The U.S. government has long operated a secretive UFO crash retrieval program and has routinely intimidated witnesses who know about the effort, all while engaging in a high-stakes arms race with adversaries around the world that also have transformative and possibly alien technologies.

Those were just a few of the bombshell charges from a witness at a House hearing Wednesday. It was the second hearing in the past two years focusing on “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP.

Once dismissed as pure science fiction, the issue has become a serious, bipartisan matter on Capitol Hill, in military circles and in the scientific community.

At the hearing, former military officials said the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have a vast trove of information, including high-resolution photos and videos, of UFOs that have been hidden from the public and even from Congress.

The witnesses said UAP research programs deep inside the Defense Department, CIA and other arms of the government operate with virtually no oversight and with off-the-books budgets.

Army veteran and former Defense Department official Luis Elizondo suggested to the House panel that the U.S. and its adversaries are working feverishly behind the scenes to develop military capabilities based on technology retrieved from UAP.

“Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries,” Mr. Elizondo told the hearing, hosted by two subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

“And I believe we are in the midst of a multidecade, secretive arms race — one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Mr. Elizondo said.

Mr. Elizondo is one of the country’s highest-profile government whistleblowers on UFOs, and his appearance before an on-the-record, public congressional hearing reflects the changing attitudes toward the issue. For decades, the government said hardly anything about its UFO research efforts and dismissed suggestions that some UAP might be extraterrestrial or at least may involve technologies that cannot be explained with today’s science.

Last year, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) directly addressed some of the more far-reaching public claims of former military personnel and other U.S. officials about government contact with aliens. The 60-page study explained in detail the history of government research into UAP, and it specifically denied charges that the Pentagon has known for years about UFOs of extraterrestrial origin and has engaged in a highly secretive program to reverse-engineer their spaceships.

Critics say the report hid the truth. Mr. Elizondo testified that the government does operate secret UAP crash retrieval programs, but lawmakers of both parties said their efforts to learn more have been largely unsuccessful.

“When the American people and members of Congress ask, ‘Are reports of UAPs credible?’ We’re met with stonewalling. We’re met with responses of, ‘I can’t tell you.’ In fact, we’re met with people not wanting us to have hearings,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, Florida Democrat.

Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on cybersecurity, information technology and government innovation, suggested that people in the federal government tried to block Wednesday’s hearing.

“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who did not want this hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed,” she said.

Tim Gallaudet, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command in 2015 when his personnel in the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group witnessed unidentified objects in the sky. The incident was captured in the now-famous “GoFast” video.

He testified that Navy personnel immediately informed him of the encounters via email.

“The very next day, that email disappeared from my account … without explanation,” he said.

Mr. Gallaudet said the encounter was essentially erased from the record without discussion or explanation, leaving his personnel in a potentially vulnerable position.

“Pilots were left to mitigate these threats on their own without guidance or support,” he said.

“GoFast” was one of several high-profile videos showing footage of military personnel’s specific encounters with unexplained craft. In a survey released last year, the government said U.S. military personnel and commercial pilots reported at least 291 UFO sightings since August 2022 and that some of the craft exhibited “high-speed travel,” “unusual maneuverability” and other characteristics that are hard to explain.

The AARO said it had received 801 UAP reports as of April 2023, though the actual number of sightings is thought to be much higher.

• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.