Pentagon Clears Insiders To Reveal UFO Secrets… Sort Of
The Department of War has issued a targeted legal waiver that clears current and former service members, civilian staff, and contractors to hand over classified UAP information without facing legal punishment, as long as they give it to one specific team. That team is PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, the records effort President Trump ordered earlier this year. The waiver removes the civil and administrative penalties built into two kinds of secrecy contracts, the ordinary nondisclosure agreement and the stricter agreement people sign to enter a Special Access Program, which is the most tightly controlled category of classified work.
The waiver does not allow anyone to go public, and it does not allow anyone to take material to a reporter. It applies only to talking with PURSUE. Whatever comes in gets reviewed, checked for security concerns, and considered for possible declassification, which means it might reach the public or it might not. The goal is to move people who have seen something to speak, and that pressure is already visible in Congress. In an interview with Ask a Pol, Rep. Nancy Mace, who has led UAP hearings, said she has personally viewed videos the public has not, and that she wants people to see what she has seen.
According to The Black Vault, Congress created a nearly identical authority in the 2023 defense budget law, letting people give UAP information to a designated Pentagon office no matter its classification, and regardless of any nondisclosure agreement they had signed. That authority has been on the books for years. The new part is the recipient. The older authority sent insiders to a single Pentagon office, AARO, that several whistleblowers did not trust, while the new waiver points them to PURSUE, an effort with the White House behind it and the President’s name attached. Re-announcing the same power under a new owner tells the holdouts the address has changed and the request is now coming from the top.
The waiver formalizes an order Trump gave in July, and it lands amid steady pressure, with a whistleblower bill moving through the House, lawmakers demanding specific videos, and a White House team now assigned to the subject. A more skeptical read is that routing every disclosure through one presidential program also puts one program in control of what gets reviewed, what gets held back, and what finally reaches the public.
As documented in records obtained by The Black Vault through public-records requests, the government told former intelligence officer David Grusch, in writing, in November 2023, that he was authorized to hand over UAP information regardless of its classification, and offered him a secure facility to do it in. Grusch still declined and did not attend the planned meeting. His reason is the part that remains unsolved. He said the UAP programs he wanted to describe were buried inside other classified programs that had nothing to do with UAP, so describing the UAP piece would expose the ordinary secret piece, and the protection he was offered did not reach that far.
The Department of War says its waiver overrides penalties in both nondisclosure agreements and Special Access Program agreements, but it has released the announcement, not the directive itself. Without the actual language, no one can compare it line by line against what already existed, and nothing made public so far touches Grusch’s core problem. Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri is pushing to restore Grusch’s security clearances, with Grusch now advising his team, and Burlison has attached his UAP Disclosure Act to next year’s defense budget bill in the House, though it still must survive negotiations with the Senate. On the White House side, reporting says the effort is run by senior adviser Stephen Miller, and Rep. Tim Burchett says Miller has made it a priority. Whether a witness comes forward, and whether what they bring ever reaches the public, is the open question.
Sources
Department of War. (2026, September 14). Department of War issues legal waiver to authorize unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) disclosures to PURSUE. https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4600020/department-of-war-issues-legal-waiver-to-authorize-unidentified-anomalous-pheno/
Laslo, M. (2026, September 11). Rep. Nancy Mace calls for more UFO disclosure: “I want people to see what I’ve seen.” Ask a Pol UAP. https://www.askapoluaps.com/p/rep-nancy-mace-demands-more-ufo-disclosure
The Black Vault. (2026, September 14). Department of War issues new UAP disclosure waiver; but similar protections already existed. https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/department-of-war-issues-new-uap-disclosure-waiver-but-similar-protections-already-existed/
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