While not all of the congress members who participated in the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure are convinced we are being visited by extraterrestrials, they do appear unanimous in the opinion that the testimony was impressive. Most of them are now convinced this is a topic that the government should investigate further, and one is not only seeking a resolution from the UN to investigate UFOs, he has gone on camera with ABC News proclaiming the conspiracy to cover all of this up goes straight to the White House.
The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure YouTube page has posted videos with the closing thoughts from all of the former congress members making up the committee in the mock-congressional hearing last week. Most of the responses were very positive. The most lukewarm comes from former congresswoman Darlene Hooley who said, “When I decided I would do this, I honestly knew very little about the whole topic.”
“After listening, I will tell you, the people that have testified, I think, have great credibility.” Hooley continued, “ I think we’re sort of naïve to think in this huge huge universe that there are not other people, or other planets that are highly functioning people that live on those planets, and so I have gotten a great lesson this week.”
The committee member who expressed the most skepticism going into the event was former congressman Merrill Cook. He told the Salt Lake Tribune, “I made it clear to them that I am unlikely to be persuaded.” Although he was open to the idea of UFOs, he expressed more skepticism to the idea of extraterrestrials, saying, “It is still a leap to be saying that a UFO is extraterrestrial or that it’s being manned by people from outer space.”
Cook maintained this point of view after the week of testimony. He told the Citizen Hearing crew, “We have clearly unexplained objects out there that our government recognizes. Where I am not sure we have totally met the burden of proof is whether those have extraterrestrial origins.”
Still he says the quality of witnesses impressed him more than he thought they would have, and admitted, “This is moving me to think a lot of further investigation with more resources needs to be done, including some push to the United States government to put more resources into this.”
Former congresswomen Carolyn Kilpatrick and Lynn Woolsey expressed similar feelings about the high quality of witnesses. Woolsey went so far as to say, “It is almost impossible to be a skeptic after these amazing witnesses of caliber and intelligence and experience.”
Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlett says he is convinced that there is a “cloak of secrecy” over this topic, and he wonders why. “These are honest good people that made the decisions,” he says.” I think we need to understand why they did it so that we can get this thing reversed.”
The sixth member of the committee, former senator Mike Gravel, has been the most out spoken about his feelings on the topic. He says, “There is no doubt in my mind that there is an extraterrestrial presence that is affecting the planet.”
Gravel feels it is imperative that we learn more about these visitors. He says, “Probably the most important issue facing our civilization is to understand this, to explore it, and hopefully mature to level where we can have contact with extraterrestrial interests.”
Gravel has not been shy about sharing these opinions with the media. In the ABC News video blog Top Line, he was asked how high up he felt the conspiracy went to keep the lid on extraterrestrial visitation. He told them, “It goes right to the White House, and of course, once the White House takes a position, ‘well there’s nothing going on’…it just goes down the chain of command, everyone stands toe.”
When asked why the government would keep this secret, he replied, “The military wants to keep this secret, because they don’t want to reveal to the American people that all of these trillions of dollars that we have spent on this silly defense posture that they don’t work.”
ABC brought up the fact that the committee members were paid $20,000 to participate in the hearing. They asked if this gave him an incentive to believe the testimony. Gravel said it was “quite the contrary.”
Last week Gravel had voiced his opinion that this matter should be brought up with the United Nations. Testimony was given from several countries, and the global nature of the phenomenon convinced him that this was the best course of action. He assembled a group of panelist to discuss this option.
The Citizen Hearing committee members were more enthusiastic and involved than many had thought they would be. In his closing thoughts, organizer Stephen Bassett said the committee members were not chosen because of their views going into this event, and what they want to do going forward is up to them.
Bassett says that they were not able to get this information while they were in Congress because they are told there is nothing to it, so they don’t spend the time to get to know more. He says, “This is an end run around that barrier and we will see how it goes.”
