With all of the crazy news coming from all parts of the globe these days, it can be easy to lose sight of some of the normal, run-of-the-mill housekeeping work that Congress manages to get done from time to time. One such item was this month’s publishing of the 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act which was approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The IAA is typically a fairly routine affair that provides funding and authorizes oversight for the U.S. Intelligence Community. But there were a few elements in the IAA this year that were anything but routine or run-of-the-mill, and they deal with UFOs and possibly (wait for it…) aliens.

This information was first reported by the indispensable Douglas Dean Johnson on this website. (If you have even a passing interest in the UFO/UAP topic, you should bookmark Dean’s site and follow him on social media. He’s always on top of this stuff before everyone else.) It turns out that Congress is issuing some very unique marching orders to Federal Government contractors that work with our military. Congress wants to know which, if any of them are in possession of “material or information… relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena.” Yes, we’re talking about UFOs. And any companies that have such material or information are being ordered to notify AARO, the Pentagon’s UFO investigatory office, within a specific time period and make such materials available to the office or be found in violation of the law.

The new UAP language (found in Section 1104 of the bill) would require “any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access” to notify the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) within 60 days of enactment, and to provide within 180 days (six months) “a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material” possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for “assessment, analysis, and inspection.”

Also, they don’t plan to allow the information to remain locked up inside the Pentagon. AARO is ordered to notify senior members of certain congressional committees, probably at least the Gang of Eight, within 30 days.

This entire situation is simply surreal. This could have come straight out of a Steven Spielberg screenplay, but it’s actually about to be codified into law. The IAA is considered “must pass” legislation, so there’s little chance of these orders being derailed. Anyone who follows the lore of ufology has heard stories about contractors working on crashed, recovered alien craft, but now the topic is being openly examined in the halls of Congress.

It’s almost certain that these latest developments were spurred, at least in part, by the revelations of UFO whistleblower David Grusch, which we covered when he first went public. We have since learned that he (and potentially others involved in the beyond-Top-Secret UFO program he revealed) has been speaking to AARO and members of Congress who have been investigating the situation. Almost all of it remains classified so we don’t know what they’ve been told. But the language in the IAA makes it clear that the subjects of crash retrieval and possible reverse engineering of technologies derived from a non-human intelligence have been on the table.

What does not appear to be mentioned in the legislation is the possibility of “bodies,” or “dead pilots” as Grusch called them during his NewsNation interview. But the two topics are probably intertwined if the whistleblower’s claims are to be believed. If any of the defense contractors have the remains of non-human creatures in a freezer someplace, will they be forced to turn them over to Congress as well?

So what are we to make of all of this? It sounds almost too fantastical for even me to believe, and I’ve seen some UFOs. What if it’s all real? And how much will the public be told if that’s what Congress concludes? I suppose I can understand not sharing too much technical information about the alleged materials in case it offers some sort of advantage to our adversaries. (Although Grusch claims they have their own craft and creatures.) But what advantage would the knowledge of intelligent non-human life give to anyone? It would be a civilization-altering moment and as far as I’m concerned, the public deserves to know the truth.