Former U.S. military intelligence officer's claims about "non-human" spacecraft recovery
David Grusch is a former United States Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official who has claimed that the U.S. federal government, in collaboration with private aerospace companies, has highly secretive special access programs involved in the recovery and reverse engineering of "non-human" spacecraft and their dead pilots, and that people have been threatened and killed in order to conceal these programs. Grusch further claims to have viewed documents reporting a spacecraft of alien origin had been recovered by Benito Mussolini's government in 1933 and procured by the U.S. in 1944 or 1945 with the assistance of the Vatican and the Five Eyes alliance. 
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have both denied Grusch's claims, stating there are no such programs and that extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered. No evidence supporting Grusch's UFO claims has been presented and they have been dismissed by multiple, independent experts.
Background.
David Charles Grusch is an Afghanistan combat veteran and a former USAF intelligence officer who worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). From 2019 to 2021, he was the representative of the NRO to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He assisted in drafting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, which includes provisions for reporting of UFOs, including whistleblower protections and exemptions to non-disclosure orders and agreements. Congressional interest in UFO sightings immediately prior to Grusch's public claims surrounded questions about the four objects that the Air Force shot down in February 2023.
Grusch's claims.
On June 5, 2023, independent journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal provided a story detailing Grusch's claims of a UFO coverup by the government to "The Debrief", a website that describes itself as "self-funded" and specializing in "frontier science". "The New York Times" and "Politico" declined to publish the story, while "The Washington Post" was taking more time to conduct fact-checking than Kean and Blumenthal felt could be afforded because, according to Kean, "people on the internet were spreading stories, Dave was getting harassing phone calls, and we felt the only way to protect him was to get the story out". According to Kean, she vetted Grusch by interviewing Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, and "Jonathan Grey" (a pseudonym) whom Kean described as "a current U.S. intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC)". Kean wrote that Nell called Grusch "beyond reproach" and that both Nell and "Grey" supported Grusch's claim about a secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program.
Grusch claims that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and possesses multiple spacecraft of what he calls "non-human" origin as well as corpses of deceased pilots. He also claims there is "substantive evidence that white-collar crime" took place to conceal UFO programs and that he had interviewed officials who said that people had been killed to conceal the programs.
Grusch elaborated on his claims in a subsequent interview with the French newspaper "Le Parisien" on June 7. He said that UFOs could be coming from extra dimensions; that he had spoken with intelligence officials whom the U.S. military had briefed on "football-field" sized crafts; that the U.S. government transferred some crashed UFOs to a defense contractor; and that there was "malevolent activity" by UFOs.
During a July 26, 2023, Congressional hearing, Grusch said that he "was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access" and that he believed that the U.S. government was in possession of UAP based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years. He claimed in response to Congressional questions that the U.S. has retrieved what he terms "non-human 'biologics" from the crafts and that this "was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the [UAP] program I talked to, that are currently still on the program". When Representative Tim Burchett asked him if he had "personal knowledge of people who've been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal" the government's possession of "extraterrestrial technology", Grusch said yes, but that he was not able to provide details except within a SCIF.
BBC Radio 4's "The World Tonight" on August 3, 2023, interviewed Grusch. When asked about the U.S. having "intact and partially intact alien vehicles in its possession", Grusch repeated his claims.
Responses from relevant experts.
Grusch's claims are primarily based on conversations he’s had and documents he says he's read rather than testable evidence. Claims that the government is covering up extraterrestrial visitation to Earth are broadly considered untrue by the majority of the scientific community because they oppose the best currently available expert information. The dominant expert narrative today is that such a conspiratorial government coverup is not true.
Joshua Semeter of NASA's UAP independent study team and professor of electrical and computer engineering with Boston University's College of Engineering concludes that "without data or material evidence, we are at an impasse on evaluating these claims" and that, "in the long history of claims of extraterrestrial visitors, it is this level of specificity that always seems to be missing". Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, published a critique of the Grusch claims on June 22 with "Big Think". Frank writes that he does "not find these claims exciting at all" because they are all "just hearsay" where "a guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships". Frank also said of the Grusch account that "it's an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, none of which we're getting", adding "show me the spaceship".
