In this episode of "Reality Check," Ross Coulthart sits down with Rep. Eric Burlison, the Missouri Republican and UAP Caucus member who has become one of the most active voices in Congress pressing the federal government to come clean on the phenomenon. Burlison describes the material he was shown inside an SCIF, footage and imagery that remain closed to the public, and recounts watching plasma-like orbs move with an intelligence and instantaneous acceleration the intelligence community itself cannot explain but speculate to be the same objects FBI field agents reported seeing when they responded to sightings at residential locations and a western military facility last December.

The conversation turns to the machinery of secrecy, with Burlison arguing the Manhattan Project taught the government how to bury a program inside federally funded research centers, and detailing the interrogatories he has sent to MITRE, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the CIA and the FBI, including a reel-to-reel recording of a U.S. Air Force general questioning MIT scientists about the 1952 Washington flyover that Lincoln Laboratory is now in the process of declassifying. Coulthart and Burlison weigh whether an 82-year-old secret can hold, why declassification never happens on its own and what it would mean for a congressman of deep faith to confront the ontological shock of disclosure. Burlison does not hedge on the stakes, telling Ross that revealing what is behind this would be the greatest revelation since Jesus Christ and offering his read on whether the Trump White House intends to deliver it.