(NewsNation) — It’s time to share: That’s the mandate to all federal agencies when it comes to anything they have dealing with UFOs.
The National Archives and Records Administration has set a deadline of Sept. 30 for all agencies to deliver copies of every document, audio and video or any other media they may have about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UFOs.
That mandate is part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that funds the Defense Department.
The UAP Records Collection will consist of “copies of all Government, Government-provided, or Government-funded records relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence,” NARA says.
While the deadline for copies is Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year, agencies have until Oct. 24 to review, identify and organize their material.
NARA will make material that isn’t classified available online, along with a search function. But will the UAP Records Collection contain anything?
“Laws only work when there is a willingness to heed those laws,” said NewsNation special correspondent Ross Coulthart. “It seems to be entirely on an honor system that these government departments will respect the legislation.”
In March, the Pentagon released its congressionally mandated report on “historic” UFO cases and said it found “no verifiable evidence that any UAP (aka UFO) sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.”
The report from the department’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, also said that executives at major defense contractors “denied the existence” of any top-secret UFO crash retrieval programs “on the record.”
“We are already seeing blatant illegality in the way that the Defense Department in particular fails to properly heed Congress’s legal demands for information,” Coulthart said. “(It’s) possibly best shown by the derisory UAPs historical review report, which completely failed to follow what the legislation actually required AARO to do.”
Some lawmakers want to go farther than the language in the defense bill. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on Friday introduced a bill to require the declassification of all federal documents related to UAP.
“This bill isn’t all about finding little green men or flying saucers,” Burchett said in a statement. “It’s about forcing the Pentagon and federal agencies to be transparent with the American people.”
The UAP Transparency Act would require the president to direct all federal agencies to share all UAP-related material with the public within nine months.
“I’m sick of hearing bureaucrats telling me these things don’t exist while we’ve spent millions of taxpayer dollars on studying them for decades,” Burchett said.
“Congressman Burchett is well intentioned with the legislation,” Courthart added. “But it’s next to useless unless the National Archives cracks the whip on these departments and makes sure that they are audited to ensure they are heeding these laws.”