How seriously should we take the claims of David Grusch? He is an airforce veteran and former member of the UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) task force, which is enough to at least hear him out. He gave an exclusive interview to journalist Ross Coulthart from NewsNation, part of which has been made public. This is sure to stoke the flames of UFO conspiracy theorists, and the media is, of course, loving it. But what is he actually saying, and what is the evidence?

Grusch claims that the UAP task force, which was renamed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), was not given information that there is a super secret government program for the retrieval and study of “non-human exotic craft” – basically alien spacecraft. This secret program has been operating for decades and has even been hidden from Congress, and therefore has no congressional oversight. He claims to have “proof” that this secret agency exists, although he is not at liberty to reveal any of this evidence for national security reasons. This is really the only claim for which he states he has actual evidence – that such an organization exists within the US government, hidden from Congress and the public.

But he goes further to claim that this program has recovered many crashed or abandoned craft, they have been working to study and reverse-engineer the technology, that they have also recovered alien bodies, and that this has been going on for decades. Further, many other countries have similar programs and have also recovered alien craft, creating a race to reverse engineer the technology for strategic advantage. He has no evidence that any of this is true, nor has he seen any such evidence himself. He is basing this entirely on hearsay – what he claims other intelligence officers have told him.

I have many questions, and I remain profoundly skeptical of these claims. The overall story does not sound credible or make sense. But let’s break it down a bit.

The core claim that there is a secret government program to study crashed anomalous craft is semi-plausible. I can see such a program existing in the bowels of the intelligence community, to study anomalous material, although I think this would be mostly for the purpose of finding spy craft from hostile nations. I don’t see why such a program, even if they did think they were finding alien craft, would keep it a secret from Congress. Even if they had military secrets, if this truly were happening for decades the older findings would by now no longer be classified. It seems implausible that something we found 50 years ago would still be of such national security interest that it needs to be kept secret, even compartmentalized from Congress.

Here’s the thing – even if the US government recovered crashed alien spacecraft, why keep it a secret for so long? I don’t see even the theoretical security risk of acknowledging the very existence of such craft. Especially since he acknowledged that other countries already know about it, because of course they would. So who is being protected from what? The notion that they are trying to prevent public panic is downright silly, and I don’t buy it for even a second. Further, I can see the existence of such secrecy over the short term, until they figure out what they are dealing with. But the longer such a program is allegedly maintained the less plausible it becomes – both in purpose and logistically.

This is where many grand conspiracy theories fall apart. They require that some information leaks out to those who expose the conspiracy, while simultaneously maintaining that the conspiracy is preternaturally powerful and thorough. These intelligence officers who allegedly are part of a program that has been kept from Congress (illegally) for decades just blabbed to someone outside the program? I also find it implausible that an illegal secret program can be kept secret through many administrations, through many directors – any one of which could have exposed the program and blamed their predecessor for illegally keeping it from Congress. I just don’t see a plausible scenario where any of this makes sense.

This level of secrecy also requires that they were able to prevent any non-government people from finding and exposing such craft before the government can swoop in and take control. At some point a rancher would have called the media who would sweep in with their live-streaming cameras, and the game would be over.

We can also examine the claim that an alien civilization has the technology to send multiple probes, crewed or uncrewed, interstellar distances to Earth but then is crashing all over the place. There is a logical disconnect there. Further, the alleged aliens must know that multiple world governments have their craft and dead pilots in their possession. So “the humans” know about them. Why, then, continue to keep their presence secret?

We can make up reasons to explain each individual piece of this puzzle, but it’s all special pleading. It seems contrived to create a situation in which we have been spied on by aliens for decades, who are keeping their presence mostly secret, but not really, and crash all the time. Meanwhile multiple world governments are secretly examining their crashed craft and pilots, keeping it secret even from themselves, but not, I guess, from each other, and from the public – for decades.

And we are to believe all this from a guy who has not even seen any actual physical evidence, or even a single photograph of actual alien stuff.

Now of course, I could be wrong. There could be a deeper story going on here, and I might be missing one or more critical pieces of information that will snap everything into place. But I seriously doubt it. The far simpler explanation is that Grusch is simply wrong, that he is extrapolating too freely from what information he has, filling in apparent gaps, and making inferential leaps not justified by the actual evidence. Meanwhile the Pentagon and NASA both say they are not aware of any such program, and they are not aware of any evidence that points to aliens.

In the end I predict this will all turn out to be just another UFO nothingburger. But I would be happy to be proven wrong – just make public with some actual evidence.