The 2023 Congressional UAP Hearings: What David Grusch Said Under Oath

This article documents widely-reported accounts and historical records of unexplained phenomena. It does not assert supernatural causation.

On the morning of July 26, 2023, three men sat down at a witness table in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building and told members of the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee things that had never been said under oath before. One of them, a former senior intelligence officer, claimed the United States government has been secretly recovering materials — and biological remains — from craft not made by human hands. Whether that claim is accurate, exaggerated, or mistaken, it is now part of the permanent Congressional record. What follows is a documented account of what was said, who said it, how the government has responded, and where the public record stands today.

Background: How the Hearing Came to Exist

The July 2023 hearing did not emerge from nowhere. It was, in large part, the downstream consequence of a 2017 New York Times investigation — co-authored by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean — that revealed the existence of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). That reporting, combined with the public release of three declassified Navy videos (FLIR1, GIMBAL, and GOFAST) and the 2021 Office of the Director of National Intelligence preliminary UAP assessment, had steadily moved the subject from tabloid territory into oversight committee agendas.

The more immediate catalyst was David Grusch. In June 2023, The Debrief — an independent national security publication — ran a reported piece by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal in which Grusch, a former intelligence officer with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), went on record claiming the U.S. government was concealing a multi-decade program to retrieve and reverse-engineer non-human craft. Grusch stated he had provided classified testimony about these programs to both the Intelligence Community Inspector General and Congressional intelligence committee staff. The ICIG found his complaint “credible and urgent” — the formal protected disclosure designation under the Whistleblower Protection Act — a designation that carries legal weight even if it does not independently validate the underlying claims.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Ranking Member Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) convened the July 26 session under the formal title “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency.” The hearing was open to the public and livestreamed. It was, by any measure, unusual.

The Three Witnesses: Who They Are

Understanding the weight of the testimony requires understanding who was testifying.

David Grusch served 14 years as an intelligence officer, holding positions at the NGA and the NRO. He served as the NGA’s representative to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021, and later as a co-lead for UAP analysis at the NRO. He holds, or held, a Top Secret/SCI clearance with additional special access program (SAP) authorizations. He resigned from government service in April 2023. His attorneys are Charles McCullough III — a former Intelligence Community Inspector General — and Jonathan Safran.

Ryan Graves is a former U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who flew operationally off the East Coast between 2014 and 2015, during the period when Navy aviators were reporting frequent, sustained encounters with objects their radar systems were tracking but that did not match any known aircraft. Graves has spoken publicly about these encounters since at least 2019, when he was interviewed for the New York Times. He founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, an organization advocating for formal UAP reporting mechanisms for military and commercial pilots.

David Fravor is a retired U.S. Navy Commander and former commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41). He was the pilot of one of the two F/A-18F aircraft that encountered an object off the coast of San Diego in November 2004 — the event documented in the FLIR1 “Tic Tac” video, declassified by the Pentagon in 2017. Fravor has described the object as approximately 40 feet long, white, and shaped like a Tic Tac mint, with no visible wings, exhaust, or flight control surfaces, moving in ways he could not explain. His account has been consistent across multiple interviews, Congressional briefings, and media appearances over more than a decade.

What Grusch Said Under Oath

The Grusch testimony was the focal point of the hearing. Several of his statements were extraordinary. Because he was testifying in a public, unclassified session, he indicated he could not provide specific program names, locations, or documentary evidence in that setting — citing classification constraints — but he stated he had provided that information in classified settings to appropriate Congressional oversight staff and the ICIG.

