PORTLAND, Ore. — July marks the 76th anniversary of the most researched alleged UFO crash in U.S. history: The Mystery at Roswell.
To commemorate the event, KATU News is opening our archive to share with you a KATU Town Hall that focused on the Roswell UFO case that first aired in February 1996.
Watch the Mystery at Roswell Town Hall on KATU’s YouTube Channel:
The KATU Town Hall panel includes late UFO researcher and nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, whose research into the Roswell incident in the 1970s & 80s vaulted the case and UFOs back to the forefront of public consciousness.
The 49-minute-long event also features video and interviews conducted by former KATU Anchor Jeff Gianola, who traveled to New Mexico to speak with a few longtime locals about the alleged government coverup of the recovery operation to retrieve crashed flying discs and the bodies of their occupants in 1947.
At the start of the town hall, Gianola ponders “What really happened?”
It seems in 2023, we may be getting a little closer to answering that question.
Roughly 27 years after that KATU Town Hall aired, allegations of a secret government UFO research program persist, and new claims of recovered non-human craft and bodies are making headlines, again.
In early June, it was revealed former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch had come forward as a military whistleblower with allegations of a decades-long coverup of a UFO crash retrieval program.
In an on-camera interview with Australian journalist Ross Coulthart, which aired on NewsNation in June, Grusch shared details of accounts he says were relayed to him while speaking with personnel inside the highest levels of government. As an investigator for the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force (the government term for UFOs is now “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” or “UAP”), Grusch said he interviewed people, many with high-level security clearances, who told him about a secret government effort to retrieve “non-human or exotic” technology -- an effort that was deliberately hidden from congressional oversight and the American people.
“Why did you know it is exotic?” Coulthart asked Grusch in the NewsNation report.
“Based on the very specific properties I was briefed on,” replied Grusch. “Isotopic ratios that would have to be engineered for it to be at those levels but also just extremely strange, heavy atomic metal high up in the periodic table that we don’t understand the properties. Just a very strange mix of elements.”
Grusch claimed the program also included operations that recovered multiple crashed or landed “non-human” craft.
Coulthart also asked Grusch, “so you are absolutely sure that the materials these craft are made of are clearly not of this earth?”
Grusch’s response? “They are sophisticatedly engineered not by humans.”
He also told Coulthart that sometimes, he was told, those operations included the recovery of the bodies of the pilots of the non-human craft.
However, when asked specifically about the Roswell incident, Grusch declined to answer, indicating it was not a topic the Department of Defense had cleared him to discuss publicly.
Some of Grusch’s claims were first published in a story at TheDebrief.org by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal. The veteran reporters wrote they confirmed Grusch served as a senior intelligence officer at both the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, the latter which included the task of preparing briefings for the NRO director. They described Grusch as a decorated veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
The Debrief article said Grusch first filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) in July 2021. He later filed another complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) in 2022, alleging he’d been retaliated against for bringing the information forward.
Grusch admitted the story he’s telling is based on information shared with him by others, and that he has no firsthand knowledge.
“It's been very complicated -- I think for a lot of people to understand -- that one of the reasons why David Grusch's allegations have been taken so seriously by the Congress -- by people like Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a bipartisan response -- is because before he went to the Congress, he gave evidence in secret to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, which is kind of like the watchdog on our spooks,” said Coulthart in an interview with KATU News. “And what he did was tell the inspector general the names of people who could corroborate what he was saying. And they are people from within the very secret program that he's revealing the existence of to Congress.”
Kean and Blumenthal also reported that while many of the details of Grusch’s complaint are classified due to their sensitive nature, the ICIG did conclude that Grusch’s complaint was “credible and urgent” and that Grusch said his complaint was forwarded to the director of national intelligence and to congressional intelligence committees.
Grusch also said he briefed both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), vice chair of the SSCI, said other whistleblowers who do have firsthand accounts of these programs have disclosed their stories to the Intelligence Committee. In a recent interview with NewsNation’s Joe Khalil, Rubio explained how over the last couple of years, individuals with high-level security clearances relayed information from their experiences inside an alleged crash retrieval program.
“We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can,” Rubio told Khalil. “And frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs -- fearful of harm coming to them.”
When asked whether he found such claims credible, Rubio took a middle position.
“Understand, some of these claims are things beyond the realm of anything any of us has ever dealt with,” Rubio said in the NewsNation interview. “What I think we owe them is a mature, understanding. Listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions in one direction or another. I will say I find most of these people, at some point or maybe even currently, have held very high clearances and high positions within our government. What incentive would so many people, with that kind of qualification -- these are serious people-- have to come forward and make something up?"
In an interview with KATU News’ Your Voice Your Vote team, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, agreed more transparency is needed.
“I think there are some serious questions here,” said Wyden. “Particularly in terms of piecing the evidence together.”
Like Rubio, Wyden is a member of the SSCI and the co-chair of the Whistleblower Caucus, which encourages people to come forward.
