Congress appears poised to enact legislation that would command the military and intelligence agencies to get a grip on "unidentified aerial phenomena," and authorizes the resources required.

By Douglas Dean Johnson

WASHINGTON– (December 7, 2021, 1:45 PM EST) –  With the unveiling today of legislative language already agreed on in negotiations between key lawmakers meeting privately, it is likely that Congress will soon send the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community a set of emphatic statutory commands regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (or UFOs, in common parlance). The UAP-related provisions are included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), now being advanced under the bill designated S. 1605.  

The content of the UAP language agreed on by negotiators from the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services committees is being reported and analyzed in detail here for the first time anywhere.  [To access a PDF file containing the title page plus the six pages that contain Section 1683 (the UAP provisions), as they appear in the final version of the bill (known as the "enrolled bill"), click here.]

[December 27, 2021 cumulative update:  On December 27, 2021, President Biden signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (S. 1605), including the far-reaching UFO-related provisions analyzed in this article. The bill and the UFO language discussed here were unveiled by congressional negotiators on December 7, 2021, and I posted this analysis later the same day.  Both the House of Representatives and the Senate subsequently passed the legislation with no substantive changes (only very minor technical corrections).  The House passed the bill on December 7, 2021, on a roll call vote of 363-70.  The Senate passed it on December 21, 2021, on a roll call vote of 88-11. The bill became law with President Biden's signature on December 27, 2021.]

I read the unwritten message underlying the bill language as something like this: We, the Congress, have concluded that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are serious business. We want you to start treating it as serious business: Get your act together and get a grip on this problem! Expect to be held accountable.

The measure incorporates a robust array of statutory provisions, in essence commanding the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community (IC) to substantially elevate the priority, coordination, and resources that they devote to investigations of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).  The legislation describes the overarching mission in unmistakable terms, but also provides detailed mandates and funding authorities to advance UAP investigations, and provisions to require a measure of periodic partial public disclosure of future findings.

This negotiated NDAA proposal has been packed into the shell of a numbered bill that has already passed the Senate (S. 1605, a measure dealing with a memorial, no longer needed after a duplicate bill was enacted), which may simplify the procedural steps in the Senate. Even so, a round or two of legislative "ping-pong" might occur, as the Senate and House work out a few remaining issues unrelated to UAP.  It is not likely that the UAP language would be altered during such any such ping pong. Congress has enacted an NDAA for the past 60 consecutive years.

The new negotiated NDAA text contains most, but not all, of the major components of the Gillibrand-Rubio Amendment.  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who sits on both the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, introduced her amendment on November 4, 2021.  [I was the first person anywhere to publicly report on the Gillibrand proposal, in a lengthy analytical post on this blog at noon on November 5, 2021.  Since then, I have frequently reported on legislative developments pertaining to the proposal via my Twitter account, @ddeanjohnson.] Gillibrand's amendment was quickly co-sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), well known in ufological circles for a number of past actions and strongly worded public statements about UAP, beginning in 2020.  Senators Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also soon joined as co-sponsors. In this article, I will sometimes refer to the new UAP text as the "Gillibrand-Rubio-Gallego" language, or "GRG."  The UAP-related language is contained in Section 1683.  

Gillibrand's proposal built on and greatly upgraded a set of UAP-related mandates that had earlier been incorporated into the House version of the NDAA (H.R. 4350) by Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).  Gallego is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee-- a panel that had received a classified briefing from the UAP Task Force on June 17, 2021. (My September 11, 2021 report on the groundbreaking Gallego initiative is here.) That bill sailed through the House of Representatives, without any challenge to Gallego's UAP language, on September 23, 2021.

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https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/unidentified-aerial-phenomena-serious-business/