Lockheed Martin Challenged On UFO Legacy Programs, As Politicians Talk Hearings
Written by Christopher Sharp - 11 March 2023
Journalist and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has challenged the US Senate Committee on Appropriations to audit alleged Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Special Access Programs, citing Lockheed Martin as an example.
While appearing on Newsmax yesterday alongside Representative Tim Burchett, who is also a UAP transparency advocate, Corbell referenced the Committee's Chair, Patty Murray, and its Vice Chair, Susan Collins, in his challenge.
“I would like to also encourage you, Congressman (Tim Burchett), with whatever power that you do have with your colleagues to do one thing in particular: right now we have the US Senate Committee on Appropriations. They have jurisdiction over the spending.
“We have Senator Patty Murray, we have Senator Susan Collins, who are able to audit the special access programmes, such as ones that are held like you're talking about at Lockheed Martin.”
Corbell also named Lieutenant General Dimitri Henry, Director of Intelligence from the US Joint Staff as key to transparency efforts:
“So I would like to include in this investigation, which I ask of you, for example, Lieutenant General Demetri Henry, you know he is the current Director for Intelligence Joint Staff J2, they have authority and management over the intelligence community.
“And they should be asking questions if we do have UFO exploitation programmes, [what] I'm calling the silver bullet, they should be able to ask of Lockheed and other contractors. What are they working on?”
Lue Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program backed up Corbell’s comments, telling Liberation Times:
"I applaud the effort to get to the bottom of any legacy efforts to exploit UAP materials and have stated in the past my position on the matter.
“I would also go a step further and not limit the focus of the inquiry to just one aerospace company, but to several others that have likely played a key historical role in this endeavour."
In the early 1990s, former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who was chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and the late Senator Harry Reid, tasked a Congressional staffer named Richard D'Amato with investigating claims of secretive UAP Special Access Programs.
After investigating and visiting Area 51, D’Amato was unable to verify claims relating to such programs but according to investigative journalist George Knapp thought it “entirely feasible, that this UFO cover-up exists within a private company, a company”, such as Lockheed Martin, EG&G or Northrop Grumman.
Evidence Of Mysterious Craft And Potential Hearings
During the Newsmax discussion, hosted by Rob Schmitt, a recent clip was played featuring Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
In the full version of the discussion, Gaetz spoke about evidence of a mysterious craft that did not appear to belong to the US, its allies, or adversaries:
“I have seen evidence of craft that I am not familiar with any of our allies or adversaries or even our country possessing.
“I've seen that craft taken by air crews who have gotten quite close to it. And we've got a lot more questions about why this information isn't more broadly available to the American people.”
“If there's stuff flying over our skies, and we don't know about it, whether it's Chinese whether [or] it's unworldly, I think we need a lot more transparency.
“And we've actually got a group of Congress members together, [and] we're going to be conducting a lot more investigations and trying to get this information before the public so that we can have a lot more assessment of the threat level and the risk level.”
Gaetz’s Republican colleague Tim Burchett claimed that new Congressional hearings into UAP are being planned within the House’s Oversight Committee, which he is a member of:
“We're going to have hearings.
“I've talked to Speaker McCarthy. I've talked to the chairman of [the] Oversight Committee. I'm on that Oversight Committee. That's where it's got to happen.
“We're going to have hearings, we're going to ask them tough questions.”
Liberation Times understands from sources that the possibility of hearings is growing and that multiple congressional committees may be involved - although the situation remains fluid.
Tension Between The Intelligence Community And Congress Builds
The UAP rhetoric is heating up again at a time when tensions between the Senate Intelligence Committee and intelligence community have increased.
On 9 March 2023, its Chair, Mark Warner, and Vice Chair, Marco Rubio, criticized the intelligence community for blocking congressional access to classified documents recovered from locations connected to Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence.
Rubio conjured up the intelligence abuses that led to the Church Committee and eventual establishment of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee:
“The unique aspect of what your agencies do is, by necessity it has to be secret. That's the work of intelligence. So how do you conduct oversight over something like that? For a long time, there really wasn't any congressional oversight, until the mid-1970s when committees uncovered all kinds of situations involving the intelligence communities…. The result was the creation of this committee and our counterpart in the House.”
“It comes down to a handful of members in the House and Senate who are entrusted with conducting oversight to ensure that not only are the intelligence agencies focused on the right things, but are doing it in a way that protects both civil liberties and our national security….”
“That’s our role, and it’s one we have to play very carefully and one that's really important for the country. Because we need what you do. But we also understand that if left unsupervised, any agency, at any time, especially ones with these extraordinary powers, can do things that are really troubling and end up actually threatening these agencies’ ability to continue to work.”
Although Rubio’s words must be put into the context of classified documents held by Trump, Biden, and Pence, Liberation Times understands that Congress is also frustrated by the intelligence community’s attempts to thwart investigations into alleged illegal UAP programs.
Liberation Times understands that the idea of something akin to the Church Committee of 1975 has been contemplated by some members of Congress since UAP whistleblower language was published in July 2022's version of the Intelligence Authorization Act.
Whether such an effort occurs through the Senate Intelligence Committee or within the House’s Oversight Committee is unknown at this time.
However, sources have claimed to Liberation Times that the topic is now beyond critical mass within Congress, with whistleblowers continuing to testify privately, providing key details about alleged legacy programs.
Meanwhile, the specific remit and organisation of the White House’s UAP Interagency Group has yet to be confirmed. Any potential attempts by the group to uncover alleged UAP programs may yield greater success due to the senior authority of the President and the powers he holds.
Are Public Efforts To Downplay UAP No Longer Effective?
It should be noted that there is still public resistance to eliminating stigma surrounding UAP from within Congress.
On 10 March 2023, Democratic congressman, Jim Himes, ranking minority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Gang if Eight member stated on the House floor:
“For reasons I don’t understand, some of our colleagues and many American are running around with a theory that somehow buttresses their political legitimacy.
“Maybe you do that with UFOs. Maybe you want to believe that there are aliens at Roswell, or whatever you want to believe - that is pretty harmless.”
Earlier in the week on 6 March 2023, despite Himes' best efforts to downplay many unidentified objects as being attributable to “junk”, he admitted to Stephen Colbert that there are unidentified objects that cannot be explained:
“They [the pilots] have sensors, so it's not just what they see, it's the sensors and if sensor picks something up, you know, there's something there, right?”
Himes added:
“We can explain almost everything, and this came out in the hearing; there's still a few that we're just not sure about.”
That statement was greeted by the audience with a disturbing and stunned eery silence.
The audience reaction may indicate that no matter how much representatives downplay UAP, the public’s mood has shifted beyond the giggles.