- An ex-US intelligence officer said the government has been retrieving and "reverse-engineering" UFOs.
- The US defense department has refuted the officer's claims.
People on Twitter are going wild after a former US Air Force intelligence officer told Congress that the government has been running a multi-decade program to study UFOs.
David Grusch served as an intelligence officer with the US Air Force and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency for 14 years. Then on Wednesday, Grusch said under oath that he was denied access to information on a "crash retrieval and reverse engineering program" for "unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UFOs.
"As I have stated publicly already on my NewsNation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries," Grusch said in the hearing.
"Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?" asked Rep. Nancy Mace.
"Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to, that are currently still on the program," Grusch replied, effectively saying that aliens exist.
Defense Department spokesperson Sue Gough told the Associated Press that investigators have not discovered "any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."
But that hasn't stopped people on Twitter from speculating about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
"Are we just going to gloss over the fact an intelligence officer told Congress today that the government has alien body parts from crashed UFOs?" said one person on Twitter.
Some people went one step further and started thinking about how best to connect with said extraterrestrials.
"Now that Congress has confirmed that aliens are real, I have a list of people they need to abduct. If anyone finds out how to can get in touch with them, please DM me. Thanks," tweeted another person.
US lawmakers are currently united in their desire to find out more about UFOs. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has backed legislation that would declassify government documents on UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
Representatives for the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.