The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a US defence intelligence agency whose functions include processing, exploiting, and disseminating satellite imagery.1 Within Anomalica’s source base, the NGA’s most prominent connection to UAP research runs through the career of David Charles Grusch, described as a veteran of the NGA and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).2 He later worked as a senior intelligence officer at both agencies before becoming a whistleblower on US government Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) programmes.3
From November 2021 until April 2023, Grusch held the position of Senior Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Capabilities Requirements Officer at the NGA.4 Within that period, from late 2021 to July 2022, he served as the agency’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF).5 At the NGA he also held the title of Senior Intelligence Capabilities Integration Officer, cleared at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level,6 and was separately described as the agency’s Senior Technical Advisor for UAP analysis and Trans-Medium Issues.7 Grusch’s time at the agency is corroborated elsewhere: he is described as having worked for the NGA8 and as the NRO and NGA’s joint representative on the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force.9 By his own account, he spent 14 years as an intelligence officer, serving in the United States Air Force (USAF) in active-duty and Air National Guard and Reserve capacities at the rank of Major, and most recently at the NGA at the GS-15 civilian level - the military equivalent of a full bird colonel.10
Grusch has said he tried to personally review every UAP report that came through during his leadership role at the NGA,11 and told Congress that he personally reviewed multiple cases of satellite imagery relating to UAP events while working at the agency.12 In 2022, while at the NGA, he filed a federal whistleblower complaint with the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), an action later documented as David Grusch’s federal whistleblower complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).13 He left the NGA in April 2023.4,14 After fighting off administrative reprisals and maintaining his top secret clearance, he returned to work at the agency,15 where he found he would not be allowed to do his job and that a minefield was being created for him.16
Other claims in Anomalica’s source base situate the NGA within the wider US intelligence community’s handling of UAP information. Christopher K. Mellon has said that the NRO, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NGA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA) appeared to hold important UAP data that they were not sharing with each other.17 According to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Historical Record Report (HR2), one line of effort was to partner with the archives of key intelligence and national security agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the CIA, the Department of Energy, the NSA, and the NGA.18 Separately, as part of its evaluation of the Department of Defense’s handling of UAP, the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General interviewed senior officials and requested UAP-related data, policies, and procedures from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the military services, and the department’s defense intelligence agencies.19
The podcast host UAP Gerb has said that data associated with the Immaculate Constellation project would be held within the NGA.20