Congress dropped a provision to release government secrets about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) from the National Defense Authorization Act. The move came as a big disappointment for Democrats and Republicans who want the government to share more of what it knows regarding aliens.

“The United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “That is wrong, and additionally, it breeds mistrust.”

House and Senate lawmakers want to create an independent review board, modeled off the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, to release information on unidentified aerial phenomena. The board would oversee the release of classified information, as long as it doesn’t reveal sources or compromise national security.

“We’ve also been notified by multiple credible sources that information on UAPs has also been withheld from Congress, which if true is a violation of the laws requiring full notification to the legislative branch,”  Schumer said.  

“I share Senator Schumer’s disappointment that the UAP transparency provisions that we fought for, were not included, they were kept out with really the veto of the House Intelligence Committee,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said. “And that only breeds more concern over the lack of information.”

There was also an amendment in the House version of the defense bill that would have required the defense secretary to declassify any Defense Department records related to publicly known sightings of UAPs, as long as it doesn’t compromise sources or national security. However, that amendment was dropped too.

The NDAA does require the National Archives to collect federal records pertaining to UAPs and release them if appropriate. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn, criticized the requirement because the most secretive information will stay hidden since the federal records would already be in the public domain.

“They tell us they don’t exist but yet we’ve uncovered they’ve spent millions of dollars studying them and they won’t give us the information,” Burchett said. “Because they hand it off to the private contractors, their buddies in the defense industry.”

Lawmakers also want to know if the government or another private entity has extraterrestrials in their possession. The bill to create the review board would expose that.

“And a requirement as a transparency measure for the government to obtain any recovered UAP material or biological remains that may have been provided to private entities in the past, and thereby hidden from Congress and the American people,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. , said.

Although the provisions to reveal the most closely guarded secrets did not make it into this year’s NDAA, lawmakers said they will keep pushing to pass legislation that requires the government to release more information to the public.