David Grusch

David Charles Grusch (born 1987) is a former US Air Force intelligence officer and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) / National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) representative to the UAP Task Force who on 2023-06-05 went public — through an article in The Debrief by investigative journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal and a parallel NewsNation television interview with Ross Coulthart — alleging that the United States government has reportedly for decades operated a multi-agency program to recover and reverse-engineer non-human craft, and, in some cases, purported non-human biological remains, through a network of highly compartmentalized special access programs (SAPs) that have allegedly been withheld from Congressional oversight. On 2023-07-26 Grusch testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee's subcommittee on national security, the border, and foreign affairs — becoming the first credentialed active-era intelligence official to make such claims in a formal congressional setting — stating that he had been denied access to relevant programs after making inquiries, that colleagues had faced retaliation for similar inquiries, and that the existence of "non-human intelligence" had reportedly been confirmed to him by individuals with direct knowledge.

Grusch worked directly with the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) from 2019 to 2021 and co-led UAP analysis efforts at the NGA. He declined to name specific programs or locations in public testimony, citing pending legal review, but reportedly provided classified testimony to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His attorney, Charles McCullough III — the former Intelligence Community Inspector General — stated the complaint's filing, and the ICIG's initial assessment deemed the material "credible and urgent."

Background

Grusch is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and served as a US Air Force intelligence officer beginning in the late 2000s. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2013, conducting convoys outside the wire; he lost a friend in combat and was subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for which he sought and received treatment. He subsequently served in senior intelligence-analyst roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and as an NRO representative to the UAPTF.

Grusch described himself as a fourteen-year intelligence officer who was his agency's co-lead for unidentified anomalous phenomena and trans-medium object analysis, reporting to the UAP Task Force and, once it was stood up in 2022, to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). He had no prior interest in the UAP subject when he was recruited to the UAPTF: the UAPTF director circulated a request through the operations center asking whether any NGA intelligence officer would serve as a representative, and Grusch accepted out of curiosity.

During his investigation, Grusch began interviewing military personnel who reported large triangular craft hovering near them, and separately, colleagues he had known for years approached him privately, describing programs he was not being given access to. His sources described isotopic ratios in reportedly recovered materials that would allegedly have required engineering to reach observed levels, and when he sought access to the agencies that had produced the relevant reports, access was denied repeatedly. Grusch described the process of building conviction as a "slow burn culmination" rather than a single revelation, with credence accumulating from the quality and seniority of the individuals who corroborated the information.

ICIG complaint and vetting

In 2022 Grusch filed a Protected Disclosure with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), Thomas A. Monheim, and a complementary complaint with the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General alleging illegal withholding of information from Congress and reprisal for his disclosures; the ICIG found the reprisal complaint credible and urgent and transmitted it to the congressional intelligence committees. The June 2023 Debrief report additionally named retired Army Colonel Karl E. Nell — a former UAPTF team member — as on-record corroborator, and cited a second serving intelligence officer, identified under the pseudonym "Jonathan Grey" of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), who stated that "the non-human intelligence phenomenon is real" and that crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering work had continued without Congressional notification.

Public emergence and Congressional testimony

Grusch's initial public outing took the form of a NewsNation exclusive television interview with journalist Ross Coulthart on 2023-06-11, released the same day as an audio podcast episode. In that interview Grusch described the UAP task force as "a refuses retrieval program" — meaning that its mandate reportedly involved recovering non-human-origin technical vehicles that had crashed or landed — and affirmed that he had spoken under oath with investigators about the program. In the immediate post-broadcast edition of Ross Coulthart and Bryce Zabel's Need to Know podcast, Coulthart characterised the moment as "a momentous moment in not just American history, but world history," the first time a recently retired senior intelligence official had publicly claimed "that we are not alone," and reiterated that Grusch had spoken with the Department of Defense's permission. Coulthart further noted that Grusch was constrained by classification guidelines and therefore could not present craft fragments or photographs to substantiate his claims, regardless of the public's demand for "proof."

On 2023-07-26, the House Oversight Committee's subcommittee on national security, the border, and foreign affairs convened the hearing Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency, organized by representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett. Grusch testified alongside former US Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor. Under oath, Grusch stated that he had "been informed in the course of [his] official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program" and that he had interviewed approximately forty witnesses concerning U.S. possession of UAP and associated biological material. Dr Gary Nolan — a tenured Stanford immunologist who attended the hearing alongside Grusch — recounted that he had been informed the day before that a closed-session request had been made for him to brief committee members, but the request was denied, a denial he characterized as "obvious obstruction."

