Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) believes unidentified flying objects need to be taken more seriously and that both Congress and the public have a right to know about them.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Burchett expressed concern that “we have something that we do not control in our military airspace.”
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Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the director of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, testified before Congress in April. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time that the DOD was tracking over 650 potential cases of unidentified aerial phenomena.
This number marks a large increase from the more than 350 cases revealed in the UAP report that was given to Congress in January by the director of national intelligence.
While some of his colleagues may brush off UFOs as silly, Burchett says it is at “the top of the importance ladder.”
Saturday will mark the 76th anniversary of the Roswell Incident in New Mexico, an event that remains under a shroud of mystery. In 1947, a rancher reported seeing a “flying disc” to the sheriff. It was located roughly 100 miles from Roswell Army Air Field. The next day, a press release went out stating that the U.S. Army Air Forces had recovered a “flying saucer” from the property.
Later, the military said the debris was from a crashed weather balloon.
Fascination and mystery have continued to follow the story three-quarters of a century later.
However, the topic has rarely been brought up in Congress until recently.
The House Oversight Committee has stated its intention to hold a hearing on the issue as well as a recent whistleblower who says that the government has not been forthcoming with Congress. Burchett and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) are leading the committee’s investigation into UFOs, which are officially referred to as UAPs.
Burchett confirmed that they are in the planning stages of the hearing, but the congressman said he is not at liberty to divulge any information on dates and witnesses.
He further said that when the witness list is published, “you’ll see the naysayers try to discredit them as they’ve done with me.”
David Charles Grusch, a 36-year-old decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, recently came forward about information that he says has been withheld illegally from Congress.
Grusch did work for both the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. As recently as last summer, he served as the NGA’s co-lead for analysis of UAPs and represented the task force.
According to him, information about intelligence operations that work to retrieve both intact and partially intact crafts of nonhuman origin have been concealed from Congress and the public.
The whistleblower maintains that discoveries of this nature have been made for decades by both the United States and ally governments as well as defense contractors.
Burchett said that he believes what Grusch is saying.
“I think he’s telling the truth. I think there’s a lot that’s going to be out there. I think the interesting thing you’re going to find out, though, is the Pentagon and all of our research institutions, you see them kind of warming up to it. And the reason they are is they’re smelling dollars. And I think there’ll be an effort to discredit him,” the Tennessee Republican said.
For Burchett, it isn’t difficult to think the government might be holding something back. “They’ve been holding stuff back since Roswell in ’47,” he said. “And maybe prior to that.”
“There’s enough witnesses, enough qualified pilots, astronauts, literally heroes of ours, that have come forward about things and so I think it’s pretty evident that government is covering up,” the congressman said. “And the reason we don’t have any of that information now is a lot of it is so compartmentalized that the people that could connect the dots are long gone.”
Asked what reason the government might have for covering these discoveries up, Burchett suggested, “Greed and power.”
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In the past, Pentagon officials have said that some of the information regarding UFOs must remain secure for reasons pertaining to national security, but the congressman said, “That’s the way they cover it up.”
He suggested that if these objects were from adversaries such as Russia and China, they would wield them publicly. “It’s not the Russians or the Chinese, because we know if it was the Chinese, they would own us,” he said. “And if it was Russia, Putin, with his ego, he would — he sure wouldn’t be stumbling in Ukraine right now.”
