The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report accompanying the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, published in June 2020, containing the committee language that directed the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to deliver an unclassified report on unidentified aerial phenomena.
What it produced
The requirement was carried into law in the December 2020 appropriations package and produced the ODNI Preliminary Assessment 2021 of 25 June 2021, the nine pages that conceded 143 of 144 military incidents remained unexplained and that set the terms of every argument since.
Where the language came from
Imminent records Christopher Mellon drafting much of it, and the request itself as one of five pillars of a deliberate legislative campaign run by former officials and their allies after the December 2017 press disclosure. That is worth stating plainly in both directions: it means the 2021 assessment was solicited rather than volunteered, and it means the solicitation came from people who already believed what they wanted the report to find.
Connections
ODNI Preliminary Assessment 2021 · Christopher Mellon · Imminent · Luis Elizondo · ODNI · Section 1673 · New York Times UAP Story 2017