Original subtitles

WOMAN: Can you start off by telling me your name

and a little bit about your career in the Navy?

My name is Ryan Graves.

Uh, I was a Lieutenant in the Navy

for about 11 years...

and I was with the VFA-11 Red Rippers.

In 2015, we were aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

While we were off the coast of Virginia Beach,

what we were seeing out there were essentially radar contacts

that we didn't think belonged there.

(radio chatter)

Two aircraft from my squadron were flying out

to the area one day, and they were

about 100 feet or so apart.

As they were flying through the area,

the lead pilot in this aircraft

saw an object--dvvoo--

zip right by his aircraft.

What they described was a dark cube inside some type

of clear sphere where the corners of the cube

are touching the inside of that sphere.

When that crew came back, they were shocked.

They were like, "Hey, we almost hit one of those damn things."

There was really no answer of what--what it was,

and so our squadron filed a safety report,

and we continued filing reports

MAN: Ryan Graves and many other pilots reported

these strange encounters with these unknown aircraft

that had no wings, no cockpit, no intakes, no exhaust,

and that were somehow seemingly able to fly.

DIFFERENT MAN: They began to have numerous encounters,

Weekly, almost daily in some cases.

This continued month after month, year after year.

MAN: I can't tell you how many times I've talked to pilots

both civilian and military who say, "Hey, Lue,

"the reason why I didn't report this is because

"I didn't want to lose my job.

"I got a mortgage to pay, I got kids.

You know if, if I report this, they're gonna think I'm crazy."

GRAVES: So we've been battling this stigma for a while,

but I couldn't just ignore the things that I was seeing

just because everyone else was uncomfortable talking about it.

It's just a matter of time until there's

a mid-air collision.

LUE: You can't muzzle, you can't squelch the truth.

Our entire democracy is based on the principles of truth.

We get reports every night.

MAN: I don't know what the hell it is.

MAN TWO: Looks like a rotating light around it.

MAN 3: I'd like to report a UFO.

REPORTER: The government's UFO files are stored here

at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

Notes, documents, and interview

on 12,618 UFO cases.

Since 1969, the investigation has been closed.

MAN: They said all of this stuff was--

was not to be taken seriously or believed,

even though there was 701 cases

still on the table that were unexplained.

MAN: There is nothing in Air Force files that come

to a conclusion that spaceships have visited the Earth.

BLUMENTHAL: When the government said, "You're not seeing

what you're seeing," that immediately created

a distrust in the government.

REPORTER: UFO activists have gotten mighty vocal

in recent weeks.

(chanting) We want the truth! We want the truth!

WOMAN: Because of that mistrust, people develop

all kinds of conspiracy theories.

Many conspiracy theories start with a kernel of truth.

So you had, uh, a lot of focus for instance

on Area 51, a secret facility in the Nevada desert.

REPORTER: The base has been cloaked in secrecy for decades.

MAN: Area 51 is the place where some of our most advanced

legendary aircraft were developed in secret

for the CIA and for the Air Force,

but the excessive secrecy launched

an entire mythology that they have crashed spaceships

that are being reverse-engineered at Area 51.

MULDER: Area 51, where the military has conducted--

SCULLY: For the past 50 years,

classified experiments involving extraterrestrial technology.

REPORTER: What can you say goes on at this test facility?

Darn little.

KEAN: Part of the mythology is that there is an alien craft

stored there, and this stems from a crash

of something in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1940s.

MAN: For people that are deep into the UFO experience,

they believe that whatever was discovered at Roswell

was taken at some point to Area 51.

MAN: If there are, in fact, any

extraterrestrial type equipment

or anything that's been recovered, it's most likely

out here somewhere.

HARRY REID: I've been to Area 5 on more than one occasion,

and it was just really interesting some of the stuff.

They had a Soviet helicopter,

but my personal feeling and all the knowledge I have,

I think anyone that talks about having wreckages

from outer space, I just don't think that exists,

but the American people want information.

The one way we always get in trouble in government is

trying to hide stuff, trying to be non-transparent.

REPORTER: Senator Reid, Senator Reid!

KEAN: Harry Reid played such a critical role

to the progress that we've made on the UFO issue.

He instigated a program at the Department of Defense

to investigate UFOs, and he became very outspoken

about the need for an official disclosure

and transparency.

REID: As far as I'm concerned, there needs to be

a tremendous amount of government resources

put into this

because the American people are entitled to know

what the hell's going on.

