Congress wants to know what agencies know about UFOs, and a new law requires agencies to tell them, reports say nextgov.com.
New records management provisions included in the recently passed Defense Policy Act of 2024 require federal agencies to organize and tag documents related to what the government calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP.
Agencies have until the end of the current fiscal year to “review, identify and organize each UAP record in custody for release to the public and transmission to the National Archives,” according to a memo sent Tuesday afternoon by Laurence Brewer, chief administrative officer. U.S. government official, and Chris Naylor, NARA’s director of investigative services, for federal agency records managers.
A new, central collection of UAP archives will be housed at the National Archives and Records Administration.
The law passed without action sought by its proponents, especially Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who would have created a presidential commission with the authority to release documents related to UAP.
“For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by mysterious and unexplained objects and are long overdue for answers,” Schumer said last July when the bipartisan legislation was introduced. “The American public has the right to learn about technologies of unknown origin, non-human intelligence and unexplained phenomena.
Brewer and his team at NARA are tasked with guiding archives officials through the information needed to establish the UAP collection and creating a form that agencies can use to tag records for collection in the UAP Archives .
The memo elaborates on what archives officials can expect from the metadata requirements, including information about classification levels and limitations, and what can and cannot be made public.
NARA asks agencies to get started identifying relevant documents and expect further instructions on labeling and sending documents to the archives.
