Committee on Oversight and Accountability Meeting November 13

Yes, I sat through the two hours and fifteen minutes (there about) of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability meeting about what is going on in the world of UAP. In the opening remarks by Nancy Mace, we are told that UAP demand attention (with which I think we all agree). Quoting a Colonel Carl, she said that there were non-humans interacting with us and that high-ranking people knew it. That is a somewhat provocative statement with which to open the hearing. You can watch the hearing here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT2iWKZr0qA

Robert Garcia told us that the Main Stream Media is taking the matter seriously, or more seriously than in the past. He also noted that the hearings were about getting at the truth.

There were those on the committee who told us other things that we all knew. We were told that the allegations by David Grusch have not been verified. Although Garcia didn’t elaborate, he was referring to the claim that there had been twelve crash retrievals. We are told that some of the committee members, maybe all of them, want more legislation for the study of UAP and we all know how well congressional legislation has been in helping us get at the truth in the past.

I noticed that we get some history, or rather a mention of history when Jared Moskowitz said that investigations went back to 1945, which is probably a reference to the Foo Fighters of the Second World War.

Once all the members had a chance to make statements, the emphasis switched to the witnesses that were retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, Lue Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold. They were asked, in turn they thought of the UAP situation and all suggested something outside of our technological abilities existed, but not that it was necessarily from alien visitation.

Swearing in of the witnesses. From left to right Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet,
Lue Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold.

Gallaudet said that while serving in the Navy, in a large-scale exercise, he received an email about the intrusion of unknown craft that seemed to be a danger to that exercise, specifically, the aviation assets that were being employed. The email, from a higher authority, wondered if there was some secret project, to which he knew nothing that might account for these intrusions and if they continued, they would cancel the exercise. Gallaudet said that the next day, the email was gone and in the after-action briefings, that concern was never mentioned… And, now, as far as I know, based on the testimony, there are no copies of the email offered in evidence.

I hadn’t expected much in this hearing, but Lue Elizondo did make several comments that were interesting. He said that UAP were real and that the US was in possession of UAP material, though he didn’t specify what that material might be, and that some foreign nations also had access to some form of alien material.

Once they got beyond the opening statements which seemed to include most of the free world, each member in attendance was given five minutes to ask questions or to pontificate. Here is where I thought we might get into the nuts and bolts of the situation but that somehow evaded us.

In the questions address to Gallaudet, especially those about the intrusions during the exercise, we learned nothing new. His answers to some of those questions was that he was prohibited from talking about specifics in a public forum. He would answer them in a closed session.

We had a similar experience with Elizondo. He mentioned that those answers he could give were in his book, which had been in review by officials in the Pentagon for more than year before it was published. He said there were crash retrievals, but he would only talk about them in a closed session.

Later in the hearings, Elizondo would mention bodies. He said bodies were collected before he was born. I believe this is a vague reference to the Roswell case, which is from July 1947. But he would also say that he couldn’t talk about retrievals in an open session.

Shellenberger, who was the source of the information about Immaculate Constellation, said that he trusted his sources on that information, but he wouldn’t reveal them. He said that were either still in he government or had been in the government, but not in which agencies they have worked. He also said that his sources had told him that the government was sitting on piles of information about UAP, including high resolution photographs and other material. But he wouldn’t say who these sources were, only that they were credible, based on his knowledge of who they were and his checking out their backgrounds.

Gold provided a good answer on why some of this information has been hidden. It could expose weaknesses in our capability to respond to the threats. That would be information that our adversaries in the world would want to have.

Update: Shellenberger had provided a document about Immaculate Constellation to the committee members prior to the beginning of the session. Thanks to Nancy Mace, you can read that document here:

https://mace.house.gov/immaculateconstellation 

There is one point that I should make and here is probably the best place. There was a discussion that military personnel had been injured by UFOs and that those people were being compensated for those injuries. Once again, no names were offered, but I thought immediately of John Burroughs who had been injured during the Rendlesham Forest events of December 1980.

I also know of others who claimed they were injured by UFOs, including Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum, coincidentally during their sighting of a glowing, diamond-shaped object also in December 1980. Neither of the women were compensated by the government.

This provides a short rundown on what went on in those two hours and fifteen minutes of hearing. When one committee member said that those on the committee who wanted additional information and didn’t know where to begin to look for it (and I sympathize with them on that point), he was told that the information could be discussed in a closed session.

My problem was that we learned nothing new, there were no sources named or documents presented, other than one that was so heavily redacted that it was useless*, and all the information was second hand at best. I have said before and I’ll say it again, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I have talked to the men and women who had first-hand knowledge. We can name names and have taped, both audio and video, of these witnesses.

There were some positives that came out of the hearing. I mean, here was a hearing about UAP with suggestions of an off-world presence, observed technology that was beyond our means to create, an interest in the topic by the Main Stream Media that was not wrapped in ridicule, and a suggestion that an unbiased, scientific investigation was needed.  

The members of the committee seemed to be interested in the topic and were searching for answers rather than attempting to misrepresent the situation and taking the discussion into areas that have nothing to do with the problem. All the witnesses, who were under oath, when asked, answered that they believed, based on their person experiences that the answer was alien visitation or that they didn’t know what the answer might be. There didn’t seem to be anyone who ridiculed the idea that we have been visited alien creatures.

There was a suggestion that the stigma be removed from reporting of UAP because, to solve the problem, the information must be received by those who can use it. If people are afraid to report what they have seen or experienced, then no research can be conducted and we solve no problems.

In reality, this hearing was what I expected, long on suggestion but short on evidence. Too many times, the answer to a specific question was that the witness couldn’t talk about it in an open hearing, or that his sources would not be revealed. There was nothing that we, on the outside, could do to learn more, no real cases that we could study because we don’t have the necessary information, and a little too much speculation. I can’t say that I was disappointed in the hearing because I didn’t expect it to reveal very much.

Or, as my good friend from Operation Iraqi Freedom would say after many staff meetings, “There is two hours and fifteen minutes that I won’t get back.”

*Stan Friedman used to show a heavily redacted report that contained only one or two words per page. When the whole document was eventually released, we learned it had little to do with UFO research and a great deal to do with intelligence collections methods.