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WASHINGTON —The U.S. government "absolutely" has recovered extraterrestrial craft, according to a former combat officer who was a member of a Department of Defense task force that investigated unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
Dave Grusch, in response to a House member's questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday, said he knows the exact locations of such alien craft and that he had provided this information to the intelligence community's inspector general.
Grusch, who has become a whistleblower and testified that he has faced retaliation for his revelations, told lawmakers that the U.S. government also possesses evidence of non-human biologics. Grusch did not elaborate, stating he had not seen any alien craft or beings himself, but was basing his testimony on dozens of interviews he had conducted within the U.S. intelligence community.
The Air Force veteran, who also worked for two intelligence agencies, was one of three former military officers who appeared before the House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee, which held a 135-minute open televised hearing on unidentified flying objects.
The technology "is beyond anything we have," said David Fravor, who in 2004 as a U.S. Navy pilot videotaped off the coast of California a physics-defying flight of an object, known as the "Tic-Tac."
"There's four sets of human eyeballs [that witnessed the incident], we're all very credible," testified Fravor. "It's not a joke."
A third witness, Ryan Graves, was an F/A-18 Super Hornet U.S. Navy pilot stationed in Virginia in 2014 when his squadron first began encountering unknown objects. He described what he and his colleagues saw as a "dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere" approximately 1.5 to 4.5 meters in diameter. Such incidents became so frequent, according to Graves, that air crews would discuss potential risks from the objects as a routine part of their pre-flight briefings.
Under questioning by a lawmaker, Graves said he knew the craft could not be of domestic origin because they were able to remain completely stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds and then could accelerate to supersonic speeds.
Graves said there were similar reports by military pilots and others from nearly everywhere in the world the U.S. Navy operates.
The hearing contained other sensational testimony, for which there has been no independent confirmation but is similar to statements the witnesses and others have made in recent years in mainstream media articles, including those published by The New York Times.
A Defense Department entity established to investigate UAP phenomena, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is refuting Grusch's claim that access to some materials for an earlier task force was denied.
"To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads," said Sue Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson.
Grusch told the bipartisan group of lawmakers there is more classified information, including about a flying object the size of a football field, he could reveal "in a closed session at the right level."
Lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, said the committee was denied access to the Secure Classified Information Facility, or SCIF, within the U.S. Capitol to hear further testimony from the witnesses regarding classified matters.
Several members of the committee pledged to work to make more information about the topic public.
"We're trying to get to the bottom of it," lawmaker Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said in expressing appreciation for the witnesses appearing at a public congressional hearing. "I want to thank everybody. We made history today."
Lawmaker Robert Garcia, a freshman California Democrat, told the witnesses they "had a lot of courage" and characterized Wednesday's hearing as the most bipartisan discussion he had experienced during his first seven months in Congress.
"Many Americans are deeply interested in this issue, and it shouldn't take the potential of nonhuman origin to bring us together," added lawmaker Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat.
Luna recently accused the U.S. government of stonewalling lawmakers' efforts for transparency, saying she and other lawmakers were rebuffed by officials when they went to an Air Force base in Florida seeking information on UAP sightings by military pilots.
"They refuse to answer questions posed by whistleblowers, avoiding the concerns of Americans and acknowledging the possible threat of UAPs poses to our national security as well as public safety," Luna said at a news conference last week. "It is extremely unnecessary and an overclassification."
During Wednesday's session, Graves noted there are many more credible witnesses with significant information but who are "hesitant to come forward" because they fear ridicule and retaliation." He said a centralized method for reporting sightings would circumvent potential retaliation, a system lawmakers expressed interest in creating through bipartisan legislation.
UAP are "a national security issue worth looking at," according to John Kirby, a former Navy admiral, who is a National Security Council spokesman. He said the matter is taken seriously by President Joe Biden and his administration.
"In some cases, these phenomena have affected military training, have impacted military readiness," Kirby told White House reporters following the congressional hearing. "The truth is we don't have hard and fast answers on these things."
Steve Herman, formerly White House Bureau Chief, is now VOA's Chief National Correspondent.