David Charles Grusch (USAF)

David Charles Grusch (USAF)

Name(s):	David Charles Grusch
Birth Date:	1987
Occupation:	USAF officer and former intelligence official

In 2023,United States Air Force (USAF) officer and former intelligence official David Grusch was interviewed by various media outlets and testified in a U.S. House of Representatives congressional hearing. Grusch claimed that he had conversations with unnamed officials that led him to believe that the U.S. federal government maintains a secretive UFO (or UAP) recovery program and is in possession of "non-human" spacecraft along with their "dead pilots". In 2022, Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) to support his plan to share classified information with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He also filed a complaint alleging retaliation by his superiors over a similar complaint he made in 2021.

He claims to have viewed documents reporting that Benito Mussolini's government recovered a "non-human" spacecraft in 1933, which the Vatican and the Five Eyes assisted the U.S. in procuring in 1944 or 1945. Grusch claims second hand knowledge that American citizens have been harmed and killed as part of the government's efforts to cover up the information. In response to his June 2023 claims, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued statements reaffirming that no evidence of extraterrestrial life has been discovered and that there is no verifiable information about anyone possessing and reverse engineering any "extraterrestrial materials".

In July 2023 testimony given to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Grusch repeated some of his claims under oath, alongside testimony from retired U.S. fighter pilot Ryan Graves and retired U.S. Navy commander David Fravor on their personal experiences related to UFOs. Grusch testified that he could not elaborate publicly on some aspects of his claims, but offered to provide further details to representatives in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).

Grusch's public 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".[12] 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".[13] 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. Also on June 5, portions of an interview of Grusch by Ross Coulthart aired on NewsNation with additional excerpts appearing on June 11.

Grusch claims that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and possesses multiple spacecraft of non-human origin as well as corpses of deceased pilots. Grusch 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 stated that he tried to get the director of AARO to help him share his claims with Congress, "I expressed some concerns to Dr. Kirkpatrick about a year ago, and told him what I was starting to uncover. And he didn't follow up with me."

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 believes that the U.S. government is in possession of UAP based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years. Grusch claimed in response to Congressional questions that the U.S. has retrieved "non-human" biological matter from the pilots of 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 asked by U.S. Representative Tim Burchett during this July 26 hearing, if Grusch 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 along with his attorney Charles McCullough, a former Intelligence Community Inspector General. When asked about the U.S. having "intact and partially intact alien vehicles in its possession", Grusch repeated his claims, and McCullough noted that Congress should have "access to the information it needs to properly oversee things going on in the executive branch".