A secret briefing on UFOs is happening next week (Picture: Getty)

A secret meeting to discuss UFOs is taking place in the heart of the US government next week – raising questions about what intelligence officials are keeping from the public.

Members of the House Oversight Committee will be given a classified briefing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the new name for UFOs, in the Office of House Security on Friday, January 12.

Interest in UAP at a government level soared last year after a former intelligence officer, David Grusch, turned whistleblower, alleging the government had ‘evidence of intact and partially intact alien vehicles’.

That bombshell led to a full congressional hearing on the subject, in which Mr Grusch and two other witnesses gave testimony under oath regarding their experiences with UAP.

Retired Navy pilot Ryan Graves said that UFOs are an ‘open secret’ among fighter pilots, and shared a third-party account of jets having to avoid a ‘dark grey cube inside of a clear sphere’ which stood ‘motionless against the wind’.

Former Navy commander David Fravor shared his memory of the famous ‘Tic Tac’ UFO, a small, white object that buzzed past military aircraft, before apparently being picked up by radar 60 miles away seconds later. 

Adding to his original claims, Mr Grusch said that people have been ‘harmed or injured’ in an effort to cover-up information about the recovered craft.

More recently, he featured on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and alleged the government had retrieved ‘at least ten’ alien bodies from UAP crashes.

While a Nasa report released last year stated there was no evidence that any UAP had an ‘extraterrestrial source’, interest in what or who is behind these mysterious objects in the sky remains at all-time high.

And while until recently mention of UFOs was met with scepticism or ridicule, concerns over the threat to airspace safety is increasingly being cited as reason enough for governments across the globe to share everything they know.

In November, a Freedom of Information request revealed a Ryanair plane came within 20 metres of a UFO while taking off from Stansted airport in Essex. The plane, which was travelling at 230mph, passed the ‘black object’ at 4,000ft.

Metro’s interpretation of the sighting. Yes, our designer may have got a bit carried away (Picture: Getty)

Last month, the UK’s leading UFO expert Nick Pope revealed fears that ‘demonic forces’ were behind UAP had previously obstructed government investigations into the phenomena. 

In the US, Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett has been vocal in demanding the government reveal everything it knows about UAP, and leads the bipartisan group of oversight committee members.

The group sent a letter to intelligence community inspector general Thomas Monheim last year requesting more details about UAP – including any programmes to reverse engineer or retrieve crashed vehicles – which prompted next week’s briefing.

Representative Tim Burchett is calling on greater transparency from the government (Picture: Getty)

Speaking to Axios, which revealed the meeting, Mr Burchett said: ‘I just want transparency.

‘We’ve got a lot of questions … If we are paying millions of dollars to investigate them, we should be able to see the results.’

However, demands for greater transparency are not universally popular.

House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner, and House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers are opponents of a bill that would lead to the formation of a panel of experts with ‘presidential-level authority’ to investigate government records and reveal them to the public.

Proponents of the bill argue that any opposition proves they have touched a nerve – suggesting the government does know more than it’s letting on.

The UAP disclosure act would also allow the government to seize ‘any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities’. 

A former Navy pilot says UFOs are an ‘open secret’ (Picture: Getty)

Opponents Mr Turner and Mr Rogers both receive generous political donations from defence company Lockheed Martin.

Congress has not yet voted on the act, but it is expected to pass – after which many more UAP records will also be available to the public in the National Archives.

Growing interest in UAP has not been limited to the US.

In September, Mexico held its own congressional hearing into the issue. However, it was derailed when ufologist and journalist Jaime Maussan revealed what he claimed were the bodies of two ‘non-human beings’, said to have been found in a Peruvian algae mine.

The specimens have been largely branded a hoax across the scientific community, and also caused a minor diplomatic spat between Mexico and Peru.

In Mexico, scientists recently gathered together to discuss the findings at a conference, the subtitle of which was ‘Science responds to the charlatans and the gullible’.

Host Alejandro Frank, a professor of mathematical physics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), said: ‘Faced with the serious problems we are experiencing in Mexico and the entire planet, starting with climate change, war, and pandemics, it is sad to gather to talk about the misdeeds of a professional charlatan.’

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The truth is out there. Somewhere.