Don’t sleep on (or hate on) how Gillibrand prefers to talk about UFOs

Senator Gillibrand is arguably the most important UFO disclosure leader in Congress, but she steadfastly refuses to talk about UFOs and aliens. How can this be? To understand what is really going on, we need to parse the subtext of her statements. 

In my rankings of the UFO stance of members of congress, Gillibrand is UFO Agnostic/Disclosure Supportive. This is in contrast to UFO skeptics (like Mike Turner and Eric Burlison) or Extraterrestrial Hypothesis advocates (like Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna). A majority of congress people who have spoken out about UFOs/UAP are like Gillibrand--supportive of UAP investigative and disclosure efforts but also carefully broadcasting they are not ready to announce what they think UAP might be. This can be annoying to those in the wider UFO community who have already made up their minds about UFOs and are eager for everyone in Congress to just come out with it. That annoyance should not blind us to the fact that politicians like Gillibrand are working from a communications strategy that is intentional, savvy, and ultimately in support of their disclosure goals.  

Let’s look at one recent example: Gillibrand’s May 19, 2024 interview on the CBS News New York Sunday show. At the tail end of the interview, the host asked Gillibrand about her work on the UAP issue.     

Gillibrand’s response [emphasis added]: “…unidentified aerial--or anomalous phenomenon--because some’s in air, some’s in water. Most likely most of these are drones, drones by adversaries, Russia, China, Iran. Some are spy technology, spy balloons, just like the spy balloon we saw [in February 2023]. And then there might be just other technology that we are not aware of that we can’t identify. What the purpose of this office is to do is to assess it--what is it? Is it a small plane, is it a drone, is it a balloon, is it something we’ve never seen before?”

Host: “Is it an alien.”

Gillibrand: “Yes. Is it anything?”

The first thing to note is that her tone remained steady, earnest, serious but not too serious, unflappable, and a little bit boring. She spoke at a moderately fast pace with a smooth, confident flow. Contrast this with some of her colleagues who often come off garbled and glitchy when they talk about this topic. She knows exactly what she wants to communicate when it comes to UAP, which is telling considering the substance of what she is communicating.  

She acknowledges that most UAP are “likely” caused by drones and foreign spying, but she explicitly and repeatedly holds out the possibility that UAP are something else entirely. Her phrasing for what that might be is general and open-ended--“other technology” that “we can’t identify” and that “we’ve never seen before”--but quite remarkable if you pause to consider the implication of those statements. After listing all the prosaic explanations for UAP, she offers an alternative explanation, which is that heretofore undiscovered technology that the most advanced military in the world cannot identify is operating outside of our knowledge in both air and water. And when specifically asked if these UAP could be alien, she says yes. Unlike AARO and others, her list of possible sources for UAP do not include misidentifications and optical illusions. To Gillibrand, UAP are not only real, solid objects, but technology--that just might be extraterrestrial.  

Contrast Gillibrand’s approach to the UFO skeptics--Mark Kelly who says “extraordinary claims, you needs some extraordinary evidence”; Jim Himes who says “what people think are UFOs is just garbage”; Sean Kirkpatrick who says alien visitation is “unlikely” and not supported by the evidence, and belief in such things is akin to a religious cult. Gillibrand and the other UFO agnostics never say any of those things. They say UAP are real and we don’t know what they are. A giant mystery.   

It’s true that the average Sunday morning show viewer listening to Gillibrand’s explanation would have stopped considering the deeper implications when she said drones and spying. The fact remains she has never publicly used the words alien or extraterrestrial or other worlds in the context of UAP. She does not footstomp her suggestion that UAP may be alien, but she also does not deny it or hide from it. This is why my rankings have the category UFO Agnostic. Agnostics don’t sing from the hymnal with all the other true believers, but they are not atheists, and sometimes they go to church, and some of them eventually convert.   

Maybe Gillibrand does not see it as her role at this point to convince citizens of the reality of alien visitation and a government coverup. Doing so now would require a lot of time and energy, not to mention political capital that would detract from her behind-the-scenes legislative and oversight efforts. But when that day comes, she will be able to say, “I always addressed the possibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis in my public statements on UAP.” She has. 

When I began tracking congressional statements on UFOs two years ago, I assumed there would be a large and loud chorus of mocking skeptics. The number is quite low. The agnostic UFO stance is seen by members of Congress as a means to an end: raise the possibility, get comfortable discussing it, don’t raise the temperature and volatility of the conversation by crying alien and coverup, and meanwhile do the legislative work that will be necessary to finally disclose it.