The Hill: Powerful Members of Congress are dead set on killing UFO Transparency

Bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) aimed to establish a process with the ostensible goal of revealing the existence of “non-human intelligence” to the public. But the legislation, which is co-sponsored by three Republican and two Democratic senators, is now in jeopardy.

In comments yesterday on the Senate floor, Schumer stated that “House Republicans are also attempting to kill another commonsense, bipartisan measure passed by the Senate, which I was proud to cosponsor… to increase transparency around what the government does and does not know about unidentified aerial phenomena.”

According to reports, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, are leading efforts to prevent any meaningful version of this provision from being added to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.

Members of Congress generally clamor for enhanced government oversight — a core function of the legislative branch — and transparency. So what could cause a small group of influential lawmakers to suddenly resist it?

FoundTheVegan,
FoundTheVegan avatar

That's nice.

Can I have some Healthcare now?

DrDeadCrash,

No, you can have a pharmaceutical shortage and unending inflation!

conditional_soup,

Notably, the legislation calls for the U.S. government to reassert control over “recovered technologies of unknown origin” currently held by defense contractors. Some analysts suspect that corporations potentially holding such exotic technology are exerting undue pressure and influence to oppose the provision in Schumer’s legislation.

Found why. It’s absolutely amazing how consistently bad and stupid the financialization of everything has been. The apparent* government conspiracy to hide UFOs and aliens isn’t down to a nefarious plot to control the world or keep the peace, it’s to protect the investors. Jesus wept.

*I’ll be on the side of the evidence, wherever it points, but I’d like for it to be released. The claims mean nothing without some proof.

dudinax,

Gee, I wonder why chairs of the Intelligence and Armed Services committees would want to prevent the release of information about heretofore unrevealed aircraft?

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

Drone technology is insane right now and the United States fields a massive arsenal of hypersonic highly maneuverable spy drones. It’s easier to claim it is space aliens than explain just how far out in front the CIA drones are.

TransplantedSconie,

That’s what I’m guessing.

UFOs are a convenient method of distraction for the military and the flying killbots they’ve invented.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod,
Semi-Hemi-Demigod avatar

They've used this playbook before:

By August 1988, Bennewitz was accusing his wife of being in control of the extraterrestrials. After attempting to barricade himself in his home using sandbags, his family admitted him to the mental health unit of Presbyterian Anna Kaseman Hospital; He remained under observation there for one month.

On July 1, 1989, William Moore claimed that he tried to push Bennewitz into a mental breakdown by feeding him false information about aliens. This was corroborated by a declassified CIA document that claims Moore and another officer of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Richard Doty, are responsible for a disinformation campaign against Bennewitz.

Zombiepirate,
@Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

Gotta be extraterrestrial activity despite the physical improbably and complete lack of evidence.

DarkGamer,
DarkGamer avatar

If that's what these UAPs are, wouldn't they want people to know they have it as deterrent? These things have been observed for a very long time.

dudinax,

Because they might not be deterrents or they might not be ready yet. When the B-2 was first flown it was not admitted to by the gov. and it looked like a flying saucer. Once it was ready for use, the gov. admitted to it.

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

The amendment gives departments a 25 year window for releasing information and still allows for info to be withheld from the public over national security. The information would also reviewed by an appointed committee and wouldn’t just be blindly released to the public.

SCB,

Until the DoD can account for the 2 trillion dollars they can’t account for this audit, I have 0 interest in entertaining the obstruction of these officials.

That’s American taxpayer money and we don’t even get “classified aerospace research” as a line item

EatYouWell,

They can account for it, but the government can’t just make all of their defense spending public knowledge.

loxo,

They still don’t account for it, they just get free money from US tax payers. The DoD is getting free hand outs.

EatYouWell,

They don’t publicly account for it. That’s different than not accounting for it at all.

I’m 100% in favor of funneling much of the defense budget into social programs like universal healthcare and free college, but I also know that it’s silly to expect the Pentagon and DoD to release spending details on top secret defense projects.

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

They don’t even account for it within the government. They have failed their 6th consecutive audit. The issue isn’t that the public doesn’t know where the funds are going, it’s that not even Congress knows how the money is being used.

UsernameHere,

Congress can’t be trusted anymore than Trump when it comes to national security secrets.

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

Are you suggesting that the DoD should operate with no oversight and be allowed to fail their audits every year? I understand a breakdown in trust with politicians, but there needs to be some accountability.

SCB,

One of the things the UAP investigations has found is that no, they cannot account for it. Even at the highest levels of clearance, some things are buried beneath mountains of different security designations, and it is at least as likely (and probably much more so) that there is embezzlement happening there than there is alien craft, etc.

UsernameHere,

some things are buried beneath mountains of different security designations

You say this but then claim it’s embezzlement.

It’s much more likely that the Pentagon keeps this info guarded so it doesn’t end up in a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago.

SCB,

The Pentagon does not have the authority to withhold information from properly-vetted members of Congress - they have been denying access through various loopholes to anyone.