In 2023, Yes Theory, in collaboration with American Alchemy host Jesse Michels, produced a documentary titled Proof of Aliens on Earth // 72 hrs With UFO Whistleblower David Grusch Under Oath following Grusch through the days surrounding the hearing, with Gary Nolan and Grusch's wife Melanie Kirchdorfer among the principal figures. In an informal public Q&A organized by Yes Theory on the rooftop of a Washington D.C. hotel the day after the hearing, Grusch explained the original rationale for secrecy as Manhattan Project security culture overlaid on UAP material — a decision made in an era of high public trust in government and high religiosity that was never revisited: "They basically took the Manhattan Project secrecy and overlaid it on this issue... And they never really developed a disclosure plan for what it's worth. They just were like, this is the way it's been and we're going to keep it that way." Grusch predicted that 2024 would see a government statement on the crash retrieval issue and that additional intelligence officers were preparing to file whistleblower complaints similar to his own.

In 2024, Jesse Michels of American Alchemy released a documentary-style podcast episode titled "UFO Whistleblower David Grusch Tells Me Everything," produced in collaboration with Yes Theory. The episode compiled the most comprehensive public account of Grusch's claims to date, covering the history of UAP secrecy, his personal experience of retaliation, and his theories on propulsion and non-human biology. Grusch described how an agency attempted to revoke his security clearance by resurfacing his 2013 Afghanistan-related PTSD diagnosis, claiming he had "ongoing unmitigated issues"; he fought the allegation for two years, was cleared, and retained his clearance. Grusch discussed the role of Thomas Townsend Brown in investigating the foo fighters for OSS and MI6, and President Eisenhower's dispatch of General James Doolittle to investigate the Swedish ghost rockets — details documented in the Thomas Townsend Brown and Ghost rockets articles respectively. On the religious implications of disclosure, Grusch cited the Vatican Observatory as having already stated openness to the existence of other sentient life, framing it as an expression of divine creativity rather than a challenge to faith.

Biological remains claim

Grusch stated publicly, including in his 2023 NewsNation interview and in his July 2023 Congressional testimony, that biologics — allegedly non-human remains — accompanied some of the reportedly recovered craft. He described the biological aspect as the most psychologically confronting dimension of the issue — calling it "mind blowing" — but stated he could not elaborate beyond what had been submitted to and cleared through the DoD Pre-Publication and Security Review process, citing the risk that additional disclosures would force the relevant agencies to self-identify and reveal their classification guides in any legal challenge.

1933 Italian crash retrieval

Main article:

1933 Magenta UFO crash

In his June 2024 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience (episode #2065), Grusch described the earliest crash retrieval he is able to discuss publicly: a 1933 incident in Magenta, Italy, involving a lenticular disc craft with no biological remains, which Mussolini's government showed to German officials who confirmed it was not theirs.

Grusch also described, in the same appearance, that prior to filing his Inspector General whistleblower complaint he was subjected to what he characterized as an intimidation operation: an incident in which he and his wife were made to understand in a physical manner that they could be touched at any time, which he reported to counterintelligence and local law enforcement. He described the incident as motivating rather than deterring him: "I'm from Pittsburgh, you know, like Steel Town. I don't take shit from people — I decided, fuck it, I'm going to file an inspector general complaint to protect myself."

Secrecy architecture and the Manhattan Project

Grusch has argued that the secrecy regime allegedly covering UAP programs is structurally rooted in the Atomic Energy Act and the classified ecosystem built around the Manhattan Project, with Robert Oppenheimer among those who applied nuclear-era security frameworks to the UAP material. He noted that Project Blue Book personnel may have had connections to Manhattan Project structures, describing colleagues whose grandparents had handled UFO reports within the Manhattan Project context.

Grusch described the extreme compartmentalization of the programs as counterproductive — preventing even senior program staff from having a holistic view, and making it impossible to bring in the best theoretical scientists since security clearances bar many candidates on lifestyle grounds. He contended that opening the programs — while protecting anything that could be weaponized — would in fact strengthen rather than weaken national security.

Views on UAP propulsion and nuclear interest

Grusch has speculated publicly on UAP propulsion in terms of space-time metric engineering, suggesting craft may "surf" a wave in space-time, and has noted that blue-shifted radiation reported in UAP proximity cases is consistent with relativistic lensing. He has also affirmed that UAP display documented interest in nuclear facilities, speculating this may reflect a physics threshold at which a civilization begins manipulating space-time. Detailed analysis is documented in the UAP propulsion and Manhattan Project articles.

Disclosure advocacy and public commentary

Grusch's claims attracted early support from venture-capital and technology circles as well as from established UAP researchers. In a 2023 appearance on the Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal podcast, American Alchemy host Jesse Michels described Grusch as the most consequential intelligence-world figure to have emerged from the UAP disclosure movement, noting that the question of disinformation within the field — how to distinguish signal from manufactured noise — was itself a "clue" about the depth of official concealment. Michels, who had produced documentary content on Grusch and the broader disclosure movement, observed that top academics in physics and mathematics were privately interested in the UAP phenomenon despite public reticence — a dynamic he characterized as a "collective illusion" around stigma that Grusch's congressional appearance had begun to disrupt. In a follow-up 2023-11 appearance on Theories of Everything, Ross Coulthart addressed the inside story of Grusch's evidence base, media suppression dynamics, and the political stakes of the Gillibrand/Schumer UAP legislation.

