WASHINGTON — The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.
Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.
“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.
Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
The Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a coverup. In a statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough said investigators have 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.” The statement did not address UFOs that are not suspected of being extraterrestrial objects.
Grusch says he became a government whistleblower after his discovery and has faced retaliation for coming forward. He declined to be more specific about the retaliatory tactics, citing an ongoing investigation.
“It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he said.
Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., chaired the panel’s hearing and joked to a packed audience, “Welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week.” But members of both parties asked Grusch about his study of UFOs and the consequences he faced.
“I take it that you’re arguing what we need is real transparency and reporting systems so we can get some clarity on what’s going on out there,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.
Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.
At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”
can't believe there's still politicians suffering from weather-balloon hysteria. 
So which one is it then? You're saying it's pointless to speculate and then you go ahead and speculate.
It's not, there have been cases all over the world.
I'm not 100% convinced of anything but just outright dismissing it all doesn't seem wise to me. I guess we'll see soon enough if this keeps on rolling. I don't get why people feel the need to have strong rigid opinions on this, it's fine to just not know and be intrigued.
It's not speculation. I think its just empirical reasoning. I'm also intrigued. Alien life intrigues me beyond anything also, except maybe superintelligent AI and communism. But my conclusions have to be based on all the empirical info I have available, including about the general nature of technology and the social context in which this is happening. It's not like this is Arrival and we're seeing the ships arrive. It's literally just the US government allowing (for God-knows-what-reason) an (never really ex) spook to go before the world and say aliens exist and that they're crashed here multiple times with tech. Also, while UFOs are 'spotted' all over the world, its overwhelmingly westerns, and especially Americans, who claim the vast majority of sightings (which is very suspicious already). If someone says that this is because other people report it less, that might be true, but not only do I doubt it, but that is really arguing from a negative, so speculating.
You think I'm contradicting myself when I'm not. Read those two sentences again. Just because I encounter technology that is beyond my capacity (not in principle but concretely or practically, due to lack of theoretical understanding) to understand how it works, that doesn't in any way get in the way of the general reasoning I can make about technology in general; more particular, that the complexity of technology, which relies in an important way on theoretical understanding such as quantum theory in modern tech, should lead to higher levels of functioning. Also there's the social context: an alien species is sending pilots across the galaxy to...who knows? And then they are going to risk showing themselves? Why do this? If they could hide themselves getting here, they could observe us from a distance. Indeed if they're here, they can obviously do so if they can systematically come here at will. Why come near and crash? I'm really just making a basic point that the level of technological development has relations to how efficiently the tech functions on an average attempt. That's completely independent of whether or not we as a species can understand their tech. It's more advanced than ours, and that implies certain things about its functioning. This is not speculation because its based on a general observation about tech. The efficiency and high-level functioning with low-failure rates of more advanced technology, compared to more rudimentary technologies, is a function of the fact that we have more fine-tuned the tech. Consider how computaional and other tech is used to keep time far mor exactly than a mechanical clock.
Yeah I'm also not 100% convinced of anything either but that's just a straw man. I can still reflect on what it more likely or less likely given the hard evidence we have. Until public proof definitiveely shows that we're not alone, and that extremely advanced aliens travelled here, then I'm going to doubt that they are that intelligent yet stupid enough to repeatedly manage to crash with ways to stop us noticing or getting the tech. Of course, maybe their society, values and behaviour are radically different, maybe not. But if so, I have less evidence for that and, if I were to accept they were here, then I'd have to note that they are similar to us in that they may tech and explore stuff. Perhaps they are so radically different a form of life than they don't have the same kind of minds of intelligence as us, and have different ways of being curious, but that seems to me the only way to support your argument that we should be equally confident of each possibility is more speculative.
I far more strongly believe that if we encounter alien life then it will be a far more dramatic, history-altering moment in human history. I think it would be a far more revelatory and mind-bending experience that the US gov being like 'yeh we robbed flying saucers'. Call me cynical but I agree that this is probably a means to justify greater military expenditure. Don't get me wrong, no beef obvs, I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I hope they are out their, maybe against my better judgement.