Kirsten Gillibrand And Mark Warner To The Rescue (Amnesty NOT DISCLOSURE)

douglasjohnson  |  The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has unanimously approved legislation containing language that appears intended to dig out any UAP-associated technology that is or ever was controlled by the federal government.

The new UAP/UFO provisions are being publicly reported in detail in this article for the first time anywhere.

The new UAP provisions are part of the Fiscal Year 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA, S. 2103), which was approved unanimously by the Senate Intelligence committee in a closed-door session on June 14.  On June 21 I reported on the committee's action, but the text of the UAP amendment was not yet publicly available at that time. The committee formally filed the bill and it was assigned its number on June 22; it was posted on the Internet early on June 24.

The new UAP language (found in Section 1104 of the bill) would require "any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access" to notify the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) within 60 days of enactment, and to provide within 180 days (six months) "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material" possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for "assessment, analysis, and inspection."

AARO is the Pentagon office established by Congress to conduct investigations of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), and to collect information on current and past federal government activity pertaining to UAP.

The legislation also would require the AARO director to notify designated congressional committees and leaders within 30 days after receiving any such notifications, information, or exotic materials.

The Intelligence committee legislation also includes what might be called a "safe harbor" provision, providing that if such a person complies with the notification and make-available deadlines, "No criminal or civil action may lie or be maintained in any Federal or State court against any person for receiving [UAP-related] material or information."

The "safe harbor" language might be read to imply that a private entity that obtained non-human technology from the government, and then held on to that material outside of the standard mechanisms for democratic oversight, perhaps profiting from it in some manner, might be in a legally tenuous position. If so, then such an amnesty period might smooth the way for timely and orderly disclosure. This reading of the provision is speculative; the committee has not yet published any explanatory material on the language.

Section 1104 of S. 2103 does not create any new criminal offenses. Neither does it confer any immunity for threats or acts of violence, perjury, or other crimes of the sorts sometimes alleged in stories about purported hidden government UFO programs.

A PDF file of the UAP-related section of the bill (Sec. 1104) is embedded immediately below this paragraph. Images of the seven UAP-related pages are displayed at the bottom of this article.