In what could be bombshell testimony that leads to a greater push for publishing government documents, a key House committee is preparing for a public hearing on encounters with unidentified flying objects, their origins, and what the federal government has been hiding, if anything. It has both parties and both chambers in Congress unified in a rare moment of bipartisanship. 

On Wednesday, the House Oversight subcommittee on national security, the border, and foreign affairs will hear from three retired military officers who claim to have had contact with UFOs, which the committee refers to as “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP. 

The subcommittee witnesses include a former Air Force officer, David Grusch, who once served as the National Reconnaissance Office’s representative to the defense department’s UAP Task Force. In June, during interviews with both the Debrief and NewsNation, Mr. Grusch claimed that he is aware of government processes by which UAPs of “non-human” origin are captured and maintained. 

Also testifying before the subcommittee is a retired Navy aviator, Lieutenant Commander David Fravor, who claims to have encountered a UAP off the coast of Southern California during a training mission in 2004. Another former Navy officer, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, will also testify in his position as president of Americans for Safe Aerospace. Like Lieutenant Commander Fravor, Lieutenant Graves claims to have encountered UAPs during his time as an aviator. 

Not since the public bashing of the Communist China-backed social media app TikTok earlier this year has Congress been so unified around an issue. House Democrats and Republicans are preparing for their fact-finding hearing Wednesday just as a bipartisan group of senators attempts to include an amendment in the defense authorization bill that would require the release of documents related to UAPs. 

“I just want some transparency,” the lawmaker who pushed for Wednesday’s House hearing, Congressman Tim Burchett, told Los Angeles Times. “I think everybody should be asking for that. If there aren’t any UFOs, then why’s the federal government spending so much time and effort to stop any kind of hearings, and why don’t they release these files that they have? Every file I’ve seen is so redacted it looks like a piece of Swiss cheese.”

In a statement announcing the hearing, Mr. Burchett said its purpose is to uncover long-hidden information about UAPs. “The Pentagon and Washington bureaucrats have kept this information hidden for decades, and we’re finally going to shed some light on it,” he said. “We’re bringing in credible witnesses who can provide public testimony because the American people deserve the truth. We’re done with the cover-ups.”

The lead Democrat on the subcommittee, Congressman Robert Garcia, also told the Times he believes the public deserves more information about UAPs: “There’s a lot of information we don’t know, and so I think that it’s really important that we have this hearing publicly.”

In 2022, Congress established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to investigate reports of UAPs. Even though the agency has spent millions of dollars to investigate such anomalies, the findings have not yet been shared with Congress or the public.

In Congress’s upper chamber, senators are in lock-step with their House colleagues. Senator Schumer introduced an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act to declassify government records related to UAPs. The measure was introduced by a Republican senator of North Dakota, Mike Rounds. The amendment already has several co-sponsors from both parties. 

“Our goal is to assure credibility with regard to any investigation or record keeping of materials associated with UAPs,” Mr. Rounds said in a statement. “Relevant documents related to this issue should be preserved. Providing a central collection location and reputable review board to maintain the records adds to the credibility of any future investigations.”