EDITORIAL GUIDE
~5 min read
UAP Senate Hearings 2024 — What the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees Established
The 2023 House Oversight Committee hearing (July 26, 2023) — featuring Grusch, Graves, and Fravor — received most public attention. But the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee conducted their own UAP proceedings in 2023 and 2024 that arguably had greater legislative impact. Senate hearings produced classified briefings, direct testimony from AARO directors under oath, and the legislative language that became the UAP Disclosure Act provisions in NDAA 2024. Understanding the Senate track is essential for understanding how the disclosure process actually advanced institutionally.
The Senate Track vs. the House Hearing
The July 2023 House Oversight hearing with Grusch, Graves, and Fravor was an open, public proceeding covered extensively by media. But the Senate was conducting parallel UAP oversight through two committees with more direct jurisdiction over defense and intelligence programs: the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Senate proceedings included both open and classified components. The classified briefings — attended by senior senators and cleared staff — allowed AARO officials and intelligence community representatives to discuss materials that could not be discussed in open session. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who became the Senate's most active UAP legislator, described AARO briefings as 'incomplete' in public statements, explicitly alleging that agencies were not fully cooperating with AARO's information requests. Senator Marco Rubio, the SSCI vice chair, made similar statements about witnesses being prevented from providing full information to Congress.
AARO Director Testimony Under Oath
AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick testified before multiple Senate committees in 2023 and 2024. His open testimony established AARO's official positions: no verifiable evidence of non-human intelligence, no confirmed crash retrieval programs, and a standing offer for individuals with relevant information to contact AARO through proper channels.
Kirkpatrick's testimony also produced notable statements about the limits of AARO's access. He acknowledged that Special Access Programs — the compartmented programs that Grusch alleged contain crash retrieval information — are not fully accessible to AARO by statute. He described the challenge of investigating programs that may have been structured specifically to limit inter-agency visibility. After Kirkpatrick departed AARO in late 2023, he published an editorial explicitly stating that he believed UAP conspiracy theories were damaging serious scientific investigation — a statement that Grusch and other disclosure advocates disputed publicly.
The UAP Disclosure Act and Senate Legislative Action
The most consequential product of Senate UAP activity was legislative: the UAP Disclosure Act provisions written into the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The key architects were Senator Chuck Schumer (who co-authored the amendment with Senator Mike Rounds) and Senator Gillibrand.
The Schumer-Rounds amendment created: the UAP Records Review Board (modeled on the JFK Records Act Review Board) with authority to override classification claims; mandatory agency transfers to NARA RG 615 on defined timelines; enhanced whistleblower protections prohibiting NDAs that restrict reporting to AARO or Congress; and a definition of 'non-human intelligence' in U.S. law for the first time. Parts of the Schumer-Rounds language were weakened before final passage — the Records Review Board's override authority was reduced from mandatory to advisory for certain agency categories. But the core framework survived and became law in December 2024.
What the Senate Proceedings Established
The Senate UAP proceedings of 2023–2024 established several institutional facts that differ from what the public House hearing produced. In the Senate: (1) Senior senators with intelligence community oversight described AARO's access as incomplete and alleged active non-cooperation by some agencies — statements more significant than they appear because these senators have classified briefings not available to the public or House witnesses. (2) AARO itself acknowledged the limits of its Special Access Program access under oath. (3) Legislative action explicitly created mechanisms (RRB, NARA transfers, whistleblower protections) predicated on the assumption that relevant information exists and is being withheld — legislating remedies to a problem implies institutional acknowledgment that the problem exists.
The gap between what Grusch alleged in the House hearing and what the Senate established legislatively is instructive: senators with classified access did not publicly confirm Grusch's specific claims, but they legislated as if classified UAP-relevant information exists and is not being appropriately disclosed — suggesting their classified briefings gave them reason to believe the disclosure problem is real even if they could not confirm the specific crash-retrieval claims.