David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims

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.