The House of Representatives will hold a public congressional hearing on unidentified flying machines (UFOs) for the first time in more than 50 years.
The hearing will focus on a Pentagon program known as the Air Object Identification and Control Team. It was created last year after the U.S. intelligence community published a preliminary assessment of 144 reports of “unidentified airborne phenomena” since 2004 — and was able to explain only one.
“The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously assess and respond to any potential risks to national security, especially those that we do not fully understand,” said Indiana Democratic House Member Andre Carson, chairman of the subcommittee holding the meeting.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, added that the hearing “will give the public an opportunity to hear directly from experts in the field and leaders in the intelligence community about one of the great mysteries of our time and break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Defense Department will try to “make sure we have a better process for identifying these phenomena, analyzing this information in a more proactive and coordinated way than has been done in the past.” He said the Pentagon will also try to “mitigate any security concerns” that arise because “many of these phenomena” are recorded near the ranges.
The hearing will be held May 17.