On his broader reasoning for disclosure, Grusch stated that the public deserves to know the answers to fundamental questions — whether we are alone and what happens after death — and that keeping those answers secret because officials believe the public cannot handle them, or to protect a Cold War information advantage, is indefensible.

He has also noted elite civilian interest in the UAP topic, including the Rockefeller family's funding of Steven Greer's early disclosure work, John Mack's UAP research, and the Princeton Parapsychology Laboratory, as well as correspondence between Lawrence Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s pushing for UAP disclosure.

Steven Greer has described fourteen months of encrypted communications with Grusch prior to his public emergence, and has publicly stated that a specific incident Grusch cited — in which aliens allegedly murdered humans — was in Greer's assessment a U.S. black ops false flag operation rather than a genuine NHI attack. In a 2025 interview, Greer alleged that Grusch and Lue Elizondo had told members of Congress that Greer was "a Russian sleeper agent" and "a Russian spy," which Greer described as "batshit, insane crazy stuff" designed to discourage congressional engagement with his disclosure efforts.

Government and institutional responses

The Pentagon, through spokesperson Sue Gough, stated shortly after the June 2023 Debrief publication that AARO "has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently." NASA stated that it had "not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life" and no evidence that UAP are extraterrestrial; in an August 2023 interview with the Washington Times General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he had never encountered evidence supporting Grusch's alien or cover-up claims.

AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick issued a LinkedIn statement after the July 2023 hearing saying Grusch had "refused to speak with AARO" and calling portions of the hearing "insulting... to the officers of the Department of Defense." In a 2024-01-19 Scientific American opinion piece — and in a podcast interview with Peter Bergen four days later — Kirkpatrick characterized the Grusch allegations as "derive[d] from inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures of legitimate U.S. programs," described the narrative as "circular reporting" sourced to "the same small group of individuals," and labeled the supporting ecosystem "a small group of interconnected believers... with possibly less than honest intentions," likening the dynamic to a "self-licking ice cream cone."

Members of Congress split along sympathy lines: Representative Mike Turner (House Intelligence Committee) observed that "every decade there's been individuals" making similar claims without evidence; Senator Lindsey Graham called sustained secrecy on recovered non-human craft "implausible"; Senator Marco Rubio, then on the Senate intelligence committee, stated that the committee had received "first-hand knowledge" accounts from separate, unnamed sources potentially corroborating Grusch.

Scientific responses were largely skeptical. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute wrote for MSNBC that "the evidence... is MIA." Astrophysicist Adam Frank of the University of Rochester called the claims "just hearsay... guy says he knows a guy" and noted that "an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence." Physicist Sean M. Carroll described Grusch's evidence as "laughable" and the presentation as having "all the vibes of a complete crackpot." Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, said it was "astonishing it's come this far without any real evidence" and that there was "not a shred of physical evidence." Laurie Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, answered "Absolutely not. No." when asked whether NASA possessed alien spacecraft. Joshua Semeter, a member of the NASA UAP Independent Study Team, stated that "without data or material evidence, we are at an impasse" and that "specificity... always seems to be missing" from such claims. Marina Koren of The Atlantic observed that Grusch's claims fit a pattern of unprovable allegations, and that "the best evidence... is the government's denial." Andrew Prokop of Vox asked whether Grusch may be repeating "tall tales" circulating inside the UFO-believing community rather than original intelligence material.

Historian Greg Eghigian of Pennsylvania State University placed the Grusch episode in a longer arc of credentialed former officials — Donald Keyhoe, Frank Scully, Gerald Heard — making "bombshell allegations" in the 1940s–50s that proved unverifiable, advocating "a new kind of sobriety... unless we start getting real evidence of forensic nature."

Reporting on prior psychiatric history

On 2023-08-09 Ken Klippenstein, then of The Intercept, reported that Loudoun County, Virginia, records documented two incidents — in 2014 and 2018 — in which Grusch had been temporarily committed following intoxication and suicidal statements; a 2018 emergency custody order resulted in admission to Loudoun Adult Medical Psychiatric Services, and the police records referenced his PTSD diagnosis. In 2024 Grusch filed a $2.5 million suit against the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office over its disclosure of these records. Documentary filmmaker Steven Greenstreet of the New York Post has been critical of Grusch's post-hearing associations with Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, arguing that the ufologist milieu undermines Grusch's framing as a neutral intelligence professional.

UAP Disclosure Act

In response to Grusch's allegations, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds introduced the 64-page UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, directing the National Archives and Records Administration to collect documents related to "unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence" and creating a review process modeled on the JFK Records Act. A bipartisan group of House members subsequently called for a select committee with subpoena authority to investigate the issues raised at the July 2023 hearing.

See also

• Immaculate Constellation
• AATIP
• Lue Elizondo
• UFO retrieval program
• Majestic 12
• Karl E. Nell
• Jonathan Grey (pseudonym)
• UAP Disclosure Act of 2023
• AARO

References