drop down in a matter of seconds, do whatever it wants, and leave and there is nothing we can do about it. Nothing. Mr. GROTHMAN. OK. Each of you? Mr. GRAVES. I would also like to add from a commercial aviation and military aviation perspective, we deal with uncertainty in our operating space as a matter of our professional actions. Identifying friend from foe is very important to us, and so when we have unidentified targets, and we continue to ignore those due to a stigma or fear of what it could be that is an opening that our adversaries can take advantage of. Mr. GROTHMAN. What steps should be taken to better understand and respond to UAP encounters in the interest of national security? Mr. GRAVES. There needs to be a location where this information is centralized for processing and there needs to be a two-way com- munication loop so the operators on the front end have a feedback and can get best practices on how to process information, what to do, and to ensure that their reporting is being listened to. Right now, there is not a lot of back and forth. Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Grusch, in your complaint to the intelligence community Inspector General, you claim that you believe informa- tion is being hidden. What kind of information do you think was hidden and do you think it should remain hidden?
Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 54 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.