A video showing a “white orb” UFO coming out of the ocean off Kuwait has been found on the US Department of Defense’s own network, a congressional hearing has heard.
Giving evidence to House representatives on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), the now-preferred term for UFOs, journalist Michael Shellenberger said he had been told of the footage by a source in recent weeks.
As it happened: Latest updates from the hearing
Mr Shellenberger, the founder of the Public news service, said the 13-minute-long high-definition, colour video was of the “orb” 20 miles off the Kuwait coast and was filmed from a helicopter.
“Then, halfway through the video, the person said, the orb is joined by another orb that briefly comes into the frame from the left before rapidly moving again out of the frame.”
He said the source discovered the video on SIPR, the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network that the Department of Defense “uses to transmit classified information”.
One particularly eye-catching moment saw representative Nancy Mace, who served as the hearing’s co-chair, bring out a 12-page document purporting to detail a classified UAP crash-retrieval programme known as Immaculate Constellation.
‘Come at me bro, I guess’
The report had been delivered to Congress by Mr Shellenberger who told the hearing a whistleblower, who is a current or former US government official, wrote the report that said “the executive branch has been managing UAP issues without congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorisation for some time, possibly decades”.
After entering the document into the Congressional record, Ms Mace said she had been warned that referencing the programme’s name in a public setting would land her “on a list”, to which she said: “Come at me bro, I guess.”
The hearing was named “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth”, and is part of a committee’s ongoing efforts to provide more information about what the government knows or does not know about UAPs.
The House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation was told that objects, including those observed performing at more than 3,000Gs, have been spotted over US military and energy sites.
The representatives heard the objects could travel faster underwater than US submarines and could withstand massive force.
‘We are not alone in the cosmos’
Luis Elizondo, a former defence department official, was asked whether these objects could be controlled via a “mind-body connection”, to which he answered they were clearly being “intelligently controlled”.
“The vehicles we’re talking about… are performing in excess of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000Gs,” he said, adding that they react to human movement and are incredibly manoeuvrable.
“We are talking about technologies that outperform anything in our [military] inventory,” he said.
Luis Elizondo, a former defence department official
Mr Elizondo also said there was “definitely enough data” to suggest that there is “some sort of relationship” between UAPs and “sensitive US military installations, also some of our nuclear equities and also some of our department of energy sites”.
He later clarified this could be because the UAPs, or whoever or whatever is operating them, are particularly interested in gaining information about the sites, or it could simply be because there is increased visibility in such sensitive areas that more are spotted.
Mr Elizondo said “excessive secrecy” has led to “grave misdeeds… to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos”.
We are “in the midst of a multi-decade, secretive arms race - one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Mr Elizondo stated during his testimony.
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Members also heard that the US had recovered crashed UAPs for the purpose of understanding how to reverse-engineer them, but witnesses said they could not elaborate further.
Last year, the House Oversight Committee also looked into UFOs, with at least one witness claiming a Pentagon cover-up – something the department denied.
In November 2023, NASA announced it was taking “concrete action” to explore the potential threat of UFOs following the release of a landmark report into the phenomena.
A 33-page report had found that NASA should play a larger role in detecting such phenomena.