In fact, one of the things discovered this year is that several major defense contractors have had ongoing “projects” for decades in which each part of the project is so compartmentalized that, quite simply, no one can even begin to suggest what the project is actually doing. These are not uncommon right now in the more confidential areas of our government, but the strange thing is the utter impermeability of them.

There are significant amounts of Senators and House members, of both sides, who suspect an embezzlement operation basically funneling cash chasing projects that will never materialize as anything

The more you dig into this the crazier it gets. I’m not even talking about the actual UAPs, just potentially of billions of embezzled funds with nothing to show for it and nothing that will ever come of it

I believe citizens absolutely have a right to know if this kind of theft is happening.

JustZ,

The more you dig into it after a short few minutes you realize you don’t know what they say in closed sessions.

UndefinedIsNotAFunction,

The amendment makes a very clear distinction between things we create and things we don’t and only deals with the latter. So, those projects would not be lumped into what gets released to the public. I’d sure like to know why our government has spent millions upon millions on these things if they don’t exist. It’s our tax dollars paying for it!

EatYouWell,

I mean, it’s generally a bad idea to make your defense R&D public knowledge.

Hegar,
Hegar avatar

I’d sure like to know why our government has spent millions upon millions on these things if they don’t exist.

To get a near-peer adversary to spend even more money on nonsense.

UFOs definitely don't exist. First time round we pretended otherwise to get the russians to waste time and money researching bunk.

This time round it's directed at the Chinese.

EatYouWell,

UFOs absolutely do exist, but they’re definitely not from an alien species.

UFO just means there’s a flying object that we don’t know what it is. That Chinese spy balloon was a UFO at first.

Hegar,
Hegar avatar

Sure, but when people say UFO they don't mean an unidentified flying object, they just mean a UFO.

JustZ,

Is this like how when I say LOL I didn’t necessarily laugh out loud for real?

Organichedgehog,

but they’re definitely not from an alien species.

You mean “probably”

EatYouWell,

Nope. The chances of an alien civilization knowing we exist is infinitesimal.

Organichedgehog,

So we agree, UFO’s are probably not extraterrestrials

Organichedgehog,

UFOs definitely don’t exist.

You mean “probably”

Hegar,
Hegar avatar

I mean we have definitely not been visited by aliens in spacecraft.

Organichedgehog,

You mean “probably”

dudinax,

The distinction will be harder to make in real life than in legislation.

UndefinedIsNotAFunction,

You’re right! Which is why there’s a prededentially appointed panel containing a national security official, foreign service official, sociologist, economist, a scientist or engineer, and professional historian to help make these determinations and whether the information is deemed safe to release. Many great minds to make the decision rather than a single individual.

Edit: Assuming Schumer’s amendment passes that is.

dudinax,

You don’t have to convince me, except if I were the military I wouldn’t trust those guys.

Limeey,

Defense contractors.

UndefinedIsNotAFunction,

Bingo.

Maeve,

So billionaires and politicians can gtfooh and leave the rest of us to perish in the mess they made.

user1234,

Isn’t UFO transparency just a fancy way of saying Cloaking Device?

pinkdrunkenelephants,

What technology do these corps supposedly have?

SkybreakerEngineer,

It’s not transparency when it’s paying idiots to go conspiracy mongering. The whole project should have been gutted after that hearing where the guy tried to pass off rumors as top secret evidence.

What we really need is to teach people how gimbals and bokeh and parallax work.

JustZ,

This mf spittin.

Hegar,
Hegar avatar

UFOs were a plot by the US government - but just to get the Russians to waste money researching something we knew was nonsense. Yet another cold war deception.

This current UAP nonsense is probably us seeing if China will buy the same ploy. Chuck Schumer does seem to be a UFO true believer though.

UndefinedIsNotAFunction,

I’d love to read some more about this if you have some recommendations that I can go look for. I don’t buy that it’s all a ruse, but am open to it if the data points that way. So, recommended reading for that please!

Right now we have many senior government officials stating there are “things” that do not belong to us or our adversaries but are interfering with flight trainings on a routine basis, well respected intelligence and military officials under oath saying the same and more. I get it’s still not “proven” but the movers and shakers are taking it seriously, so there’s something to it - whether that’s purely government corruption or “something else” remains to be seen.

Hegar,
Hegar avatar

Hi! Sorry for the delay.

So bear with me here. I first heard about it on the podcast of two prominent tabletop RPG developers. One is or was an academic, and they are both intelligence nerds who heavily research intelligence history and present. Is that a credible source? I think it's an informed opinion, but i'd understand some eyebrow-raising.

You can hear them talking about the recent round of UAP stuff in this episode from july, beggining at 54:45: https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-557-all-four-sided/

I believe the theory that UFOs were a cover story for new airplane design research that got weaponised during the cold war originates from skeptic Brian Dunning: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4528

grabyourmotherskeys,

Most people reading this will have no idea that these credible people are going all in on this or that there’s a long history of such people coming forward. It’s too bad, this is a fascinating topic. What I don’t get is why anyone who thinks there is nothing there would care if this passes.

PeleSpirit,

deleted_by_author

    •
    itsonlygeorge,

    Sounds about right.

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