Chuck Schumer Moves to Declassify UFO Secrets Like JFK Records

Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer has introduced legislation that could lead to a swarth of U.S. government-held documents relating to unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, being declassified.

The Democrat from New York tacked an amendment onto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which would create a commission with the power to declassify information, with Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Rounds also giving their support.

The government is under pressure to reveal exactly what it knows about UFOs, in response to an active conspiracy movement existing around the subject. House Republican Tim Burchett said Thursday the government has "been covering this [UFOs] up since the 40s" during an appearance on NewsNation, adding: "I think the American people can handle it."

Schumer announced his new plan on Twitter, sharing an article from The New York Times on the subject. "I'm introducing new legislation to declassify government records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena and UFOs as an amendment to the NDAA, modeled after the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act," the senator wrote.

The 1992 John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act resulted in the publication of thousands of previously sealed government records relating to the 1963 shooting of President Kennedy.

Newsweek reached out to Schumer's Washington, D.C. office for comment.

While the term UFO is often used as a shorthand for extraterrestrials, it actually refers to any unidentified aerial object which defies conventional explanation.

On February 4, a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina by an F22 fighter jet on the orders of President Biden.

In the following weeks, two more unidentified objects were shot down by the U.S. Air Force over Alaska and Yukon, Canada. House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the object downed over Alaska was the size of a small car and posed a "reasonable threat" to civilian aviation.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand described the item hit over Yukon as "potentially similar" to the balloon brought down off South Carolina, "though smaller in size and cylindrical in nature."

If adopted, Schumer's proposal would see President Biden appoint a nine-person review board, with Senate approval, to go over classified information related to UFOs and the presumption that material should be made public where possible. The president would, however, have the power to delay the declassification of documents if he believes there are national security concerns.

"You now will have a process through which we will declassify this material," Allison Biasotti, a spokeswoman for Schumer, told The New York Times.

Twitter and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk welcomed the legislation, writing "Cool" on Twitter in response to Schumer's tweet.

The House Oversight Committee is also planning to hold a hearing on UFOs, with Politico reporting this could begin at the end of July. Speaking to the outlet, Burchett, who sits on the committee, said: "That's what it is about: Aliens...I think people deserve to know."

While appearing on the science and space-focused Event Horizon podcast, the congressman laid out his concerns in more detail.

Referring to aliens, he said: "If they're out there, they're out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette. If they can travel light years or at the speeds that we've seen, and physics as we know it, fly underwater, don't show a heat trail, things like that, then we are vastly out of our league."

In June, Republican Senator Josh Hawley claimed the U.S. government has "downplayed" reports of "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAPs), also known as UFOs, for a long, long time. The government has never claimed to have identified alien lifeforms that have come to Earth, and no firm evidence that it is covering this up has been made available.