(NewsNation) — Two key provisions were deleted from the Department of Defense spending bill regarding the requirement to make any information on UAPs public.
Some lawmakers have been pushing for more transparency around unidentified aerial phenomena and have taken a step toward that goal by including in the annual defense funding bill a provision requiring disclosure of classified records relating to UAPs but not before stripping out key portions of the measure.
As for the UAP measure, whistleblower David Grusch called it a “mixed bag of success.” He credited senators for keeping in a provision that fences off money for illegal special access programs but overall says the watered-down version presented last week doesn’t do enough.
One of the nixed provisions would have created an advisory panel whose members are chosen by the president. This group would have been tasked with sorting through which records would be disclosed.
Another aspect of the bill would give the government full possession of all recovered “non-human technology” currently kept by private entities like defense contractors.
Now, the legislation includes a list of exemptions for disclosing records on UAPs, including ones if the documents could threaten national defense, compromise national intelligence or federal agents or threaten sources and methods of intel gathering.
The UAP measure in the defense bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., would disclose records on “technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence.”
Rounds said it’s clear now to Congress that it’s not just one branch or area within the government that it has to retrieve material and information from. Therefore, one of this bill’s greatest accomplishments would be establishing a separate location where these records will be kept and transferred.
The bill passed through the Senate with “flying colors,” but Rounds said the House still has some work to do to get it where it needs to be.
The South Dakota representative said he hopes Congress will be able to provide additional information to the American public on this topic without damaging U.S. national security.
However, Schumer says the bill doesn’t go nearly as far as he intended. The senator blames House Republicans for fighting against his efforts for more transparency.
“This model’s been a terrific success for decades,” Schumer said. “It should be used again with UAPs, but once again, House Republicans are ready to kill this bipartisan provision.”
NewsNation sources said the two provisions were taken out after influence from the House Intelligence Committee.
Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett had proposed a provision for the bill that would require the FAA to forward reports from commercial airline pilots who claim they spot an anomaly or UFO. However, Schumer and Rounds had to tell him it wasn’t even considered for the UAP bill because the intelligence community didn’t like it.
To Burchett, it’s about broader transparency from other government agencies such as the Pentagon.
“It’s about greed. It’s about power. It’s about control,” Burchett said. “All those things that run Washington D.C., and it’s obvious that some of my colleagues have been compromised.”
He continued, “They’re studying something over there with our money.”