Former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to level a direct accusation at America's intelligence agencies: billions of taxpayer dollars, he said, have been funneled into secret programs operating entirely outside congressional oversight. He called them "slush funds." And he said they have been running for years.
Grusch appeared alongside a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. Together, they renewed demands for records that federal officials, they say, continue to withhold, even as the Trump administration has moved to pry open decades of classified files on unidentified aerial phenomena.
The press conference marked the latest escalation in a fight that pits elected representatives against the defense and intelligence bureaucracies they are constitutionally charged with overseeing. At its core is a simple question that should trouble every taxpayer regardless of what they think about UFOs: Where is the money going, and who authorized it?
Grusch, who served on the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and later represented the National Reconnaissance Office on that body, told reporters at the Capitol Hill event that his investigation uncovered pools of money operating entirely outside normal congressional channels.
"This is also a real fraud, waste and abuse issue. During my investigation, I found slush funds to the tune of billions of dollars per annum for these activities."
He singled out the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's primary military intelligence arm, accusing it of obstructing congressional oversight efforts. He urged the DIA to release additional documents for review and declassification. The DIA could not immediately be reached for comment.
Grusch first gained national attention in 2023 when he testified before Congress about alleged government efforts to recover and study unidentified craft. The Pentagon has consistently said its investigations have not uncovered verified evidence of extraterrestrial technology. Previous government reviews have disputed claims that secret crash-retrieval programs exist.
But the Pentagon's own credibility on financial accountability is thin. The department has failed seven consecutive annual audits. Defense officials have attributed the failures to longstanding challenges tracking assets and accounting systems across the sprawling department. That explanation has not satisfied the lawmakers pressing for answers.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, stood beside Grusch and described a pattern of institutional resistance that grew more aggressive as lawmakers pushed harder.
"We would ask questions, and they would then push back. We would ask more questions, and the pushback became more significant. We would try to put language in an amendment, in a bill, and they would oppose it."
Moskowitz tied the UAP debate to the Pentagon's broader accountability failures. His framing was blunt.
"There's trillions of dollars missing at the Pentagon. Where does that money go?"
That question does not require anyone to believe in alien spacecraft to deserve an answer. Whether these hidden expenditures involve exotic technology programs, conventional black-budget overruns, or outright fraud, Congress has a constitutional obligation to know, and the agencies have a legal obligation to tell them.
Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, went further. He called for real consequences for officials who block congressional oversight and urged President Donald Trump to act.
"There must be real penalties for officials who knowingly withhold information from Congress."
Burlison also called on Trump to waive nondisclosure agreements for individuals with knowledge of alleged government UAP programs and to grant immunity to those willing to testify. His appeal was direct.
"Grant immunity to anyone who has already come forward, and everyone who will come forward. Open the door and let them speak."
Grusch told the press conference that additional witnesses remain reluctant to come forward because of concerns about retaliation and legal exposure. That claim aligns with what lawmakers on the task force have described, a culture of secrecy so deep that even members of Congress struggle to access basic information.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who chairs the House task force, said lawmakers are discussing immunity protections for individuals with knowledge of alleged craft locations, recovered materials, or advanced technologies. The broader pattern of whistleblowers facing institutional resistance when they bring classified concerns to Congress is not unique to the UAP issue, but it may be most acute here.
Burlison described a striking episode to illustrate how difficult it has been for lawmakers to obtain even basic evidence. He said his office obtained MQ-9 drone footage of a UAP incident off the coast of Yemen through what he called a "Tom Clancy-style dead drop", not through official channels.
"Congress is requesting specific records and videos. These agencies and contractors know that we know that they exist, and we're going to get them released."
When a sitting member of Congress has to receive military footage through back channels because the defense establishment won't hand it over through proper ones, the system is broken. That is not a UAP problem. That is a constitutional problem.
Tuesday's event came weeks after the Trump administration released a major tranche of previously classified UAP records, hundreds of pages of previously secret files. The administration has intensified efforts to declassify government UAP records, a move that has given bipartisan cover to lawmakers who spent years being dismissed for asking questions about the subject.
The administration's fiscal year 2027 budget includes nearly $132 billion in military and national intelligence spending. With numbers that large, the margin for hidden expenditures is enormous, and the case for rigorous oversight is self-evident.
Grusch's most provocative claim Tuesday went well beyond budgets. He said the government is aware of "several" different alien species, describing them in terms that ranged from "corporeal bipedal type life" to what he called "sentient plasma life." He did not elaborate or provide evidence during the event. Those claims remain unverified and disputed by the Pentagon.
But the extraterrestrial angle, however sensational, should not be allowed to obscure the fiscal and constitutional questions at the center of this fight. Separate from any debate about what the government may or may not have recovered, claims about recovered materials and secret programs have now been made by multiple individuals with intelligence backgrounds, and they deserve either thorough debunking or thorough investigation, not bureaucratic stonewalling.
The lawmakers' concerns about hidden spending gained an unexpected boost from a recent federal investigation. Investigators alleged that David Rush, a former CIA official, used a fraudulent "special access program" as part of a scheme involving more than $40 million in gold bars and millions in government funds.
That case illustrates exactly the kind of abuse that flourishes when programs operate in the dark. Special access programs are designed to protect the nation's most sensitive secrets. When they become vehicles for fraud, or for hiding expenditures from the people's elected representatives, they become threats to the constitutional order they were created to defend.
The bipartisan nature of Tuesday's press conference is worth noting. Moskowitz, a Democrat, and Burlison and Luna, both Republicans, stood together to make the same demand: stop hiding records from Congress. That kind of agreement across party lines is rare in Washington. It usually means the underlying grievance is real.
Members of Congress who have received classified briefings on UAP matters have increasingly gone public with their frustration. The pattern is consistent: lawmakers ask questions, agencies resist, legislative language gets blocked, and the cycle repeats.
Skeptics will dismiss this entire story because of the alien claims. That is a mistake. Strip away the extraterrestrial speculation and what remains is a straightforward accountability crisis. Intelligence agencies are accused of running billions of dollars in programs that Congress, the branch of government with the constitutional power of the purse, cannot see, cannot audit, and cannot control.
The Pentagon cannot pass its own audit. Lawmakers say they are being actively blocked from obtaining records. A former CIA officer allegedly exploited the secrecy infrastructure to steal tens of millions. And witnesses with direct knowledge say they are afraid to talk.
None of that requires believing in flying saucers. All of it requires believing in congressional oversight.
If the intelligence community has nothing to hide, the fastest way to prove it is to open the books. If it does have something to hide, then every day of delay is another day the people paying the bills are kept in the dark, and another day the Constitution's separation of powers exists only on paper.
