In a clandestine gathering slated for next week, the US government’s inner circle is set to delve into the enigmatic realm of UFOs, stirring public curiosity about the covert information harboured by intelligence officials.

The House Oversight Committee members are slated for a confidential briefing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the new designation for UFOs, scheduled at the Office of House Security on January 12.

The surge of interest in UAPs at a governmental level was triggered by ex-intelligence officer David Grusch’s revelation, igniting a whistleblower storm asserting that the government possesses “evidence of intact and partially intact alien vehicles.”

This revelation culminated in a pivotal congressional hearing where Grusch and two other witnesses provided sworn testimony about their encounters with UAPs. Retired Navy pilot Ryan Graves unveiled that UFOs are a clandestine reality among fighter pilots, recounting a hair-raising anecdote involving jets manoeuvring around a stationary “dark grey cube inside of a clear sphere.”

Former Navy commander David Fravor reminisced about the infamous ‘Tic Tac’ UFO, a nimble, white object that streaked past military aircraft before mysteriously appearing on radar 60 miles away seconds later. Grusch, bolstering his initial claims, alleged incidents of individuals being “harmed or injured” in attempts to cloak information about the retrieved crafts.

Adding fuel to the controversy, Grusch featured on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, affirming the government’s retrieval of “at least ten” alien bodies from UAP crashes.

Despite a NASA report last year negating any extraterrestrial origins of UAPs, intrigue surrounding these mysterious aerial phenomena persists at an all-time high.

Where once UFO discussions were met with scepticism or derision, concerns over airspace safety are now being cited as a compelling rationale for global governments to divulge their troves of information.

In a recent development, a Freedom of Information request revealed a hair-raising incident where a Ryanair plane narrowly missed colliding with a UFO during takeoff from Stansted airport in Essex. This alarming encounter, at a speed of 230mph, heightened concerns about airspace security.

In the UK, prominent UFO authority Nick Pope raised eyebrows by suggesting that “demonic forces” might be linked to UAPs, obstructing government investigations.

In the US, Congressman Tim Burchett from Tennessee spearheads a bipartisan group of oversight committee members pressing for comprehensive disclosure. Their efforts prompted a forthcoming briefing after sending a pointed letter to intelligence community inspector general Thomas Monheim seeking more details, including potential programs to reverse engineer or retrieve crashed UAP vehicles.

However, the push for transparency faces opposition. House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner and House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers are staunch adversaries of a bill aiming to establish a panel with ‘presidential-level authority’ to scrutinise and publicise government records.

Supporters of the bill argue that resistance indicates a deeper knowledge being concealed by the government.

The UAP disclosure act also proposes granting the government authority to seize any unidentified recovered technologies and biological evidence of non-human intelligence held by private entities. Critics Turner and Rogers notably receive substantial political donations from defence giant Lockheed Martin.

While Congress is yet to vote on the act, its passage is anticipated, promising a flood of UAP records into the National Archives for public perusal.

This growing fascination with UAPs extends beyond the US. Mexico convened its own congressional hearing, albeit marred by controversy when ufologist Jaime Maussan claimed to unveil bodies of ‘non-human beings’ found in a Peruvian algae mine, widely dismissed as a hoax.

Scientists in Mexico recently congregated to debunk such claims at a conference titled ‘Science responds to the charlatans and the gullible.’ Professor Alejandro Frank lamented the distraction caused by such hoaxes amid pressing global issues like climate change, warfare, and pandemics.