House Oversight Committee
The House Oversight Committee (formally the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability) is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives that held the first public UAP congressional hearing in 26 years on July 26, 2023, at which David Grusch, Ryan Graves, and David Fravor testified under oath — marking the most significant congressional action on the UAP topic since the 1966 University of Colorado UFO Project hearings.
July 2023 UAP hearing
The July 26, 2023 hearing before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs — chaired by Rep. Glenn Grothman and ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia — was the first congressional UAP hearing with whistleblower testimony under oath. Additionally waved onto the subcommittee were Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Andy Ogles (R-TN).
Ryan Graves
Ryan Graves, a former F/A-18 pilot and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, testified that UAP encounters in his squadron began in 2014 following radar upgrades and described a near-miss where a UAP — "a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere" — came within 50 feet of a lead F/A-18 in Warning Area Whiskey 72 off Virginia Beach. Graves stated the same morphology was reported "over almost eight years" and that commercial pilots were receiving cease-and-desist orders from airlines when attempting to report UAP encounters. He described objects stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds that then accelerated to Mach 1.1–1.2 — shapes and behaviors he confirmed exceeded any known U.S. or adversary capability.
David Grusch
David Grusch identified himself as a 14-year intelligence officer (USAF major / NGA GS-15) who served as co-lead on UAP analysis and reported to the UAP Task Force and subsequently AARO. He described filing a PPD-19 urgent concern with the ICIG in May 2022 following reports from "multiple esteemed and credentialed current and former military and intelligence community individuals that the U.S. government is operating with secrecy above congressional oversight with regards to UAPs." Under oath he stated: "I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program, to which I was denied access."
When asked by Rep. Garcia whether the government possesses UAP, Grusch responded: "Based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years — I know the exact locations and those locations were provided to the Inspector General." When asked if programs existed above congressional oversight, Grusch confirmed: "Yes, I do" — and described the mechanism as misappropriation of funds, stating that U.S. corporations were overcharging for technology and routing excess funds to unacknowledged programs. He confirmed being in fear for his life, and having directed individuals with knowledge of fatalities connected to the cover-up to the appropriate authorities.
Grusch also directly rebutted AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick's prior testimony that AARO had found "no credible evidence" of extraterrestrial activity, testifying under oath: "It's not accurate."
David Fravor
David Fravor, a retired Navy commander and Tic-Tac encounter witness, testified that the object descended from above 80,000 feet ("above 80,000 feet is space"), hung out for hours, then "rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared" before reappearing at the combat air patrol point 60 miles away in under a minute. He stated: "I think it is far beyond our material science that we currently possess" — and described the encounter was never investigated at the time, despite the captain and admiral being aware.
Burchett's role and institutional resistance
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of the primary organizers of the July 2023 hearing, described significant institutional resistance in the lead-up: the committee's press conference room was initially assigned in an under-construction space despite the scale of public interest, access to pilots and radar imagery at Eglin Air Force Base was denied when Burchett, Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna visited — only after Gaetz contacted the Pentagon directly did base commanders agree to allow them to view the image taken by the flight crew and meet one pilot.
Burchett described the hearing as attracting more international public attention than any congressional hearing in a reporter's fifteen-year experience, with people lining up outside the building from 4:30 in the morning, attendees from overseas, and an overflow viewing room packed with additional observers.
Grusch testimony and classification constraints
Michael Salla noted that the institutional pushback against Grusch's testimony — from AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick and Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough — was unusual for a sitting bureaucrat, given that Grusch's testimony was sworn congressional testimony carrying criminal penalties for perjury. Salla argued that critics who attacked Grusch for not releasing specific program details in public missed that doing so would constitute unauthorized disclosure of classified information, exposing him to prosecution. Grusch testified in closed sessions to both intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives in addition to the public hearing, presenting details he could not safely disclose in open session.