Grusch saw beings resembling “Greek gods” on footage
David Grusch, a former US Air Force intelligence official, claimed on a podcast on September 30 that he had seen pale, human-like beings on undisclosed footage. The footage is not public, and no official source has confirmed his claim.
Grusch said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that on footage he claims came from a secret retrieval operation, he saw three or four pale, bluish-white figures that appeared human-like. When Rogan asked how many bodies he saw, Grusch replied, “I think three or four is what I saw,” and added that he did not know how many bodies may have been involved in total. The comparison to “Greek gods” also came up in the conversation, to which Grusch replied: “That's how I described it.” He did not identify the footage, nor did he say when or where the alleged event may have taken place.
Grusch testified before Congress in July 2023 about secret UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering programs, and by his account he was a member of a UAP task force between 2019 and 2021. At the time of the 2026 podcast interview, he no longer worked there. Grusch himself acknowledged that a significant part of his claims is based on information from other people.
An important distinction is that Grusch did not claim to have personally encountered alien beings; rather, he spoke about footage that he says he viewed during his investigation. That footage, however, has not been released, so independent experts cannot examine it, and nothing verifies that the figures he saw are of extraterrestrial origin. In the interview, Grusch raised several possible origins while acknowledging that he does not have complete information.
He also talked about another, separate case: reptilian-like beings and dead grey figures, but here too he emphasized that he had not seen this personally. According to him, colleagues told him about beings more than two meters tall, with scaly skin and a gorilla-like build, some of which they had also seen alive. Grusch also claimed that the US military allegedly opened fire on the beings, and according to his account, American service members were injured or killed in the incident. He presented no independent evidence for this claim in the interview.
What do we know, and what don't we?
We know for certain that Grusch previously testified before Congress and that he most recently worked on a representative's staff. We also know exactly what he said on the podcast, because the conversation is public. What we do not know, however, is what the footage he described actually shows, because it has not been made public, and so no independent examination could take place. AARO, the Pentagon office dealing with UAP matters, stated in its report on fiscal year 2025 that it had found no evidence that the US government or private companies had captured or exploited materials derived from unidentified anomalous phenomena. This does not rule out every unexplained UAP report, but it does not confirm Grusch's claims either. The interview sparked lively interest in online communities focused on the UFO topic, with reactions ranging from excitement to skepticism; this, however, only attests to interest in the topic and provides no evidence of the truth of the events described.
The question therefore remains where it stood at the end of the interview: a piece of footage that no one has yet been able to see publicly, and a series of secondhand stories whose truth nothing supports so far.
The sober take
According to the latest report from AARO, the Pentagon's UAP investigation office, there is no evidence that the US government or private companies captured or exploited materials of alien origin; because the footage is unavailable and the information is secondhand, no independent source confirms Grusch's claims for now.