David Charles Grusch is a former United States intelligence officer and Air Force veteran who became a whistleblower on programmes he says recover and reverse-engineer craft of non-human origin. He is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO),1 serving as the NRO’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) from 2019 to 2021 and later as NGA’s co-lead for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) analysis and UAPTF representative from late 2021 to July 2022.1 At NGA he held the post of Senior Intelligence Capabilities Integration Officer, cleared at Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level,2 and Senior Technical Advisor for UAP analysis and Trans-Medium Issues,3 and later served as Senior GEOINT Capabilities Requirements Officer with NGA from November 2021 to April 2023.4 At NRO he was Senior Intelligence Officer from 2016 to 2021, leading production of the NRO director’s daily briefing.5 He was a GS-15 civilian, the military equivalent of a Colonel, with over fourteen years as an Intelligence Officer; he is also a United States Air Force veteran with awards for covert and clandestine operations,6 served 14 years in the Air Force reaching the rank of Major,7 and completed a combat tour in Afghanistan supporting counter-illicit finance, drug and arms-trafficking operations with Joint Special Operations Command and the International Security Assistance Force.8
In May 2022, represented by Charles McCullough III of Compass Rose Legal Group,9 Grusch filed a Disclosure of Urgent Concern with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, covering information gathered from 2019 while working for the UAPTF.9 The complaint states he has direct knowledge that UAP-related classified information had been withheld from the United States Congress by elements of the intelligence community.10 He had earlier, in July 2021, confidentially provided classified information to the DoD Office of Inspector General on the same subject.11 In July 2022 the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found the complaint “credible and urgent,” and a summary was submitted to the Director of National Intelligence and to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.1213 Grusch says he suffered months of retaliation and reprisals beginning in 2021.14 Marik von Rennenkampff reported that current and former officials vouched for Grusch and corroborated the broad outlines of his allegations,15 while Compass Rose Legal Group stated it “took no position and takes no position” on the substance of the information Grusch provided to the ICIG.16 Grusch himself has stated the evidence supporting his allegations is highly classified.17 Karl E. Nell, the United States Army’s liaison to the UAPTF from 2021 to 2022 who worked alongside Grusch there,18 said he considers Grusch’s central assertion - that a terrestrial arms race has been under way sub-rosa for eighty years, focused on reverse-engineering technologies of unknown origin - to be fundamentally correct.19
Grusch testified before Congress in 2023,20 giving the House and Senate intelligence committees and the ICIG extensive classified information about programmes he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.21 He reported to Congress the existence of a decades-long, publicly unknown Cold War competition with near-peer adversaries to identify UAP crashes and landings and to retrieve material for exploitation and reverse engineering of recovered craft of non-human origin for asymmetric national defence advantages,22 and from 2022 provided Congress with hours of recorded classified testimony transcribed into hundreds of pages.23 Before disclosing information to journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, he provided it to the DoD Office of Prepublication and Security Review for clearance.24 In a public hearing on 2023-07-26, part of the David Grusch’s 2023 congressional testimony on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) crash retrieval programmes at which he testified alongside David Fravor and Ryan Graves,25 Grusch, under oath, said he was aware that non-human biologics were found alongside crashed disks.26 He has said he has not personally witnessed alien bodies,27 and has no knowledge of any documentation confirming that interdimensional crossing occurs in connection with UAP, describing that only as a theoretical framework discussion.28 He has said he prefers to describe the phenomenon as nonhuman intelligence rather than assuming an extraterrestrial origin, in order to keep an open mind on its specific cause.29 Fravor has said that pilots know where classified information about UAP is located but will not divulge it due to classification levels.30 The United States Department of Defense (DoD) denied to NewsNation that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) had uncovered the activity Grusch alleged.31
His 2023 testimony alleged that elements of the US government had thwarted Congressional oversight of programmes related to recovery and reverse engineering of craft of unknown, non-human origin.32 He has said he helped draft the UAP language for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023,33 and other active and retired intelligence officials independently provided corroborating information about his account.34 After going public, he says his co-workers, friends and supervisors were attacked for having enabled and helped him,35 and that he went public in part because national leaders were not being provided information about humanity’s place in the cosmos.36 He returned to work at NGA after fighting off administrative reprisals and maintaining his clearance,7 but says the United States Air Force (USAF) unsuccessfully attempted to file an Espionage Act unauthorised-disclosure complaint against him, and that he resigned his USAF commission, foreseeing an attack of that nature.8 He says he consequently missed a promotion to lieutenant colonel in the USAF Reserve,36 was only a couple of years from military retirement,35 and is now seeking medical retirement and the missed promotion through a records correction process.37 He has said he spent substantial money on legal fees and lost income as a result of going public.38 Grusch has described himself as having a very high justice sensitivity, with a touch of the autism spectrum and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.39
On 2025-03-27, Congressman Eric Burlison announced Grusch as a Special Advisor,40 citing his sworn testimony before the US House Oversight & Accountability Committee on federal UAP activities41 and his role in a planned Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.42 Burlison described Grusch as having risked his career to expose critical information.43 The announcement noted Grusch had earlier worked as a senior intelligence officer at NGA and NRO,44 had officially represented the NRO on the UAPTF from 2019 to 2021,4 and had filed a federal whistleblower complaint with the ICIG in 2022 while at NGA.45