The long government shutdown had left a secret screening in limbo. But Monday on Capitol Hill, a handful of House members filed into a committee room to watch a new documentary featuring nearly three dozen government officials and others discussing what they can disclose about unidentified aerial phenomena, long known as U.F.O.s.
The unusual bipartisan mix of Republicans and Democrats had gathered to watch “The Age of Disclosure,” which had its high-profile debut at South by Southwest earlier this year. In the film, 34 former and current senior members of government, military and intelligence groups claim that they have knowledge of advanced nonhuman intelligence and contend, among other things, that there’s been an 80-year cover-up of the reverse engineering of technology retrieved from crashes.
Perhaps the biggest name in “The Age of Disclosure” (in theaters Friday) is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former senator whose participation helped open the door for other top officials to go on record when he served as the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In the film, he cites “repeated instances of something operating in the airspace over restricted nuclear facilities, and it’s not ours. And we don’t know whose it is.”
At the invitation of the movie’s producer and director, Dan Farah, five House members, as well as staffers and a few of the former officials who were interviewed in the film gathered at a long conference table in a large Cannon House Office Building space. The closed-door session was scheduled for 7 p.m., but members arrived late after a vote, without time to eat.
Representative André Carson of Indiana, a Democrat from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, praised the documentary, saying it “pieces everything together that we’ve seen on television, on film and on social media.” Carson, a host of the screening who also appears in the film, added, “There is a section in here that will bring context to all the fuzzy photos that we’ve seen.”
One attendee, Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri, said he hoped “The Age of Disclosure” would help make the U.A.P. issue a priority for the Trump administration.
“I think we’ve had enough hearings” and it is now time for hard evidence or “receipts,” he said in an interview while waiting for his colleagues to arrive. “I’m trying to find the receipts. In private conversations, I’ve been given enough information to find them, I just don’t have access.”
A request to a Pentagon spokesperson for comment on the film drew no initial response. In a 2021 report on more than 100 U.A.P. sightings, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it lacked any data explaining the sightings as the work of American classified programs, technology from adversaries or extraterrestrial visitations.
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with investigating U.A.P., has said it has no verifiable information to support reports of a government program to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial materials.
The controversial documentary has drawn mixed reactions from critics, with several reviews questioning unproven statements.
But on Monday the movie and Farah were introduced by Carson and his co-host, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the chairwoman of the House’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
Also at the screening were Representatives Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, and Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida. A few of the military and intelligence officials interviewed on camera were also on hand: Jay Stratton, a former director of the Pentagon’s U.A.P. task force; Brett Feddersen, a former White House National Security Council director of aviation security; and Timothy Gallaudet, a retired rear admiral. (The House members Burchett and Luna also appear in the film.)
In the film, Stratton says “I have seen with my own eyes nonhuman craft and nonhuman beings,” but declined to elaborate before the screening.
The mood in the room was often electric, but somber too as the rapt guests watched the 109-minute film, occasionally whispering to one another. In an animated discussion afterward, they talked about their support for legislation to increase transparency, voicing hopes that the film would raise public backing for their efforts.
The public has been “kept in the dark, and misled by a sophisticated disinformation campaign that silenced anyone who attempted to reveal the truth,” Farah, who was a producer of Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” said in an interview.
The showing was held in part to mobilize support for the U.A.P. Disclosure Act, legislation proposing a path to undoing government secrecy on this topic that has been introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. Rounds was interviewed in the film.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, did not attend but sent a statement calling for greater transparency and saying she would work in Congress to “reduce the stigma around reporting, strengthen our national security, and ensure U.A.P. records are being properly disclosed.”
At the event, Burlison emphasized the need for legislation to protect whistle-blowers and called on the president to take action. “Trump could do an executive order tomorrow,” Burlinson said, urging viewers “to pick up the phone and reach out to their representatives.”
Congressional committees have held four public hearings in the last few years, interviewing whistle-blowers, Navy pilots, witnesses to unexplained events and government personnel. The representatives at the screening all participated in at least one of those hearings.
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