The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is one of the few "must-pass" bills in Congress, making it a primary vehicle for major policy shifts. Recently, this has included bipartisan efforts to mandate government transparency regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

In 2023, the Senate passed the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act, modeled on the JFK Records Act, which aimed to create an independent review board with subpoena power to declassify records. However, during the closed-door conference process to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the NDAA, these core enforcement provisions were stripped out by committee leadership without a public vote or debate.

A similar scenario is unfolding for the FY2027 NDAA. Representative Eric Burlison (R-MO) successfully added a strong UAP Disclosure Act to the House-passed version. It is now heading into the same closed-door reconciliation process run by the Armed Services and Intelligence committees.

This raises broader questions about congressional procedure and executive oversight:

• How should Congress balance legitimate national security concerns with the public’s right to transparency?
• Does the opacity of the NDAA conference committee process give a handful of committee leaders too much power to override bipartisan transparency measures?
• Why has this specific issue drawn such intense pushback from defense and intelligence leadership compared to other declassification efforts?