By J.P. Hague
UAP or “unidentified aerial phenomena”, the official term the US government uses instead of UFOs, are real. This was an admission made by the US Department of Defense (known as “the Pentagon” due to the shape of its headquarters in Washington DC) through its Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a preliminary assessment paper released in June 2021.
Over two years on, distinguished former US Navy pilots and an intelligence official have given, under oath, broad-ranging unclassified evidence on alarming UAP activity and related special access and controlled access programs before the US Senate House Oversight Committee. The hearing also placed the spotlight on explaining the existence of alien life and theories surrounding the potential interdimensional origins of certain phenomena. This unprecedented hearing was effectively sparked by recent coverage of an exemplary intelligence officer, David Grusch, whose complaint to the US Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (“IGIC”) was verified to be “credible and urgent” by the latter. Accordingly, Mr. Grusch is a ‘whistleblower’ in line with the provisions of the National Defense Authorisation Act 2023 (NDAA) which affords protections to members of the intelligence community and its contractors who report wrongdoing in accordance with approved procedures.
Mr. Grush is reported to be a former US Airforce intelligence officer and retired Major with effect from April 2023. Described as a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, Mr. Grusch is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the NRO’s representative to the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) between 2019 and 2021. It is during this period that Mr. Grusch was asked to identify all highly classified UAP programs to which he was denied access. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force. Mr Grusch’s IGIC complaint is based on the testimony of over forty witnesses across a four-year period of which key aspects were highlighted in his testimony.
The historic July 26th hearing effectively resulted from an article published online in The Debrief and a hard-hitting interview with Mr. Grusch conducted by Australian award-winning investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart, on the US channel, NewsNation. Representatives Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) and Anna-Paulina Luna (R-Florida) opened the proceedings by addressing “the devil” of roadblocks and obstacles that have been laid in the way by the intelligence community and the lack of transparency and inertia of the Federal Government on their Congressional investigation into the subject.
Mr. Grusch outlined that classified information pertaining to a “multi-decade” program which collected and attempted to reverse-engineer crashed UFOs has been illegally withheld from Congress and that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures to the IGIC and Congress. While Mr. Grusch says he was denied access to such programs it is reported that 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. During the session Mr. Grusch stated:
“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”.
When asked whether the US government had information about extraterrestrial life, Mr. Grusch said the US likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s. He was alluding to a crashed craft that he claims was recovered in 1933 in a town named Magenta in the outskirts of Milan, as previously provided in the NewsNation interview. Moreover, Mr. Grusch went as far as claiming that the US has recovered non-human beings. After reiterating his position that the government had possession of crashed non-human vehicles, he was asked if the government has the bodies of the pilots who piloted craft. In reply, he said:
“As I’ve stated publicly already in my NewsNation interview, [non-human] biologics came with some of these recoveries”.
In response to being questioned on the non-human origins of UAP, Mr. Grusch addressed one potential source “in terms of multi-dimensionality”. He expounded that:
“The framework that I’m familiar with, for example, is something called the holographic principle. It derives itself from general relativity and quantum mechanics. If you want to imagine 3D objects, such as yourself, casting a shadow onto a 2D surface, that’s the holographic principle. So, you can be projected, quasi-projected, from higher dimensional space to lower dimensional. It’s a scientific trope that you can actually cross literally, as far as I understand.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Grusch acknowledged he had no direct knowledge of whether this was the source of the phenomenon regardless of holding a degree in physics.
During the hearing, it was made clear that Mr. Grusch has outstanding credentials and has taken both a great personal and professional risk in coming forward. He stated that he had knowledge of “people who have been harmed or injured” in the course of government efforts to conceal UFO information. Asked by an oversight committee member if he had “feared for his life”, Mr. Grusch replied: “Yes definitely”, and added: “I am hopeful that my actions will ultimately lead to a positive outcome of increased transparency”. Mr Grusch carefully clarified that he considers the pressure coming from senior intelligence figures associated with the agencies for whom he previously worked.