ANCHOR: The New York Times detailing our nation's

secretive search for signs of intelligent life.

The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

reportedly dates back to 2007,

and one of its patron saints is said to be

former senator Harry Reid.

REPORTER: The military spending millions of dollars

to look into UFO sightings and videos

from American fighter pilots, all being made public.

LUE: The New York Times article that came out in 2017

started this journey for us as a country.

It revealed several things.

First of all, the fact that the U.S. government was still

looking at UFOs and that there was

enough information there to convince a lot of people

that it was real.

MAN: When you learn about a program on UFOs

and then we see the videos were released,

and "Well, this is fantastic."

What we've now had to come to grips with is that

we have not learned hardly anything

about the specifics of what they did

in this secret project.

REPORTER: President Obama says

that there is footage and records

of objects in the skies,

these unidentified aerial phenomenon,

and he says we don't know exactly what they are.

What do you think that it is?

I would ask him again. Thank you.

(laughter)

KEAN: You can only imagine what they have and what

they've learned in this secret program

that they're not revealing to us.

When are we going to have access to that?

MAN: If you hide the information rather

than revealing it to everyone, then it becomes much easier

for it to be seen as conspiratorial.

So being able to shed light on all of this and make it

available for objective study can eliminate

the conspiracy aspect of any of this.

REID: With the information we have right now,

there's no reason in my opinion why they shouldn't do

some public hearings on this.

It's a perfect time to do it.

KEAN: Harry Reid remained involved with this right up

until the time that he died.

Thankfully, there was another person

in government who came along to carry on

his legacy and pick up the torch.

My name is Kirsten Gillibrand.

I'm a senator from New York,

and I sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee

and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

On the Armed Services Committee

over the last decade, we've had very minimal reporting

on UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomenon,

and I was talking to some staff,

and they said, "Well, if you are interested

in this topic, you should really talk to Harry Reid.

So I called him and I said, "Harry, I'm really interested

"in this issue of UAPs.

can you give me some advice on it?"

And he said, "Well, it's really important,

and you should definitely work on it."

The more I sort of pushed on this issue,

the more I realized that our armed forces

were able to capture video footage

of unidentified aerial phenomena...

(radio chatter)

but over time have decided it's best to say nothing

if you see something that you can't identify

because you may well be seen as someone who is crazy

and that it will harm your career.

We just need to know the facts,

and that is certainly our responsibility as members

of Congress to demand those facts.

GRAVES: We spend a lot of time and a lot of resources

ensuring that our aircraft operate safely,

and to think that we would ignore a potential safety issue

because of a little skepticism around

a, you know, 3-letter acronym, it just doesn't make sense.

I thought that we had to expres this in the public light,

and make it OK to talk about, not just for people, right,

but for elected officials.

that proved that there was something

we did not understand.

KEAN: As a number of these pilots came forward,

interest in Washington seemed to increase in this topic,

and Those pilots actually briefed members of Congress

about what they had seen.

GRAVES: I did have the opportunity to go

to the Pentagon personally to tell my story

in a classified environment.

Other pilots went there to discuss this, as well.

I'm Alex Dietrich. I'm a retired naval officer.

I served 20 years in the U.S. Navy.

My name is David Fravor.

I'm a retired navy commander, Super Hornet pilot,

where I flew for 18 years for the United States Navy.

DIETRICH: Dave Fravor and I were asked by the Pentagon

if we would agree to go into closed session.

We spoke to some individuals in Congress,

giving us a chance to talk about the incident.

We were flying a training exercise

in Southern California off the coast.

Commander David Fravor in the lead aircraft,

he was the commanding officer of the squadron.

We look down, and we see a long, cylindrical

white object with rounded ends

roughly 40 feet long that looked like

a giant Tic Tac.

MELLON: When you have a face-to-face meeting

with these pilots, when they describe in detail

the incidents and the encounter

and you feel the emotion, it becomes virtually impossible

to deny that this is something serious

and something real.

PILOT: Look at that thing, dude

FRAVOR: One of the meetings with the highest group

of officials was supposed to be 30 minutes.

It was an hour and a half.

They literally did not want to leave,

and a couple of them were enthralled, like,

could not stop asking questions

REPORTER: How concerned should we be about the briefing that

you received on UFOs?

is that a concern for pilots?

Yeah, I'm not gonna get into any of the contents

of the briefing.

It was a classified briefing.