The key claims Grusch made on the record, July 26, 2023:

• Non-human craft recovered: Grusch stated that the U.S. government, and entities acting on its behalf, has been in possession of “non-human” craft for decades — some recovered intact, some as fragments from crash retrieval operations. He said he had spoken with individuals who had direct, first-hand knowledge of these programs.
• Non-human biologics: When asked directly by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) whether non-human biological material had been recovered in association with these craft, Grusch answered: “That’s something I’ve been briefed on, yes.” He did not specify origin, number, or condition of any alleged remains.
• Private contractor custody: Grusch claimed the most sensitive retrieval and reverse-engineering programs were not housed within traditional government facilities but had been offloaded to private aerospace contractors — specifically to avoid Congressional oversight and the appropriations process. He named no contractors by name in open session.
• Multi-decade legacy program: He characterized this not as a recent development but as a program with roots going back potentially to the mid-twentieth century, with institutional knowledge passed through successive contractor relationships and compartmented government offices.
• Retaliation against him personally: Grusch stated he was the subject of a criminal investigation opened against him following his protected disclosures, and that he and people close to him had experienced “administrative, professional, and psychological” retaliation. He declined to give specifics in open session but said his legal team had documented these incidents.
• Others have faced worse: Grusch stated that individuals he had spoken with in the course of his research had been “harmed” — he used that word — for attempting to come forward. He declined to elaborate on the nature of that harm in open session.

Grusch was careful, repeatedly, to distinguish between what he had personally witnessed and what he had been told by others with claimed direct access. He acknowledged he had not personally seen retrieved craft or biological material. He framed his testimony as an account of a documented bureaucratic structure whose existence he believed could be independently verified by Congress if subpoena authority were applied.

Graves and Fravor: The Operational Context

While Grusch’s claims dominated headlines, the testimony of Graves and Fravor provided a different but complementary kind of record — that of trained military aviators describing encounters they cannot explain.

Fravor’s account of the November 14, 2004 Nimitz encounter has been public for years, but under oath he reiterated the core details: the object appeared on the USS Princeton’s SPY-1 radar for approximately two weeks before the intercept. When his flight of two aircraft arrived at the designated coordinates, Fravor described seeing a disturbance in the water — roughly the size and shape of a 737 fuselage just below the surface — and above it, an object moving in ways inconsistent with any known propulsion system. When he attempted to intercept it, the object accelerated away and was subsequently detected, seconds later, at a pre-briefed rendezvous point approximately 60 miles away. A second aircrew from Fravor’s squadron, launched after the initial encounter, captured the FLIR1 video. Fravor stated plainly: “I have no idea what I saw. It had no wings, no exhaust, no flight control surfaces.”

Graves testified about encounters off the U.S. East Coast in 2014–2015, in which his squadron tracked objects that appeared to loiter in restricted airspace — sometimes for hours — moving against prevailing winds, and occasionally dropping from 80,000 feet to sea level in seconds. He emphasized a point that receives less attention than the exotic flight characteristics: these objects were appearing regularly in restricted military airspace, and the reporting mechanisms to document and investigate them formally did not adequately exist. Near-miss encounters, he said, were going unreported because pilots feared professional ridicule. “Stigma,” he said, “is real.”

The Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Amendment

The July hearing did not end congressional activity on the subject. In July 2023, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced a sweeping UAP Disclosure Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The amendment was modeled explicitly on the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. Its key provisions included:

• Establishment of a presidentially appointed UAP Records Review Board with authority to declassify and release government UAP records.
• A presumption of disclosure — meaning records would be released unless a specific, reviewable national security exemption was invoked.
• A provision requiring any private individual, corporation, or contractor in possession of recovered non-human craft or materials to disclose and transfer that material to the U.S. government — with eminent-domain-style compensation.
• Criminal penalties for non-compliance.

The amendment passed the Senate Armed Services Committee and was included in the Senate version of the FY24 NDAA. It did not survive conference with the House. The version that emerged from the conference committee and was signed into law in December 2023 had been substantially reduced. The Records Review Board was stripped out. The mandatory contractor disclosure provision was removed. What remained was a narrower reporting requirement directing the executive branch to compile and submit UAP-related records to Congress — without the independent declassification board or the contractor disclosure mechanism that Schumer and Rounds had sought.

