U.S. Has UFOs of 'Non-Human Origin', Ex-Intelligence Officer Claims

An ex-U.S. military and intelligence worker has given an interview in which he says that the U.S. has found and covered up several "non-human origin" crafts.

David Grusch, a 36-year-old airforce veteran, told NewsNation on Monday evening that a top-secret military program found the wreckage of fully intact UFOs, or "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAPs).

"These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed," Grusch said. He added that, in those wreckages, the pilots of the craft were found.

"Well, naturally, when you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it's true," the whistleblower said. Grusch previously worked as the National Reconnaissance Office's representative to the UAP Task Force. He also saw combat in Afghanistan.

There were 510 UAP sightings in 2022, up from the 366 in the previous year, according to a report from the Office for the Director of National Intelligence in January. Only 171 of these were deemed to "appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," according to the report. The remainder were "balloon-like entities," or clutter.

Grusch's claims cannot be verified by Newsweek, but they have kickstarted a discussion on social media about whether aliens could be on our planet.

"The majority of UAPs can be accounted for as balloons, drones, or drifting aerial junk. In some cases, the visual impression is impacted by 'perspective bias,' where a slow nearby object looks like a large, rapid, distant object," Joshua Semeter previously told Newsweek. He is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University.

"That said, there is a small percentage of observations that remain unexplained. These cases generally involve an object that exhibits unusual flight characteristics—for instance, rapid acceleration, rapid velocity, or extreme maneuverability—characteristics that cannot readily be accounted for through known technologies," said Semeter, who is also a member of NASA's independent panel to study UAPs.

The U.S. government has declassified several videos of UAPs in recent months, one of which showing an mysterious orb flying in the Middle East in 2022. The Navy has verified footage released in 2017 by The New York Times and the The Washington Post of a Tic-Tac-shaped craft flying off the coast of California.

Grusch also told NewsNation that the federal government has been lying to the people to cover up the existence of these craft. "There is a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. populace, which is extremely unethical and immoral," he said.

In 2023, other officials have made similar allegations. In January, a Tennessee Republican congressman Tim Burchett accused the U.S. government of a "huge cover-up" following a rise in UAPs, during an interview also with NewsNation. Burchett told Newsweek in March that he believed "we have recovered a craft at some point, and possible beings."

And in that same month, Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Intelligence, wrote in Politico that he knew of a secret government program "involving the analysis and exploitation of materials recovered from off-world craft."

In 2020, one defense contractor told the New York Times that he had briefed Defence Department officials, regarding objects from "off-world vehicles not made on this Earth."

"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone," Luis Elizondo, the former military intelligence official who led a government UFO program, told CNN in 2017. However, no solid evidence of these claims has yet come to light.

"Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that we cannot defend the conclusions of," Sean M. Kirkpatrick said at a meeting of the subcommittee discussing the declassified government videos in April. He is director of the Pentagon's newly instated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

"I should also state clearly for the record that, in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick added.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about UAPs? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.