The military and others are taking

this issue seriously, which I think

in previous generations may not have been the case.

MARCO RUBIO: Some of my colleagues are very interested

in this topic, and some kind of, you know, giggle,

but I--I--don't think we can allow the stigma

to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.

TIM BURCHETT: Clearly, something's going on.

The American public wants to know,

and frankly we deserve to know.

KEAN: Congress wanted to get to the bottom of this,

get everything on the table that was known about it.

Ultimately, Congress did something unprecedented.

REPORTER: For many years, government investigations

into these close encounters were shrouded in secrecy.

Now the curtain may be lifted.

KEAN: They asked the intelligence community

to provide them with a report about what they know about UFOs

ANCHOR: In June, the Pentagon will issue a report to Congress

ANCHOR TWO: The release next month

of a highly anticipated military report.

MELLON: For this report from the Director

of National Intelligence, we didn't know how responsive

the services would be, the Air Force in particular.

We were very eager to see what they would come up with.

ANCHOR: The U.S. intelligence community has finally released

its highly anticipated UFO report.

ANCHOR TWO: The Pentagon is taking it seriously,

saying it's possible this is a national security issue

and a danger to flight.

ELIZONDO: In this report, it states specifically

that there were 144 incidents that this report reviewed.

GAYLE KING: Now, the study released on Friday found

only one of those can be explained.

Just one!

PODESTA: There were 18 incidents that showed

unusual air characteristics--

start, stop, hovering, incredible speed,

things that they couldn't explain.

KEAN: The report established that UFOs are

a real physical phenomenon.

It also stated that they were not

American technology,

and there was no evidence that they were

either Russian or Chinese.

PODESTA: So we know that. Heh.

What we don't know is what caused this phenomena.

ANDRÉ CARSON: With the coming out of this report,

it's opened up the door because the report

in effect is inconclusive.

BURCHETT: They came back with a report that was

pretty lame, I thought.

I said I could have written it when I was

in the fifth grade.

Very short and nothing.

ELIZONDO: It was very clear to most people that

the Air Force was conspicuously absent for that reporting,

And I think some of that goes back to

when the Air Force was tasked originally

to end Project Blue Book,

to look at this topic of UFOs.

MELLON: Their civilian astronomer Dr. Allen Hynek

became increasingly dissatisfied as a scientist

because they weren't approaching it

in a scientific way.

And we've always honored accredited media

when they want to investigate a given, specific sighting.

HOST: There's nothing to hide?

There's nothing to hide at all.

RODEGHIER: So this just continues

the fine, long tradition

of the Air Force neglecting, uh, the UFO problem.

MELLON: The Air Force of course has the most sensors,

the most capability, and the responsibility

for monitoring air and space.

That's the primary source you would turn to

for information, and they were not forthcoming.

PODESTA: What I fear is that government will feel

they were asked to do a report,

they did a minimally acceptable report,

and now they can go back and forget about it.

I fear that.

GILLIBRAND: When I joined the Intelligence Committee,

I began to see that we weren't actually getting

the reporting that I thought Congress

would have been getting on UAPs.

That gave me very serious concern that we're not

given the information we need to do our jobs.

MELLON: It's like trying to put a puzzle together

when the pieces are in different rooms

all over different buildings.

VALLÉE: Dr. Hynek told me very wisely that there is

no such thing as a U.S. government.

There are a number of agencies with their own focus,

their own technologies, and their own budgets.

So it's very difficult to get those agencies

to converge on a new phenomenon

that doesn't seem to belong to anyone.

KEAN: Government agencies definitely need to play

a role in gathering data about UFOs,

but if they don't organize this data and centralize it,

then a lot of it could be lost.

We know of at least one case where the material was

passed around from agency to agency,

and that was the Aguadilla case.

MELLON: Aguadilla is an inciden

where the local airport detected a UFO.

They notified the U.S. Customs enforcement aircraft

with a sophisticated infrared camera system.

They were able to observe it and film it

for 5 minutes or so.

It's a curious little craft that doesn't appear

to have rotors.

It's unclear how it manages to fly without wings.

When people say, "How come there are no pictures?"

Well, here's quite an extensive video

officially taken by the U.S. Government

of yet another UAP.

MAN: The Aguadilla video was shuffled around

in Homeland Security,

and apparently they sent a copy of the video

to the Air Force and said,

"Could you guys tell us what this is?"

and the Air Force replied back,

"Why don't you contact a civilian UFO group?"

