David Grusch

David Charles Grusch (born c. 1986) is a decorated former officer of the US Air Force and veteran senior civilian intelligence official who served for over fourteen years across multiple agencies.⁴ He holds a degree in physics and completed a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan supporting counter-illicit finance, drug, and arms-trafficking operations with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).⁵ From 2016 to 2021, Grusch served with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) as a Senior Intelligence Officer, leading the NRO director’s daily briefing and coordinating the Presidential daily brief.³ He subsequently held positions at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as Senior Intelligence Capabilities Integration Officer and Senior Technical Advisor for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) analysis and Trans-Medium Issues, cleared at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level.² From 2019 to 2021 he served as the NRO’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), and from late 2021 to July 2022 as the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the UAP Task Force, reporting subsequently to the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).¹

In 2019, the UAPTF Director tasked Grusch with identifying all Special Access Programs and controlled access programmes needed to satisfy the congressionally mandated mission.¹¹ In the course of that work, Grusch states he was informed of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programme to which he was denied access.¹¹ Beginning in 2021, Grusch provided classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General concerning the withholding of UAP-related information from Congress, and in 2022 — while still employed at the NGA — his attorney Charles McCullough III of the Compass Rose Legal Group filed a formal Disclosure of Urgent Concern and Complaint of Reprisal on his behalf with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).⁶ The complaint, signed under penalty of perjury, alleged that non-human craft recovery programmes had been illegally withheld from Congressional oversight.⁹ The ICIG found the complaint credible and urgent in July 2022, and a summary was submitted to the Director of National Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.⁷ Grusch’s on-the-record public statements were subsequently cleared for publication by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review on 2023-04-04 and 2023-04-06.⁸

Grusch’s core allegations, made public in June 2023, assert that the US government, its allies, and defence contractors have recovered partial fragments through to intact vehicles of non-human origin over a period of decades, and that analysis of retrieved objects determined exotic origin based on vehicle morphologies, material science testing, unique atomic arrangements, and radiological signatures.¹⁰ He further alleged that UAP legacy programmes and UAP reverse engineering legacy programmes have long been concealed within multiple agencies by nesting UAP activities in conventional Special Access Programs without appropriate reporting to oversight authorities — what he characterised as a decades-long, publicly unknown Cold War competition with near-peer adversaries to retrieve and exploit non-human material for asymmetric national defence advantages.⁹ These claims were developed over approximately four years through interviews with more than forty witnesses, some of whom Grusch states provided photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony.¹² The DOD responded with a statement that its UAP office had not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that programmes involving the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed or currently exist.¹⁴

On 2023-07-26, Grusch testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee UAP Hearing 2023, alongside pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor.¹⁷ His testimony, the preponderance of which he noted was classified, alleged that unsanctioned programmes operated above Congressional oversight were funded through misappropriation of appropriated funds and corporate independent research and development charges, and that waived unacknowledged Special Access Programs had not been properly notified to the Gang of Eight as required under 10 US Code Section 119.¹² Grusch further testified that biologics recovered alongside nonhuman craft had been assessed as nonhuman by individuals with direct knowledge of the programme,¹³ and that colleagues had been physically injured in connection with UAP legacy programmes.¹² He stated he uses the term nonhuman intelligence rather than extraterrestrial life to preserve an open analytical framework regarding the origin of the phenomenon.²⁰ Grusch’s credibility was vouched for by former colleague Karl E. Nell, who had worked with him on the UAPTF and characterised him as “beyond reproach”, further corroborating his assertion of a sub-rosa terrestrial arms race over technologies of unknown origin spanning approximately eighty years.¹⁹

The Grusch Retaliation Matter forms a significant dimension of his disclosures. Grusch filed a complaint alleging illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures,¹⁵ and testified that reprisals were severe, affecting him both professionally and personally, originating from senior leadership at agencies with which he had previously been associated.¹⁶ He described a tactic of “administrative terrorism” used to threaten careers, security clearances, and reputations. A whistleblower reprisal investigation was formally launched following his ICIG complaint. The Grusch Congressional Disclosure and subsequent public interview with NewsNation brought his allegations to wider public attention. In 2024, Congressman Eric Burlison announced Grusch’s appointment as Special Advisor to support the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets and efforts to promote transparency on UAP matters.¹⁸ Grusch has also collaborated with fellow whistleblower Luis Elizondo, having worked alongside him at Space Force and contributed to the UAP Task Force.¹²