Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) requested a House select committee on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) on Tuesday, leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers demanding answers from the Pentagon on the unknown flying objects.
UAPs first became an issue in Congress last summer after a series of hearings featured whistleblowers who alleged that the government was hiding knowledge of secret ultra-high-tech craft of foreign or even extraterrestrial origin.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers formed the House UAP Caucus last fall to focus on the issue, urging transparency and communication with the public.
Burlison, a member of the caucus, said the proposed select committee would first be focused on questioning the Department of Defense on expenditures he believes are for secret UAP recovery programs.
“I think that we owe it to the American people to shed light on the expenditures that are the, you know, where all the money that’s being used to investigate these matters,” he told Blake Burman in a “The Hill on NewsNation” interview Tuesday. “This needs to be done in a transparent way.”
The Pentagon brushed off concerns over spending in a report last week, claiming that all the expenditures questioned were either related to non-UAP projects or defunct ones. The report also reiterated that the government is not aware of any extraterrestrial crafts and that reported sightings have been the “result of misidentification.”
Burlison said Tuesday that his concerns were that the Pentagon is not being completely forthright in its denials about UAP programs. He said Defense officials were not truthful to members of Congress in private when sharing classified information.
“They weren’t transparent to us in a SCIF setting,” Burlison said. “So they could have brought forward evidence. They could have explained what these Special Access Programs actually do. But they are not willing to do that with Congress.”
“So to me, it’s about time that they opened the kimono, that they show us exactly what’s happening, because they should,” he continued. “If they’re doing something that’s good for the American people, if they’re being responsible with taxpayer dollars, they should have nothing to hide.”
Burlison said he had not questioned Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on the issue, but already has the support of Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), as well as Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.).
Burchett led efforts for a similar UAP select committee last year when former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) held the gavel, though the effort was lost when McCarthy lost the Speakership.
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