Claims that UFO information was inappropriately withheld from Congress deemed 'credible,' 'urgent'

Published on 2023-06-09 in The Hill, this opinion piece by Marik von Rennenkampff examines the significance of the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) finding that a whistleblower complaint alleging UFO information had been inappropriately withheld from United States Congress was both “urgent and credible."¹ The whistleblower at the centre of the complaint is David Grusch, described in the article as a former high-level intelligence official.² Rennenkampff had previously served as an analyst with the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation and as an Obama administration appointee at the Department of Defense (DoD).²⁰

The article details the legal and institutional framework surrounding Grusch’s complaint. Grusch was previously represented by a lawyer who had served as the intelligence community’s first inspector general, a Senate-confirmed position,³ and the managing partner of the representing firm co-signed the complaint submitted to the current ICIG.⁴ That firm, Compass Rose Legal Group, stated in a press release dated 2023-06-09 that it “took no position and takes no position” on the substance of the information provided to the ICIG.⁵ Rennenkampff notes that knowingly making false statements to the ICIG carries the risk of financial penalties and imprisonment,⁸ and that Grusch provided classified evidence to Congress and two inspectors general.¹² Grusch himself stated the evidence supporting his allegations is highly classified.¹¹

Rennenkampff addresses the credibility of Grusch’s allegations by citing corroboration from multiple sources. Current and former officials vouched for Grusch and corroborated the broad outlines of his allegations,⁶ and Grusch spoke to Congress for hours, generating hundreds of pages of transcripts.⁷ Separately, Michael Shellenberger reported that numerous current and former officials confirmed the outlines of Grusch’s allegations and provided context and descriptions of the vehicles allegedly recovered by a surreptitious UFO retrieval and reverse engineering effort.¹⁵ Rennenkampff acknowledges, however, that Grusch has not provided publicly available proof of his allegations.⁹

The article contrasts Grusch’s approach with that of Daniel Ellsberg. Rennenkampff argues that, from what is publicly known, Grusch is making use of the well-established, legally protected whistleblower process rather than conducting an Ellsberg-style leak of highly classified information.¹³ Grusch’s statements about the retrieval of “exotic” craft of “non-human” origin were reportedly approved by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), the Pentagon’s pre-publication review office, which scrutinises statements by former officials to ensure no sensitive information is inadvertently disclosed.¹⁸ The article also notes that staff of previous UFO analysis programmes were reportedly not “read in” to information regarding the kind of activities Grusch and others allege exist, raising questions about compartmentalisation.¹⁷

The Department of Defense (DoD) response, as described in the article, was sceptical. The DoD denied that the Pentagon’s new UFO office had uncovered the sort of activity alleged by Grusch,¹⁰ with All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — identified as the Defence Department’s current UFO analysis effort — having released a statement that it “has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."¹⁶ The article also notes that the House Oversight Committee vowed to hold a hearing on the UFO allegations,¹⁴ and that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, signed by Joe Biden in December 2022, establishes whistleblower protections for individuals with knowledge of UFO programmes engaged in material retrieval, material analysis, reverse engineering, and research and development.¹⁹