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.
2 United States Air Force was covering up UAP activity at Eglin Air Force Base. We have heard from a number of whistleblowers, specifically military pilots, that the reason for not coming forward publicly is out of fear that speaking out would cost them their flight status and potentially their careers. This is unacceptable. We cannot pro- tect our airspaces if our best trained observers are silenced. We cannot advance science if we refuse to ask questions. And we can- not maintain trust in government if we keep the American people in the dark. Now, Congress has tried to fix this problem. Congress tried to create formal channels through the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, also known as AARO, and the intelligence community in- spector general for servicemembers and officials to make disclo- sures. But the reality, the reports come in are too often brushed aside, slow-walked, or met with skepticism rather than serious in- vestigation. Recently, the former AARO director known as Sean Kirkpatrick attacked our witnesses and members on this Committee. It should be noted that he is a documented liar and brings into question what his purpose at AARO really was if it was not to followup on investigations and disclose his findings to Members of Congress. A former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Chris Mellon, described a report published by AARO that found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed any sighting of UAP rep- resented extraterrestrial technology as the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading after decades of government service. Mellon further noted that this was a first AARO report sub- mitted to Congress without the director of national intelligence’s sign-off and seemingly excluded input from any scholars or experts who have studied or written extensively about this topic, as would normally be in any other case in this field. Mellon determined that this report failed to fulfill the congres- sional mandate under which it was required, omitted entire agen- cies with known investigations or activities related to UAPs, and omitted any discussion of efforts to hide classified or unclassified information about UAPs. Such efforts were unaddressed by the re- port, despite the existence of agency records and investigations con- curring with them, including those at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. If we set up offices and oversight bodies only to let them become graveyards for testimony or, worse yet, ruses for pre- tending to investigate when in actuality there was no followup, then we are not doing our jobs. In recent months, Congress has also been presented with evi- dence that points to technologies that to our knowledge are beyond our current capabilities. It is our duty as elected representatives to follow the facts wherever they lead and to ensure that those facts are not buried under classification stamps or bureaucratic excuses. Let me be clear. Whether UAPs represent adversarial technology, natural phenomena, or something beyond current human under- standing, Congress has a responsibility to investigate. If these ob- jects are foreign in origin, then they pose a direct threat to our na-
Not linked to a story yet.
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.