The 2023 Congressional UAP Hearing: What Witnesses Told Congress

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On July 26, 2023, three men sat before the House Oversight Committee and told lawmakers things that had never been said under oath in Congress. One alleged a decades-long cover-up of recovered alien vehicles. Another described objects appearing on military sensors every day. The third recounted an encounter with something that defied the laws of physics as he understood them. What followed was bipartisan attention, official denials, and a debate that continues to shape UAP policy today.

TL;DR: On July 26, 2023, the House Oversight Committee held a congressional hearing on UAP that featured David Grusch, Ryan Graves, and David Fravor as witnesses. The hearing marked the first time a government insider testified under oath about alleged crash retrieval programs. No physical evidence was presented. The DOD and NASA denied the claims. Sources linked below.

Timeline

June 5, 2023 Journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal publish David Grusch’s claims in The Debrief, a “frontier science” website. Grusch alleges the U.S. government has recovered multiple craft of “non-human” origin. The New York Times and Politico had declined to publish the story; the Washington Post was still fact-checking when The Debrief went live.

June 7, 2023 Grusch elaborates in an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, claiming the U.S. has briefed intelligence officials on “football-field” sized craft and that some crashed UFOs were transferred to a defense contractor.

July 26, 2023 The House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, holds a hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency.” Witnesses: David Grusch, Ryan Graves, David Fravor. Chair: Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI). Key organizers: Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL).

August 3, 2023 Grusch repeats his claims in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, stating the U.S. has “intact and partially intact alien vehicles in its possession.”

December 2023 The Senate passes the UAP Disclosure Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, largely inspired by the testimony and public pressure generated by the July hearing. The House later strips key provisions.

November 13, 2024 Congress holds a follow-up session, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” with four new witnesses. The proceedings build directly on the foundation laid by the July 2023 session.

The 2023 Congressional UAP Hearing: Grusch, Graves, Fravor

David Grusch: The Whistleblower

David Charles Grusch is a former Air Force intelligence officer who served as the National Reconnaissance Office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021. He also worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and assisted in drafting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, which included whistleblower protections for UAP reporting.

Under oath, Grusch made several specific claims. He stated he was “informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access.” He said his claims were based on interviews with 40 witnesses over four years of work. When asked directly, he stated the U.S. government has recovered what he termed “non-human biologics” from retrieved craft, describing this as the assessment of people with direct knowledge of the program who were still working in it.

Grusch further alleged that people had been threatened and killed to conceal these programs. When Rep. Tim Burchett asked if he had “personal knowledge of people who’ve been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal” the government’s possession of extraterrestrial technology, Grusch said yes, but could not provide details outside of a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).

He also claimed to have viewed documents indicating a spacecraft of alien origin had been recovered by Benito Mussolini’s government in 1933 and procured by the United States in 1944 or 1945 with the assistance of the Vatican and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

No physical evidence was presented to support any of these claims. Both NASA and the Department of Defense denied Grusch’s allegations, stating there are no such programs and that extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered.

Ryan Graves: The Pilot’s Perspective

Ryan Graves is a former F/A-18 pilot who served with the U.S. Navy and is the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit organization advocating for UAP transparency and pilot safety. Graves testified about his firsthand experience encountering UAP during training missions off the U.S. East Coast.

Graves told the committee that UAP encounters during military training were “not rare or isolated” and that pilots in his squadron observed objects on their sensors “every day for a couple of years.” He described objects that appeared as dark gray or black cubes inside clear spheres, approximately 5 to 15 feet in diameter, observed at altitudes between 10,000 and 30,000 feet.

His testimony focused primarily on the aviation safety implications of UAP encounters and the stigma that prevented military pilots from reporting what they saw. Graves argued that the lack of a standardized, non-punitive reporting system left pilots and the public at risk.

David Fravor: The Tic Tac Encounter

Retired Navy Commander David Fravor recounted his 2004 encounter off the coast of San Diego, known as the Nimitz Encounter. During a training mission from the USS Nimitz carrier strike group, Fravor and his weapons systems officer observed a white, oblong object approximately 40 feet long hovering over the water. The object appeared to mirror his aircraft’s movements before accelerating at a rate he described as beyond any known technology.

Fravor told the committee that the object had no visible means of propulsion, no wings, no exhaust, and no rotors. When he descended to investigate, the object rose to meet him, then disappeared. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he testified. Fravor stated he believed the object could have evaded any military response and that he had never encountered anything like it in his 18-year career as a naval aviator.

