Sean Kirkpatrick, who leads the Pentagon's UFO office, ripped whistleblower testimony from a Wednesday congressional hearing that claimed to have firsthand knowledge of "nonhuman" technology, calling the proceeding "insulting" in a post on LinkedIn.
Former intelligence official David Grusch testified before the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs that in his position as liaison to Kirkpatrick's office he discovered that the government was concealing a crashed nonhuman spacecraft from both the public and Congress.
In his post, Kirkpatrick claimed that Grusch was "never a representative" to his office, which is officially called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and said the testimony was "insulting."
"I am deeply disappointed at the denigration of AARO's dedicated men and women hailing from the Department of Defense, intelligence community, and civil partners who are pouring their hearts out working this issue on the behalf of Congress," Kirkpatrick said.
"To be clear, AARO has yet to find any credible evidence to support the allegations of any reverse engineering program for nonhuman technology."
Kirkpatrick's claims contradict Grusch's previous description of his role as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency lead on UFO reporting to AARO, which was confirmed by the House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who helped organize Wednesday's hearing, denounced Kirkpatrick for his criticism of the hearing witnesses, which included two former Navy pilots who encountered strange objects during flights over the ocean.
"That's crazy to me that they would even try to discredit them," Luna told the Daily Mail. "The fact that Kirkpatrick just tried to discredit the other two witnesses that were legitimate pilots for the military, that had the 'Gimbal' and 'Tic Tac' videos that were confirmed by DOD is the exact reason why I think people don't trust AARO."
While flying off the coast of southern California in November 2004, David Fravor encountered a strange "tic tac-"shaped object, which was caught on infrared video by another pilot and leaked to The New York Times in 2017.
Graves had a similar encounter off the East Coast around 2015 and his fellow pilots captured the object on video as well.
Luna told the Mail that she would follow up on Grusch's claims by calling more witnesses, issuing subpoenas, and demanding the Pentagon turn over documents.
In a letter on Thursday, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for a select committee on "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena," which are more commonly known as UFOs.
Led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the four lawmakers requested that the select committee be independent and have subpoena power, with the goal of "collecting information from the Pentagon and elsewhere" on UAPs.
In addition to Gaetz, the letter was signed by Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.
Citing Grusch's shocking testimony, the unorthodox group said that the Pentagon "has been keeping Congress in the dark" on the issue.
McCarthy said last week that he would "love to see whatever facts and information we have" on UAPs.
"I'm very supportive to letting the American public see whatever we have," he added.
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