Does Firsthand Testimony Count as Evidence?
Avi Loeb says Jay Stratton’s claims need data, not testimony; Danny Sheehan, a trial lawyer, says firsthand testimony is evidence, and that Congress has until January to compel the rest.
Sheehan recorded this episode on the road home from The Science of Consciousness 2026 in San Diego, a gathering he describes as some 800 people, including dozens of scientists studying the biology of consciousness. Afterward, he says, NPI was invited to meet with an AI developer working to build living neurons into computers. NPI’s message to them was that the work raises serious ethical questions that need answers now, before the effort to make machines think like people goes further.
The episode centers on Jay Stratton’s memoir, Out of the Shadows, published October 13. Stratton helped create the Pentagon’s AAWSAP program and later led the UAP Task Force, and he has said publicly that he has seen non-human craft and beings himself. According to published accounts, the book says the government and its contractors hold recovered non-human craft and bodies, and that some beings were reportedly alive when recovered but later died. It also recounts what Stratton was told about a filmed 1964 meeting at Holloman Air Force Base; Sheehan wants the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer, to subpoena that film.
The astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who leads a UAP Science Advisory Council formed in June to advise an interagency UAP Governance Board, responded the day the book came out. He wrote that Stratton’s claims “are not corroborated by publicly verifiable data” and that “we must see the evidence to gauge whether Jay is speaking the truth.” Sheehan’s reply is a lawyer’s: firsthand testimony is evidence, admissible in any court, and it has carried the heaviest verdicts the law can impose. He says he is not attacking Loeb, whom he knows and likes, and asks listeners to read the book and judge for themselves.
Then the deadline. The current Congress serves until the new one is seated in January, and it returns November 9. Both chambers have now passed a version of the UAP Disclosure Act, the Senate in its 2023 defense bill and the House in July as the Burlison amendment, but in different Congresses, so the provision must survive the final 2027 defense bill to become law. The Senate has not yet passed its own bill, and negotiators are expected to settle the final text in November and December. Sheehan says NPI has sent some 10,000 messages to members urging them to keep the provision, and he asks listeners to join Citizens for Disclosure and host screenings of The Age of Disclosure, which has streamed on Prime Video since November 2025.
The episode closes with a listener question: who is behind UAP abductions, given that some, including Steven Greer, argue humans are responsible? Drawing on his years with John Mack at Harvard and his decades of interviews, Sheehan says the people he has spoken with encountered beings that were not human. He allows that the military may sometimes mimic UFOs, and calls the argument over proportions a false debate.
Sources: The Science of Consciousness 2026 · Avi Loeb on Stratton’s claims · DefenseScoop on the UAP Science Advisory Council · UNILAD on Out of the Shadows · Rep. Burlison on the House-passed amendment · Harbinger lame-duck preview · The Age of Disclosure on Prime Video
The fact is that direct testimony like this on the part of a firsthand witness has sent people to the electric chair, to the gas chamber. So that this is evidence.
What’s discussed
Twenty-two chapters, timestamped to the episode. Each one opens the video at that moment.
0:00 Episode Teaser
0:42 Intro
2:02 The Science of Consciousness Conference
3:16 Ethical Concerns Over Biological AI
4:39 Jay Stratton’s Out of the Shadows
5:53 Who Controls UFO Disclosure?
6:53 Tranches Versus Subpoenas
8:58 Stratton’s Account of a Hidden Program
9:48 The Alleged Holloman Landing Film
10:53 A Subpoena for the Film
11:37 Is Firsthand Testimony Evidence?
13:18 Craft, Bodies and Beings, as Stratton Describes Them
16:21 Grusch’s 2023 Testimony
17:07 On Avi Loeb
18:41 Congress’s Final Window for Disclosure
20:09 Putting the Disclosure Act Into Law
20:53 Mobilizing the Citizen Disclosure Movement
22:14 Showing The Age of Disclosure
23:27 Free Materials From NPI
24:50 Meetings With AI Developers
25:31 Q&A: Who Is Really Behind UAP Abductions?
29:48 Closing Call to Congress
Key passages
On biological AI
“When we were invited to speak here, we pointed out to them this was a very dangerous undertaking and needed to have major ethical concerns addressed here at this stage to stop this kind of onrushing effort to try to expand the capacity of these computers to think like people and to become conscious”
On Congress’s authority
“It’s clear that the Congress of the United States from a constitutional point of view has the authority to make decisions about the levels of classification and disclosure that are going to be undertaken pertaining to the UFO phenomenon, but they’ve not yet asserted this”
On the book
“People should get a copy of the book Out of the Shadows and read the book and evaluate for yourself how credible do you believe this to be”
On who is behind abductions
“This is in a certain sense a false debate. People can have this debate about the relative numbers, but that’s all that it is”
Related from the Learning Library
Is There Film of a 1964 UFO Landing? · episode 16, on Jay Stratton’s book and the Holloman film
Can UFO Disclosure Pass Before January? · episode 14, on the lame-duck window
Should the White House Control UFO Disclosure? · episode 12, Congress versus the executive branch
What Did David Grusch Tell Joe Rogan? · episode 15, Sheehan on the Rogan interview
Keep the UAPDA in the NDAA · ask Congress to keep the disclosure provision in the final bill
Join Citizens for Disclosure · NPI’s volunteer network, with local and state chapters
