The UFO Disclosure Law That Lost Its Teeth: Inside the December 2023 NDAA Deal

On Wednesday, December 13, 2023, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stood on the Senate floor and called his own bill's fate "beyond disappointing."

He wasn't talking about a tax break or a highway project. He was talking about UFO records.

Five months earlier, Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota had written the most aggressive UAP disclosure plan Congress had ever seen. It would have built a presidentially appointed board to pry loose government secrets, and it would have let Washington seize recovered "technologies of unknown origin" from private companies. Within hours of that floor speech, the Senate passed a defense bill that kept the paperwork and cut out the teeth.

The bill modeled on the JFK files

Schumer and Rounds introduced the UAP Disclosure Act on July 14, 2023, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Their co-sponsors were Sens. Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Todd Young and Martin Heinrich.

The template was the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the law that forced decades of Kennedy files into public view.

According to Schumer's office, the bill would have:

• Created a UAP Records Collection at the National Archives, with every government office required to identify records that belong in it.
• Made those records presumptively public, putting the burden on a review board to justify secrecy.
• Set up an independent UAP Records Review Board to decide what could be held back, with the president able to concur with or overturn its calls.
• Given the federal government eminent domain over recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence held by private parties.
• Required every record to be public within 25 years, unless the president certified that continued secrecy was necessary.

"It's long past time they get some answers," Schumer said. "Relevant documents related to this issue should be preserved," said Rounds.

The amendment text even defined "non-human intelligence" in federal law, as a sentient, intelligent non-human life form of whatever nature or origin, according to the Congressional Record. Less than two weeks after the bill was introduced, David Grusch testified under oath about crash retrievals. The timing was not lost on anyone.

Senate yes, House no

The Senate passed its version of the defense bill, UAP language included, by 86-11 over the summer. The House passed its own version, 219-210, according to The Debrief. Then the two chambers went to conference.

That's where it stalled.

On December 4, Schumer went to the floor with a warning. "But, once again, House Republicans are ready to kill this bipartisan provision," he said, according to the Daily Wire.

He didn't name names. Reporting focused on Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Turner told NewsNation he saw the Schumer amendment as a "poorly drafted piece of legislation," and denied that he was "holding up" the measure, the Daily Wire reported.

The next day, Schumer posted: "We'll keep working to get this done."

What got cut

The final conference agreement kept only part of the Senate plan.

It did not include the government-wide review board, its staff, the eminent-domain authority or the controlled disclosure process, according to an analysis of the conference report by the law firm Covington & Burling's Inside Government Contracts blog. Those were the provisions that would have taken disclosure decisions away from the agencies holding the records.

Rounds listed the losses on the Senate floor. The deal had rejected "a government-wide review board composed of expert citizens," he said, and a requirement that the government obtain recovered UAP material or biological remains "that may have been provided to private entities."

Schumer was blunter about what the change meant.

"It's beyond disappointing that the House has refused to work with us on all the important elements of the UAP Disclosure Act during the NDAA conference."

Without the board, he said, "declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades."

What survived

Here's the part the headlines skipped. The stripped-down version still became law.

President Biden signed the FY2024 NDAA on December 22, 2023. Its UAP provisions, Sections 1841 through 1843 of Public Law 118-31, did several concrete things, according to Inside Government Contracts:

• A records collection. The National Archives had to establish a "UAP Records Collection" by February 23, 2024, covering government, government-provided and government-funded records on UAP.
• A search order. Every government office had until October 23, 2024, to identify and review its UAP records and send the ones cleared for release to the Archives.
• Rules for secrecy. An agency could postpone disclosure only on findings such as a grave threat to military defense, intelligence operations or foreign relations, with Congress notified.
• A long clock. Postponed records must be reviewed periodically, but full public release isn't required until 25 years after a record was created.

The Archives did build it. The UAP collection is Record Group 615, and NARA says agency transfers are added to its online catalog on a rolling basis.

Schumer called it a win anyway. "This is a major win for government transparency on UAPs," he said. "And it gives us a strong foundation for more action in the future."

The fight didn't end

Schumer promised, on December 13, that "Senator Rounds and I will keep working to change the status quo." Rounds framed the stakes as congressional, not cosmic. "We are lacking oversight opportunities, and we are not fulfilling our responsibilities," he said.

They meant it. On July 29, 2025, Schumer, Rounds and Gillibrand filed an amendment to the FY2026 defense bill titled the "UAP Disclosure Act of 2025," according to the Congressional Record. It brought back both a records review board and an eminent-domain clause over recovered technologies of unknown origin.

The two provisions the House cut in 2023 were back on the table two years later.

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• The original Schumer-Rounds bill would have created an independent review board and eminent domain over privately held "technologies of unknown origin" and non-human biological evidence.
• The final FY2024 NDAA dropped both but created a UAP records collection at the National Archives and ordered agencies to search their files.
• House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner called the Senate amendment poorly drafted and denied holding it up.

What we don't

• Exactly who in the conference pushed to remove the board and eminent domain, and why. The public record names no single decision-maker.
• How many UAP records agencies have postponed under the law's secrecy rules, and on what grounds.
• Whether anything resembling "technologies of unknown origin" sits with a private contractor, the scenario the eminent-domain clause was written for.

The clause that tells you what they feared

Lawmakers don't usually write eminent-domain powers for objects they think are imaginary. Whatever you believe about crash retrievals, a bipartisan group of senators put the possibility into statutory text, and the House took it back out.

The skeptic's reading is simple: the language was overbroad, poorly drafted, and chasing rumors. The believer's reading is just as simple: someone didn't want a truly independent board getting near contractor vaults.

The law that passed lets the agencies grade their own homework, on a 25-year curve.

So which is it: a sensible trim of a sloppy bill, or the moment Congress blinked? Make your case in the comments.

Sources

• Schumer, Rounds Introduce New Legislation To Declassify Government Records Related To Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena And UFOs — Senate Democrats, 2023
• Congressional Record, July 13, 2023 (UAP Disclosure Act amendment text) — U.S. Congress, 2023
• Schumer Warns UFO Disclosure Legislation Is About To Get Rejected — The Daily Wire, 2023
• Majority Leader Schumer And Republican Senator Mike Rounds Floor Colloquy On UAP Provisions In The NDAA — Senate Democrats, 2023
• The Senate Just Passed Its Massive Defense Bill. Here's What That Means for UAP Disclosure — The Debrief, 2023
• Implications of the UAP Amendment in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act — Inside Government Contracts (Covington & Burling), 2024
• Public Law 118-31, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 — U.S. Congress, 2023
• Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection (Record Group 615) — National Archives, 2024
• Congressional Record, July 29, 2025 (SA 3111, UAP Disclosure Act of 2025) — U.S. Congress, 2025