Whistleblower David Grusch, whose testimony regarding alleged secret UFO-retrieval programs kicked off a series of congressional hearings, has stated private contractors are being used to make it more difficult for lawmakers to obtain information on certain programs. "If you really want to hide something from Congress, you don't put it in a government file cabinet. You hand it to a private contractor. That's why my investigation is following the trail into RAND, MITRE, Aerospace Corp, MIT Lincoln Labs, and the Northrop Grummans of the world," [Rep. Eric] Burlison said on X. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, along with others, including MITRE, RAND, IDA, the Aerospace Corporation, JPL and Sandia, was designed in the 1940s and 1950s to retain wartime scientific capability outside the civil service. That structure has led to a network of private nonprofits with classified access that ordinary contractors do not have and that also operate one legal step removed from the executive branch. Grusch alleged in his testimony before Congress that private contractors are carrying out UFO crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programs to shield them from congressional oversight. That has been echoed by lawmakers, including Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., one of the leading voices around UFO disclosure, who has accused the Department of Defense of siloing information to avoid questions from Congress.