A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin. The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time. Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record. The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force. The task force was established to investigate what were once called “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, and are now officially called “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP. The task force was led by the Department of the Navy under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. It has since been reorganized and expanded into the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to include investigations of objects operating underwater. Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said. In filing his complaint, Grusch is represented by a lawyer who served as the original Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). “We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.” In accordance with protocols, Grusch provided the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review at the Department of Defense with the information he intended to disclose to us. His on-the-record statements were all “cleared for open publication” on April 4 and 6, 2023, in documents provided to us. Grusch’s disclosures, and those of non-public witnesses, under new protective provisions of the latest defense appropriations bill, signal a growing determination by some in the government to unravel a colossal enigma with national security implications that has bedeviled the military and tantalized the public going back to World War II and beyond. For many decades, the Air Force carried out a disinformation campaign to discredit reported sightings of unexplained objects. Now, with two public hearings and many classified briefings under its belt, Congress is pressing for answers. Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army Colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there, characterizes Grusch as “beyond reproach.” Christopher Mellon, who spent nearly twenty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, has worked with Congress for years on unidentified aerial phenomena. “A number of well-placed current and former officials have shared detailed information with me regarding this alleged program, including insights into the history, governing documents and the location where a craft was allegedly abandoned and recovered,” Mellon said. “However, it is a delicate matter getting this potentially explosive information into the right hands for validation. This is made harder by the fact that, rightly or wrongly, a number of potential sources do not trust the leadership of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office established by Congress.” Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces. “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.” At the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Grusch served as a Senior Intelligence Capabilities Integration Officer, cleared at the Top Secret/Secret Compartmented Information level, and was the agency’s Senior Technical Advisor for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena analysis/Trans-Medium Issues. From 2016 to 2021, he served with the National Reconnaissance Office as Senior Intelligence Officer and led the production of the NRO director’s daily briefing. Grusch was a GS-15 civilian, the military equivalent of a Colonel. Grusch has served as an Intelligence Officer for over fourteen years. A veteran of the Air Force, he has numerous awards and decorations for his participation in covert and clandestine operations to advance American security. According to a 2021 NRO Performance Report, Grusch was an intelligence strategist with multiple responsibilities who “analyzed unidentified aerial phenomena reports” and “boosted congressional leadership Intel gaps [in] understanding.” He was assessed by the reconnaissance office’s Operations Center Deputy Director as an “adept staff officer and strategist” and “total force integrator with innovative solutions and actionable results.” Grusch prepared many briefs on unidentified aerial phenomena for Congress while in government and helped draft the language on UAP for the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act, spearheaded by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Marco Rubio and signed into law by President Biden in December 2022. The provision states that any person with relevant UAP information can inform Congress without retaliation, regardless of any previous non-disclosure agreements. In his statements cleared for publication by the Pentagon in April, Grusch asserted that UFO “legacy programs” have long been concealed within “multiple agencies nesting UAP activities in conventional secret access programs without appropriate reporting to various oversight authorities.” He said he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material – a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.” Beginning in 2022, Grusch provided Congress with hours of recorded classified information transcribed into hundreds of pages which included specific data about the materials recovery program. Congress has not been provided with any physical materials related to wreckage or other non-human objects. Grusch’s investigation was centered on extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials, some of whom are directly involved with the program. He says the operation was illegally shielded from proper Congressional oversight and that he was targeted and harassed because of his investigation. Grusch said that the craft recovery operations are ongoing at various levels of activity and that he knows the specific individuals, current and former, who are involved. “Individuals on these UAP programs approached me in my official capacity and disclosed their concerns regarding a multitude of wrongdoings, such as illegal contracting against the Federal Acquisition Regulations and other criminality and the suppression of information across a qualified industrial base and academia,” he stated. Associates who vouched for Grusch said his information was highly sensitive, providing evidence that materials from objects of non-human origin are in the possession of highly secret black programs. Although locations, program names, and other specific data remain classified, the Inspector General and intelligence committee staff were provided with these details. Several current members of the recovery program spoke to the Inspector General’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint. Grusch left the government on April 7, 2023, in order, he said, to advance government accountability through public awareness. He remains well-supported within intelligence circles, and numerous sources have vouched for his credibility. “His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa 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,” said Karl Nell. In a 2022 performance evaluation, Laura A. Potter, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Headquarters, Department of the Army, described Nell as “an officer with the strongest possible moral compass.” Grusch is represented by Charles McCullough III, senior partner of the Compass Rose Legal Group in Washington and the original Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2011. In May 2022, McCullough filed a Disclosure of Urgent Concern(s); Complaint of Reprisal on behalf of Grusch with the ICIG about detailed information that Grusch had gathered beginning in 2019 while working for the UAP Task Force. An unclassified version of the complaint states that Grusch has direct knowledge that UAP-related classified information has been withheld and/or concealed from Congress by “elements” of the intelligence community “to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP Program.” All testimony Grusch provided for the classified complaint was provided under oath. In July 2021, Grusch had confidentially provided classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General concerning the withholding of UAP-related information from Congress. He believed that his identity, and the fact that he had provided testimony, were disclosed to individuals and/or entities within the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community outside the IG’s office, resulting in months of retaliation and reprisals. The Intelligence Community Inspector General found his complaint “credible and urgent” in July 2022. According to Grusch, a summary was immediately submitted to the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A whistleblower reprisal investigation was launched, and Grusch began communication with the staff of Congressional intelligence committees in private closed-door sessions. Grey said that complex historical programs involving the retrieval and study of exotic materials dating back to the early 20th century should no longer remain a secret: “A vast array of our most sophisticated sensors, including space-based platforms, have been utilized by different agencies, typically in triplicate, to observe and accurately identify the out-of-this-world nature, performance, and design of these anomalous machines, which are then determined not to be of earthly origin.” Dr. Garry Nolan, a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University, highlighted the immense transformative potential of studying anomalous material, comparing it to the impact of the microprocessor: “Human civilization was utterly transformed by something as small as a grain of silicon or germanium... What might be represented here could be hundreds of technology revolutions ahead of us.” Rep. Andre Carson emphasized: “Whistleblowing is essential to the checks and balances of our government – and no federal employee should feel discouraged from stepping forward due to fear of retaliation.” Grusch concluded by warning against ongoing secrecy in an eighty-year arms race: “I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to re-assess their priorities.”