u/howthee123

In March of 1957, a gigantic saucer shaped craft silently descended in a restricted area of Alexandria, Virginia. Authorities were called, and two policemen approached the metallic craft. From it appeared a man. Not a typical grey, or a horrifying sight that our minds can’t even fathom, but a normal looking— attractive in fact, male. Guns drawn, the police were terrified, but some kind of thought transference occurred to let the men know that this was a friendly interaction.

He identified himself as Valiant Thor. He explained that he had come from Venus, and requested an audience with the upper echelons of the US Government with urgency. Confused but cooperatively, the officials took him to the Pentagon. Valiant Thor would remain there for three years.

Before Grusch: An Age of Hearsay

When the UFO craze arrived in the middle of the last century, everything was shrouded in mystery and hearsay. In the years that followed, figures like Glenn Dennis — a mortician from Roswell, New Mexico — claimed that after the infamous 1947 Roswell crash, he received strange inquiries for child-sized coffins, and even saw alien bodies on an air base.

Then there was Bob Lazar, a former physicist who claimed he reverse-engineered an exotic alien vehicle’s propulsion system for a secret government base in Nevada, so that the US could build its own.

Donna Hare worked for NASA as an illustrator and claimed she was shown images of unidentified craft captured by satellites — images she said were “painted out” before being released to the public. But these were all just claims.

The list of such figures is endless, and throughout the 1990s, as the obsession really picked up, you could throw a stone and hit at least three “whistleblowers.” The trouble was, none of it was verified. Dennis, an old man by the time he told his story, was just that — a story, with no evidence beyond his word. Lazar’s school records couldn’t be found, people who should have known him didn’t, and his account wobbled more than once. Hare had none of the “unedited” photos to prove her claims, only the locations where they could supposedly be found.

Many people will argue — at times, including myself — that some of these individuals are genuine and credible. But the government, and those tasked with discrediting and spreading disinformation (see Richard Doty, who will get his own article in time), successfully deceived the public into labelling these people as crazy, or as fame- and money-hungry liars.

If we count forward from the emergence of Lazar — the first major, mainstream whistleblower — in 1989, it took 34 years for a stone-cold, credible witness to finally step forward.

His name is David Grusch.

Who is David Grusch?

Grusch is a decorated combat veteran who served in multiple branches of the US military and government. A former United States Air Force (USAF) Intelligence Officer who worked at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), he held clearance to hundreds of compartmented programs. Grusch was an intelligence officer for 14 years, and from 2021 to 2023 was at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) at a GS15 civilian level — the military equivalent of a full bird Colonel. He described himself as “agnostic” about aliens and UFOs — something he had never really contemplated or spent too long thinking about.

A Question That Changed Everything

In early 2017, while briefing a senior CIA official on some Special Access Programs (SAPs — highly classified information handled under strict security safeguards), the official asked Grusch if he’d ever heard of Lue Elizondo. “He’s running some UFO program at the Pentagon,” the official told him. “We all think he’s crazy.”

From that day forward, David’s life would change dramatically.

Confused by the exchange, Grusch discounted it — until December 2017, when a New York Times article exposed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), run by the very same Elizondo. As the name suggests, the program investigated UFO reports and sightings from both civilian and military witnesses.

Racking his brains, David recalled hearing of AATIP before, back when it was known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), around 2008–09. Grusch was a lieutenant at the time and had read reports on weird topics like black holes and time warps, and had wondered why the Defense Intelligence Agency was looking into such left-field material.

With hindsight, he began to think there might be something to it — there had to be, if the subject was worth the Pentagon spending tax dollars to explore it. As 2018 began, Grusch started getting up to speed on the subject, listening to sources and reading every document he could get his hands on. He learned that these experiences had reportedly been occurring since antiquity.

Joining the UAP Task Force

Another year passed. Grusch opened his email one day to find a message forwarded by his NRO boss, from the director of the UAP Task Force (UAP — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, the new term for UFO). The director was asking for an NRO representative to join the task force, and David’s boss thought he’d be the perfect fit. Grusch saw it as something for his performance report — a way to earn some brownie points. It would turn out to be the turning point, and ultimately the undoing, of his government career.

Continued via linked post!