David Charles Grusch (pronounced “grush”), a former top U.S. intelligence official and a selectee to the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, is now a federal whistleblower deemed “credible” by the Intelligence Community Inspector General. He recently submitted documentary and testimonial evidence to Congress establishing the existence of a secretive—and successful—DoD UAP-retrieval project.
According to this evidence, the United States Armed Forces has retrieved, on a number of discrete occasions, intact spacecrafts of apparent extraterrestrial origin.
The Debrief writes that Mr. Grusch, 36, was “a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan [and is] a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, [and] served as the Reconnaissance Office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021.” You can find photos of Grusch and other figures in this developing story below.
To any who wonder why this report first appeared in The Debrief, VICE helpfully explains: “The [Debrief] article was written by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, the reporters who broke the news of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerial Threat Intelligence (AATIP) program in the New York Times in 2017. That story kicked off the current resurging interest in UAPs in the government and among the public.”
To those who wonder why Grusch is speaking out now after turning over evidence to Congress back in July 2021, Kean and Blumenthal explain that the statement Grusch wanted to give to American media was only cleared for release by the Pentagon over the last few weeks. Meanwhile, the “classified proof” Grusch turned over to Congress under penalty of possible federal imprisonment for any mistruth cannot be shared by Grusch because of its classified status; he could be charged with a federal crime were he to share it.
David Grusch’s Primetime Interview with NewsNation
I don’t want to get over my skis on this story, which—if true—would rank among the most important in the history of our species, so I’m simply reproducing here, for all Proof readers, the following interview. Below the interview are many additional links to major-media reports on this developing story inside the United States and abroad.
Note that the primary news report on this is from The Debrief, and can be found here.
The Latest Updates
1
The White House is refusing to comment on this breaking news report.
2
Grusch’s account, found “credible” by the current Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) even as Grusch is being represented by the nation’s first-ever ICIG, has now been confirmed by a current federal official on the record, according to new reporting by The Guardian:
3
The House Oversight Committee is now planning to hold a hearing on these new allegations. Representative Pete Aguilar (D-CA) has just given the following statement:
“This is not a question I had on my bingo card last week. It is not in my sweet spot. Although I’m a defense appropriator, I’m part of classified briefings. This is nothing that has come up [in prior briefings]. I didn’t read the [Debrief] article that you’re mentioning, [but] I saw [that] it [had come out].”
Representative James Gomez (D-CA) has now also given a statement to the media:
“I saw the [Debrief] report. It sounds fascinating. [I]f there’s anything there, we’ve got to investigate, just like we would investigate a foreign country that has a balloon over our sky.”
4
The Pentagon has now issued an odd response to Grusch’s whistleblower report. In the response, the Pentagon does two things: (1) it notes something Grusch already conceded, which is that he hasn’t personally observed the exotic crafts in question (and this is certainly a point in his favor, as were he a hoaxer it would be far easier for him to claim that he had seen the non-human crafts in question), and (2) it says that
“[t]o date, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) 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.”
What is odd about this response is that the AARO acknowledges (1) that it has data that it is investigating; (2) acknowledges that a serious internal DoD investigation is ongoing; (3) acknowledges that the said investigation isn’t complete; and then simply notes that (4) “to date” it has been as unable as Grusch says he was to get the Pentagon to admit to the existence of a subunit it already (allegedly) lied to its UAP Task Force about. This amounts to no more than the AARO—an outgrowth of Grusch’s original (2019 to 2021) outfit—admitting that it has had no more luck than Grusch in getting other components of the Pentagon to admit to something they have already denied.
None of this moves the ball whatsoever. Indeed, it adds some bizarre new wrinkles—e.g., the reference to the “reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials” that has not been a key part of major-media reporting on the Grusch whistleblower report.
5
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has now given one of the most startling statements I have ever read from any member of Congress, on any subject, on the Grusch whistleblower report:
Burchett: “I’ve been briefed in some confidential settings where we’ve been talked to on some things that were, um, that I would say were”—{pause}—“there’s no military aircraft we know of in this world that match th[e] descriptions [of the aircraft revealed in briefings].”
Interviewer: “So you’ve been shown something—by government sources—that they say is proof of alien life?”
Burchett: {Nods.} “Yessir.”
6
The Independent, one of the leading news outlets in the United Kingdom, has just in the last two hours published its second major article on this story (the first one is already linked to below). Grusch alleges—and Burchett, above, appears to confirm—that evidence of spacecraft of “non-human origin” was first shared with Congress in July of 2021 and was thereafter kept classified and actively lied about, which would also explain (arguendo) the response from the AARO, above. There’s no evidence that that the AARO would, as a matter of national security, be able to reveal any data it had seen. Burchett appears to have gone rogue in revealing what the Pentagon has shown him and certain other members of Congress.