A second witness at the hearing was David Fravor, a former Navy Commander fighter pilot who infamously recalled his encounter with a “tic-tac” shaped craft recorded from sensors aboard a F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet. Mr. Fravor described the object performing feats “far superior” and “far beyond material science and the capabilities [the US military] had at the time”, while on a training mission in November 2004 off the west coast of California. Mr. Fravor explained how the tic-tac displayed the ability to hover motionless against strong winds and then rapidly accelerate, without any visible wings or known means of propulsion. Furthermore, his team experienced “significant jamming to the APG-73 radar” upon landing.
The third witness was Ryan Graves, a retired Lieutenant Navy pilot who claimed that he saw UAP off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”, including “dark grey or black cubes inside of a clear sphere”. Graves has since founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a non-profit organisation, and said he was appearing to voice the concerns of several other commercial aircrews and military veterans who have confided their similar encounters. Mr. Graves personally estimated some 95% of all sightings to have gone unreported to date. In his testimony, he expressed an understanding of the scepticism and stigma that the public may have of UAP but that the “national conversation would change” if they saw the sensor data that he and others had seen.
The impetus for the July 26th hearing is in large part due to closed briefings following the interest generated by an interview with Mr. Grusch arising from The Debrief article and his notable interview with which aired on NewsNation in June 2023 and was submitted into the Congressional record at the hearing. In an exclusive commentary for Le Mauricien, Ross Coulthart, the investigative journalist who interviewed Mr. Grusch, shared his thoughts on the hearing and where he sees it leading:
“I think yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) hearing was the beginning of what is likely going to be a momentous series of revelations that come out over the next year. I’ve been talking for some time to witnesses inside the legacy, crash retrieval, and reverse engineering program who want to come forward and give evidence under oath about the things that they have witnessed. Those witnesses tell me there is a crash retrieval program, and that people have been harassed, intimidated and threatened. I too have heard allegations that people have been murdered to protect this secret. What David Grusch says, in its entirety, suggests that people should, and must go to jail for terrible crimes that have been committed.
I know a lot of people watching and reading about his allegations will be intensely sceptical and we should be intensely sceptical. They should be tested and rigorously investigated. That’s exactly what David Grusch wants.
What impressed me about Congress yesterday was that it is clearly resolved to get to the bottom of this mystery, and that is because evidence has already been given secretly before the Senate intelligence committee by Mr Grusch and other witnesses.”
The hearing clearly appears to be the visible result of a long-term effort and initiative to place the study and global benefits of the technology associated with UAP into the realm of democracy, transparency and effective oversight. This is particularly relevant in view of the environmental concerns and energy crisis that world governments face and are attempting to tackle.
Towards the end of the hearing, Representative Ogles (R- Tennessee), who sits on a Congressional Sub-Committee for National Security and Financial Services, stated that the Congress would seek to invoke “the Holman rule” on any non-compliant UAP special or controlled access program or personnel who obstructed the Congressional investigation any further. This rule allows the US House of Representatives to make amendments to appropriations legislation that would reduce the salary of or dismiss specific federal employees or cut a specific program within scope.
For observers of UAP developments, the hearing was never expected to be a breakthrough disclosure event, because Mr. Grusch is heavily constrained, due to his security oath, from revealing the full extent of what he knows. However, the sitting was focussed and a bipartisan success forged between Republicans and Democrats in pledging to get to the truth of this matter. The public should also be heartened by the incredible NDAA updating draft legislation explicitly describing a cover-up, prepared by Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. This proposed legislation explicitly acknowledges that there has been a cover-up over UAP. What is clear is that we are not alone and that there is no turning back.
Aerospace, David Grusch and Retired Navy Commander David Fravor are sworn in during a House Oversight Committee hearing [Drew Angerer/Getty Images via AFP]