Under Oath: What David Grusch Actually Told Congress, and What Came Next

On Wednesday, July 26, 2023, a 36-year-old former intelligence officer raised his right hand in front of a House Oversight subcommittee and said the thing nobody in that position had ever said on the record.

"I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program," David Grusch testified, "to which I was denied access to those additional read-ons when I requested it."

He sat between two Navy aviators, retired Cmdr. David Fravor and former pilot Ryan Graves. The hearing ran for hours. Three years later, it is still among the most quoted UFO testimony ever given to Congress.

So what did he actually say? Not what the internet says he said. What the transcript says.

Who was in the chair

Grusch laid out his résumé himself. He said he was an intelligence officer for 14 years, a major in the Air Force, active duty, Air National Guard and Reserve. Most recently, from 2021 to 2023, he worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at the GS-15 level.

He said he was his agency's co-lead for UAP analysis and served on the UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021 as a National Reconnaissance Office reservist. In 2019, he testified, the task force director asked him to identify every special access program the team would need. At the time, he said, he was "cleared to literally all relevant compartments."

He became a whistleblower in May 2022, he said, through a filing with the Intelligence Community Inspector General. The Debrief, which first published his story in June 2023, reported that the inspector general found the complaint "credible and urgent" that July. That finding has been reported but not publicly released.

The careful phrase: "as I have been told them"

Here is the line most people skip. Grusch did not testify that he personally saw a recovered craft. He said this:

"But as I stand here under oath now, I am speaking to the facts as I have been told them."

His testimony, he said, came from "individuals with a long-standing track record of legitimacy," some of whom showed him "photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony."

That distinction mattered when the questions got specific.

Seven exchanges that defined the hearing

On possession. Rep. Robert Garcia asked whether the government has UAPs. "Absolutely, based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over 4 years," Grusch said. He said he knew "the exact locations" and had given them to the inspector general and, in part, to the intelligence committees.

On bodies. Rep. Nancy Mace asked whether pilots were recovered. "Biologics came with some of these recoveries," Grusch said. Human or nonhuman? "Nonhuman, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program."

On what he saw himself. Rep. Eric Burlison asked whether he had seen the bodies. "That is something I have not witnessed myself," Grusch said. On the craft, he said he would answer "behind closed doors."

On the timeline. Asked when the government first became aware of nonhuman intelligence, Grusch pointed to the "1930's." He said he prefers "nonhuman" because it does not assume origin.

On the money. Rep. Jared Moskowitz asked how such a program gets funded. "Misappropriation of funds and self-fund," Grusch said, adding that contractor overcharging flowed through "something called IR&D," industry research and development money.

On harm. Rep. Tim Burchett asked whether Grusch knew of people harmed to keep the secret. "Yes, personally," he said. Asked about murder, he said, "I have to be careful asking that question. I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities."

On reprisal. Grusch described "administrative terrorism" against colleagues. Asked by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna whether he had feared for his life, he said, "Yes, personally."

He also said his statements had passed Pentagon prepublication security review, and he stressed: "These are my own personal views and opinions, not the Department's."

The Pentagon's answer

The Defense Department's position was already on file. Spokesperson Sue Gough said investigators had not found "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 Associated Press reported.

In a second statement, Gough said the department "has no information that any individual has been harmed or killed as a result of providing information" on the subject, according to Scripps News.

The next day, Sean Kirkpatrick, then director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), posted a personal letter calling the hearing "insulting" to his officers. "AARO has yet to find any credible evidence to support the allegations," he wrote, adding that "the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO." He did not name the source.

At the hearing, Grusch had his own account of AARO. He said he had a classified conversation with Kirkpatrick in April 2022, before Kirkpatrick took over the office, and offered "sage counsel" on where to look. When Rep. Virginia Foxx read Kirkpatrick's earlier statement of "no credible evidence," Grusch replied, "It is not accurate."

The closed doors

On January 12, 2024, House Oversight members got the closed-door briefing many had asked for, from Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim. What was said is classified. What lawmakers said afterward was not.

Moskowitz called it "the first real briefing that we've had," according to CBS News. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said lawmakers "haven't gotten the answers that we need." Burchett compared the hunt for information to "Whack-a-Mole."

Two months later, AARO answered in writing.

AARO's verdict

AARO's Historical Record Report, Volume I, released in March 2024, never names Grusch. It doesn't need to. It says AARO "found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology."

It went further. AARO said the modern version of the claim is "in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence." It said none of its interviewees "had firsthand knowledge" of the programs they described.

AARO did find two things it called real: a proposed Homeland Security program called KONA BLUE that was never approved, and an intelligence program that was "unnecessarily expanded in 2021 to include a UAP reverse-engineering mission" and later shut down. AARO said that program "never recovered or reverse-engineered any technology."

In July 2026, AARO's fiscal 2025 annual report restated the position: "To date, no evidence suggests that a USG or private entity has ever captured or exploited UAP-derived materials." It also said 262 people contacted its secure reporting channel in that period; seven were asked for follow-up interviews.

What came after

The claims didn't die. They moved.

In November 2024, former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo testified before House Oversight about what he called a "multi-decade secretive arms race," "hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies," according to DefenseScoop. The Pentagon maintained it had found no credible evidence of nonhuman activity.

In May 2026, under a February directive from President Trump, the Pentagon began releasing declassified UAP files at war.gov/UFO, cautioning that many materials "have not yet been analyzed for resolution of any anomalies." Nothing in the official record released so far has confirmed the program Grusch described.

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• Grusch testified under oath that he was told of a multi-decade crash-retrieval program and denied access to it.
• He said he had not personally seen recovered bodies, and that his biologics claim came from people still on the program.
• The Pentagon, AARO in 2024 and AARO again in 2026 said they found no evidence such programs exist.

What we don't

• What Grusch's witnesses told the inspector general and intelligence committees, and how those bodies assessed it.
• What lawmakers heard in the January 2024 classified briefing.
• Whether AARO's promised second volume will address these claims directly.

The question underneath the testimony

Strip away the headlines and the hearing comes down to one problem. Grusch's evidence, by his own account, lives in classified spaces. The rebuttal, by the Pentagon's account, also comes from classified spaces. The public is asked to pick a side without seeing either file.

Grusch called himself a "fact witness and not an expert." Kirkpatrick called the testimony insulting. Both were speaking under the weight of their own credibility.

So: is secondhand testimony from 40 witnesses, delivered under oath, enough to take seriously, or does a claim this big need one piece of physical proof before anything else? Make your case in the comments.

Sources

• Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency (hearing transcript, Serial No. 118-53) — U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2023
• Hearing page and video — House Committee on Oversight, 2023
• Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin — The Debrief, 2023
• Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing UFO program that Pentagon has denied — Associated Press via Anchorage Daily News, 2023
• Top Pentagon official calls UFO hearing 'insulting' to US employees — Scripps News, 2023
• Lawmakers investigating UAPs remain frustrated after closed-door briefing — CBS News, 2024
• Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, 2024
• Fiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, 2026
• Lawmakers urge Pentagon to be more transparent about ongoing UAP investigations — DefenseScoop, 2024
• Pentagon releases declassified UFO files — NBC News, 2026