And so that's how we got access to the video.

This is the object that's being tracked

by the Homeland Security aircraft.

You have latitude, longitude coordinates,

and you have all the information,

and pause right there.

Currently, I'm an executive board member

with the Scientific Coalition for UAP studies.

This organization consists of about 160 people.

Almost all of them have backgrounds in science.

We provide a location where scientists can actually

come and research the subject without the stigma

that's often associated with it

We broke the video down into individual frames

and looked at it frame by frame,

and the first time I saw the video, I'm watching it,

and you see this little dot moving along,

and then, to me, you see the object go into the water,

and I can hardly see a splash.

I mean, how did it do that?

But the really exciting part was it comes out

of the water, and then you see two objects.

Right there. Now there's two objects.

The pilot you'll see, he's magnified it because

he's like, "What in the heck is going on?"

When I looked at it frame by frame,

to me, it was crazy.

It was clear to me that there was not

another object that came out of the water.

I thought this object had simply split in half

and became two objects.

That's what really made that video so anomalous,

but I have no explanation for it.

That's just what the data show.

KEAN: The Aguadilla video could have easily fallen

through the cracks.

There are probably other videos that just sit

in some agency that we don't even know about.

ELIZONDO: We had this video data at the Pentagon.

We actually had this, but there's a lot more.

There's--there's--there's a lot more videos there.

It's not up to me to release or talk about,

but I can tell you that I've personally had access

to them along with my colleagues.

There's some that are-- that are extremely compelling.

GILLIBRAND: We need to have a place where all

this information can be brought together.

That is what a responsible, thoughtful approach

towards something you do not know what it is would be,

and so that's what I put into the defense bill,

and that is what is going to be in place

moving forward.

REPORTER: The headlines are screaming about legislation

from New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

REPORTER TWO: A bipartisan amendment proposed

in the National Defense Authorization Act

would create a permanent office...

REPORTER 3: Permanent government office tasked

with investigating unidentified aerial phenomenon.

GILLIBRAND: These are serious issues of National Security

and technology that we should know about.

MELLON: In December of 2021, Congress enacted

the Gillibrand amendment, which created a new office

to study the UAP phenomenon.

GILLIBRAND: What I would expect it to be is some

of the brightest minds in the whole country

focused on this specific review--

mathematicians and scientists and astrophysicists,

and people who understand how to look

at this phenomenon and analyze it.

KEAN: The people interested in this have been calling

for this for so long, and that it's finally happening

is just amazing,

and this is only the beginning.

The legislation that was proposed

by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

was important in so many ways, but one thing

that stood out was she wanted the office to research

materials that are allegedly connected to crashed UFOs.

GILLIBRAND: We should never be afraid of what we don't know.

I know nothing about crash materials.

I don't even know if they exist.

If there are any, of course they should be studied.

If we don't know what it is, it's not

an appropriate response to say,

"Well, then let's not look at it."

I'm Garry Nolan. I'm a professor

of pathology at Stanford.

My background is in genetics, microbiology,

virology, and cancer biology.

When some scientist friend heard that I was working

on UFOs, he said, "Well, you're gonna ruin

your career."

It got me mad. It's just data.

I'm not coming to any conclusions.

People have been seeing these things for so long,

and somehow we seem to feel like we need government

to tell us that it's OK to believe in it.

I don't agree with that kind of approach to life.

I don't need anybody to tell me what it is that

I know is real.

ELIZONDO: Garry's a Nobel nominee

and a Stanford researcher,

and he's just now coming out of the shadows.

He's dealing with something here with the UAP phenomenon,

that's just something outside of our current understanding,

but that doesn't mean we should shy away from it.

It just means we should understand it.

I've got some of them with me.

WOMAN: In your opinion, does the U.S. government have

crashed materials in their possession?

Yes.

KEAN: What's really important about physical materials is

that they could possibly reveal that these

were not from Earth.

Garry works with Jacques Vallée on these studies.

Jacques--he's a computer scientist, an astronomer.

He also has been studying UFOs of course

and has been one of the most original thinkers

in that field.

NOLAN: I brought some of the other materials here

that we've been looking at.

I mean, there was 30 pounds of this dropped

on the ground in a molten state.

VALLÉE: There are a number of cases where people saw

an object coming from the sky and crashing in a field,

and they've recovered something

When I spoke to physicists, they said, "Well,

"you know, Jacques, you know, it's fascinating,

"but you haven't given me something I can take to my lab,

something I can put on the microscope,"

but that's started to happen in the last few years.

