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extraterrestrial US Congress is talking about activity again. Is the truth really out there?
BBC Science Focus
|January 2025
Despite several testimonies, the question remains frustratingly unanswered
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On 13 November 2024, four witnesses appeared before the Joint Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability of the US Congress for a session of testimony about so-called 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPS)'. This is the necessary rebrand of the term 'UFO' - people spouting those three letters in the past were hardly seen as credible, or worthy of testifying in front of the US government.
The four witnesses were the former commander of the US Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, Rear Admiral Dr Tim Gallaudet; retired director of the Pentagon's former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, Luis Elizondo; investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger; and former NASA associate administrator Michael Gold.
The four submitted written testimony ahead of the hearing. Shellenberger also filed an allegedly original document from an unnamed whistleblower about a programme called "Immaculate Constellation", an "unacknowledged special access program" for toplevel oversight of UAP-related activities.
The document contained an extensive database of high-quality evidence collected over a series of decades, all of which had previously evaded the democratic scrutiny of Congress.
An earlier hearing was held on 26 July 2023, with former US Navy pilots testifying to events like the encounter with the famous "Tic Tac-looking object" and the FLIR (forward-looking infrared) video from the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter, as well as the GoFast and Gimbal videos from the 2015 USS Roosevelt incident.
This story is from the January 2025 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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