For decades, US politicians have been reluctant to get involved in the topic of UFOs and aliens.
After a series of disclosures in recent months, however, Republicans and Democrats now appear to be lining up to inquire into the question of extraterrestrial life, as the world seems closer than ever to finding out whether we are alone in the universe.
Next week, the House oversight committee will hold its first public hearing as part of its investigation into UFOs, weeks after a whistleblower former intelligence official went public with claims that the government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.
David Grusch’s allegations about the government harboring alien craft – he has since suggested that the US has also encountered “malevolent” alien pilots – sparked the 26 July hearing, and beyond that, appear to have lit a fire under the Washington establishment.
The Republican party has led the initial charge, with a series of claims about extraterrestrial life that, until recently, would have been seen as career-ending.
Tim Burchett, the Republican congressman from Tennessee who is co-leading the UFO investigation, declared in early July that alien craft possess technology that could “turn us into a charcoal briquette”, while a Republican colleague suggested that extraterrestrial interlopers could actually be representatives of an ancient civilization.
In a briefing on Thursday, Burchett said he and his co-investigator Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican member from Florida, had been “stonewalled” by federal officials when asking about UFOs, and prevented from accessing some “information to prove that they do exist”.
“We’ve had a heck of a lot of pushback about this hearing. There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” he said.
Burchett said the US had evidence of technology that “defies all of our laws of physics”, and angrily railed against a “cover-up” by military officials.
He added: “We’re gonna get to the bottom of it, dadgummit. Whatever the truth may be. We’re done with the cover-up.”
In recent days the government itself has joined the UFO discourse. A White House official claimed that aerial phenomena “have already had an impact on our training ranges”, while a bipartisan group of senators have proposed new legislation to collect and distribute documents on “unidentified anomalous phenomena”.
The legitimization of UFO discussion has been propelled in part by claims from US military pilots of UFO encounters, along with leaked military videos showing inexplicable happenings in the sky.
Following those revelations, in 2021 the Pentagon released a report on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the term some experts prefer, which found more than 140 instances of UAP encounters that could not be explained. Since then, politicians appear to have moved past some of the stigma around extraterrestrial life.
“There’s a sort of critical mass building now,” said Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD).
“And I think even though it’s easy to portray some of the politicians as mavericks, the fact that Republicans and Democrats are lining up, are united in their stance on this … I think we have crossed a line.”
Grusch will appear at the hearing on Wednesday, along with David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004, and Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who in 2021 told the 60 Minutes news show he had seen unidentified aerial phenomena off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.
As Burchett has investigated the accuracy of Grusch’s claims, he has begun to make some bold declarations of his own. On the Event Horizon podcast, Burchett was asked if had seen “compelling evidence” that the US was seeing things in the sky “that might not be of this earth”.
“Oh, 100%. 100%. No question,” he said.
Burchett went on to claim that the US has been hiding evidence of UFOs since 1947, and speculated that the extraterrestrial craft could be dangerous.
“If they’re out there, they’re out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette,” Burchett said.
“And if they can travel light years or at the speeds that we’ve seen, and physics as we know it, fly underwater, don’t show a heat trail, things like that, then we are vastly out of our league.”
He is not alone.
Days earlier, Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, hypothesized that UFO encounters “could actually be an ancient civilization that’s just been hiding here and is suddenly showing itself”.
Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who, along with Democrats including Kirsten Gillibrand, has maintained a longtime interest in UAPs, has weighed in, as has the Donald Trump disciple Josh Hawley, who claims the US has “downplayed” the number of UFO sightings “for a long, long time”.
On Thursday, Luna, the co-lead of the oversight committee investigation, echoed Hawley’s statements, alleging that “the Pentagon and the Department of the Air Force” had been particularly uncooperative.
“When I take at face value the numerous roadblocks that we’ve been presented with, it leads me to believe that they are indeed hiding information,” she said.
“I look forward to bringing this topic to light, and finding out the truth of what is really out there.”
It is doubtful that the hearing on Wednesday will prove conclusively whether or not aliens exist. It is also unlikely the public will find out whether aliens, with their charcoal-briquette capable weaponry, have visited Earth.
But still, the desire of politicians, of both sides, to wade into UFO discourse suggests that a corner has been turned, and Pope suggested Republicans’ and Democrats’ willingness to investigate could mean they are beginning to believe.
“I think these politicians are doing it because they either know, or more likely strongly suspect that some of this is true,” Pope said.
“I don’t think you would go all in – and they are going all in on this – if they weren’t pretty darn sure of themselves. Because the egg on the face if this all turns out to be drones – it would be staggering.”
• This article was amended on 21 July 2023 to correct the spelling of David Fravor’s surname, the first name of Ryan Graves, and the states that Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna represent.
