The UFO enthusiast community wasn't surprised, with some explaining that the U.S. government has never been forthcoming about projects researching such phenomena. The military program codenamed Project Blue Book took place between March 1952 and Dec. 17, 1969. It wasn't revealed to the public until amateur historian John Greenewald posted 100,000 pages of documents on the program online on a site called The Black Vault. Prior to that, the government began researching UFOs after the Roswell incident in 1947, under an operation called Project Sign.
Bray and Moultrie insisted that as far as they knew, no program existed between Project Blue Book and the existing task force, which began in 2020. Prior to the task force, a research project was funded by the U.S. Senate at the urging of former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to research the reports of UAPs. It existed between 2007 and 2012, only becoming public after a whistleblower came forward to report his observations while working as a U.S. Navy pilot on "60 Minutes." He reported he saw UFOs every day for at least two years.
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UFO enthusiasts disputed that the government has ever stopped following or researching the phenomena after Roswell.
Other viewers were angry that there weren't any questions about the March 24, 1967 Malmstrom incident when unidentified flying objects managed to disable all nuclear weapons simultaneously. Captain Robert Salas told the Science Channel in 2014 that a terrified guard stationed above the nuclear bunker called to report a glowing red object moving like nothing they've ever seen before.
The lights in the bunker turned from green to red, which indicates to those working at the nuclear missile controls that they couldn't launch. Sales feared they were under attack and noted it was an "inexplicable incident." A week earlier, the missile crew at a nearby base observed the same thing. Their nukes also went off-line at the same time when the lights were over them.
Speaking in the Tuesday hearing, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) asked about the incident and entered into the congressional record the "Wilson Memo." The 2002 document is known to ufologists as an alleged leak from the military yet on UFOs. A retired Defense Intelligence Agency official, an Adm. Wilson turned over a transcript of a meeting that reveals secret government groups that possess alien bodies and UFO crash retrievals.
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The document, which has never been verified by the Defense Department, claims among other things that the men in the meeting "knew about intelligence on US mil/intell ufo close encounters — and foreign gov't encounters. Seen records. Told [Will] Miller." Will Miller owned and operated Miller Investigations and Polygraph Services for years. He grew up in Roswell, New Mexico and his father was a state police officer.
Entering the memo into the record from a member of congress is being considered by some as validation, but neither military leader had ever heard of the memo.
Members followed that same line of questioning throughout the hearing, with one asking if the men knew of any recovered crashed crafts. The officials said that it wasn't something they could talk about outside of a classified setting. Among the many things the operation has focused on, however, is the use of international technology that could be used to spy on the United States. Alleged UAPs simply mean they weren't identified and that falls under any international aircraft.
Other observers were miffed that the military testified that they don't coordinate with public reports of UAPs in a given area. So, groups like Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which tracks reports of what has been observed by the public, aren't adding to the data set of what the military observes and reports. The only things that are being recorded are that which the military and FAA observe.
In the next stages of the project, the military leaders said that they do intend to begin incorporating public accounts into their data sets.
"Everything you can't explain is in a bucket called data. Is that correct?" asked Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT). "That would mean data collected by sensors, observations and everything that we can't explain quote, unquote is in a bucket called data. A narrative report, the victims had a little information on it would be in our database and unresolved."
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"I would add that it's insufficient data, I mean, that's one of the challenges that we have," explained Moultrie. "Insufficient data on the event itself, the object sits he have, or insufficient data to plugin with some other organization or agency that may have had something in that space at that time. So, it's a data issue that we're facing in some instances, congressman."
Gallagher then asked about incorporating public data, which Moultrie explained they don't have the resources to research. They don't chase down every UFO report, for example, made by a rancher in Idaho somewhere. They only deal with data collected by the government that uses the same intelligence gathering using sources and methods consistent across the board.
