Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed transcript of a September 9, 2025 hearing held by the U.S. House Oversight Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The witnesses were Jeffrey Nuccetelli, Alexandro Wiggins, George Knapp, Dylan Borland and Joe Spielberger. They described UAP incursions at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 2003 to 2005 and a tic-tac-shaped object seen from USS Jackson in 2023. Members criticized AARO and called for whistleblower protections and the UAP Disclosure Act.
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22 Ms. MACE. Yes, I did not even get to the crash retrieval program stuff yet, Ms. Chairwoman. There is just so much. Okay. Thank you so much for your time today. I wish we had more time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mrs. LUNA. I now recognize Ms. Crockett for 5 minutes. Ms. CROCKETT. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And thank you so much to each of the witnesses that have come before us today. The Federal Government has had a longstanding overclassifica- tion issue in general. We all know that from the assassinations of MLK and Malcolm X, to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and torture programs, to now UAPs. The Federal Government has kept the American public in the dark about issues of immense public interest. The Federal Government has routinely made excuses for failing to provide transparency to the public, the most common of which is national security concerns. Mr. Spielberger, can you provide an example of when national se- curity was inappropriately used as a pretext for classification? Mr. SPIELBERGER. Congresswoman, probably one of the most in- famous examples of that is the 9/11 Commission that found that overclassification was a key factor in the failure to adequately pre- vent the attacks of that day. Ms. CROCKETT. In addition to that, what lessons from these over- sight failures should guide Congress in approaching UAP over- sight? Mr. SPIELBERGER. Generally speaking, we would advise this Con- gress to ensure that agencies adopt general policy in favor of disclo- sure instead of a kneejerk needing to overclassify information and documents. We should ensure that when information is classified or deemed sensitive, it is only for legitimate national security and privacy concerns. And we would recommend adding additional fac- tors to the considerations of cost value and certainly to the extent that it is critical for the public interest and the public’s right to know, especially when we are talking about these very serious na- tional security concerns and implications. Ms. CROCKETT. Can you speak to how whistleblowers have his- torically helped Congress uncover the truth in other areas and how that might apply here? Mr. SPIELBERGER. Absolutely. So, again, Congress has always re- lied on whistleblowers coming forward and making disclosures in a number of different issues across different agencies, anything from national security to airline safety, railway safety, environ- mental concerns, workplace health and safety, a lot of issues com- ing out of the COVID pandemic, for example. Whistleblowers have come forward with important disclosures on just about any critical issue affecting our government and affecting the American people, all of which have grave implications for the rights and protections that we have and how we live our lives in communities across the country. Ms. CROCKETT. How important is it for whistleblowers to have strong protections when it comes to UAP-related disclosures or dis- closures of other topics of excessive government secrecy? Mr. SPIELBERGER. It is absolutely vital. This has been one of the disappointing failures of doing this work of advocating for stronger
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Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. 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.