WASHINGTON -- The first lobbying group dedicated to UFO issues has opened for business on Capitol Hill. The Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee, X-PPAC, will lobby for more openness from the federal government about possible evidence of alien life.

The group's overriding goal, said founder Stephen Besset, is open congressional hearings on what he says is a massive government secrecy effort that extends back to the famously rumored 1947 crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

"We're calling for open hearing from government witnesses who have approached us and want to testify, openly, about the big stuff," Besset said. "There are dozens of people and they want to talk. If we get those hearings, the cover-up is over."

Besset helped launch a national petition in 1997 to ask for open hearings. He said that now that the Cold War is over, the government has less need to hide information.

The group will also back open-government reforms like the bipartisan Government Secrecy Reform Act which was introduced by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., in January and is now sitting in the Governmental Affairs Committee.