Ufology, in many ways, is a self-contained ecosystem of ideas, recycling outlandish claims and wild theories one generation after another. Yesterday’s House Oversight hearing on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP): Exposing the Truth” was the latest installment in a saga that has been going on since 1947.
The hearing was chaired by U.S. Rep Nancy Mace (R-SC). “This hearing is intended to help Congress and the American people to learn the extent of the programs and activities our government has engaged in with respect to UAPs and what knowledge it has yielded,” she said. “This includes of course any knowledge of extraterrestrial life or technology of non-human origin. If government-funded research on UAPs has not yielded any useful knowledge we also need to know those facts. Taxpayers deserve to know how much has it been invested, how much has been spent. They shouldn’t be kept in the dark to spare the Pentagon a little bit of embarrassment.”
The mission of the House Oversight Committee is “to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies. We provide a check and balance on the role and power of Washington – and a voice to the people it serves.
“Genuinely good government requires a commitment to expose waste, fraud, and abuse. We ultimately report to hard-working taxpayers to ensure their investment in government is spent effectively, efficiently, and transparently. We identify problems, shine light on the situation, and propose reforms to prevent abuses from being repeated.”
The hearing on UFOs is a change for the committee that has spent much of the last four years investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations against the “Biden crime family” under the leadership of Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) began her five minutes of questioning by listing three conspiracy theories and one provable fact that she refuses to believe. “I speak my mind often so why not just keep going with it,” she said. “[I] may as well just go all out and say it: the Earth is flat, birds are government drones, we’ve never set foot on the moon, and Joe Biden received 81 million votes in the 2020 election. Let’s just see how many lists we could get on here today.”
The panel of witnesses — retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, UFO “whistleblower” Luis Elizondo, former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold, and right-wing commentator and author Michael Shellenberger — were questioned by Boebert about rumors of secret projects.
“There are rumors that have come up to the hill of a secretive project within the Department of Defense involving the manipulation of human genetics with what is described as ‘non-human genetic material,’ potentially for the enhancement of human capabilities — hybrids,” said Boebert. “Are any of you familiar with that?”
The witnesses denied any knowledge of such an alien-hybridization program, but the idea isn’t a new one. In the 1980s, CIA pilot and frequent Coast to Coast AM guest John Lear suggested that UFOs were abducting human women for genetic experimentation as part of a far-reaching government conspiracy. Much of Lear’s — and others — theories about UFOs would go on to be adapted into Chris Carter’s hit television series X-Files.
“During the period of 1969-1971, MJ-12 representing the U.S. Government made a deal with these creatures, called EBE’s (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, named by Detley Bronk, original MJ-12 member and 6th President of Johns Hopkins University),” wrote Lear in 1987. “The ‘deal’ was that in exchange for ‘technology’ that they would provide to us, we agreed to ‘ignore’ the abductions that were going on and suppress information on the cattle mutilations. The EBE’s assured MJ-12 that the abductions (usually lasting about 2 hours) were merely the ongoing monitoring of developing civilizations. In fact, the purposes for the abductions turned out to be … impregnation of human females and early termination of pregnancies to secure the crossbreed infant.”
Lear, alongside Phil Schneider, promulgated the idea of a deep underground military base (DUMB) in Dulce, New Mexico. “This jointly occupied (CIA-Alien) facility has been described as enormous, with huge tiled walls that ‘go on forever,’” wrote Lear. “Witnesses have reported huge vats filled with amber liquid with parts of human bodies being stirred inside.”
In 1979, electronics entrepreneur Paul Bennewitz reported a series of UFO sightings to Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Air Force Office of Special Investigations officer Richard Doty responded to Bennewitz and encouraged him to dig deeper into the sightings and the story of Dulce Base, eventually resulting in Bennewitz being admitted to a psychiatric facility in 1988.
While it sounds implausible, the idea of human/alien hybrids has gained renewed interest among the UFO faithful with the recent “discovery” of the Nazca mummies. The three-fingered, humanoid mummies with elongated skulls, covered in a coat of powdery white diatomaceous earth, were first revealed in 2017 and are generally considered to be a hoax, but have gained some level of credibility from the testimony of experts, including Denver Coroner Dr. James Caruso and Dr. John McDowell, a forensic odontologist and retired professor at the University of Colorado who volunteers as a consultant with the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.
Another popular concept of alien hybridization involves starseeds, or New Age spiritualists who believe their souls originated on another planet. Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, was deeply involved in starseed beliefs and had a YouTube channel called Starseed Academy.
The New Age belief in starseeds grew out of ideas developed by Ufologists from the 50s and 60s who described themselves as “contactees,” most notably George Adamski, who claimed to have been visited by a Venusian named Orthon. Adamski fused ideas from theosophy, which suggests knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations, with the rising popularity of flying saucer sightings. Theosophical connections to Ufology persist today, not just with New Age starseeds, but also with theories about submersible UFOs, called USOs, and the mythology of Atlantis.
“We’ve studied more of space than we have of our own oceans,” said Boebert. “Are there any accounts of UAPs emerging from or submerging into our water which could indicate a base or presence beneath the ocean’s surface?”
Shellenberger cited footage of UFOs emerging from the ocean. “I don’t know about a base, but as I mentioned I had a different source entirely described this pretty extraordinary footage that exists of orbs of an orb coming out of the ocean and being met by another orb,” he said.
In addition to questions from Boebert, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), also took part in the hearing. Burchett has been an outspoken advocate for UFO transparency. In 2022 Burchett was a keynote speaker at the Mutual UFO Network’s (MUFON) annual symposium. That year MUFON announced they had secured the assistance of A10 Associates, a lobbying firm, to bring political awareness to the UFO issue.
“We should always be guided by facts science and data and stay serious on those issues,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA): “I think that we should not limit our imagination and our thoughts and our curiosity on what UAPs could actually be.”
The hearing was officially a joint meeting of two House Oversight subcommittees: Cybersecurity, Information Technology & Government Innovation, and National Security, the Border, & Foreign Affairs.
