Money and Britons join US quest for truth about UFOs But while the claims are familiar - bright lights in the sky, bunkers in the desert, and conspiracy in the White House - the project's scale and ambition is new. Funded with $1.1 million from a Canadian donor, the CHD hired six former politicians to participate in the elaborately-staged hearings in front of banks of television cameras and more than 40 witnesses. And its end goal? "I would like to see the President of the United States come out one day and say my fellow Americans we are not alone in the universe and we have visitors now," says Stephen Bassett, an organiser who has spent a decade mulling the idea. At the heart of this earnest American exercise in representative democracy are a handful of British stars. Speaking in a broad Lincolnshire accent, former British Transport Police detective Gary Heseltine makes a passionate call for the disclosure of government files, at one point being rebuked by a ex-congresswoman for interrupting. "I believe that that time is now to lift the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the subject for more than 60 years," he tells the panel. Former detective Gary Heseltine addresses the hearing (Pic: Reuben Langdon) Mr Heseltine's own fascination with UFOs began on a balmy summer night in Scunthorpe in 1975. The then-15-year-old was walking under the stars with his girlfriend when a bright light swooped overhead, seemingly knocking out the power in parts of the village of Ashby below. Leaping onto his bicycle, he rode furiously and reached his parents' house on Baysdale Road moments before the light crossed above it. No sooner had it flown over then out went the lights. Mr Heseltine has no exact date for his close encounter, making it impossible to confirm his account of the power outages, but whatever he saw affected him enough that four decades later he is in Washington offering his testimony to the panel. "We're sensible people, we're not looney tunes," he says. All we ask is don't treat us like fools. Listen to the evidence and make your own minds up. Mr Heseltine's full-throated performance wows many in the American audience and a crowd of admirers cluster around him afterward, including one woman who urgently describes photographs of alien bodies that a friend sent to her. On the other side of the UFO community's broad church is Nick Pope, a bookish-looking former civil servant who spent three years studying sightings for the Ministry of Defence. Unlike Mr Heseltine and many of his fellow Ufologists, Mr Pope believes the world's governments are probably "as mystified as everyone else" and doubts that there's "a spaceship in a hangar somewhere." Nick Pope is more sceptical than many other Ufologists (Pic: Reuben Langdon) But he's impressed with the professionalism of the hearings and the brisk stewardship of the often-sceptical former members of Congress. "If the UFO community wants to be taken seriously - and they do - this is a very good start point," he says. The Holy Grail of UFO sightings used to be Roswell, the 1947 crash in the New Mexico desert of an object which the government described as a surveillance balloon but believers are convinced is a flying saucer. But as decades passed and Roswell witnesses died, interest has shifted to less exotic locale: Suffolk. It was there in December 1980 that US Air Force personnel based at RAF Woodbridge claimed to have seen a triangular metal object and later recorded unusually high levels of radiation. "Roswell is almost passing into legend, Rendlesham Forest is now the most potent sighting available to us," said Mr Pope. Mike Gravel, a Left-wing former Alaska senator who ran against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, is among those convinced by what he's heard. "I've seen enough evidence that there's no question that there's an unidentified phenomenon taking place," he says, calling for a international conference on the matter hosted by the UN. And is there a danger that taking a $20,000 fee to participate in a panel on UFOs might hurt his credibility? The 82-year-old grins broadly. At my age I could care less. The hearings sometimes go through periods of unsettling normality, as minutes are taken, oaths are taken and witnesses scolded for going over their time limits. And then, just in case there's a danger of things becoming too mundane, an exasperated attendee in gold trousers and a cowboy hat walks out of the conference room complaining into her mobile phone. "I don't know why they can't just hurry and come down and beam me up," she says.