Ryan Graves, a former Navy F-18 pilot, David Grusch, a former intelligence officer with the Air Force, and retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor testify at a House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, July 26, 2023, on Capitol Hill. (Joe Gromelski/Special to Stars and Stripes)
UFOs have long captured the human imagination. Yet hours of testimony on Capitol Hill from former intelligence and military personnel about alleged close encounters with unidentified phenomena — and more extreme allusions to government cover-up of alien lifeforms — were just a blip on the radar.
Seventy years ago, claims of flying saucers around Washington were the talk of the town and front pages. Today? Many Americans suggested they are too overwhelmed by the problems on Earth to care much about what's outside it.
"Man I got a lot going on lately," read one meme viewed nearly 6 million times on Twitter since it was posted Wednesday, depicting a fictitious exchange between a human and a member of a newly identified alien class.
"Are the alleged aliens gonna stop inflation? are they going to lower the prices of gas, rent, and hot and spicy chicken burgers from mcdonald's? if not, i suggest the gov. wrap the shenanigans up asap," wrote another Twitter user.
With this kind of news cycle, who can blame them?
On Wednesday alone, the hearing convened by a House Oversight subcommittee had stiff competition for the public's attention. A plea deal involving President Biden's son Hunter fell apart in court, raising questions about the future of the government's case against him for tax and gun charges. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was escorted out of a news conference after he appeared momentarily unable to speak, sparking concerns about the Senate minority leader's health. And the ongoing, dramatic heat waves in Europe and the United States and wildfires in Canada and North Africa continued — with rising warnings about how climate change is rapidly altering life on Earth.
That's a lot to take in — particularly as psychologists say humans's capacity to take in bad news is limited. Many have become overwhelmed about issues beyond their control, especially since the coronavirus pandemic.
The hearing also did not produce any revelations about the existence of alien life. Witnesses did not provide evidence to back up their most controversial claims. And the Pentagon has denied that it ever ran a program to identify or reverse-engineer extraterrestrial materials — a central allegation in the testimony. (And, to be sure, subcommittees hold hearings on all sorts of topics — and its convening should not be seen as a congressional endorsement of the testimony.)
While authorities have set up various groups to analyze sightings of mysterious objects in the sky, none have been able to prove what are these "unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UAP — a term the government prefers to "unidentified flying object" because it is designed to include unexplained sightings of objects on or below ground.
One of the most eye-popping moments was when one of the witnesses, David Grusch, a former employee of the Pentagon's UAP task force, claimed that the government has recovered "non-human" "biologics" at the scene of various crashes. He said he got this information from "people with direct knowledge on the program," but did not say who the people were.
Yet Grusch, who has sparked controversy in the past with his unsubstantiated claims that the government has a secret repository of downed alien spacecraft and corpses, was cagey about details — and about whether the government has made contact with extraterrestrials. It's "something I can't discuss in a public setting," he said.
Sue Gough, spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, said in a statement to the Associated Press that investigators had not discovered "any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."
And as The Post has reported, government officials have so far said that none of the sightings of unidentified phenomena has led to the discovery of extraterrestrial life: the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office determined this year that nearly 200 of 366 recently reported sightings were "unremarkable" and possibly can be attributed to routine objects found in the air, including drones, balloons and clutter, such as plastic bags.
Some people may also not have been very surprised by the hearing — because they are already convinced.
Studies show most Americans already believe there is intelligent life outside our planet, and don't view UFOs as threats.
In a survey published in 2021 by the Pew Research Center, 65% of American adults said their best guess was that intelligent life exists on other planets. Just over half of Americans said that UFOs are not a threat to national security at all, while 36% viewed UFOs as a minor threat. And 51% of Americans said that UFOs reported by people in the military were definitely or probably evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.
The Washington Post's Abigail Hauslohner, Shane Harris, Dan Lamothe, Amy B Wang, Paul Kane and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.
