Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) this week cited alarming classified reports of UFOs he has seen following President Donald Trump’s tease of a pending release of government files on the phenomena by the Pentagon.
“These people are seeing something out there,” Burchett told News Nation host Elizabeth Vargas while talking about what the government now calls UAPs or “unidentified aerial/anomalous phenomena.”
In February, President Trump announced he’d ordered the federal government to identify and release all relevant files on the phenomena, and a week ago he predicted disclosure would begin soon.
The congressman made his comments in connection with a rash of reports about missing and dead scientists connected to classified arial research and development.
He said he was limited to what he could talk about from classified settings but gave a stunning example of one military report.
Burchett recalled a discussion he had with a Navy admiral who told him about an aircraft they saw on sonar that was “almost as big as a football field” and “traveling over 200 miles an hour” underwater.
“We don’t have anything of that capability or that size,” Burchett said.
According to Burchett, one of the most outspoken legislators on the subject:
I’ve seen pictures and video of things that defy any reason that we have, and everybody says, ‘Well, it’s our stuff, it’s the Russians, it’s the Chinese.’ If it’s the Chinese, ma’am, they would own us. If it was the Russians, they wouldn’t be bogged down in Ukraine.
If it was ours, we would never risk our military fighting men and women in half-a-billion-dollar aircraft out with these things that they’re spotting. These things can hover for hours on end, then they can just shoot straight up, they can do angles.
In another appearance on Pierce Morgan Uncensored, the Tennessee congressman also cited the underwater craft report and said servicemen who report such things are often “pulled off the line and will get a psych evaluation.”
He also criticized a lack of transparency by the federal government, predicting material could very well still be kept secret despite President Trump’s release order.
“I feel like this is something that’s being held back for whatever reason,” Burchett told Morgan. “I have no faith in our federal government will release any of this stuff.”
Burchett’s comments come one week after President Trump said at a Turning Point USA event that the “first releases” of documents on the matter “will begin very, very soon.”
In February, the president announced he was ordering the veil of secrecy on the UAPs to be lifted.
He wrote on Truth Social at the time:
Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
The post became another endorsement of the notion that the government was secretly documenting the phenomena following the 2017 revelation in a New York Times article that the Pentagon had a special unit that was studying UAPs.
Adding to the interest was former President Barack Obama telling commentator Brian Tyler Cohen earlier this year that he believed aliens “are real,” but also saying the governments were not hiding any information.
Obama later walked back the comment saying it was based on the size of the universe.
Trump accused the former president of revealing classified information with the comment.
“Well, he gave classified information,” Trump told a Fox reporter back in February. “He’s not supposed to be doing that.”
Talking on News Nation, Burchett joined with the president in calling for full disclosure of relevant files on the subject.
“Just put it out there and let people decide,” he told Vargas. “I have my own theories about what it is, but I would hope that America could handle [it]. I think they can handle it.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.