• Former Navy Pilot Ryan Graves testified at the congressional UFO hearing
• Graves said he told lawmakers 'nothing but the truth' at the hearing
• Graves said testifying about what he knows about UFOs was 'empowering'

(NewsNation) — A former Navy fighter pilot says since he testified before a congressional committee about UFOs, more people are coming forward to share their own stories.

Lt. Ryan Graves was the first active duty pilot to testify before Congress about his squadron’s experience with unidentified crafts, officially classified by the government as Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP). He also testified at Wednesday’s UFO hearing and insists he told “nothing but the truth.”

“It (testifying before Congress) was quite the experience, even just from the moment they opened the back doors and we came out. Honestly, I kind of lost my breath for a moment,” Graves said. “But, sitting there, it was something that I had spoken to before and for me, it was a story I had considered for a while and it was nothing but the truth.”

He continued: “For me to be under oath, in a way, it was almost empowering that I could show people that I was being as honest as I felt.”

Graves, who also serves as the executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, told NewsNation senior national correspondent Brian Entin that an “influx” of people have reported information about UFOs since the hearing.

“Since the hearing, there have been an influx of people coming to safeaerospace.org and joining both as pilots and as people who just want to support the conversation. A lot of those pilots have shared their stories,” Graves told NewsNation. “A lot of those pilots shared their stories. There have been a number of commercial pilots that have recently signed up that have been confirming some of the sightings that I spoke about, as well as sharing some new data about potentially some new cases. So, we certainly have our work cut out for us.”

Ben Hansen, host of “UFO Witness” on Discovery Plus, says he had a similar experience when he recently attended a pilots conference after the UFO congressional hearing.

“We had a booth and we had a line of people, several people deep. Every five minutes, I was getting reports from people and some of them were really extraordinary,” Hansen said.

He continued: “(There are) people that might become whistleblowers because some of these (possible sightings) happened while they were on Navy ships, some of these things happened with commercial pilots. It’s really extraordinary. I just need some time to vet the information because it’s like drinking from a firehose.”

Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, whose interview with whistleblower David Grusch was part of the impetus for the hearing, thinks there may be some confusion about where people can report their information about potential UFO sightings, suggesting that the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office is nearly unreachable.

“Frankly, one of the issues at the moment is that the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP investigation office, AARO, is sending out a shocking signal. It doesn’t have a phone number. It doesn’t have an email address. It doesn’t even have a website and its Twitter page hasn’t posted a tweet since the very first tweet it posted last year,” Coulthart said.

He added: “If this truly is an agency inside the Pentagon that’s seriously interested in proactively investigating and hearing from witnesses, it’s not sending that message out. I’m at a dilemma at the moment, where do I send these poor people I’m encouraging to consider going forward?”

The leader of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) attacked the UFO hearing before lawmakers, calling it “insulting.”

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick posted a letter about the hearing to his personal LinkedIn page.

Kirkpatrick wrote, in part, on Thursday: “I cannot let yesterday’s hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community who chose to join AARO, many with not unreasonable anxieties about the career risks this would entail.”

“They are truth-seekers, as am I,” Kirkpatrick said. “But you certainly would not get that impression from yesterday’s hearing.”

In the meantime, Graves, Coulthart and many lawmakers are continuing to push for transparency on the issue.

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