Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is throwing his weight behind bipartisan legislation that would declassify government records related to so-called U.F.O.s and unidentified anomalous phenomena, he announced this week.

The legislation would amend the National Defense Authorization Act and require the federal government to collect all records related to unidentified phenomena and make them immediately available to the public unless a review board offers legitimate reasons to keep them classified.

The process is modeled after the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which ordered all files related to Kennedys killing to be released by the National Archives by 2017. Most, but not all, of the files have been released, however, leading to ongoing public scrutiny and a lawsuit by JFK scholars .