What Would Actually Protect a UAP Whistleblower? NPI’s Draft Statute
There is already a draft statute that would protect UAP whistleblowers from retaliation — narrowly written, and sitting with the House Oversight task force. Danny Sheehan explains what it does and why it has not passed.
The episode opens with the record as it stands. Roughly forty insiders have already testified, many under oath, to Senate committee staff. The Senate passed the full 64-page UAP Disclosure Act in 2023 — records gathering, plus a congressionally confirmed nine-member review panel — and the House passed only the first half, dropping private aerospace contractors and replacing a 300-day deadline with “as soon as possible,” which Sheehan says the executive branch treated as permission to produce nothing. He traces the sequence forward from there: Luis Elizondo’s sworn testimony in November 2024, the House Oversight task force stood up in February 2025 with no subpoena power, no funding and no staff, and four tranches of released material he reads as carefully uninformative. Along the way he recounts a February 2026 podcast exchange in which former President Obama, asked whether aliens are real, answered “They’re real. But I haven’t seen them” — a remark Obama clarified the next day, saying that while life elsewhere is statistically likely, he “saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”
The center of the episode is a piece of legislation most people do not know exists. NPI has already drafted a fifteen-page whistleblower protection statute and put it in the hands of the declassification task force. Sheehan describes it as deliberately narrow: it covers UAP whistleblowers specifically rather than the whole federal workforce, releases nobody from a non-disclosure agreement, and works by creating a private right of action — not only against whoever retaliates, but against any official who knew a retaliation was planned, was positioned to stop it, and did not. Congress can pass it whenever it chooses.
The rest is a citizens’ playbook for the ninety days before the November election: pledge cards put to every candidate for all 435 House seats and the 35 Senate seats on the ballot, publicizing who declines to sign, and holding the signers to it after election day. He also argues Congress should do for UAP records what it did for the Epstein files — pass a transparency act, and if the Speaker refuses a rule, force it onto the floor with a discharge petition. Underneath both is the point that recurs across this series: Congress does not need the executive branch’s permission, because it can declassify what it chooses. The episode closes with a listener question on disclosure and spiritual awakening.
Update — guidance issued the day after this episode
On July 31, 2026 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued preliminary guidance implementing the non-disclosure-agreement waiver described here. It permits current and former personnel to disclose UAP information to designated representatives in AARO or the PURSUE Task Force “notwithstanding prior non-disclosure agreements, oaths, or commitments” — and, as outside counsel have noted, it does not authorize public disclosure of classified information or disclosures to Congress outside existing channels. Intelligence Community elements were given 30 days to name a PURSUE designee and notify their workforce. Whether it reaches government contractors is unresolved; the guidance addresses IC employees.
The House of Representatives and the Congress of the United States can declassify any information that they choose to declassify. They don’t have to go hat in hand to the executive branch, pleading with them to give them security clearances.
What’s discussed
2:22 What this episode is about
2:46 The call for a veto-proof whistleblower protection law
3:27 Some forty insiders have already testified
4:07 The 2023 Senate bill — Part A and Part B
4:58 The nine-person review panel, and the president’s narrow caveat
5:31 What the House stripped out
5:56 “As soon as possible” — and the stalemate through 2024
6:38 Elizondo’s sworn testimony, November 2024
7:08 Comer’s task force, and what it lacked
8:06 The Epstein files as a template — and the discharge petition
9:16 February 2026: a former president’s remarks
9:54 Trump directs agencies to prepare a release
10:08 Four tranches, and what they avoid saying
10:52 July 21: released from NDAs, but only to AARO or PURSUE
11:40 Why whistleblowers do not trust AARO
12:13 “Catch or kill”
12:46 Burchett after a two-hour Pentagon briefing
13:19 The argument that the president could simply order it
14:22 The essay: what citizens have to do
15:26 The statute that already exists
16:03 Why representative democracy is still the route
16:35 Pledge cards, 435 House seats, 35 Senate races
17:44 What counts as refusing to sign
19:30 Why a signature is not the end of the work
20:37 Inside the 15-page statute
21:17 A cause of action against retaliators — and against those who let it happen
22:42 A UFO transparency act, on the Epstein model
24:26 Congress can declassify on its own authority
25:17 Listener question: disclosure and spiritual awakening
Timestamps open the episode on YouTube at that moment.
Key passages
On how much Congress already knows
“There are some 40 of these insiders who have already come forward and testified, many of them under oath, to the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and … the Senate Armed Services Committee.”
On the two words that stalled it
“They changed the language saying that … they had to turn it over to the National Archives only as soon as possible. And what happened, of course, is the executive branch dug in their heels and just maintained that it wasn’t possible.”
On AARO
“None of the UFO whistleblowers trust AARO. … They’re not taking any steps whatsoever to try to confirm that, or to reveal to the public what it is that’s going on.”
On the statute already in Congress’s hands
“There already exists a 15-page enhanced UFO whistleblower protection statute … It’s been asked for by members of the House Oversight Committee, has been provided to them by the New Paradigm Institute. They can pass it if they want to.”
On what makes it different
“It also provides a legal cause of action against anybody inside the government who is in a position to know that there is a plan to retaliate against such a UFO whistleblower to Congress, and they are in a position to do something about it, and they fail to do so.”
On who the information is finally for
“Not only does the Congress of the United States have to have this information, but we’ve got to get Congress to give us the information as voters, so that we can help craft the policies.”
Related from the Learning Library
Who Decides What UAP Records Get Released? — the previous episode, on the amendment the House adopted.
How Protected Are UAP Whistleblowers? — the problem this draft statute is written to answer.
Join Citizens for Disclosure — the pledge-card campaign described in this episode.
Write Directly to Congress
The Congressional Disclosure Actions campaign tracks legislative efforts to compel transparency from the U.S. government on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Here, we focus on actions citizens can take to influence elected officials — from supporting UAP legislation to contacting your representative and attending hearings. This is the movement's policy pressure point, and your voice matters.