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> INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SAY U.S. HAS RETRIEVED CRAFT OF NON-HUMAN ORIGIN
> https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/

[36]craft of non-human origin[37]craft of non-human origin
(Getty Images/A. Foster)

Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin

[38]Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal.June 5, 2023

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.

David Charles Grusch (Copyright © D. Grusch. Image may not be reproduced
or circulated without permission of the authors).

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 [39]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.”

[40]Karl E. Nell[41]Karl E. NellKarl E. Nell (Credit: Department of the
Army)

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."

But some insiders are now willing to take the risk of coming forward for
the first time with knowledge of these recovery programs.

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.

[42]David Grusch[43]David GruschDavid Grusch in Afghanistan, 2013
(Copyright © D. Grusch. Image may not be reproduced or circulated
without permission of the authors).

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
[44]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, the
retired Army Colonel who worked with Grusch on the UAP Task Force.

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. At
that time, McCullough reported directly to the then-Director of National
Intelligence, James R. Clapper, and oversaw intelligence officers
responsible for audits, inspections, and investigations.

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 provided to us 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.

According to the unclassified complaint, 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. He did not allege that this
information was improperly disclosed by any member of that office.

As a result, Grusch suffered months of retaliation and reprisals related
to these disclosures beginning in 2021. He asked that details of these
reprisals be withheld to protect the integrity of the ongoing
investigation.

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.

The complaint was drafted and signed by McCullough and his managing
partner. It ended with Grusch’s signature attached to his statement that
“I do solemnly affirm under the penalties of perjury that the contents
of the foregoing paper are true and correct to the best of my
knowledge.”

A whistleblower reprisal investigation was launched, and Grusch began his
communication with the staff of the Congressional intelligence committees
in private closed-door sessions. According to Grusch, certain information
which he obtained in his investigation could not be put before
Congressional staffers because they did not have the necessary clearances
or the appropriate investigative authority.

A representative of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
told us in March that the committee members are not able to comment on the
content of a complaint or confirm the identity of a complainant.

“When you have multiple agencies nesting UAP activities in conventional
SAP/CAP programs, both as recipients of exploitation-related insights and
for operational reasons, without appropriate reporting to various
oversight authorities, you have a problem,” Grusch said, referencing the
highly secret Special Access Programs and Controlled Access Programs.

Grusch’s willingness to take risks and speak out appears to be
emboldening others with similar knowledge who believe in greater
transparency.

Jonathan Grey, the intelligence officer specializing in UAP analysis at
the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, is speaking publicly for
the first time, identified here under the identity he uses inside the
agency.

NASIC, headquartered at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, is the Department
of Defense’s primary Air Force source for foreign air and space threat
analysis. Its mission is to “discover and characterize air, space,
missile, and cyber threats,” according to the agency’s website. “The
center’s team of trusted subject matter experts deliver unique
collection, exploitation, and analytic capabilities not found
elsewhere,” the website states.

Grey said that such immense capabilities are not merely relegated to the
study of the prosaic.  “The existence of complex historical programs
involving the coordinated retrieval and study of exotic materials, dating
back to the early 20th century, should no longer remain a secret,” he
said. “The majority of retrieved, foreign exotic materials have a
prosaic terrestrial explanation and origin - but not all, and any number
higher than zero in this category represents an undeniably significant
statistical percentage.”

[48]NASIC[49]NASICNational Air and Space Intelligence Center headquarters
at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Image Credit: NASIC/Facebook).

It is unusual for an Air Force insider to come forward, as the Air Force
[50]has been less forthcoming than other agencies with regard to UAP.

“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,” Grey said.

Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence,
has been instrumental in arranging classified briefings for members of
Congress and other officials about UAP, which include references to exotic
retrieved materials. The first briefing he facilitated on retrievals of
unexplained objects was provided to staff members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee on Oct. 21, 2019, and to staff members of the Senate
Intelligence Committee two days later, as [51]reported by The New York
Times.

