The Grusch Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Whistleblower Disclosure refers to a series of classified and public statements made in 2023 by David Grusch, a former senior US intelligence official, alleging that elements of the intelligence community possess retrieved craft and materials of non-human origin and have illegally concealed this information from Congressional oversight. The disclosure was first reported publicly in June 2023 by journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, who had previously co-authored the December 2017 New York Times article disclosing a secret Pentagon UAP investigation programme. Grusch, described as a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan and a veteran of both the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, provided extensive classified testimony to Congress and to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).1 His on-the-record statements were cleared for open publication by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review on 2023-04-04 and 2023-04-06.7
Grusch’s professional background was central to the reception of his claims. From 2019 to 2021 he served as the National Reconnaissance Office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), and from late 2021 to 2022-07 he served as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force.4,5 He held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance and was a GS-15 civilian, the military equivalent of a Colonel. Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army Colonel who served as the Army’s liaison for the UAPTF from 2021 to 2022 and worked alongside Grusch, characterised him as “beyond reproach."8,9 Christopher K. Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence who had been instrumental in arranging classified Congressional briefings on UAP retrieved materials — the first of which was provided to Senate Armed Services Committee staff on 2019-10-2129,30 — stated that multiple well-placed current and former officials had shared detailed information with him regarding an alleged non-human craft recovery programme.10
The substantive claims made by Grusch alleged that the US government, its allies, and defence contractors had made recoveries of partial fragments through to intact vehicles of non-human origin over several decades, and that analysis determined retrieved objects to be “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin)” based on vehicle morphologies, material science testing, unique atomic arrangements, and radiological signatures.6 He further reported to Congress the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War” between the United States and near-peer adversaries to identify UAP crashes and landings and retrieve material for exploitation and reverse engineering to gain asymmetric national defence advantages.12 Grusch alleged that UAP legacy programmes had long been concealed within Special Access Programs across multiple agencies without appropriate reporting to oversight authorities, and that individuals within those programmes had approached him to disclose concerns about wrongdoings including illegal contracting, other criminality, and suppression of information.15 Jonathan Grey, an intelligence officer at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) whose UAP analysis work had been his focus, stated publicly that “[t]he nonhuman intelligence phenomenon is real” and that retrievals of this kind are “not limited to the United States."11
The formal whistleblower process began in 2021-07, when Grusch confidentially provided classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General concerning the withholding of UAP-related information from Congress.19 In 2022-05, his legal representative Charles McCullough III — the original ICIG, confirmed by the Senate in 2011, and senior partner of the Compass Rose Legal Group — filed a Disclosure of Urgent Concern and Complaint of Reprisal with the ICIG on Grusch’s behalf, covering information Grusch had gathered beginning in 2019 during his time with the UAPTF.22,17 The Grusch ICIG complaint was signed under penalties of perjury and all testimony provided was given under oath. In 2022-07, the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Credibility Finding declared the complaint “credible and urgent,"20 and a summary of that finding was submitted to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.21 Several current members of the alleged non-human craft recovery programme also spoke to the ICIG’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided.16
Beginning in 2022, Grusch provided Congress with hours of recorded classified information transcribed into hundreds of pages, including specific data about the materials recovery programme.13 An unclassified version of the complaint states that Grusch has direct knowledge that UAP-related classified information has been withheld and concealed from Congress by “elements” of the intelligence community to intentionally thwart legitimate oversight.18 Grusch alleged he suffered months of retaliation and reprisals related to his UAP disclosures beginning in 2021,26 forming the basis of the Grusch Retaliation Matter. He left government service on 2023-04-07, stating his intention to advance government accountability through public awareness.23 The Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) National Defense Authorization Act, UAP provisions of which Grusch had helped draft25 and which was signed into law in 2022-12, stated that any person with relevant UAP information may inform Congress without retaliation regardless of prior non-disclosure agreements,24 and tasked the Secretary of Defense with establishing a secure mechanism for the authorised reporting of sensitive UAP information to defence channels.
Karl E. Nell stated publicly that Grusch’s assertion concerning the existence of a sub-rosa terrestrial arms race 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."27 Jonathan Grey stated that high-level classified briefing materials on UAP real-world scenarios, evidenced by historical examples, are available to intelligence personnel on a need-to-know basis, and that he had been the recipient of such briefings for almost a decade.28 Christopher K. Mellon noted that a number of potential sources did not trust the leadership of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the body that had reorganised and expanded the UAPTF to include investigations of objects operating underwater. The First Open Congressional UAP Hearing 2022, presided over by Representative Andre Carson in 2022-05, had been the first such open hearing since 1968; following Grusch’s disclosure, Carson stated that whistleblowing is essential to the checks and balances of government and that no federal employee should feel discouraged from coming forward due to fear of retaliation.