David Grusch returns to Rogan with his most specific claims yet
In a two-and-a-half-hour interview released September 30, the former intelligence officer said he had watched video of a crash retrieval with human-looking dead occupants, that colleagues saw living reptilians, and that an official acknowledgment will come before Donald Trump leaves office. He also said, more than once, not to take his word for it.
Published
Back on the show, and off the Hill
David Grusch’s second visit to The Joe Rogan Experience, episode #2560, was released on September 30, 2026, almost three years after his first, which came four months after his July 2023 testimony to a House Oversight subcommittee. “Living a nightmare is what I tell my friends,” he said in the opening minute. The conversation ran about two and a half hours and went further than anything he has said in public before. By his own account he spent 2024 lying low, then worked about eighteen months for Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri, whose office announced him as a special advisor in March 2025. Grusch called the job professional staff member and said it made him the first congressional whistleblower later hired by Congress. He stayed through the August recess, he said, and left around Labor Day. “I’m currently literally a private citizen,” he told Rogan, and near the end: “I hope this is the last time I got to send it on an interview.”
Sources: Episode #2560 at 0:20Episode #2560 at 1:16Episode #2560 at 33:31Episode #2560 at 2:29:39Rep. Burlison welcomes former U.S. Air Force officer David Grusch as special advisor
What the Burlison job produced
He described the work as letters, classified briefings for members and legal interrogatories, including one he said the office sent “this summer” to the MITRE Corporation, the federally funded research center in Northern Virginia. The result he returned to most was a recording. Shortly before he left, he said, he and Burlison “got a 1952 recording that was still classified from Blue Book,” in which, as he described it, Project Blue Book’s Captain Edward Ruppelt briefs the Beacon Hill study group at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory: the Air Force had “ruled out mass hysteria,” objects were being seen near nuclear sites and test ranges, and around White Sands and Holloman Air Force Base “multiple objects” had been tracked at an estimated 3,500 miles an hour. The same ranges see unexplained orbs today, he added, and a task force spanning the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon, now styled the Department of War, is looking at them. The recording is real and public. Burlison wrote to MIT in May 2026 about a reel labeled “flying saucer talk,” and the audio and a transcript were released on September 21 through the department’s PURSUE portal. Burlison’s announcement calls the tape “previously unavailable” rather than classified, and does not mention Grusch.
Sources: Episode #2560 at 30:05Episode #2560 at 1:38:41Episode #2560 at 1:55:47Burlison requests review of identified 1952 UAP recordingBurlison-sought 1952 UAP recording released
The footage he says he watched
The interview’s center of gravity arrived just under an hour in, when Grusch mentioned that genomes had been compared and Rogan asked from what. “Dead cadavers, yeah,” Grusch said, and when Rogan asked whether that was real: “Oh, 100 percent.” Asked how he knew, he said he had seen “the audio visual”: video of a retrieval operation, contemporary and clear rather than, in Rogan’s words, “1950s black and white,” in which the camera panned across a crash site and three or four bodies on the ground. He would not say when it was filmed or which operation it was, to protect the person who showed it to him. The beings were “human looking,” “very, very beautiful,” pale and “bluish white,” with long grayish hair and what looked like a form-fitting garment. The comparison he reached for came from Tom DeLonge’s account of advice from retired Major General William McCasland: “think of the Greek gods.” The bodies are kept in preservation for analysis, he said; he never saw the biological reports and called that his biggest regret. Asked whether he feared being shown a plant, he said he had confirmed the event “through other sources and methods” and sat on the material for years. Then a line he returned to in other forms: “Don’t take my word for it. Plead with the president to make sure this comes out.”
Sources: Episode #2560 at 58:23Episode #2560 at 1:00:06Episode #2560 at 1:04:46Episode #2560 at 1:06:59Episode #2560 at 1:09:39
Reptilians, grays and a firefight he did not see
Grusch repeated that he has never had an encounter and never saw the other beings he described; those reached him from colleagues who were present at retrievals and, he said, “saw them alive.” They included grays, which he called “real” and linked to the 1994 Ariel School sighting in Zimbabwe, and beings he introduced with visible reluctance: “the pop culture,” he began, “reptilian looking.” A friend described them as seven feet tall or more with “gorilla looking skin,” in more than one type, and usually associated with tic-tac-shaped craft (“I cannot believe I’m talking about this on Joe Rogan,” he said of the description); the pale “Greek god” beings, he said, favor boomerangs and crescents. He described one tic-tac found wedged into the ground with dead grays beside living reptilians, an instance of conflict between non-human groups that he said the intelligence community has “documented,” and guessed at “at least a dozen or two” such crashes. Three-quarters of an hour later Rogan asked what became of the survivors. “Deceased. They were killed,” Grusch said: shot, after they “posed a threat” and U.S. personnel “started getting hurt and dying.” He did not know how many died and hoped those present would one day tell it “from the horse’s mouth, not through me secondhand.” Within days an AI-generated picture of soldiers firing at a reptile was circulating on X as a real photograph of the event he described; the episode shows no such image.
