Politics
You Gotta Believe! UFO Debate Lands in Congress
By Mara Lafontaine · July 27, 2023
In brief…
- Witnesses at House hearings on UFOs claimed a government cover-up of evidence of interplanetary spacecraft.
- Former Navy Pilot Ryan Graves and Commander David Fravor shared what they termed credible UFO experiences during the hearings.
- Astrophysicist Dr. David Kipping cast doubt on the House witnesses, citing potential misidentification as a significant factor in their claimed sightings.
- Dr. Kipping stays agnostic, calling for more substantive evidence on the existence of alien life.
Orson Welles must be smiling somewhere out there.
Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee’s hearings on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) saw witnesses, including Retired Maj. David Grusch, grant credence to the question of alien life, while claiming the U.S. government has long been covering up evidence of interplanetary spacecraft. During the hearing, lawmakers and witnesses urged greater transparency from the government as Grusch, a noted whistleblower, and other witnesses answered questions about their experiences with UFOs.
Columbia University astrophysicist Dr. David Kipping told CNN that personal testimonies alone are insufficient to convince skeptics or those, like himself, who are somewhere in the middle. “It’s all ambiguous. It’s personal testimony,” he said, suggesting that misidentification could be a significant factor in these sightings. “Even if their error rate of misidentifying things was 1 in 10,000, let’s say, one of every 10,000 hours flown, you would still expect 500 or more spurious reports of things they just couldn’t identify.”
Other House witnesses included former Navy Pilot Ryan Graves, who has had personal experience with UAPs on training missions and Commander David Fravor, who saw and recorded the “Tic-Tac” UFO in 2004. unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAPs), in an interview with CNN.
Recalling the 2004 “Tic-Tac” incident, Fravor said, “It’s probably the most credible UFO sighting in history, based on all the sensors that were tracking it… I mean, there’re four sets of human eyeballs. We’re all very credible… Every one of us is going to do 20-plus years in the military in very responsible positions. So I’d say the world needs to know that. It’s not a joke.”
Dr. Kipping remains agnostic as he awaits further revelations and continues to ask the questions that many in the public also ask: “Is there something more? Could we actually have some serious physical evidence that would probably convince us all?”