Video of the encounter, known as the FLIR1 or “Tic Tac” video, was among three UAP videos officially declassified by the Pentagon in April 2020.

Key Moments from the Hearing

The hearing lasted approximately two and a half hours and covered a range of topics beyond the witnesses’ individual accounts. Several exchanges stood out:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pressed Grusch on whether he had reported his allegations through official channels, including the Intelligence Community Inspector General. Grusch confirmed he had filed a complaint with the ICIG, which found his complaint “credible and urgent.” Ocasio-Cortez asked about oversight gaps that might allow unauthorized programs to operate without Congressional knowledge.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of the hearing’s primary organizers, asked Grusch directly about threats made against witnesses. Grusch confirmed he faced retaliation for his disclosures and that other witnesses had been intimidated. Burchett framed the hearing as a matter of government accountability, stating that taxpayer money may be funding programs that Congress cannot access.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) asked about specific locations where retrieved craft might be stored and whether defense contractors were involved in reverse engineering programs. Grusch said he could provide some details in a classified setting.

The bipartisan tone was notable. Both Republican and Democratic members of the committee expressed interest in further investigation, asked substantive questions, and treated the witnesses with seriousness. This bipartisanship was unusual for the deeply divided 118th Congress.

What Happened After

The session generated immediate public and media attention. Grusch’s claims about non-human biologics and crash retrieval programs made international headlines. The proceedings were the most-viewed Congressional livestream on YouTube in 2023 at the time of broadcast.

The most significant policy outcome was the inclusion of the UAP Disclosure Act in the Senate version of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act. Spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), the legislation proposed a review board modeled on the JFK Records Act to declassify UAP-related records. The act also included eminent domain provisions allowing the government to seize alleged UAP materials from private contractors.

However, the House stripped key provisions of the UAP Disclosure Act during conference negotiations in December 2023. The eminent domain authority and the independent review board were removed. A weaker version requiring annual reports from the Pentagon survived.

Grusch’s specific claims remain unverified. No physical evidence has been presented publicly. The ICIG complaint has not resulted in public findings. Defense contractors named in connection with alleged reverse engineering programs have not commented. NASA and the DOD maintain that no evidence supports the existence of extraterrestrial technology in government possession.

The Follow-Up: November 2024

The July 2023 session directly led to a second event on November 13, 2024, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” Organized by the same subcommittee, the 2024 hearing featured four new witnesses: Dr. Tim Gallaudet, a retired Navy Rear Admiral; Luis Elizondo, a former DOD official who ran the AATIP program; Michael Gold, former NASA associate administrator; and journalist Michael Shellenberger.

The 2024 hearing expanded the scope beyond Grusch’s allegations to include the Immaculate Constellation program, alleged secret UAP imagery, and calls for specific legislation. Rep. Luna introduced a report on the alleged Immaculate Constellation program during the session.

Opposing Perspectives

The July 2023 hearing generated significant debate, and the testimony has been met with skepticism from multiple directions.

The evidence gap: Grusch’s claims rest entirely on secondhand accounts and alleged documents. No photographs, materials, or physical samples have been presented publicly. Joshua Semeter, a professor at Boston University and member of NASA’s UAP independent study team, concluded that “without data or material evidence, we cannot assess” Grusch’s claims. The scientific standard for extraordinary claims requires testable evidence, and none has been produced.

Official denials: Both NASA and the Department of Defense have stated explicitly that there are no programs to recover or reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology. The DOD has said Grusch’s claims about crash retrieval programs could not be verified. AARO, the Pentagon’s UAP investigation office, has stated it found no evidence that any cases it examined had extraterrestrial origins.

Secondhand testimony: Grusch’s testimony is based on what other people told him, not what he directly observed. Graves and Fravor provided firsthand accounts of what they saw, but neither claimed the objects they encountered were extraterrestrial. The gap between “unexplained aerial objects” and “non-human biologics” is significant, and the hearing did not bridge it.

The credibility question: Supporters note that Grusch’s claims were found “credible and urgent” by the Intelligence Community Inspector General and that his background in intelligence gives weight to his allegations. Critics note that “credible” in the ICIG context means the complaint was properly filed and warranted investigation, not that its factual claims were verified.

What the session accomplished: Regardless of whether Grusch’s specific claims are validated, the July 2023 session forced Congressional attention onto UAP transparency, pilot reporting safety, and oversight of classified programs. The bipartisan interest it generated led directly to the UAP Disclosure Act and a follow-up session in 2024. Whether the underlying claims prove true or not, the political momentum they created is real.

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