Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Raw Story that aliens may have come to the Earth 1,000 years ago or more and could have been living in the deep ocean.

Walking on Capitol Hill Wednesday night, Burchett mused, "What if these are entities that are on this Earth that have been on this Earth — who knows how long, and that we, we, think that they're coming in from way out. Maybe they did a millennium ago, but they're here in these deep-water areas and that's why — I mean, like we say, we know more about space than we do what's going on there."

The oceans have gone largely unexplored and unmapped. Google began a project 12 years ago to map the oceans as part of a partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. The images can be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth.

"We have a higher propensity of silence around these five or six, I believe, deep-water areas," Burchett continued. "And so, for me it, just, um, creates a question. And then when we have Naval personnel telling me that we have these sightings and that there's these underwater craft they're chasing that are doing hundreds of miles of hour and the best we've got is something that goes a little under 40 miles an hour. So, I got a lot of questions about that stuff."

Last week, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed a video seen on social media in a House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing that showed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone attempting to intercept an unidentified object off the coast of Yemen in 2024. It failed to do so, VICE reported.

Four witnesses spoke in the Sept. 9 hearing about their experiences with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

USA Today noted that congressional leaders allege that the federal government knows more than is being said and is intentionally keeping Congress in the dark on the matter.