UFO Whistleblower Jake Barber Joins Burlison's Staff in Congress

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—The man who says he helped haul an egg-shaped craft of unknown origin out of the sky now has a desk on Capitol Hill.

Jake Barber, the Air Force veteran turned Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) whistleblower, has joined the staff of Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) to work on UAP issues, according to PARADIGM—which reported that a Burlison spokesman confirmed the hire. No job title or start date has been made public.

Barber fills a seat with some history. In March 2025, Burlison brought on David Grusch, the former intelligence officer whose 2023 congressional testimony helped make "non-human" a C-SPAN word. Grusch left around Labor Day, according to PARADIGM, and disclosed his departure soon after the outlet reported he was an executive at an advanced-materials startup.

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The hire comes days after Burlison won another term in Missouri’s 7th District on November 3, and caps a few weeks of tea-leaf reading. Pavel Ibarra Meda, host of the “Psicoactivo” podcast, called it on an October 24 episode, saying his own digging pointed to Barber as Burlison's next hire. The day prior, Burlison said in an interview with Timothy Alberino that he was preparing to add someone to his UAP effort who had appeared with journalist Ross Coulthart.

Barber went public in January 2025 on NewsNation. He said he had flown helicopters for a private contractor on missions to retrieve craft of non-human origin. He then helped launch Skywatcher, a privately funded outfit that said it could summon UAP with an "electromechanical dog whistle" and trained psychics. It published a nine-class UAP taxonomy, which ran from “Tic Tac” to “Jellyfish,” and Barber predicted the big questions could be answered, with definitive data made public, within a year.

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The follow-through never came. Skywatcher’s promised footage, its third documentary episode and the craft landing its allies talked up never materialized, and its lead technologist, James Fowler, left in mid-2025. The group has since gone silent and has publicly disclosed no independently verified evidence of success. Unlike Grusch, Barber has never testified under oath.

In February 2025, Burlison told Ask a Pol UAP that he hadn't yet looked into Barber's claims. Now Barber works for him.

What Barber will actually do there remains unclear. The open question is whether a congressional office can deliver the evidence Skywatcher never did.

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