(NewsNation) — Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., calls UAP whistleblower Lue Elizondo “an American hero” for publicly sharing what he says he knows about unidentified anomalous phenomena, aka UFOs.

Elizondo, a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, says the U.S. military has been running an unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) retrieval and reverse engineering program for years — and has even recovered nonhuman specimens.

“My buddy Lue Elizondo is an American hero,” Burchett told NewsNation on Sunday. He also shared his longtime frustration has what he calls a decades-long cover-up by the government.

“Every time we turn around, we have some smart-aleck kid with a man bun … telling us they don’t exist. And I say ‘well, what about this incident, or this report’ and they’ll say ‘well I don’t have anything on that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It goes on and on and on.”

Burchett says his personal conversations with pilots and others contradict the denials that he and other members of Congress have heard over the years.

“One of them (military pilot) told me, ‘Tim this thing was 14 feet from my canopy. I could not mis-identify it.’ If we have credible people telling us that they have recovered craft or recovered bodies … we ought to be able to see that information.”

Burchett says there will be more UAP hearings by House committees, and he expects the witnesses to be more forthcoming than others have been.

“We’re gonna call some people in and they’re gonna point some fingers and name some names. I think that the American public has a right to know,” he said.

But Burchett also warns the ultimate decision on releasing what the government knows about UAP may have to come from the White House.

“We’re gonna have to have a president with the guts to say ‘let’s release all of them. Let’s turn ‘em loose.’”