NOLAN: This is a magnesium isotope ratios for Ubatuba.

VALLÉE: I wonder why people always expect it to be

very complex, you know, metal materials.

KEAN: One of the cases that Jacques and Garry studied

involved a UFO event that occurred in 1957.

Jacques had collected samples, and he brought them

into the lab and worked with Garry on the case.

NOLAN: The Ubatuba event was a fisherman, he sees

a glowing object over the ocean

that suddenly exploded and just shattered

these magnesium chunks,

bright, silvery metal, all over the ground

and in the water.

The fisherman went back and collected this stuff.

KEAN: Decades later, Garry was able to study it in his lab.

He found that for the magnesium sample

the way it was held together was something

that had been manipulated.

NOLAN: It's pretty clear that they were part

of some industrial process that had engineered them

to be different.

That is interesting.

Maybe it was being used for propulsion.

Maybe it was used for energy generation.

It's a physics we just don't understand,

but who couldn't be excited about

potentially understanding it?

Because imagine what we could do with it.

If you could so easily move from one place to another--

as in the videos that have been seen--the energy that

is necessary to do that,

who needs coal-fired power plants anymore, right?

So that, to me, is one of the most important parts

about thinking about the phenomenon.

If you take the data off the table

and you don't allow it to be part of the solution,

the solution could be staring you in the face,

but you just threw it in the garbage.

That's not how a scientist approaches science.

GILLIBRAND: Fear grows in darkness.

It's essential that you have light and transparency.

There's nothing to me that is frightening or worrisome

about research and study and analysis.

That is what scientists and academics

are extremely good at.

It is what they are there to do

so why not use our best and brightest to get

a clearer handle on what's known and what's unknown?

KEAN: Now the UFO topic has been authenticated as real

by the government, so that has drawn people in.

There's just a much wider arena of people

that are involved now.

MAN: When the government came forward in the form

of the report from the Director

of National Intelligence and talks

about objects they cannot identify,

that's very significant.

If the government doesn't really know what they are,

then it's the duty of the scientific community

to come to the help of the government

in figuring it out,

So a month after the Pentagon report,

I established the Galileo Project in July 2021.

ANCHOR: A team of international scientists is embarking

on a new research project that just a few years ago

would have been dismissed as very fringe.

ELIZONDO: What Professor Avi Loeb has managed to do is

create this body of scientists who are willing to say,

"To hell with social stigma.

"We're gonna have the courage, as a scientific community,

to look at this topic from a scientific perspective."

That is, in itself, revolutionary.

REPORTER: At Harvard, Astrophysics professor

Avi Loeb is hoping to collect scientific data

on the kinds of mysterious objects that have been

spotted by fighter pilots.

LOEB: The Galileo Project would look

at unidentified objects near Earth

and try to identify the nature

of interstellar objects that enter the solar system

from outside whose nature is unclear.

We will keep the data open, not classified.

ELIZONDO: What Professor Avi Loeb has

managed to do is create this consortium

of like-minded scientists,

and when I say, "Like-minded scientists"

I don't mean believers, OK?

I mean scientists, all who agree that this topic

is worthy of study.

LOEB: I look at problems differently

because fundamentally, I'm a farm boy.

I used to drive the tractor through the hills

of the village and read philosophy books

because I was mostly interested about the fundamental questions

How did everything start?

Is there life elsewhere?

If we see an object in the sky, we should not assume

that it's natural or human-made

but rather get more evidence on if it doesn't look familiar.

So this is the roof of the Harvard College Observatory.

-Right. -It's an institution

that existed for more than 170 years.

This is where the telescope system will be.

-Over there? -Yeah.

What we will have is a dome-shaped array

of infrared cameras that look at the entire sky at all times.

We will monitor the sky and hav

an artificial intelligence software that analyzes

what we see and tries to identify whether it's a bird,

a drone, an atmospheric phenomena,

or something else.

We allow for the possibility

of an extraterrestrial technological origin,

which makes us different from the rest

of the scientific community that does not even allow

for that possible interpretation.

NOLAN: The Galileo Project is an extraordinary step

that Dr. Loeb has taken because you have the credibility

of a major scientific institution behind it,

and It's giving people permission to talk about it.

This is a turning point.

