UAP Crash Retrieval: Whistleblowers, Pentagon Denial, and Congress

The allegation of a U.S. government UAP crash retrieval program rests on sworn testimony from former intelligence and military officials who say the United States has secretly recovered and attempted to reverse-engineer unidentified anomalous phenomena for decades. The Pentagon office assigned to investigate found no evidence to support the claim. Both positions remain on the record, and a declassification process launched by Congress and expanded by the executive branch is still underway in 2026.

What the Whistleblowers Have Alleged

The central figure is David Grusch, a former Air Force major and civilian intelligence officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency who served as co-lead for UAP analysis and reported to both the UAP Task Force and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) before resigning in April 2023.¹

In May 2022, Grusch filed an “urgent concern” complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General under Presidential Policy Directive 19, the framework that protects intelligence community whistleblowers.² According to Grusch and House Oversight Committee members, the ICIG found the complaint “credible and urgent” after interviewing him, the witnesses he named, and additional individuals he had not identified.³

Under oath before the House Oversight Committee on July 26, 2023, Grusch said that while tasked with identifying relevant classified programs for the UAP Task Force in 2019, he learned of a “multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” but was denied access to the relevant compartments.¹ He testified that the United States possesses “quite a number” of craft of “non-human exotic origin,” that some recoveries included “dead pilots,” and that private aerospace companies are involved in storing retrieved material.³ Asked by Rep. Nancy Mace, he confirmed that “biologics came with some of these recoveries” and were assessed to be “non-human.”⁴ He alleged the military had misappropriated funds to hide the programs from congressional oversight, and when Rep. Tim Burchett asked whether anyone had been killed to protect the secret, he said he had “directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.”⁵

An important limit on the testimony: Grusch acknowledged he had not personally seen non-human craft or bodies. His claims rested on interviews with more than 40 witnesses over four years who, he said, provided photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony.⁶ He said specifics could only be shared inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

A second former official broadened the allegation. At a November 13, 2024, House Oversight hearing, Luis Elizondo, who had led the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program before resigning in 2017, testified that the U.S. is in possession of “UAP technologies” and that a “multi-decade, secretive arms race” is being funded by “misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives.”⁷ Asked directly by Rep. Nancy Mace whether the government had run secret crash retrieval programs to reverse-engineer alien craft, Elizondo confirmed it, though he said a non-disclosure agreement signed three years earlier barred him from specifics.⁸

A separate 2024 allegation named the alleged program itself. Press reports described an unacknowledged Special Access Program called “Immaculate Constellation,” said to have been created in 2017, that a whistleblower reportedly told Congress houses UAP evidence never shared with AARO.⁹ Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough denied it: “The Department of Defense has no record, present or historical, of any type of SAP called ‘IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION.'”

What the Pentagon’s Investigation Found

In February 2024, AARO published the first volume of its “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” Its conclusion was unequivocal: the office found “no empirical evidence” that the U.S. government or private companies have ever recovered or reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology.¹⁰

The report offered specific rebuttals. AARO said it located the actual classified programs interviewees described and concluded the witnesses, who lacked firsthand access, had mistakenly associated legitimate national security programs with extraterrestrial activity.¹¹ In one case, a claim that a military officer had touched an alien craft turned out to be a description of touching an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. In another, a supposed sighting of aliens at a technology test was assessed to be a misunderstood conversation about a routine, non-UAP test.¹²

A physical sample presented as material from a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft was tested and determined to be “a manufactured, terrestrial alloy” composed primarily of magnesium, zinc, and bismuth with no exceptional qualities.¹¹ Executives and chief technology officers at private companies named by interviewees met with the AARO director and denied on the record any involvement in recovering or reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.

AARO characterized the persistence of the crash retrieval narrative as “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.”¹⁰ The report did acknowledge one relevant government action: an Intelligence Community controlled access program had its scope expanded in 2021 to protect UAP reverse-engineering. AARO said this was done “without sufficient justification,” that the program never actually recovered or reverse-engineered any spacecraft, and that it was subsequently shut down.¹¹

Independent scientific commentary largely aligned with AARO. David Spergel, who led NASA’s UAP advisory team, said of the whistleblower claims: “There’s nothing hard there — no locations, no sites. It’s reports of reports.”¹³

Reporting by the Wall Street Journal, citing former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, offered a partial explanation for how the belief spread within the military itself: “broad hazing practices” in the Air Force over decades in which personnel were briefed on secret alien activities and told to sign non-disclosure agreements under threat of imprisonment, producing sincere but false belief in an extraterrestrial program.¹⁴ Some historical UFO sightings near Nevada, according to the same reporting, were deliberate cover stories for programs like the F-117.