"The Guardian" printed an opinion piece by Stuart Clark about Grusch's claims which included questions from three scientists. Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb, who co-founded the UFO-investigating Galileo Project, noted that nothing extraterrestrial has been observed. Radio astronomer Michael Garrett noted that crashed landings of alien craft "would imply that there must be hundreds of them coming every day, and astronomers simply don't see them". Sara Russell, a planetary scientist from the Natural History Museum in London, said that, "if you give me an alloy, it would take me less than half an hour to tell you what elements are in it", and that "it should be easy to understand whether something falling to Earth is man-made or extraterrestrial, and if it is the latter, whether it is naturally occurring or not".
Greg Eghigian, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University and expert in the history of UFOs as it occurs in the context of public fascination, notes that there have been many instances over recent decades in the U.S. of people "who previously worked in some kind of federal department" coming forward to make "bombshell allegations" about the truth regarding UFOs with the whistleblower claims by Grusch fitting this pattern. Eghigian describes the 1940s–50s media enthusiasm about flying saucers, and comments that the successful books on the subject by authors Donald Keyhoe, Frank Scully, and Gerald Heard "provided the model for a new kind of public figure: the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking the silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects." Since then all these similarly credentialed claimants have been unable to provide any further corroboration. Eghigian said that "a new kind of sobriety needs to be interjected here" and that the Grusch story "ups the ante" but is "very hard to take seriously unless we start getting some real evidence that's of a forensic nature to prove these things".
Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute writing on MSNBC.com about Grusch's claims, said that the claims are extraordinary, before asking, "But where is the evidence? It's MIA. Neither Grusch nor anyone else claiming to have knowledge of secret government UAP programs has ever been able to publicly produce convincing photos showing alien hardware splayed across the landscape. And remember, we're not talking about a Cessna that plowed into a wheat field. We're talking about, presumably, an alien interstellar rocket, capable of bridging trillions of miles of space, and sporting technology that is obviously alien". Shostak concluded that, "from the standpoint of science, there's still no good evidence [that extraterrestrials are visiting the Earth], only an 'argument from authority'". Michael Shermer, publisher of "Skeptic" magazine, said of the July 26, 2023, congressional hearing that "it's astonishing it's come this far without any real evidence, without anybody in the scientific community making an appearance" and "we are still seeing not a shred of physical evidence".
The physicist and cosmologist Sean M. Carroll said of Grusch's claims about alien visitors, "the evidence is laughable". Grusch was "talking about the holographic principle and extra dimensions and stuff like that" which should "set off your alarm bells," he said. He concluded that Grusch "has all of the vibes of a complete crackpot".
Laurie Leshin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director for NASA, when asked by reporter in August 2023 if she had "seen spacecraft made from outside of this world", replied "Absolutely not. No." with a laugh and head shake.
Physicist and popular science writer Michio Kaku said "so far we have not seen the smoking gun" to prove any of Grusch's claims. However, he also suggested that "the burden of proof has shifted, now the Pentagon has to prove these things aren't extra-terrestrial". That prompted Real Clear Science editor Ross Pomeroy to comment, "no, the burden of proof has not shifted. Aliens are not the default explanation when a simpler explanation readily does the job". According to Pomeroy, "Kaku is seriously jeopardizing his reputation and misleading the public through his unscientific new stance on UFOs."
Responses from the United States government.
Department of Defense and NASA.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions about Grusch's complaint to the Department of Defense (DoD). In a statement, Sue Gough, spokesperson for the Pentagon, said: "To date, AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads."
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave an interview to "The Washington Times" on August 6, 2023, in which he stated that he had never encountered evidence that would verify the claims made by Grusch regarding "quote-unquote 'aliens' or that there's some sort of cover-up program". Milley added that he was unsurprised that such rumors would circulate and be believed by some within an organization as large as the U.S. military.
NASA stated: "One of NASA's key priorities is the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but so far, NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial. However, NASA is exploring the solar system and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the universe."
Congress.
In response to Grusch's claims, Representative Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, "every decade there's been individuals who've said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space" and that "there's no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level".
Senator Lindsey Graham found the claims unreasonable, saying, "If we'd really found this stuff, there's no way you could keep it from coming out". Senator Josh Hawley said, "I'm not surprised, necessarily, by these latest allegations, because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of grudgingly admitted to us in the briefing". Some senators, though not concerned about Grusch's specific claims, were concerned that Congress might not have been briefed on special access programs. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who led a Senate hearing on UFOs in April 2023, said she intends to hold a hearing to assess whether "rogue SAP programs" existed "that no one is providing oversight for". Senator Marco Rubio, vice-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said, "there are people who have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years" with "first-hand knowledge" and that they