Schumer released a statement calling the gutting of the amendment “deeply disappointing” and attributed it to opposition from unnamed members of the House Armed Services Committee. The episode was noted by UAP researchers and journalists — including those at The Debrief and journalist Tim McMillan — as a meaningful data point about institutional resistance to disclosure, though conventional explanations, including general legislative attrition in conference and national security agency objections, are also consistent with the outcome.

The November 2024 Hearing: Exposing the Truth

On November 13, 2024, a second major UAP hearing was convened — this one before the House Subcommittee on Oversight, titled “UAPs: Exposing the Truth.” The hearing followed the November 2024 U.S. election and took place in the final weeks of the 118th Congress. It featured a larger and more varied witness panel than the July 2023 session.

Witnesses included Luis Elizondo, the former director of AATIP who left the Pentagon in 2017 and has since become one of the most prominent public advocates for UAP disclosure; Dr. Garry Nolan, a Stanford University professor of pathology who has published peer-reviewed research and has been consulted by the CIA on anomalous materials; Michael Shellenberger, a journalist and author who had written on UAP-related whistleblower accounts; and Tim Gallaudet, a retired rear admiral and former NASA deputy administrator.

Elizondo testified that he had direct, personal knowledge of U.S. government programs tracking and analyzing UAPs, and reiterated longstanding claims that the phenomenon represents a genuine national security issue that has been systematically underreported within the chain of command. Nolan discussed biological and materials anomalies he said he had been asked to examine without being given context for their origin — a framing he found professionally unusual. Gallaudet testified to suppression of UAP-related data within NASA during his tenure, a notable claim given NASA’s formal UAP study group, which released its own report in September 2023.

The November 2024 hearing produced significant public interest but, like its predecessor, was constrained by the classified nature of most specific evidence. No classified session was held in conjunction with it, limiting what witnesses could say in specific terms on the public record.

Where the Public Record Stands Now

As of early 2025, no documentary evidence has been made publicly available that independently corroborates Grusch’s central claims about recovered craft or biological material. The Department of Defense, through its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — established in 2022 — released a historical review in March 2024 covering UAP-related programs going back decades. That report stated AARO had found no verifiable evidence of any U.S. government program involving the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial craft, and no corroboration for claims of non-human biologics. AARO simultaneously acknowledged limitations in its own access to highly compartmented programs — a caveat critics noted significantly qualifies the scope of its conclusions.

Grusch’s attorneys have maintained that their client’s classified testimony to Congressional committees and the ICIG contains specific, verifiable program names, locations, and personnel that have not been acted on by the relevant oversight bodies. The ICIG’s “credible and urgent” designation remains on the record. It means the inspector general found the disclosure warranted investigation — not that the underlying claims were verified.

Ryan Graves’s organization, Americans for Safe Aerospace, continues to collect pilot UAP reports and advocate for formal, stigma-free reporting infrastructure. The FAA and the newly reorganized AARO have expanded reporting channels, though the volume and quality of systematically analyzed data in the public domain remains limited.

The legislative situation remains unresolved. The gutted Schumer-Rounds provisions have not been reintroduced in a form that has advanced through committee as of this writing. Multiple members of Congress from both parties have stated publicly that classified briefings they have received go significantly beyond what appears in AARO’s public reports — without specifying what those briefings contained.

What is documented, verifiable, and agreed upon by the Pentagon, the Navy, and multiple administrations is narrower but real: unidentified objects have been tracked by military sensor systems, encountered by trained pilots, and recorded on instrumented platforms. The objects have demonstrated flight characteristics that remain, in the official record, unexplained. What those objects are, who made them, and what the government knows or has recovered — those questions remain, as of this writing, formally open.

Related case files

• AATIP: The Pentagon’s $22 Million UFO Program
• AARO Explained: The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office
• The Wilson-Davis Memo: Inside the UAP Disclosure Story
• The Tic Tac UFO: Inside the 2004 Nimitz Encounter and the Pentagon’s Response
• Project Blue Book: 17 Years of US Air Force UFO Investigation