Why the Denial Has Not Settled the Question

AARO’s conclusions have not been universally accepted, and the office itself became contested. Sean Kirkpatrick, its first director, served from July 2022 until his retirement in December 2023 after a 27-year federal career.¹⁵ He said he faced “violent threats” and social media campaigns from parts of the UFO community, and described crash retrieval belief as “more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing.”¹⁶ He also expressed frustration with Pentagon leadership for resisting his efforts to engage publicly.¹⁷

Structural questions surfaced too. Critics in Congress and among whistleblowers asked whether an office reporting to the same Pentagon leadership accused of running the alleged programs could investigate them credibly. A January 2024 Defense Department Inspector General report found the Pentagon’s UAP identification efforts “uncoordinated” and potentially blind to threats.¹⁷ Kirkpatrick called that report “misleading” and said Grusch had refused to provide evidence directly to AARO despite being contacted multiple times.¹⁶

The Kirkpatrick “hazing” explanation has itself been challenged. Critics noted that it contradicts AARO’s earlier framing of crash retrieval belief as the product of a small group of circular reporters. They also challenged a specific claim that a 1967 incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base, in which nuclear missiles reportedly shut down while UFOs were observed, was caused by an unannounced electromagnetic pulse test, noting that the technology described was not designed or tested until years later.

What Congress Did About It

The allegations produced the most ambitious UAP legislation to date. On July 14, 2023, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds introduced the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, co-sponsored by Senators Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Todd Young, and Martin Heinrich.¹⁸

Modeled on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the bill would have:

Directed the National Archives to create a centralized “UAP Records Collection” with a presumption of immediate public disclosure.
Established a nine-member, Senate-confirmed review board to evaluate delayed-release requests, with members barred from past involvement in alleged legacy UAP programs.¹⁹
Granted the federal government eminent domain over any “technologies of unknown origin” and “biological evidence of non-human intelligence” held by private persons or entities.
Required full public release of all UAP records within 25 years unless the President certified that continued secrecy was necessary to prevent “direct harm to national security.”

The strongest provisions did not survive. By December 2023, the review board and the eminent domain clause had both been stripped from the final NDAA, reportedly under pressure from the House Intelligence Committee.²⁰ What became law in Public Law 118-31, Sections 1841–1843, was a requirement that federal agencies review, organize, and transfer UAP records to the National Archives by October 20, 2024, along with a list of exemptions covering national defense and intelligence sources and methods that critics said could block most disclosures.²¹

What Is Being Released Now

Declassification has continued into 2026. In May, the Trump administration began releasing batches of UAP files through a dedicated government site under an interagency initiative called PURSUE (Presidential Unsealings and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). The initial release included more than 160 files covering over 400 incidents from the 1940s to 2025, including military infrared footage, FBI reports, and NASA archival materials from Apollo-era missions.²² The Pentagon said all files were reviewed for security but many had not yet been analyzed to resolve anomalies. According to the release, the files showed “no indication that the U.S. government has had any interaction with beings from other planets.”²³

Also in May 2026, Rep. Eric Burlison issued a 10-page production request to The MITRE Corporation, a major operator of federally funded research and development centers, demanding records related to “any program known, alleged, or described as a legacy crash-retrieval or reverse-engineering effort” dating back to 1930. MITRE confirmed it was reviewing its archives to comply.²⁴

In June 2026, the White House established a UAP Science Advisory Council chaired by Harvard physicist Avi Loeb, including astrophysicists, molecular biologists, an oceanographer, a psychologist, and the publisher of Skeptic magazine. The council is designed to coordinate with AARO, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI, with a stated mission to apply “curiosity, skepticism, and methodological rigor” to UAP.²⁵

The crash retrieval question sits in an unusual place. It has been formally investigated and formally denied by the office assigned to examine it, and it is sustained by sworn testimony from former officials, bipartisan congressional attention, and an active declassification process. Officials maintain no verified evidence of extraterrestrial technology exists. Whistleblowers maintain the evidence is hidden. The investigation is ongoing.

1
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. David Grusch Prepared Testimony
2
GovInfo. Hearing Transcript, House Subcommittee on National Security
3
U.S. Congress. David Grusch Hearing Exhibit
4
Roll Call. Whistleblower at UAP Hearing Claims Non-Human Remains
5
The Guardian. UFO Hearing Congress Whistleblower
6
NPR. UFO Hearing Non-Human Biologics UAPs
7
House Oversight Committee. Written Testimony of Luis Elizondo
8
NPR. UFO UAP Hearing Congress 2024
9
ODNI. Immaculate Constellation Description From Unclassified Press
10
AARO. Historical Record Report Volume 1
11
Department of Defense. AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1
12
Wikisource. AARO Historical Record Report, Page 8
13
The Hill. Scientists Say About Whistleblower Claims
14
The Hill. Did the Pentagon Spread False UFO Stories
15
Department of Defense. Statement on the Upcoming Departure of Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick
16
The Guardian. Ufologists Sean Kirkpatrick Pentagon Report UAPs
17
Politico. Former UFO Boss Pentagon Kirkpatrick
18
Senate Democrats. Schumer, Rounds Introduce New Legislation to Declassify Government Records Related to UAP and UFOs
19
Senate Democrats. UAP Disclosure Act Amendment Text
20
NewsNation. UAP UFO Panel Recovery Rules Cut
21
National Archives. UAP Records Management Guidance
22
NBC News. UFO UAP Files Pentagon Release Trump
23
CNN. UFO Files Pentagon Release Aliens
24
DefenseScoop. Rep. Eric Burlison Request for UAP Records MITRE
25
Skeptic. Michael Shermer Named to White House UAP Science Advisory Council