Making Sense of the UFO Hearing with Shane Harris
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2023
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
This past week, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a spirited hearing on an unusual topic: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, the more correct term for what are commonly called UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects. The witnesses included two military veterans who claimed to have borne eyewitness to UAPs, and an intelligence community whistleblower who claims to have heard secondhand from contacts about a range of government activity relating to extraterrestrials, including the recovery of alien remains and crashed aircraft. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the witnesses’ testimony has triggered an array of strong reactions, from outright scorn and disbelief to an array of boosters eager to tie it into their own worldviews and conspiracy theories.
To talk through the revelations at this hearing and the debate over UAPs more broadly, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with veteran Washington Post national security reporter Shane Harris, who has closely followed the debate over UAPs for many years. They talked about how the witnesses’ testimony fits into the broader universe of reports relating to UAPs, what parts reflect serious policy problems and which don't, and how to separate the wheat from the chaff in the broader UAP debate.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | It is also problematic to have the testimony of a witness, Dave Grush, who was offering |
| 0:41.1 | second-hand claims about the existence of alien technology with naval aviators who are |
| 0:47.9 | offering a first-hand account of something that they saw and are not trying to attribute |
| 0:53.3 | it to anything. |
| 0:54.3 | Now they may believe they had an encounter with an alien life form, they may believe that. |
| 0:59.4 | They're not saying it and I think that it's really problematic that these witnesses |
| 1:04.4 | got put together in the same context before a committee of lawmakers who believe that |
| 1:10.0 | the government is run by people who are in a conspiracy and run by a deep state. |
| 1:15.4 | I'm Scott Anderson and this is the LawFair podcast for July 31st, 2023. |
| 1:21.0 | This past week, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign |
| 1:25.2 | Affairs held a spirited hearing on an unusual topic, unidentified aerial phenomena or |
| 1:30.9 | UAPs, the more correct term for what are commonly called UFOs or unidentified flying objects. |
| 1:37.5 | The witnesses included two military veterans who claimed to have borne eyewitness to UAPs, |
| 1:41.9 | an intelligence committee whistleblower who claims to have heard second-hand from contacts |
| 1:45.8 | about a range of government activity relating to extraterrestrials, including the recovery |
| 1:50.0 | of alien remains and crashed aircraft. |
| 1:53.0 | Perhaps unsurprisingly, the witnesses testimony is triggered in array of strong reactions, |
... |
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