WASHINGTON — Dylan Borland was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in summer 2012 when in the middle of the night he observed a triangular craft shrouded in light in the sky above his barracks, he told members of Congress. The craft approached him noiselessly, hovered above where he stood, and then quickly ascended tens of thousands of feet into the sky and disappeared.

After the roughly 15-minute encounter, he recounted it to some of his colleagues, according to Borland, a former geospatial intelligence specialist for the U.S. Air Force and one of a growing number of witnesses who have come forward in recent years documenting interactions with unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — better known in more sensational terms as UFOs.

“A couple people had pulled me aside, some older enlisted, and were like, ‘You probably want to keep that to yourself,’” Borland testified at a Tuesday hearing held by the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, part of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The truth is out there, if only the government would set it free, Borland and other witnesses testified at the hearing while also demanding stronger whistleblower protections for those who come forward with spooky stories of oddly shaped crafts that maneuver unpredictably without any visible sign of propulsion. Often, they appear in or around military airspace.

The hearing was the latest in a series hosted by the Oversight panel dating back to the 118th Congress. In bombshell testimony from 2023, David Grusch, a former military intelligence officer who this March was brought on as a special adviser to Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison, told lawmakers the government had recovered “non-human” biologics.

But whereas past hearings drew large crowds that snaked around hallways of the Rayburn House Office Building, where the committee normally meets, Tuesday’s was a quieter affair.

Ahead of the start time, a relatively small group queued outside the Capitol Visitor Center room where it was held. An almost saucer-shaped ceiling light illuminated the lawmakers on the dais, including Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who chairs the task force that has taken a deep dive into the world of conspiracies this Congress.

In a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Luna recounted a potential UAP sighting she learned of while stationed at the Portland Air National Guard Base and said lawmakers had seen evidence of what she believes are “interdimensional beings.”

Under Luna’s leadership, the task force has held multiple hearings on files related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy that the Trump administration released earlier this year. She has speculated that Lee Harvey Oswald was not Kennedy’s assassin. And as debate over Jeffrey Epstein roils the Hill, Luna suggested the disgraced financier and sex offender was connected with intelligence agencies.

But Luna was clear from the start: UAPs are no laughing matter.

“Today, I want to state clearly: This is not science fiction or creating speculation,” Luna said. “This is about national security, government accountability and the American people’s right to the truth.”

Reports of UAPs are too often disregarded and rarely lead to serious investigations, Luna and other lawmakers complained. And the government tried to squelch the flow of information, making it difficult to parse what’s true or false regarding UAPs, which don’t necessarily indicate the existence of little green men on flying saucers but could have real national security implications.

“I don’t really know what is true. I don’t know on this subject. But I do know when we’re being lied to, and we are definitely being lied to. There’s just no doubt about that,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said at the hearing.

Part of the problem is a culture of fear and stigma in the intelligence community when it comes to UAPs, witnesses and members of the panel said.

Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, also a member of the task force, reintroduced legislation last month that would protect whistleblowers who bring attention to taxpayer-funded UAP research programs.

“What we’re trying to get to is total disclosure,” Burchett said. “The government has something, and they need to turn it over to us.”

For witnesses like Borland, who say they were the victims of retaliation after reporting their experiences, the situation is urgent.

Borland said he was blacklisted from certain agencies within the intelligence community after he became a whistleblower and met with the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General and the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, an office within the Department of Defense formed in 2022 to investigate UAPs. And Grusch, in the 2023 hearing, also claimed he was retaliated against. Reporting on his past struggles with mental health and substance abuse followed in the months after he testified. In 2024, Grusch sued the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office for allegedly releasing personal medical information.

Jeffrey Nuccetelli, a former military police officer who served 16 years in the Air Force, described separate incidents near Vandenberg Air Force Base between 2003 and 2005 involving massive crafts of varying shapes that approached military personnel and floated, accelerated, pulsed and traveled in strange ways. Military personnel who reported the incidents were threatened and told to keep quiet, Nuccetelli alleged.

Nuccetelli had his own sighting in 2005, when “a huge glowing orb of blue-white light” appeared about 200 feet above his house before vanishing and then reappearing in a different location. Even 20 years later, he said the experience was jarring.

“We don’t know what we saw. What we saw changed our lives, the way we think about everything,” Nuccetelli said.

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