Congressional Statements on UAPs: Compilation
- Type: compilation of public statements
- Author: various members of Congress
- Date: 2020-2024
- Credibility: primary (direct quotes from elected officials)
Senate
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Vice Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee:
- “There’s stuff flying in our airspace and we don’t know who it is and it’s not ours. So we should know who it is, especially if it’s an adversary that’s made a technological leap.” (2020, requesting Navy UAP video footage)
- “This report is an important first step in cataloging these incidents, but it is just a first step. The Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern.” (June 2021, on the DNI UAP report)
- “There are people who have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years” with “first-hand knowledge” and that they were “potentially some of the same people perhaps” referred to by Grusch. (July 2023)
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader:
- Co-sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 with Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD). Official press release: “Schumer, Rounds Introduce New Legislation To Declassify Government Records Related To Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena & UFOs.” (July 14, 2023)
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY):
- Instrumental in creating AARO.
- Chaired a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on UAPs (April 2023).
- Said she intends to hold a hearing to assess whether “rogue SAP programs” existed “that no one is providing oversight for.” (2023)
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO):
- “I’m not surprised, necessarily, by these latest allegations, because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of grudgingly admitted to us in the briefing.” (2023, on Grusch’s claims)
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman:
- “The United States must be able to understand and mitigate threats to our pilots, whether they’re from drones or weather balloons or adversary intelligence capabilities.” (2021)
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC):
- “If we’d really found this stuff, there’s no way you could keep it from coming out.” (2023, expressing skepticism about Grusch’s claims)
House
Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN):
- Co-organized the July 2023 hearing.
- Publicly stated that officials informed lawmakers “that Grusch doesn’t currently have security clearance to discuss the issues in a SCIF.” (Post-hearing, July 2023)
Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL):
- Co-organized the July 2023 hearing with Burchett.
Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL):
- Active in bipartisan UAP push from the House side.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY):
- At the July 2023 hearing, asked witnesses: “If you were me, where would you look?”
Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), Chairman of House Intelligence Committee:
- “Every decade there’s been individuals who’ve said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space. There’s no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level.” (2023)
The Bipartisan Nature
The UAP push crosses party lines in a way almost nothing else does in contemporary American politics. Schumer (Democrat) and Rounds (Republican) co-sponsored legislation. Burchett (Republican), Luna (Republican), Moskowitz (Democrat), and Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat) all participated in hearings. Rubio (Republican) and Gillibrand (Democrat) have both pushed from the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees.
This bipartisan interest could mean: (a) the underlying claims have substance that transcends partisanship, (b) the national security framing makes it safe for both parties, or (c) individual members have been influenced by the same small group of advocates described by Kirkpatrick.