UFOs! Scary Beams of Light! Bullet-proof Balloons! Former Members of Congress Search for the Truth

By Sarah Anne Hughes
In the ballroom of the National Press Club, mere steps from the White House, the Citizens Hearing for Disclosure began its fourth day of testimony on Thursday with a simple purpose: to present evidence for the existence of extra-terrestrials and urge governments worldwide to take this seriously.
Which wasn’t always easy, especially when one expert witness declared, "Thank God the space people are here to save us from our own insanity."
But for the most part, the mood at the hearing was serious—think suits instead of space alien costumes. Adding an air of gravitas to the occasion were six former members of Congress, each paid $20,000 to attend: former Reps. Roscoe Bartlett, Merrill Cook, Darlene Hooley, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Lynn Woolsey and former Sen. Mike Gravel. Sitting at the head of the room, set up to resemble an actual Congressional hearing, each regarded the witnesses before them with about $20,000’s worth of enthusiasm.
For those unfamiliar with the former legislators, The Daily Beast described them thusly:

Former Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, the mother of disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, chaired the hearing. Former Rep. Merrill Cook lost a 2000 campaign after aides called him delusional. Former senator Mike Gravel is the guy who marketed his 2008 presidential run with a YouTube video of him staring blankly into the camera for a minute before hurling a rock in a pond. Former Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is a survivalist who has long warned of the potential for an electro-magnetic pulse to destroy the electric grid.

The focus of Thursday morning's lightly-attended panel was UFO sightings in South America, with the Chilean journalist Antonio Huneeus of Chile declaring, “The United States likes to think it's ahead ... but I'm afraid that's not the case with ufology.”

The six witnesses—ranging from former military pilots to the editor of a magazine about UFOs—each presented the case for why we’re not alone in the universe. Pictures of bright spots of light in the night sky were shown. Firsthand accounts were shared. Government documents revealed.
Why is the government hiding the truth? Because UFOs can deactivate—or, perhaps more importantly, activate—nuclear weapons, Wilson Picler, a former member of the Brazilian congress.
How can UFOs disguise themselves? As clouds, said Huneeus.
But eerie saucers masking themselves as weather patterns is a bit Outer Limits. The testimony most likely to inspire a Michael Bay blockbuster came from retired Col. Oscar Santa-Maria of the Peruvian air force. Santa-Maria told the story of chasing a balloon-like craft in 1980, which he was unable to bring down with bullets. (“That must have been some ride,” Hooley remarked.) He presented a sketch of the UFO he confronted, which resembled a baby's pacifier.
"Could it have been a hologram," Bartlett asked, completely straight-faced?
"No, I could see it from different angles," Santa-Maria replied.
"Is there any doubt this was something other than a UFO," Merrill enthused?
"Nope," said Santa-Maria, later adding that he is unaware of any earthly technology like what he saw that day.
Brazilian ufologist A.J. Gevaerd, who edits the aforementioned journal of extra-terrestrial sightings, testified that in 1977, 1,000 people in the Amazon rainforest were attacked by beams of light that emanated from spaceships. Kilpatrick said Gevaerd's claim was the first she had heard all week of UFOs acting aggressively. (i.e., not like the ship that dropped off E.T.). The beams would make a person faint or become anemic, Gevaerd said. The attacks stopped when the military arrived, according to Gevaerd, who presented as evidence a 400-page-plus compendium titled “UFOs in the Amazon."
The previous three days of hearings saw testimony from a diverse group including a nuclear physicist and Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. The Citizen Hearing, a project of Stephen Bassett’s Paradigm Research Group, ends on Friday and is open to the public.
As the panel came to a close, Gravel applauded the witnesses for helping prove that “our government has not been straightforward with the American people.”
Indeed, while the U.S. government did take most of the blame for the incredulous attitude Americans have toward UFOs—one witness suggested that the U.S. only deals with “politically correct extraterrestrials”—the media, lamestream and otherwise, also took some heat.
“The media must abandon its sarcasm” when covering UFOs, Dr. Anthony Choy of Peru said at the end of his testimony.
Seeing that would be truly out of this world.

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