7
Yet another U.S. official is now corroborating Grusch’s account. As VICE reports, in a Politico article two days ago former intelligence official Christopher Mellon wrote the following (emphasis added):
“[The American people] have a right to know the truth of this matter….A number of well-placed current and former officials have shared detailed information with me regarding this alleged [Pentagon UAP-retrieval] program, including insights into the history [of it], [its] governing documents, and [even] the location where a craft [of non-human origin] was allegedly abandoned and recovered.”
8
Two key items remain unclear in the Kean and Blumenthal Report, and could indeed undermine it. First, it’s not clear whether the current ICIG found Grusch’s claims of retaliation from the federal government “credible and urgent” or whether it was his “classified proof” of a clandestine Pentagon UAP-retrieval program that was termed that (though in either case, it appears that at least one ICIG—the lawyer representing Grusch—does find his whistleblower report on clandestine activities at the Pentagon credible and urgent, and as noted above it has already been corroborated by others).
The second matter of debate, a considerably more troubling one, is whether Grusch is claiming that the U.S. federal government is in possession of the remains of an alien life-form (which no other federal official has ever confirmed, and which Grusch is cagey in discussing apparently in part because he’s worried about the classification status of such information) or simply nonhuman-origin vehicles. When NewsNation’s interviewer, Ross Coulthart, asks Grusch if any of the nonhuman-origin spacecraft were piloted by extraterrestrial life (“Do we have bodies? [A] species of nonhuman origin?”), Grusch responds, with an admittedly rather discomforting (by way of being a bit “flip”) affect,
“Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, um, sometimes you encounter, um, dead pilots, and, believe it or not—as fantastical as that sounds—it’s true.”
Grusch doesn’t explicitly claim to have received documentary evidence of anything but alien craft, as far as Proof has been able to divine. His comments about alleged “pilots”—which would make his report exponentially less plausible, as it’s one thing for intelligent life elsewhere to send signal-chasing probes en masse around the galaxy or universe (and indeed all such probes would end up here if we’re one of the only civilizations sending out signals that could be picked up by such exotic probes) but another for a life-form to be able to travel the almost unimaginable distances required for another civilization to get to ours—may well be mere scuttlebutt and hearsay even as his statements about alien craft (presumed to indicate probes) seem to be corroborated by officials in the U.S. government. Kean and Blumenthal would do well to get clarity from Grusch on any distinction he is making between the discovery of exotic vehicles and the recovery of an organic mass.
9
A pre-recorded add-on interview/documentary has been released showing behind-the-scenes images and video from the Ross Coulthart–David Grusch interview. Here it is:
We learn from this hour-long video the following additional information about Grusch:
- He was formerly co-responsible for putting together the Presidential Daily Brief
- He has TS-SCI classified access to over 2,000 Pentagon “special access” programs
- His public statements come under prior authorizations from the Defense Office Prepublication Security Review protocol (meaning his disclosures are not illegal)
- He was the “lead investigator” on the Pentagon task force the Department of Defense set up explicitly at the request (up to the demand) of the U.S. Congress
- He’s vouched for, per Coulthart, by “so many people on the inside [of the USAF]”
- He was interviewed by Coulthart for over seven hours, and not all of what he said was included in the first Debrief report by Kean and Blumenthal
Even more incredible is this revelation: Coulthart, an award-winning journalist, now says that he himself was directed, by a U.S. Navy intel officer named Nat Covitz [ph], to individuals who “were [then] working in what they purported was a secret [Pentagon] program involving the retrieval and attempted reverse-engineering of non-human technology.” In other words, Grusch was not the original source for Coulthart’s report, but rather a number of people inside the Pentagon who, unlike David Grusch, weren’t willing to become named whistleblowers.
Coulthart says Grusch’s “allegations” were “verified as both urgent and credible” by the ICIG, which seems to suggest—based on Coulthart’s delivery of this information—that it was the UAP-retrieval program allegations that were found credible (see Update #8, above), meaning that no reason was found to discard the allegations as unreliable.
Coulthart implies that these allegations are so widely accepted as accurate inside the U.S. military that a shorthand has already been developed—specifically, “NHI” (for nonhuman intelligence)—to discuss them and avoid the use of inexact terms like “alien.”
If true, this could mean that NHI will soon be as discussed a term as “AI” already is.
