House of Representatives to hold hearing on whistleblower’s UFO claims

The House of Representatives plans to investigate claims that the US government is harboring UFOs after a whistleblower former intelligence official said the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.

James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, said the committee would hold a hearing into claims by David Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency, that the government had been collecting non-human craft for “decades”.

Related: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

Grusch, who left the government in April after a 14-year career in US intelligence, told the Debrief that information on these vehicles was being illegally withheld from Congress.

“There will be oversight of that,” Comer told NewsNation. “We plan on having a hearing.”

Comer said he had heard about Grusch’s claims, but added: “I don’t know anything about it.”

The timing of the hearing is not yet determined, but a source familiar with the matter said a date is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, Republican members of Congress from Florida and Tennessee, respectively, will lead the oversight committee investigation.

Burchett is working closely with House oversight committee leaders to prepare for a hearing, the congressman’s office said. The witness list for the hearing has not yet been set, so it is unclear whether Grusch will publicly testify before the oversight committee.

“Congressman Burchett’s office is working through logistics, including a witness list of the most credible witnesses and sources who would be able to speak openly at an unclassified hearing,” a spokesperson said.

Austin Hacker, a spokesman for the committee, told the Guardian in a statement: “In addition to recent claims by a whistleblower, reports continue to surface regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. The House oversight committee is following these UAP reports and is in the early stages of planning a hearing,” Hacker said in a statement.

“The National Defense Authorization Act for 2022 created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office which coordinates among the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, Nasa, and other federal agencies to study UAPs.

“Americans, who continue to fund this federal government work, expect transparency and meaningful oversight from Congress.”

Luna addressed her appointment in a tweet on Wednesday.

“Thank you @RepJamesComer! Very happy to announce @RepTimBurchett and myself will be working with the @GOPoversight team to lead out the investigation into UAPs (UFOs),” Luna said.

Grusch made his claims in an interview with the Debrief journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, who previously exposed the existence of a secret Pentagon program that investigated UFOs.

He said the US government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch told the Debrief. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

Grusch said analysis determined that this material was “of exotic origin” – meaning “non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin”.

According to the Debrief, Grusch’s knowledge of non-human materials and vehicles was based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”. He said he had reported the existence of a UFO material “recovery program” to Congress.

In the Debrief article, Grusch does not say he has personally seen alien vehicles, nor does he say where they may be being stored, but in a follow-up interview with NewsNation, he insisted his story was accurate.

“We’re definitely not alone,” Grusch said. “The data points, quite empirically, that we’re not alone.”

Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (Nasic), confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” to the Debrief.

“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said.

“Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”

Grusch told the Debrief that he had filed a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general. That complaint contained classified locations, program names and other data, the Debrief said.

Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence, said the existence of that complaint could hamper the oversight committee investigation.

“As an active complaint it is very difficult to get into the substance of the testimony, because it constitutes interference with an ongoing investigation,” Pope said.

Pope added: “So, for anyone who thinks great, the hearing will determine whether David Grusch’s allegations are correct or not, I think an awful lot of [what is said in the hearing] is going to be: ‘That’s the subject of an ongoing investigation and we can’t discuss it.’”

Pope said to find out whether Grusch’s claims about alien craft are true, “we need a few key pieces of information”.

“Number one is the project name or office name. Number two is who is the person in charge of that – the director, the commanding officer, whoever it is? Thirdly, what agency is it embedded in?”

Grusch’s claims came after a series of credible sightings and reports over the past two years.

In 2021, the Pentagon released a report on “unidentified anomalous phenomena” – the term is preferred to UFO by many extraterrestrial enthusiasts and investigators – which found more than 140 instances of UAP encounters that could not be explained.

The report followed a leak of military footage that showed apparently inexplicable happenings in the sky, while navy pilots testified that they had frequently had encounters with strange craft off the US coast.

Following renewed interest in UFOs the Pentagon established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022, to investigate unexplained phenomena.

In April this year Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of AARO, told the Senate armed forces committee that the office had “found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics”.