(applause)

LOEB: On November 10, 2021, there was

the Ignatius Forum that took place

in the Washington National Cathedral.

It was attended by the head of NASA Bill Nelson,

the director of National Intelligence Avril Haines,

Jeff Bezos, and myself.

LOEB: My point is simple. Let's look at the sky

and check if there is any equipment that were sent

by other civilizations,

and that's the goal of the Galileo Project.

The Ignatius Forum was a discussion

about the theological implications of discovering

a smarter kid on our cosmic block.

It was fascinating for me to sit next to Avril Haines,

the Director of National Intelligence, when she made

a statement that some of the objects might be

from an extraterrestrial origin.

The main issues that Congress and others have been

concerned about are basically safety of flight concerns

and counterintelligence issues,

but of course, there's always the question of

is there something else that we simply do not understand

that might come extraterrestrially?

LOEB: To me, that was very revealing because it

now appears that government is willing to discuss

that possibility of an extraterrestrial origin.

REPORTER: Avril Haines, who is

the Director of National Intelligence,

saying that it was possible that the strange encounters

could be extraterrestrial life.

KEAN: She said they may be coming extraterrestrially.

She opened up that door to that possibility.

It's a sign of how things have changed.

LOEB: Imagine one of these objects happened to be

from another civilization.

That would change the future of humanity.

CARSON: People want to know is this otherworldly?

Is it from our solar system?

My hope is that the UFO community,

along with government officials,

will work together in a way

that will answer some of these questions.

KEAN: I'm just about to talk to Representative André Carson,

who is gonna be holding open hearings on UAP.

It's been more than half a century

since hearings in congress, so it's, like, major news

that we're having open hearings

There's an e-mail that just came in.

"Conference line 10 minutes."

Hello, Mr. Carson?

Thank you so much for do-- taking this call with me.

I mean, I'd love to know you know what you really hope

to accomplish from having the hearing next week.

CARSON: I think for far too long people have said,

"Oh, the public isn't ready to know about these things,"

but I think that the public is ready now more than ever.

MAN, ON P.A.: Our next and fina station is D.C.'s Union Station

REPORTER: The House Oversight Committee will host

its first public hearing

on this issue since 1969.

REPORTER TWO: Representatives from the Pentagon will be asked

questions by lawmakers about what the U.S. government

knows about all those strange lights in the sky.

REPORTER 3: These things very well may be real,

and it's about time we heard more about

what our government knows about them.

KEAN: This is really an historic moment.

It's a milestone that we are having

an open Congressional hearing about UFOs.

GRAVES: I wasn't asked to be here,

but I felt personally I wanted to have

the opportunity to come down here

and try to take this thing

full circle frankly.

The Navy trained me as a safety officer,

and at the end of the day, you know, we have objects

that are nearly hitting these aircraft,

and it is a safety issue,

and it's a tactical issue,

and it's a strategic issue.

The subcommittee will come to order.

CARSON: The last time Congress had a hearing on UAPs

was half a century ago.

I hope that it does not take 50 more years

for Congress to hold another

because transparency is desperately needed.

KEAN: The Members of Congress represent the people

of the United States.

The people want information.

Congress wants more transparency

from the Pentagon on this topic.

CARSON: Undersecretary Moultrie, Mr. Bray...

KEAN: The two witnesses that are being called

are high-level officials.

Ronald Moultrie is the Under Secretary of Defense

for Intelligence and Security,

and Scott Bray is Deputy Director

of Naval Intelligence.

Both of them obviously know a great deal

about the Pentagon's research into UFOs.

RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI: There have been no collisions

between any U.S. assets and one of these UAPs, correct?

We have not had a collision.

We've had at least 11 near misses, though.

(radio chatter)

Do we have any sensors underwater to detect

submerged UAPs?

So I think that would be more appropriately

addressed in closed session, sir.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: OK. Can you say with a 100% certainty

that they are physical objects?

I can say with certainty that a number of these

are physical objects.

MIKE GALLAGHER: It's also been reported that there have been

UAP observed flying over sensitive military facilities.

One such incident allegedly occurred

at Malmstrom Air Force Base

in which 10 of our nuclear ICBM were rendered inoperable.

I'm not commenting on the accuracy of this.

I'm simply asking you whether you're aware of it.

BRAY: I have heard stories. I have not seen

the official data on that.

Well, I mean, it's a pretty high-profile incident.

You're--you're the guys investigating it.

I mean, who else is doing it?

