The UAP Disclosure Act of 2024

In December 2023, Congress passed legislation specifically designed to address a problem that had become apparent through years of UAP hearings: classified programs related to unidentified aerial phenomena and non-human intelligence were operating outside the normal oversight structures that govern classified government programs. Elected members of Congress with the appropriate security clearances could not access them. The programs were held in contractor facilities under special access program designations that placed them outside the reach of standard declassification processes.

The UAP Disclosure Act was written to close that gap. Its structure mirrors the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which created a mechanism for surfacing documents that had been withheld through normal classification channels for three decades. The 1992 act worked. Documents were released that had been inaccessible for thirty years. The UAP Disclosure Act applies the same mechanism to a different category of government records.

The UAP Disclosure Act instructs the Archivist of the United States to establish a UAP Records Collection containing all government records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena. It defines the scope of records to be collected broadly, including records held by government agencies, military branches, intelligence community elements, and government contractors. It creates a presidential UAP Records Review Board with authority to order the declassification and release of records that agencies seek to withhold.

The legislation uses specific language in its findings section that is significant. It states that the federal government has collected material of unknown origin that may be of non-human intelligence. It states that some of this information has been withheld from Congress. It states that programs related to UAP have been operated without appropriate congressional oversight.

Legislation does not contain findings that are purely theoretical. A Congressional finding that the government has collected material that may be of non-human intelligence reflects what the bill's authors believed, based on the classified briefings they received and the testimony of witnesses, to be true. Senator Schumer, who sponsored the legislation, stated publicly that the bill was written in response to information he had received through the Senate Intelligence Committee about programs he could not access through normal oversight channels.

The UAP Disclosure Act addresses a specific structural problem that had been identified through congressional investigations. Some UAP-related programs appear to have been moved into private contractor facilities under special access program designations that place them outside the normal government classification system. Once in contractor custody under those designations, the programs are not subject to the same oversight requirements as programs held within government agencies. Congressional oversight committees cannot compel access. Standard FOIA requests do not apply. Even the executive branch may have limited visibility into what contractors hold under certain special access program structures.

David Grusch, a former intelligence officer who testified before Congress in July 2023, described this structure in his testimony. He stated that programs involving retrieved non-human craft and biological material had been illegally withheld from congressional oversight and that some of these programs were being operated by defense contractors with government knowledge but without the oversight that law requires. His testimony was given under oath. The Intelligence Community Inspector General found his complaint credible enough to forward to Congress as an urgent matter of national security.

The version of the UAP Disclosure Act that passed as part of the NDAA was significantly weaker than the version Schumer and Rounds originally introduced. The original bill gave the review board broad authority to order declassification over agency objections. The final version gave agencies significantly more power to resist declassification, allowed the president to postpone disclosures, and gave contractors additional legal protections.

Schumer stated publicly after the final bill passed that it had been weakened substantially from what he and Rounds intended. He described opposition from within the defense and intelligence community to the original bill's declassification mechanisms. The specific objections that produced the weakening of the bill have not been publicly documented. The programs that generated sufficient resistance to modify bipartisan Senate-sponsored legislation have not been identified in any public record.

The JFK Records Collection Act was passed in 1992, nearly thirty years after the assassination. It created a review board with authority to declassify records that agencies had withheld through normal channels. The board released millions of pages of previously withheld documents over the following years. Some of those documents described activities that had not been publicly known. The process confirmed that significant information had been held outside normal declassification processes for decades.

The UAP Disclosure Act uses the same model. If the parallel holds, the records that will eventually be released will describe programs that have operated outside normal oversight for an extended period and will contain information that was not accessible through any prior process. The timeline for those releases, and the question of what agency resistance will prevent or delay, has not been established. The legislation is signed. The implementation is ongoing. The records it is designed to surface have not been released.

Congress passed legislation stating that the government has collected material that may be of non-human intelligence, that this has been withheld from oversight, and that programs have operated outside normal accountability structures. The legislation was designed to force disclosure of those programs. It was weakened before passage by opposition whose specific objections have not been documented. The programs that generated that opposition have not been identified. The review board created by the act is operational. The records it is designed to surface have not been released.