David Grusch

David Charles Grusch is a former United States intelligence officer who served fourteen years across the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He is a United States Air Force combat veteran with deployments to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. He has stated publicly that he held Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances throughout his service.

Grusch was assigned as the National Reconnaissance Office representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021. The UAPTF was the precursor body to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, stood up by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence following Senator Marco Rubio's August 2020 instruction in the Senate Intelligence Authorization Act. Grusch subsequently moved to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where he co-led UAP analysis from 2021 until his departure from federal service in April 2023.

In July 2022 Grusch filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Thomas Monheim, under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. The ICIG found the complaint credible and urgent, the statutory threshold required to forward a protected disclosure to the congressional intelligence committees. Over the following months Grusch testified in classified settings before the House and Senate Permanent Select Committees on Intelligence, the Gang of Eight, and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The public disclosure followed on 5 June 2023. Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, the two journalists who had broken the 16 December 2017 New York Times article on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, published Grusch's account in The Debrief under the headline "Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin". The same evening Ross Coulthart, the Australian investigative journalist, broadcast the world-exclusive television interview with Grusch on NewsNation. The story moved within forty-eight hours from a single trade-press article to global front-page coverage.

On 26 July 2023 Grusch testified under oath before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Representative Glenn Grothman, with members including Anna Paulina Luna, Tim Burchett, and Jared Moskowitz. The hearing was the first congressional UAP testimony under oath since the 1968 Roush symposium fifty-five years earlier. Grusch appeared alongside retired Commander David Fravor of the 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter and retired Lieutenant Ryan Graves of the 2014 to 2015 East Coast incidents. The testimony ran four hours and remains the most detailed sworn account of an alleged US UAP programme placed in the public record.

Grusch testified again on 13 November 2024 before the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, alongside Luis Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet. He has since maintained a deliberate distance from press cycles, with selective public engagement focused on legislative testimony and a small number of long-form interviews.

Grusch has stated, on the public record and under oath, that the United States operates a multi-decade UAP material-retrieval and reverse-engineering programme compartmented outside the congressional oversight system. He has described non-human craft of various sizes and configurations recovered by the United States and its allies, and has stated that biological remains consistent with non-human origin have been recovered alongside some of those craft.

His core allegation in the 26 July 2023 testimony was procedural: that the constitutional requirement for congressional notification of major intelligence activities under 50 USC §3091 has not been met with respect to the programmes he identified. The procedural framing, rather than the substantive UAP claim, is what triggered the legislative response that followed in the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act of 2023.

Grusch has identified more than forty witnesses he interviewed during his UAPTF and NGA work, individuals who he has stated provided first-hand or near-first-hand accounts of programme activities, with documentation. He has stated under oath that the names and locations of these witnesses, along with the specific programme designators, were provided to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community in classified channels.

The Department of Defense and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office have rejected the substantive claims. AARO's March 2024 historical-record report, Report on the Historical Record of US Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I, found no empirical evidence of any US UAP retrieval or reverse-engineering programme. Volume II is expected. The contradiction between Grusch's sworn testimony and AARO's findings remains unresolved in the public record.

The Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds in July 2023 with subsequent re-introduction in 2024 and 2025, included provisions for federal eminent domain over recovered non-human technology and a presidential review board modelled on the JFK Records Act. Substantial portions of the original legislative text were stripped during conference committee negotiations in December 2023. The unresolved version of the Act remains active in subsequent legislative cycles.

The publicly available record of Grusch's service career, drawn from his testimony, public statements, and corroborating reporting:

• United States Air Force, commissioned officer. Combat deployments to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.
• National Reconnaissance Office. Senior intelligence representative.
• Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, 2019 to 2021. NRO representative.
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2021 to April 2023. Co-lead, UAP analysis.
• July 2022. Filed ICWPA complaint to Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
• 2022 to 2023. Classified testimony before House and Senate intelligence committees.
• April 2023. Departed federal service.
• 5 June 2023. Public disclosure via The Debrief and NewsNation.
• 26 July 2023. Sworn testimony, House Oversight Subcommittee.
• 13 November 2024. Sworn testimony, House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.

The most visible public corroboration of Grusch's allegations has come from retired Army Colonel Karl Nell, a former AAWSAP and AATIP consultant. Nell co-signed Grusch's pre-hearing public statement, including the assertion that the existence of a non-human-craft retrieval programme is, in Nell's framing, "an absolutely confirmed fact." Nell was on the witness list for the 26 July 2023 hearing but did not testify in the open session.

Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, testified at the 13 November 2024 hearing in support of Grusch's procedural concerns regarding oversight and inter-agency reporting on UAP. Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, has separately stated on the public record that he is aware of unconfirmed reports consistent with Grusch's general claims and supports the legislative effort to compel further disclosure.

The full witness list compiled by Grusch during his UAPTF and NGA service has not been made public. Grusch has stated that the list and the supporting material remain in classified intelligence channels and with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

The publicly available documentary record relating to Grusch's disclosure includes: his ICWPA complaint filed July 2022 (the substantive text remains classified, but the existence and the ICIG finding of credible and urgent are both on the public record); his sworn statement to the House Oversight Subcommittee dated 26 July 2023; the AARO Historical Record Report Volume I dated March 2024; the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 in its original July 2023 introduced form, the December 2023 conference-committee revised form, and subsequent re-introductions; and his sworn statement to the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets dated 13 November 2024.

The 16 December 2017 New York Times article that introduced AATIP to the public, the foundational document of the post-2017 disclosure cycle that Grusch's testimony sits within, is held in the archive's primary-source record alongside the FLIR1, GIMBAL and GOFAST Navy gun-camera videos confirmed authentic by the Department of Defense in April 2020.