Sources: Episode #2560 at 1:10:15Episode #2560 at 1:16:57Episode #2560 at 1:19:19Episode #2560 at 2:07:14Fact check: fake image of U.S. troops shooting ‘reptilians’ is not a real photo
Threats, a Senate vault and an allegation he had not made before
The darkest stretch concerned what Grusch says followed his 2019 assignment to the UAP Task Force. He was “administratively nuked” in October 2020, he said, his boss at the National Reconnaissance Office was walked out of headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, and colleagues were targeted. In early 2022 came a message, sent to others the same day, that “they can touch me and my wife.” Weeks later he was summoned to an off-books meeting in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s secure vault, where a dozen or more senior staff for senators including Marco Rubio and Mark Warner heard briefers name people who “wanted to kill you.” One shaken staffer went for whiskey, he said; the plan was stopped by people he owes “a debt of gratitude.” Luis Elizondo said in June that a congressional staffer had warned him “there was a plan to eliminate you” and that he and Grusch had been discussed. Grusch also said that while following the money he had ended up “bumping into a criminal enterprise” run out of an agency he would not name, funded by “the most unspeakable type of criminal endeavors.” When Rogan asked whether that meant child trafficking, he answered, “Officers of the government. That’s true,” and said he had taken it to the Justice Department, where an investigation is ongoing. In 2023 he had spoken of “illegal contracting” and “other criminality”; the trafficking allegation is new, and no referral is documented.
Sources: Episode #2560 at 11:55Episode #2560 at 13:35Episode #2560 at 17:05Episode #2560 at 21:01Episode #2560 at 5:58Episode #2560 at 9:11UAP whistleblower Luis Elizondo details congressional staffer’s warning of plot to ‘eliminate’ himIntelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human origin
A deadline for disclosure
Grusch’s forecast was the other headline. “Before Trump’s term ends,” he said, “it’s all going to come out”: recovered craft, the intelligence piloting them, the reverse-engineering effort. He credited what he called the president’s declassification order of February 2026. The record is a little different. On February 19 Trump posted on Truth Social that he was directing the Pentagon and other agencies to identify and release UFO files; no executive order has been published, and the Department of War began publishing batches in May through a portal called PURSUE. Grusch called Stephen Miller “serious” about the effort and, citing Representative Tim Burchett, said Miller has complained of being “physically blocked” from material. He pointed to nondisclosure waivers signed by the principal deputy director of national intelligence, Aaron Lukas, as “the chessboard being set,” while acknowledging that the “low-hanging fruit videos and recordings” released so far have left people unhappy. His advice: a rollout of at least a year, and a “threshold disclosure” that “we’re not alone, we have stuff,” made before Trump leaves office because he does not trust a successor to follow through, and ideally at least six months before the 2028 election to leave “some sort of recovery period.” He favors amnesty for insiders through a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, though not for the crimes he alleges, and warned that an artificial superintelligence combing through data might expose the secret first.
Sources: Episode #2560 at 23:39Episode #2560 at 27:24Episode #2560 at 29:43Episode #2560 at 33:40Episode #2560 at 49:01Episode #2560 at 1:43:19Episode #2560 at 2:26:08Trump says he is directing the Pentagon to release files related to UFOs and aliensTrump releases UFO files with rollout of new presidential unsealing and reporting system for UAP encounters
Where Rogan pushed
Rogan was mostly sympathetic and closed by thanking Grusch for “exposing all this stuff,” but he pressed at the points that mattered. “How do you know that for sure?” he asked of the bodies, then, “You saw them physically or you saw video of them?” He asked whether the footage could be a plant, whether Grusch had spoken with anyone who examined the bodies (he had not, only people from retrievals), and told him, “This sounds insane, Dave.” When Grusch called Miller a fellow “alpha,” Rogan said it was “a silly thing to say.” And he raised a claim circulating online that Grusch had planted the briefing that Matthew Brown, the former analyst behind the “Immaculate Constellation” report, says he found on a classified system in 2018, in effect manufacturing a whistleblower. Grusch said he did not know Brown until shortly before the November 2024 hearing, had never seen the briefing and had “never made a hazing brief on this topic.” Rogan then clarified that the accusation came from other people, not from Brown. “There’s a lot of theories online,” Grusch said. “Dude, it’s just me.”
