His hearing will once again give grain to grind to the believers of extraterrestrial life. Before a committee of the US Congress and under oath, David Charles Grusch, "whistleblower", assured Wednesday, July 26 to be "absolutely" convinced that the United States is currently in possession of a UFO. "In the course of my duties, I learned that there was a program (...) aimed at recovering the remains of an unidentified device and analyzing it," he said. "This testimony is based on information that has been transmitted to me by individuals whose history of legitimacy and service to this country is known and many have shared with me convincing evidence, in the form of photographs, official documents and oral testimony covered by secrecy," he continued, before this committee of the House of Representatives focusing on national security issues.
The 36-year-old man with the muscular physique, wearing a shirt buttoned up to the collar at each of his public appearances, had already made the headlines of the international media last June for having claimed - three days after the publication of a Pentagon report confirming the existence of more than a hundred unexplained aerial phenomena over the last twenty years - that the US government was conducting experiments on fragments of original aircraft "non-human", "intact and partially intact" in view of their "radiological signature". The technology found would be carefully analyzed to be reproduced and has been for decades.
Charles Grusch at the US Congress, this Wednesday, July 26. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP
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Decorated U.S. Army Veteran
These remarks would quickly be debunked, described as conspiracy theorists, if they did not come from a veteran of the US army. A decorated colonel during the war in Afghanistan, David Grusch served in the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) for 14 years, under the aegis of the US Department of Defense. Between 2019 and 2021, he was assigned to a team tasked with investigating UFOs, before being appointed co-head of the Agency for the analysis of "unidentified aerial phenomena," as the U.S. authorities officially call them. Until July 2022, he says he has consulted images captured by American air pilots, on which would be visible objects with "unknown characteristics".
David Charles Grusch left the US Department of Defense last April, a few days after submitting the information he intended to reveal to Congress, according to the American media The Debrief. The Ministry has thus validated, at the end of an official procedure, the documents selected by David Grusch, so that they can be revealed publicly.
Shortly before his departure from the institution, he reportedly received death threats in order to silence him. This is what would have pushed him to adopt the status of "whistleblower", not to remain anonymous. "It's easy to quietly attack someone who doesn't have public support. There is of course a risk in becoming a public figure, but it's worth it: the American people can push their elected representatives and the president to get answers," he told Le Parisien.
'Opinion leader'
Seemingly having invested himself with a mission, he did not cease, in each of his speeches, to show his great respect for the institutions, refraining from revealing any classified data. "I cannot discuss information that is always classified," he punctuates regularly during his congressional hearing. "I'm still bound by my confidentiality agreement," he said in an interview.
Still, the career soldier thinks big. He wants to be an "opinion leader" on the subject of UFOs. He even plans to launch a non-profit foundation this year, to "help the scientific community start protocols. It would make it possible to look at these things scientifically." An ambition that may seem excessive, but that would hardly surprise a recently retired US Army colonel. According to Karl E. Nell, and according to comments reported by The Debrief, the profile of David Grusch until his departure from the Department of Defense would have been "beyond reproach".