OPINION:
So there’s this guy named David Charles Grusch.
Earlier this month, Mr. Grusch said he gave Congress reams of classified information about covert U.S. government programs that he says are now in possession of an intact craft of “non-human origin.”
Mr. Grusch, 36, is not some armchair conspiracy theorist. He’s a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan and a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, and the National Reconnaissance Office. He was the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021.
And from late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for analysis and its representative to the UAP task force.
Bona fides stipulated.
The unidentified aerial phenomena expert said the information was illegally withheld from Congress, and he “filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures,” thedebrief.org reported.
“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,” the website reported.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who reportedly attended a Feb. 21 classified UAP briefing on a military base in his state, has also revealed a bit of information he has received.
“I have seen evidence of craft that I am not familiar with any of our allies or adversaries or even our country possessing. I’ve seen that craft taken by air crews who have gotten quite close to it, and we’ve got a lot more questions about why this information isn’t more broadly available to the American people,” Mr. Gaetz told Newsmax last week.
Talk on Capitol Hill of unidentified flying objects has grown in recent weeks, and lawmakers are speaking freely.
Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican, reportedly attended the same briefing as Mr. Gaetz.
“I think it’s a little bit of madness and a whole lot of reality. I do believe we’ve recovered a craft at some point,” Mr. Burchett said on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “War Room.”
“I do 100% [believe the U.S government is covering up] since 1947 Roswell,” the lawmaker told Newsweek. “The military said we’ve recovered a saucer and then the next day they dropped this poor officer out and claim he holds up a piece of a hot air balloon and says, ‘No, in fact, it was a hot air balloon,’ which apparently was a top-secret program at the time and they’ve never would have disclosed it in any way.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, expressed the same frustration as Mr. Burchett.
After one briefing, Mr. Hawley said: “They were talking about the balloons, and then several senators pointed out, ‘Now hold on: We’ve had a lot of unidentified anomalous phenomenon for years now,’ and that’s when the military briefer was like, ‘True. True.’”
“The takeaway from that is, they had thousands of sightings of these things over the years, which was news to me. So I’m not surprised, necessarily, by these latest [Grusch] allegations, because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of grudgingly admitted to us in the briefing,” he told Wired.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Wired that while he’s not 100% sure about some UAP claims, there seems to be something going on.
“What I take seriously is sometimes we just have these really good, decorated pilots and navigating officers who are experiencing things that we can’t explain, so we need to collect data so that we can figure out what is going on,” the New Mexico Democrat told Wired.
And another Democrat, Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, said he wants answers from the government.
“I think there are important questions to ask, and by the way, if there are things the federal government is holding back from the American people, the American people have a right to know,” Mr. Moskowitz told NewsNation in an interview.
So, it’s all real. Unless members of Congress are lying to us? But when has THAT ever happened?
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.