Sources: Episode #2560 at 58:35Episode #2560 at 1:19:32Episode #2560 at 27:43Episode #2560 at 2:21:01
What can be checked, and what cannot
Almost none of this can be checked by anyone outside the programs Grusch describes, and he said as much: “I’m not omnipotent. I didn’t have full access and I only know what I know.” He named no agency behind the alleged criminal enterprise, none of the people he says wanted him dead, no date or place for the retrieval on the video, no site for the reptilian crash, and no location for the undersea structure he called “large” and, when Rogan put the figure to him, agreed is “multiple city blocks” in size. The record he set those claims against is thinner. His 2023 statement to Congress rested, as he said then, on information other people gave him. His former attorneys at Compass Rose said in June 2023 that the complaint the intelligence community’s inspector general had found “urgent and credible” concerned the withholding of information from Congress, “did not speak to the specifics” of the programs, and that the firm “takes no position on the contents.” In March 2024 the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office reported that its historical review had found no verifiable evidence that the government or private industry had ever held extraterrestrial technology, and its annual report released in July 2026 said the same. As far as we can find, no lawmaker, the Pentagon or the White House had publicly responded to the episode by October 13. The checkable pieces hold on their own terms. McCasland did vanish from his Albuquerque home on February 27, eight days after Trump’s post, though the Bernalillo County sheriff said in April that investigators had found no evidence connecting his disappearance to his classified work; and the Ruppelt recording exists and can be heard. Everything else is a man describing, in more detail than ever, what he says he saw and was told.
Sources: Episode #2560 at 57:31Episode #2560 at 2:19:11David Grusch’s opening and closing statementsCompass Rose’s statement on the scope of its representationDOD report discounts sightings of extraterrestrial technologyFiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous PhenomenaFBI joins search for retired Air Force general who vanished from Albuquerque homeNeil McCasland update: sheriff addresses speculation about missing general
Sources & documents
Joe Rogan Experience #2560 – David GruschPowerfulJRE · YouTube · September 30, 2026 · Grusch’s own unverified claimsRep. Burlison welcomes former U.S. Air Force officer David Grusch as special advisorOffice of Rep. Eric Burlison · Press release · March 27, 2025Burlison requests review of identified 1952 UAP recordingOffice of Rep. Eric Burlison · Press release and letter to MIT Lincoln Laboratory · May 8, 2026Burlison-sought 1952 UAP recording releasedOffice of Rep. Eric Burlison · Press release on the Department of War’s PURSUE release · September 21, 2026Trump says he is directing the Pentagon to release files related to UFOs and aliensRaquel Coronell Uribe · NBC News · February 19, 2026Trump releases UFO files with rollout of new presidential unsealing and reporting system for UAP encountersMicah Hanks · The Debrief · May 8, 2026 · Notes that no formal directive is known to stand behind the releaseUAP whistleblower Luis Elizondo details congressional staffer’s warning of plot to ‘eliminate’ himTaylor Penley · Fox News · June 30, 2026Intelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human originLeslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal · The Debrief · June 5, 2023David Grusch’s opening and closing statementsU.S. House of Representatives · July 26, 2023 · PDFCompass Rose’s statement on the scope of its representationThe Debrief · Reproduces the law firm’s June 9, 2023 statementDOD report discounts sightings of extraterrestrial technologyU.S. Department of Defense · March 8, 2024 · On AARO’s Historical Record Report, Volume IFiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous PhenomenaAll-domain Anomaly Resolution Office · Released July 20, 2026 · PDFFBI joins search for retired Air Force general who vanished from Albuquerque homeCNN · March 17, 2026Neil McCasland update: sheriff addresses speculation about missing generalJoe Edwards · Newsweek · April 2026Fact check: fake image of U.S. troops shooting ‘reptilians’ is not a real photoUliana Malashenko · Lead Stories · October 12, 2026Spotted an error, or know a better source? Write to hello@uap.fun.
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