“The concept is an important one,” said Wyden. “We want to make sure these federal officials come forward. I think these are serious matters, and it’s important to encourage whistleblowers to get to the bottom of it.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisconsin, said he is in favor of transparency on this issue. Gallagher is a member of the HPSCI and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
“The claim that David Grusch and others are making is that these programs exist in violation of the law because Congress is unaware of them,” said Gallagher in a recent appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
“So, we have to smoke that out, just to examine that claim,” Gallagher told McAfee.
Gallagher also indicated that the worst-case scenario is not if it turned out to be “alien” tech, but if it’s learned the technology belongs to a foreign actor like Russia or China, revealing that the U.S. is far behind an adversary in not only research and development, but even an understanding of physics.
Despite bipartisan agreement on both sides of the Capitol on the need to investigate these claims, not every lawmaker is convinced that something nefarious is going on within the highest levels of government.
“Of course, you hear this notion that’s been out there forever, that the United States government is hiding material, hiding aliens or whatever,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Connecticut, in a June 6 interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Himes is the ranking member of the HPSCI.
“This has been a story since the 1960s,” said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the HPSCI, in that same interview with Baier.
“Really, every decade there’s been individuals who’ve said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space. There’s no evidence of this. And certainly, it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be able to be maintained, especially at this level,” said Turner.
“That's why the senators and indeed people in the House as well, have determined this needs to be taken seriously, because it's not just Mr. Grusch making wild allegations,” said Coulthart. “This is a guy who's backed to the hilt by multiple witnesses who've backed what he's saying under oath.”
KATU sister station KOMO asked the Pentagon if the DODIG is conducting a criminal investigation based on Grusch’s claims.
A statement from DODIG public affairs specialist and spokeswoman Megan G. Reed reads: “To be clear, this is not a criminal investigation, and the objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).”
In 2022, the duties of investigating UAP reports became the responsibility of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), led by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. (NASA also has an Independent UAP Study Team looking into UAP reports. They are joined by several private organizations that have formed in recent years, conducting their own investigations.)
In a briefing with NASA in May, Kirkpatrick said only a very small percentage of UAP reports come back as “anomalous.” He also said most UAP reports sent to AARO are explainable. However, he said AARO does have hundreds of reports that are not readily explainable and pointed to a lack of available data.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds defense and intelligence efforts, is passed annually. Recent versions of the NDAA have included specific directions for AARO to collect and investigate UAP reports from within the military. That includes digging into past records dating back to 1945 -- a full report which is due next summer, according to Gallagher.
The 2023 NDAA also included language, reportedly prepared with Grusch’s assistance, to create a pathway for whistleblowers to come forward with information about secret programs operating illegally and/or without government oversight -- even if they’d signed non-disclosure agreements (NDA).
Sen. Gillibrand, D-New York, who is a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and the SSCI, confirmed in a recent tweet that AARO will have full funding next year to “ensure it has the resources necessary to identify and resolve reports of Unidentified Aerial (Anomalous) Phenomena in support of our national security.”
As for whether AARO has investigated Grusch’s claims or other claims made about secret UFO recovery or technology exploitation programs, DoD spokesperson Susan Gough provided this statement to Christopher Sharp of the Liberation Times: “To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
UAP Blogger Dean Douglas Johnson shared a draft of the SSCI Authorization Act indicating that Congress would be ordering any technology -- “non-human or exotic” -- that was in the possession of either the government or government contractors, to be shared with AARO within six months. Gallagher said it includes amnesty for someone coming forward with information or evidence of illegal programs.
This has all led to calls for more public, unclassified hearings regarding UAP on Capitol Hill. An HSPCI subcommittee last held one in May 2021. A SASC subcommittee, led by Gillibrand, held another in April. Both also included classified segments of the briefing.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennessee, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, said on social media another unclassified UAP hearing could be coming in July. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Kentucky, also said a hearing was planned.
Reports say Gillibrand is also working toward holding an unclassified hearing, where Grusch himself could testify.
“For those people who say there is no evidence, the reason why Mr. Grusch, the whistleblower, cannot come forward and reveal publicly the evidence is because he's a patriot,” Coulthart said. “He's under a security oath. He's not actually a whistleblower in the technical sense of the word. He's not illegally releasing information.”
Coulthart told KATU News the DoD greenlighted the information Grusch shared in his interviews. He said the information was cleared in a “Defense Office, Pre-Publication Security review Authorization,” or “DOPSA.”
What he learned about Roswell -- whatever it may turn out to be -- remains classified.
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Ross Coulthart is the co-host of the podcast “Need to Know” with Bryce Zabel. For more information, visit needtoknow.today.
NOTE: The KATU Town Hall: Mystery at Roswell also features clips from video of an alleged “alien autopsy” which first aired on Fox TV in August 1995 as part of a special titled “Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?” hosted by Jonathan Frakes.
According to Time Magazine, about 10 years after the original “autopsy” video first aired, British entrepreneur Ray Santilli and producer Gary Shoefield, who released the video, admitted the autopsy footage was not genuine, but a “staged reconstruction.” Santilli claimed it was based on video clips he’d seen of a real alien autopsy. But, when he purchased the clips in the early 1990s, the video was too degraded to use.
