The Grusch Hearing
A former intelligence officer told Congress under oath that the United States held recovered 'non-human' craft and biological remains, based on what he said colleagues had told him. Two Navy pilots testified about their own sightings. The Pentagon said it had found no evidence for the crash-retrieval claim.
- Date
- 26 July 2023
- Place
- US House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., USA
- Witnesses
- David Grusch, Ryan Graves, David Fravor, before the House Oversight subcommittee
- Status
- Disputed
What happened
On 26 July 2023 the House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee held a public hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena. David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer who had worked on the UAP task force, testified that he had been told by more than forty witnesses of a decades-long programme to recover and reverse-engineer crashed craft of non-human origin, and that 'non-human biologics' had been recovered with some of them. He said he had not seen the craft himself and gave the classified details to the Intelligence Community Inspector General rather than to the committee.
Alongside him, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves described routine encounters with objects off the Virginia coast from 2014 onward, and Commander David Fravor recounted the 2004 Nimitz 'Tic Tac' encounter. All three called for better reporting systems and less stigma.
The claims
Grusch's central claim was second-hand by his own account. He described the programme's existence, its concealment from Congress, and, when asked, said people had been harmed to protect it. No documents, photographs or physical evidence were presented in the open session. Grusch said the Inspector General had found his complaint 'credible and urgent', a phrase that refers to whether a complaint merits investigation, not to whether it is true.
Aftermath
The hearing was watched by millions and revived the word 'disclosure' in mainstream news. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer proposed a UAP Disclosure Act with a records review board modelled on the JFK files; a weakened version passed in December 2023. A second hearing in November 2024 heard from Luis Elizondo and others. Grusch has continued to speak publicly and has said he is writing a book.
Explanations
The Pentagon's AARO office stated that it had 'discovered no verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed', and its March 2024 historical review reached the same conclusion, tracing many such rumours to misunderstood classified programmes. Sceptics note that every element of Grusch's account came from others and that similar claims, from Majestic 12 to Bob Lazar, have circulated for decades without evidence. Supporters point to his career, his willingness to testify under oath, and the Inspector General's decision to forward the complaint. The claims remain unproven and, as of 2026, unretracted.
Sources
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