10
This bombshell from the Coulthart follow-up (see Update #9, above) requires its own numerical update signifier. I’m just going to quote Coulthart from 17:25 in the video:
“There are [military] witnesses that [Grusch] has given evidence about who’ve also backed his evidence in testimony [given] in secret to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
Those people have been deposed. They have literally given evidence under oath and been questioned about what they know about the program—about [the alleged] crash-retrieval operation [at the Pentagon]. [It is] the Congress [that] has not heard the full story. [Indeed] some of what [Grush] reveals is in fact so highly protected, so highly compartmented, that many congressional sources—senators’ offices, congressional representatives’ offices—were not even able to corroborate that they had become aware of [Grusch’s] information [due to the classification status of the topic itself].”
This would seem to put to bed the first of the two concerns articulated in Update #8, inasmuch as we now know the ICIG made the finding of urgency and credibility only after receiving sworn depositions from current federal employees discussing the UAP-retrieval program itself, rather than “merely” any mistreatment Grusch experienced at the hands of the Pentagon following his disclosures to Congress.
11
Fox News reports that “experts and journalists” are “back[ing]” Grusch’s account, noting specifically that on June 6, 2023, Fox News “spoke to three different people—two experts and a journalist—who backed Grusch’s claims”, including “Jeremy Corbell, an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who was the only civilian named during Congress’ historic UFO hearing in May 2022.”
According to Corbell, Fox News reports, “everything” that David Grusch says is true.
Per Fox News, Colonel Karl Nell, a retired U.S. Army officer who worked with Grusch on the UAP Task Force stood up by the Pentagon following new legislation passed by Congress, now says the following:
“[Grusch’s] assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse-engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence.”
Also noteworthy is that Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon entity that succeeded the UAPTF—the AARO—said during a public NASA hearing last week that the AARO currently (not in the entire lifespan of the Pentagon, but simply at the moment) has between 16 and 40 UAP cases it regards as “truly anomalous” and thus inexplicable, along with up to 790 more cases that are anomalous to a lesser degree.
These startling figures, again only constituting what this Pentagon entity is currently aware of, seem to support the conclusion that over the course of the last eighty years it would have been possible and perhaps even likely for an infinitesimal percentage of anomalous UAP cases to have resulted in a UAP crash or UAP downing, which (had this happened even a single time in eighty years) would have necessitated the creation of a classified UAP-retrieval unit at the Pentagon of exactly the sort Grusch describes.
The only alternative scenario, it would appear, would be for the Pentagon to now be acknowledging thousands of variously anomalous UAP sightings by the United States Armed Forces over the last eight decades with zero takedowns and zero downings. It seems to strain credulity that so many unidentified probes operating at extremely unsafe, beyond-human-capacity speeds and (likely) an almost impossible distance from their point of origin could have a 100% survival rate while maneuvering inside Earth’s atmosphere.
(Proof puts aside for the moment that very early on in the sighting of so many UAPs the Pentagon surely would have created a unit prospectively tasked with retrieval, even if it wasn’t clear such a UAP could be brought down or that one would ever crash in a known location.)
Domestic and International Reports on This Developing News Story
You can see more information on this developing news story at the major-media links below. These links are in alphabetical order and include country-of-origin data for all non-U.S. publications.
- The Daily Beast (link)
- The Daily Caller (link)*
- The Daily Mail [United Kingdom] (link)
- The Daily Wire (link)*
- Dazed (link)
- The Debrief (link)
- Fox News (link)*
- Futurism (link)
- The Guardian [United Kingdom] (link)
- Heavy (link)
- HuffPost (link)
- IGN (link)
- The Independent [United Kingdom] (link)
- International Business Times (link)
- Jalopnik (link)
- MARCA [Spain] (link)
- NBC News (link)
- New York Magazine (link)
- New York Post (link)*
- The New York Sun (link)
- New Zealand Herald [New Zealand] (link)
- News Australia [Australia] (link)
- Newsmax (link)*
- NewsNation (link)
- Newsweek (link)
- OutKick (link)
- Raw Story (link)
- The Street (link)
- The Sun (link)
- The Times of India [India] (link)
- VICE (link)
- WION [India] (link)
- Yahoo! (link)
*Far-right news outlet with a known editorial (and sometimes reporting) bias; readers should proceed with extreme caution.
Key Figures in This Developing News Story
David C. Grusch
Karl E. Nell
Note: Per The Debrief, “Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army Colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there, characterizes Grusch as ‘beyond reproach.’”
Charles McCullough III
Note: Charles McCullough III was the first Inspector General for the Intelligence Community of the United States. He is now the lead attorney for David C. Grusch.
