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Written by Josephine Walker
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is expected to consider in the coming days a bipartisan measure that would force the U.S. government to release records of possible UFO sightings after decades of stalling.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, has teamed up with Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican, to lead an effort to force disclosure of information related to what the government officially calls “unidentified anomalies,” or UAPs. Their 64-page proposal is modeled on a 1992 US law that spells out how records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be handled.
They plan to introduce the measure as an amendment to sweeping legislation passing through Congress that would allow funding for US defense for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Schumer’s support likely swayed many of his fellow Democrats. Rounds sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.
“For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by the mysterious and unexplained, and it is a long time since we had some answers,” Schumer said in a statement Friday, adding that the public “has the right to learn about technologies of unknown origin, non-human intelligence and phenomena.” inexplicable.”
The amendment would require the US National Archives and Records Administration to collect UAP records from all relevant government offices under the “immediate disclosure presumption,” and the review board would have to provide justification for keeping the documents secret.
“Our goal is to ensure credibility with respect to any investigation or record-keeping of material” associated with UAPs, Rounds said.
Under this procedure, records must be publicly disclosed in full no later than 25 years after they are created unless the US President certifies that continued deferral is necessary because of direct harm to national security.
It also states that the federal government will have “eminent latitude” over any recovered technologies of unknown origin and any biological evidence of “non-human intelligence” that may be controlled by private individuals or entities.
Schumer is examining an issue first put forward by the late Democratic Senator Harry Reid, who served as Senate Majority Leader from 2007 until 2015.
In the past, the US government has publicly dismissed the UFO sightings that have fueled the popular imagination for decades, but in recent years it has been more open about the subject. and released an unclassified watershed report in 2021 cataloging the observations – mostly from US Navy personnel – dating back to 2004.
The Pentagon investigated several unexplained sightings reported by military pilots and NASA set up a special committee to look into the drones. The NASA panel said in May that its study is hampered by a lack of high-quality data, as well as the stigma surrounding the whole issue of UFOs in the sky, which are often balloons and debris or related to atmospheric causes.
(This story has been corrected to show that records must be disclosed 25 years after they were created, not after the law was enacted, in Section 8)