Did America get 'ripped off'? UFO disclosure bill derided for lack of transparency.
Those hoping momentous revelations were on the horizon regarding what the government knows about UFOs may be slightly disappointed with legislation Congress passed last week.
Yes, the recent measure directs the government to disclose to the public at least some records about UFOs.
But you'll need to be patient: Under the provision, the executive branch has up to 25 years within a record's creation to make it public. And even then, the president can determine that any records must remain classified for national security.
The measure, which was included in an annual defense policy bill, doesn't quite have the juice that some lawmakers had sought in order to demand greater transparency around reports of strange crafts whizzing through U.S. airspace and outmaneuvering the military.
Congress' latest foray into UFOs in July reignited long-held public suspicions that the U.S. military and other high levels of government are concealing information about what could be extraterrestrial activity. In the ensuing months, elected officials and disclosure advocates alike have become increasingly vocal in their push for transparency.
Here's what to know about the bill, which President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law.
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What's in the UFO bill?
In sum, the bill directs the National Archives to collect government documents about UFOs, which the government now officially refers to as “unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP.) The UAP term is a relatively new one that more broadly defines mysterious objects sighted in not just the sky, but also near or under the water.
The bipartisan legislation was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.,) who had hoped to establish a process that could ultimately reveal to the public what the government knows about the existence of any non-human intelligences on Earth. The legislation was co-sponsored by three Republican and two Democratic senators.
Under the bill that was passed, the National Archives will also gather information about "technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence,” the bill states.
While that sounds like a promising move toward transparency, the measure still empowers various government agencies to keep records classified.
If a future president determined that the public release of certain records would pose a threat to U.S. intelligence operations and military defense, declassification could be postponed under language in the bill. However, the potential harm of releasing the records must outweigh the public interest of disclosure, according to the legislation.
What was left out of the bill?
Schumer and other lawmakers in both parties had originally sought much stronger provisions than what was ultimately included in the amendment.
For instance, an earlier version of Schumer's amendment would have created a presidential commission to review government UFO records and declassify them for the public.
At the House level, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) sought to do away with a review altogether. Instead, his added proposal would have simply ordered the Department of Defense to declassify records "relating to publicly known sightings" of UFOs as long as they "do not reveal sources, methods or otherwise compromise the national security of the United States.”
Both those competing measures were ultimately stripped.
What are elected officials saying?
Despite some of those setbacks, Schumer still hailed the legislation as "a major, major win for government transparency on UAPs" in a statement.
"It gives us a strong foundation for more action in the future,” Schumer said.
However, Burchett railed to the New York Times against what he viewed as attempts by the intelligence community to kill his proposal and tamp down on efforts to compel public disclosure.
“We got ripped off," Burchett, who co-chaired the House panel about UAP in July, told the Times. “We got completely hosed. They stripped out every part.”
The Times also cited an anonymous person with knowledge of discussions over the bill, who claimed defense department officials had “pushed back forcefully” on the moves towards transparency.
A report in the Hill published earlier this month said a “powerful” group of Republican lawmakers were working to block any version of the measure that created a presidential commission.
What are disclosure advocates saying?
Some who advocate for the government to be transparent about what it knows of UFOs lamented lawmakers' failure to pass the amendment as originally written.
Christopher Mellon, a former defense department official, told USA TODAY on Monday that the version of the bill that will be signed into law is indicative of clear distrust that continues to exist between Congress and the executive branch.
"This legislation was a strong expression of continuing concerns in Congress that critically important UAP information is being withheld," said Mellon, who in 2017 joined a small group of former government officials with security clearances who went public with some of what they knew. "What UAP are we detecting in space and under the oceans? Members want and deserve answers to these vital questions."
Douglas Dean Johnson, an independent researcher who writes about UAPs, told Space.com that the independent Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena power was the impost important component of the bill.
"What is being enacted instead is a modest mechanism that is far less likely to result in the location, extraction and disclosure of important UAP-related records that may be tightly held or even long forgotten," Johnson told the outlet.
But change won't come easy, and Congress is up against a longstanding policy of restricting such information from the public, said Jim Semivan, a retired CIA intelligence officer who co-founded the San Diego-based To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science with Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge.
"It is unlikely the U.S. Government nor any other government that has UAP-related research programs knows exactly how to selectively release information on UAPs," Semivan told USA TODAY. "You can't just say, 'UAPs are real and we are not alone;' the questions would never stop...the people would demand more information. It is all or nothing."
Why is the timing of the legislation important?
The weakened legislation was passed at a time of growing public interest in extraterrestrial life as U.S. officials appeared to be signaling their willingness to be less secretive about UFOs.
In the halls of Congress, a potentially watershed moment in the movement for UFO transparency unfolded July 26 when three former U.S. military officers offered their testimony.
During the hearing, two former Navy pilots provided accounts of mystifying flying objects, while intelligence official David Grusch testified about an alleged shadowy "multidecade" Pentagon program to retrieve and study not only downed spacecraft, but extraterrestrial pilots.
The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that such a program exists.
The hearing was followed in September by news that the Pentagon's office to investigate UFOs had launched an online reporting tool where the public can also access declassified information about reported sightings.
A report that same month from NASA seemed to further indicate that after years of secrecy, the government was coming around to the idea of sharing more information publicly.
The space agency's highly-anticipated UFO report outlined NASA's intention to “shift the conversation about UAP from sensationalism to science,” Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters at the time. NASA also hired a director of UAP research.
During a media briefing revealing the report's findings, Nelson rebuked a reporter's suggestion that NASA or other government agencies would ever cover up or withold evidence of extraterresstrial life on Earth.
"There's so much concern that something is locked up, classified, that the American government is not being open," Nelson said in response to a reporter's question. "Well, we are the American government and we are being open."
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]