Whistleblower and U.S. Air Force Major David Grusch testified in a congressional hearing last week about an alleged government program to find and reverse-engineer downed UFOs. According to Grusch, whose credentials include time in Air Force Intelligence as well as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the program has continued without congressional oversight for almost a century.
Grusch told the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs that he had been assigned to the Department of Defense’s Task Force for UAP — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, the official term for UFOs.
It should be noted that, within officialdom, UFO/UAP does not necessarily imply an extraterrestrial connotation; it simply refers to any observed object or phenomenon whose nature and cause defies explanation. Hence the UAP Task Force’s (UAPTF) raison d’etre: to ensure that unknown objects are not threatening American airspace or security.
While on the UAPTF, Grusch was tasked with finding all highly classified and compartmented programs known as SAPs or CAPs (Special Access Programs and Controlled Access Program, respectively) related to UFOs. As part of his investigation, he “was informed … of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access.”
That denial came despite his being “cleared to literally all relevant compartments.”
Upon further investigation, Grusch came to believe that these programs were intentionally obfuscating congressional authority and constituted “a potential abuse of executive branch authorities.” He filed a whistleblower report with the Intelligence Community inspector general after four years of investigating federal UFO programs.
During those four years, Grusch collected and corroborated evidence he received from “individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy and service to this country — many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony.”
Redacted for a Reason
While saying that he came forward out of a sense of duty and the need for transparency, Grusch did caveat by highlighting the need for classification. Fully releasing all information the federal government has on UFOs would highlight both the capacities and weaknesses of American surveillance equipment, which would be detrimental to national security, according to the former intelligence officer. (READ MORE: What’s Most Plausible About UFOs?)
Former F-18 fighter pilot Ryan Graves told the subcommittee that while those classification requirements are essential, there is no need for them to extend to the actual UFOs themselves; only America’s capacity to detect them and other security threats should remain classified.
The threat UFOs posed to American national security was a common theme in the hearing, with Grusch saying he had witnessed people being hurt by UFOs, describing the incidents as “very disturbing.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) followed up by asking if he knew of anyone who had been murdered by UFOs, to which Grusch responded that he couldn’t answer that question.
On the Origin of Species
Besides insight on the potential harm that could come to Americans, the congressmen also wanted answers on the nature of the UFOs and what exactly the government has in its possession.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) asked Grusch if any parts of nonhuman bodies had been recovered from UFO crash sites.
He responded by saying that the government had recovered “biologics” from the site but that he couldn’t comment beyond that.
Various other explanations for UFOs that did not involve nonhuman origin were also expressed in the hearing, such as the military testing classified technology or foreign nations.
The witnesses were of the opinion that those explanations were unlikely, due to the specific nature and behavior of documented UFOs. Former F-18 fighter pilot Commander David Fravor claimed that a UFO witnessed by Navy airmen off the coast of San Diego — which was then detected by the USS Nimitz radar — “was far superior in performance to my brand-new F/A-18 and did not operate with any of the known aerodynamic principles.”
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) asked if there was any interdimensional explanation. Grusch responded that those involved in the UFO program had floated theoretical suggestions, but no documented evidence existed to support the idea.
The hearing debated a wide spectrum of ideas surrounding UFOs and the federal government’s alleged involvement in keeping them secret. As UFO sightings have become common enough to be included in safety briefings for new airmen, the often-stigmatized topic has now entered the marbled halls of Congress.
Halfway through earning a master’s in national security at the Institute of World Politics, Mason Stauffer is part of The American Spectator’s 2023 intern class. When he isn’t preparing for his future career in the national security sector, Mason can usually be found hiking through the National Park System or playing his trumpet.
READ MORE: