MIAMI – A group of lawmakers from Florida, both Democrats and Republicans, recently displayed an interest in learning more about unidentified flying objects, as they discussed possible violations of congressional oversight and the potential for white-collar crime amid government secrecy.
Representatives Jared Moskowitz, Maxwell Frost, Anna Paulina Luna, and Matt Gaetz participated in this week’s most viewed congressional hearing about UFOs, now referred to by U.S. officials as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
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“In being an active service member working on airfield, I have had conversations with many pilots who were in fear of coming forward,” said Luna, a Republican who represents Florida’s 13th congressional district and served in the U.S. Air Force from 2009 to 2014, about witnesses of UFOs.
Gaetz said several months ago he received a report of a UAP at Eglin Air Force Base in the western Florida Panhandle, so he sought a briefing and brought with him Luna, who was elected in 2022, to request evidence. He said they met with a member of a flight crew who captured an image over the Gulf of Mexico.
“The image was of something that I am not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States or from any of our adversaries,” Gaetz said it looked like an “orb” and it appeared to be a part of “a sequence of four craft in a clear diamond formation.”
Gaetz said lawmakers needed to meet with David Grusch, a whistleblower formerly with US Air Force and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, in “a secured compartmentalized facility.” Grusch, a witness during the hearing, said there was “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program” that included non-human “biologics.”
Moskowitz, who represents Florida’s 23rd congressional district, and Frost, who represents Florida’s 10th congressional district, are members of the subcommittee on national security that hosted the UAP hearing to focus on public safety and transparency. Luna and Gaetz were guests.
“There are 171 uncharacterized UAP reports,” Moskowitz said demanding that more information be released.
Moskowitz also had an interest in learning more about “unsanctioned” advanced technology government programs and if U.S. corporations were “overcharging” the U.S. for “certain tech” and using that “additional money” for that. Grusch said this was likely done through the internal research and development program or IRAD.
Luna asked Ryan Graves, a retired U.S. Navy F-18 pilot, to describe the UFO sightings at Vandenberg Space Force Base in 2003. He said witnesses reported a “100-yard-sided red square” approached the base from the ocean and hovered at a low altitude over one of the launch facilities.
“I have witnessed advanced UAP on multiple sensor systems firsthand ... It has been more than a decade since my squadron began witnessing advanced UAP demonstrating complex maneuvers on a regular basis, and we still don’t have answers,” said Graves, the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, an advocacy nonprofit organization.
Graves said he saw “a dark gray cube inside of a clear sphere” for U.S. Navy jets, only 100 feet apart, to “take evasive action,” terminate a mission, and return to base. He said the objects held “their position against hurricane-force winds,” and outlasted fighter jets without “visible means of lift, control surfaces, or propulsion.”
After Graves said commercial aviators have received “seize and desist” orders from corporations to prevent them from reporting sightings to the public, Luna said this is evidence that corporations are prioritizing the airlines’ reputations over public safety.
Frost said he was eagerly awaiting the results of the NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study by 16 experts from the scientific, aeronautics, and data analytics communities.
David Fravor, a retired U.S. Navy commander, said he was stationed onboard the USS Nimitz in 2004 when his squadron encountered a “small white Tic Tac-shaped object” moving “very abruptly,” displaying “a clockwise climbing turn” and quickly vanishing. A 90-second video of it is public.
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