HHRG-117-IG05-MState-C001072-20220517.pdf

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Chairman Carson Opening Remarks 
C3 Subcommittee Hearing 
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Open Hearing 
May 17, 2022 
 
The Subcommittee will come to order.  Without objection, 
the Chair may declare a recess at any time.  
Before we get started today, I want to recognize with a 
moment of silence, the victims of the white supremacist hate 
crime in Buffalo, New York. This subcommittee has focused 
intently on that threat, in both open and closed hearings. It is 
utterly devastating to see more victims of this violence.  
Buffalo, our heart breaks for you.  
With that, I’d ask my colleagues…

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More than fifty years ago, the U.S. government ended 
Project Blue Book – an effort to catalogue and understand 
sightings of objects in the air that could not otherwise be 
explained. For more than 20 years, that project had treated 
unidentified anomalies in our airspace as a national security 
threat to be monitored and investigated. 
In 2017, we learned, for the first time, that the Department 
of Defense had quietly restarted a similar organization tracking 
what we now call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – or UAPs. 
Last year, Congress rewrote the charter for that 
organization, now …

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Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are a potential national 
security threat. And they need to be treated that way.  
For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in 
the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting, 
or were laughed at when they did. DOD officials relegated the 
issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful 
of a skeptical national security community. 
Today, we know better. UAPs are unexplained, it’s true. 
But they are real. They need to be investigated. And any threats 
they pose need to be mitigated. 
Under Secretary Moultr…

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status of the organization and any obstacles to getting up and 
running. 
Second, you have to convince the audience today – and 
most especially our military and civilian aviators – the culture 
has changed. That those who report UAPs will be treated as 
witnesses, not as kooks. 
Third, you need to show Congress and the American 
public, whose imagination you have captured, you are willing to 
follow the facts where they lead. I fear sometimes that DOD is 
focused more on emphasizing what it can explain, not 
investigating what it can’t.  
I am looking for you to assure us today, that all…

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and others have been collecting data on this issue for years. I 
hope you’ll explain how you can leverage the knowledge and 
experience of prior work on this issue to move the AIMSOG 
along. 
The last time Congress had a hearing on UAPs was a half 
century ago. I hope that it does not take fifty years for Congress 
to hold another. Because transparency is desperately needed.  
I’ll now turn to Chairman Schiff for any comments he 
wishes to make. 
[After Chairman Remarks] 
I’ll now turn to Raking Member Crawford for any 
comments he wishes to make. 
[After Ranking Member remarks] 
Thank yo…

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[RECESS the Hearing at the End] 
Thank you for this important hearing and conversation.  We 
will recess this hearing for the moment and return in closed 
session at noon in the HPSCI SCIF.