![](https://static.independent.co.uk/2021/10/27/14/GettyImages-51970887.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp)
Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett claimed that the US government has been withholding evidence of UFOs.
Rep Burchett told the Washington Examiner the government has been “holding stuff back since Roswell in ‘47, and maybe prior to that.” He added that he was concerned that “we have something that we do not control in our military airspace.”
His remarks follow claims from former US intelligence officer David Charles Grusch, who served on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which was established by the Department of Defense to “improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs.” UAPs are the new term for UFOs.
Tim Burchett— (Fox News)
Mr Grusch filed a complaint saying the government was keeping classified information regarding the existence of non-human life from Congress. He told The Debrief in June that the withheld “material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”
“I think he’s telling the truth. I think there’s a lot that’s going to be out there,” Rep Burchett said.
“I think the interesting thing you’re going to find out, though, is the Pentagon and all of our research institutions, you see them kind of warming up to it. And the reason they are is they’re smelling dollars. And I think there’ll be an effort to discredit him,” the Tennessee Republican said.
“There are enough witnesses, enough qualified pilots, astronauts, literally heroes of ours, who have come forward about things and so I think it’s pretty evident that government is covering up,” he continued.
“And the reason we don’t have any of that information now is a lot of it is so compartmentalised that the people that could connect the dots are long gone,” the Tennessee lawmaker said.
Suspicions about a government cover-up of UFOs goes back decades, including this march in Washington DC in 1995— (AFP via Getty Images)
When asked why the government would be hiding this evidence, Rep Burchett replied: “Greed and power.”
He also added that he doesn’t believe the alleged vehicles are from a US adversary, as “We know if it was the Chinese, they would own us … And if it was Russia, Putin, with his ego, he would — he sure wouldn’t be stumbling in Ukraine right now.”
Rep Burchett said on the Event Horizon podcast earlier this week that the alleged vehicle “can travel light years or at the speeds that we’ve seen defy physics as we know it.”
On 29 June, Rep Burchett filed an amendment requiring the Department of Defense to “declassify any documents and other records ... relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena.”