Historical congressional hearing on UFOs point to less transparency in the future

The headline is referring to the open session of the congressional hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena, or UFOs, held on May 17, 2022. Hopefully, the open hearing was the first of many to come. Otherwise, greater official transparency on the UFO issue may remain a dream.

"Open C3 Subcommittee Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." Duration: approx. 90 min.

Introduction

The above link takes you to the “Open C3 Subcommittee Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” that took place on May 17, 2022, at 9:00 a.m. ET (credit for the video to the House Intelligence). The purpose of this article is to make some comments on selected parts from the public hearing on the UFO issue. The selected parts mainly relate to the question of more or less official transparency in the future. For a full understanding of what the congressional representatives asked, and the witnesses answered in the public hearing, you should carefully listen to the open hearing in its entirety (the link above).

For readers unfamiliar with the events of the last three to four years that have led up to the public hearing on May 17, 2022, I refer you to my previous Medium-articles (from 2018 and onward). However, the historical background goes back to at least 1947. You can understand the open hearing without the historical knowledge of the UFO phenomenon (or phenomena), but probably not understand all the implications of the witnesses' answers. One reason I bring up the crucial historical aspect of UFOs is because the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) do not seem to think the historical aspect is crucial for further our understanding of the UFO phenomenon. I will come back to the DoD’s and IC’s perspective on the historical aspect further down.

What were the themes of the public hearing?

The witnesses referred to above were the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (USD(I&S)), Mr Ronald Moultrie, and Deputy Director of Navy Intelligence (ONI), Mr Scott W. Bray. Mr André Carson, Counterproliferation Subcommittee, chaired the open hearing, which was a bipartisan effort by representatives from The House Intelligence Counterterrorism, and Counterintelligence.

A scientist to direct the Pentagon UFO office

According to researcher Mr Douglas Dean Johnson, a physicist will be the director of the recently formed UFO/UAP office, Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). If accurate, that may have positive implications for further our understanding of UFOs/UAP. 

First note that Mr Johnson, in his article — which I highly recommend you to read — explicitly says that “The Pentagon has not confirmed” that Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., is selected as the director of AOIMSG. Mr Johnson refers to other sources within the Executive Branch who off the record affirm that Dr Kirkpatrick both applied to be the director and that I have selected him to fill the position. I am familiar with Mr Johnson’s research and writing, so, in this case, I feel confident in referring to an article about the UFO/UAP issue with anonymous sources (which regarding to the UFO topic should raise red flags in 9 out of 10 cases).

Dr Sean Kirkpatrick. Credit.

The main reason for referring to Mr Johnson’s article is to “spread the news”. So again, I recommend you to click on the link above and read his article. I will not give the bullet points here.

What I will do, however, is to make some short comments on the decision of the Department of Defense (DoD) to appoint a scientist (a physicist) to direct an elevated UAP office (compared to its predecessors AATIP and UAPTF) and tasked by the U.S. Government (USG) to study the national security threat of UFOs/UAP. People have to realise that the USG takes the UFO issue seriously. The goals, the organizational structure, and the resources of AOIMSG (its extent of authority is unclear) are a sign of that seriousness.