[52]Chris Mellon[53]Chris MellonFormer Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon (Credit: C. Mellon).

Mellon  says that once the members of Congress gain greater awareness of
the information provided to their staff and the Inspector General, they
will be in a position to quickly determine the truth if they have the will
to do so.

“This is an unprecedented oversight challenge for the committees, but I
believe we have leaders in Congress who are up to the task,” Mellon
said.

Classified briefings are often presented for Jonathan Grey and his team at
NASIC. “High-level, classified briefing materials exist in which
real-world scenarios involving UAP, as evidenced by historical examples,
are made available to Intelligence Personnel on a need-to-know basis,”
he told us. “I have been the recipient of such briefings for almost a
decade.”

The National Defense Authorization Act for FY2023 tasked the Secretary of
Defense, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, with
establishing for the first time a secure mechanism for the authorized
reporting of sensitive information to defense channels.

In addition, the legislation asks for reporting on “material retrieval,
material analysis, reverse engineering, research, and development”
involving unidentified anomalous phenomena currently and going back
decades.

Dr. Garry Nolan, a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford
University and a renowned inventor and entrepreneur with more than three
hundred published papers, has started over half a dozen companies based on
technologies out of his laboratory. Nolan has previously applied some of
those technologies to the analysis of exotic materials, publishing the
first peer-reviewed paper examining such materials.

[54]Garry Nolan[55]Garry NolanStanford professor Garry Nolan (Credit:
Timothy Archibald)

“Human civilization was utterly transformed by something as small as a
grain of silicon or germanium—creating the underpinning of the
integrated circuits that underly computation and now even artificial
intelligence,” Nolan said.

Studying even small samples of purported anomalous material could lead to
currently inconceivable benefits for humanity, he said. “What might be
represented here could be hundreds of technology revolutions ahead of us.
It could be more transformative for humanity than what the microprocessor
accomplished. Imagine what we could do with even a grain of knowledge
about how they operate.”

To encourage potential witnesses to come forward, the whistleblower
legislation forbids any federal employee from retaliating against anyone
providing authorized disclosure.

“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,” Rep. Andre Carson told us.
In May 2022, Carson presided over the first open Congressional hearing on
UAP since 1968.

The case of David Grusch marks a crucial test of these new whistleblower
protections and their ability to protect future whistleblowers who decide
to come forward.

Jonathan Grey says secrets have been necessary. “Though a tough nut to
crack, potential technological advancements may be gleaned from non-human
intelligence/UAP retrievals by any sufficiently advanced nation and then
used to wage asymmetrical warfare, so, therefore, some secrecy must
remain,” he says. “However, it is no longer necessary to continue to
deny that these advanced technologies derived from non-human intelligence
exist at all or to deny that these technologies have landed, crashed, or
fallen into the hands of human beings.”

Grey noted that the hypothesis that the United States alone has bullied
the other nations into maintaining this secrecy for nearly a century
continues to prevail as the primary consensus amongst the public at large.
“My hope is to dissuade the global populace from this archaic and
preposterous notion, and to potentially pave the way for a much broader
discussion,” he said.

Grusch said it was dangerous for this “eighty-year arms race” to
continue in secrecy because it “further inhibits the world populace to
be prepared for an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario.”

“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,” Grusch said.

Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, with Helene Cooper, co-authored the Dec.
17, 2017, front-page article in The New York Times that disclosed the
existence of a secret Pentagon program investigating UAP.

Tim McMillan, Micah Hanks, Craig Labadie ,and Sean Munger contributed to
this article.

Additional background details on this article, and our investigative
process [56]can be found here.

39. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/03/ufo-crash-materials-intelligence-00100077
44. https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20221205/BILLS-117hres_-SUS.pdf
50. https://thedebrief.org/why-is-the-air-force-awol-on-the-uap-issue/
51. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html