KEAN: Overall, it's a huge step that the hearings

even happened, but It was frustrating

because they just didn't say that much.

REPORTER: The Pentagon says today's hearings,

while they may not find new answers,

will help with how these reports are handled.

REPORTER TWO: This could be the first of several hearings,

with some lawmakers saying next they would like to hear

directly from some of the pilots who have encountered

those objects first hand.

BURCHETT: Overall reaction to the hearings?

I said I thought it will be a cover-up at some level,

and--and I feel like that's what it was.

GRAVES: How you doing? Ryan Graves, one of the pilots.

KEAN: Yeah. Right. He was one of the pilots.

Oh good gosh. God bless you.

-How are you? -How you doing?

Well, see you've got a pilot right here,

and he should've been the one talking in there, OK?

He should have been the one talking, explaining

what the heck was going on.

BURCHETT: Congress needs to give those pilots some sort

of whistleblower's protection

and some guarantee that it will not be a mark on their record,

and we need to bring them in.

-You talk. -I just really appreciate that

everyone took the time out here in order to, uh,

pay attention to this issue.

From my perspective, getting energy on this

is simply going to save lives at the end of the day

for our Navy operators.

This is something that the American populace is

very interested in, and I think that

they deserve to know what's going on.

BURCHETT: When our own military fighter pilots,

the best in the world,

they're up there and they're saying,

"What in the world is this?"

we should be concerned.

PILOT: Look at that thing, dude

ELIZONDO: Congress is doing exactly the right thing.

If their constituents are demanding answers,

then Congress needs to demand answers.

GILLIBRAND: That's what the Constitutional framework

of our democracy is all about.

It's about oversight and accountability,

and each branch of government having a responsibility.

KEAN: Now that the government has acknowledged

that UFOs are real, they're physical,

they're a national security concern,

it raises a lot of questions,

the main one being, what are these things?

Where are they from? Why are they here?

RODEGHIER: The truth about UFOS is easy to summarize.

The UFO phenomenon is real

and maybe the greatest scientific problem of all time.

WOMAN: What do you think these things are?

Let's try to break it down one by one in terms

of the technology that we see.

We now know that these objects go between Mach 5

and Mach 20,

20 times the speed of sound.

They can fly in the air,

and they can go even underwater

(radio chatter)

What could be behind that?

Why should they go underwater?

PITTS: Surprisingly enough, we've explored more of the moon

than we've explored of our ocean floors

on this planet,

so our ocean floors are just as much of a mystery

to us as are some of the moons orbiting

some of the planets in our solar system.

KEAN: People ask a lot, "Well, what do you

think they are?"

When I started out, I was

probably pretty convinced

of the extraterrestrial hypothesis,

that they were just visitors from another planet,

but I've come to learn since that the phenomenon

is way more complicated.

It was traveling at fantastic speed.

It was a series of about 6 lights in the shape of a cross.

It seemed to be rotating, and it was hovering.

It was a rim of lights in the shape of a triangle.

KEAN: They're so diverse. I just don't think

it's a simple a disc-shaped shi

that has traveled here from some planet far away.

MELLON: If we succeed and if we find that indeed

there is an alien intelligence of some kind in our atmosphere,

it is gonna be something that changes our world view,

changes our understanding of our place in the universe.

LOEB: The way I see science is as a service to society.

That the knowledge we obtain from studying

the universe is relevant for everyone

and benefits everyone.

WOMAN: Do you think we will find evidence

of extraterrestrial intelligence in your lifetime?

I think we already have.

I don't need to think in the future.

KAKU: Why is there so much debate?

Why all this controversy?

Because what's at stake is nothing less than our role

in the universe.

It roots back to watching that space race

as a kid growing up.

MAN: Standard speed down 3.5.

PODESTA: Overall, the world benefited from having

that sense of wonder and that commitment to move

human knowledge forward.

That all applied to

the unidentified aerial phenomena question

would spur innovation, tremendous thinking,

the production of knowledge,

and that's why it shouldn't be locked

in a secure vault someplace.

POWELL: It's exciting to see there's a lot more attention

being given on the subject of UAPs.

I hope that things don't go bac

and then 70 years from now we're still wondering

what the UAP might be.

GRAVES: Uh, the truth about UFOs.

Man, uh, that's the one question I was gonna say

you should ask me.

The truth is that

no one knows what they are...

but we have the ability

to figure it out if we want to.

Captioned by National Captioning Institute