UFO Whistleblower NDAs Are the Real Fight as Pentagon Drip-Feeds Files

On Sept. 19, three of the most prominent names in the UFO debate took their case directly to President Donald Trump. David Grusch, Dylan Borland and Matthew Brown asked the president to waive the UFO whistleblower NDAs binding them and grant them immunity, so they could describe to the public what they say they witnessed inside classified UAP programs. Documentary filmmaker James Fox, who coordinated the effort, told the New York Post it was "the first time in history you have a direct public plea" of its kind to a sitting president. Grusch addressed Trump in a video Fox released, saying he was ready to give the White House a full accounting of what he knew if the president authorized him to speak.

The plea landed five days after the government gave its own answer on secrecy. On Sept. 14, the Department of War issued a legal waiver that lets current and former military personnel, civilians and contractors share UAP-related information with official representatives of the Pentagon's disclosure program, known as PURSUE, without breaching their nondisclosure agreements or special access program rules. According to a detailed breakdown published by the disclosure tracker UFO Disclosure, the waiver covers only conversations inside government channels. It does not permit public disclosure, grants no blanket immunity, and does not cover the intelligence agencies, which fall under separate guidance.

That gap is where the current fight lives. The three men argue that the UFO whistleblower NDAs blocking public testimony are the real barrier to disclosure, and that only a presidential order can remove them. Fox told the Post the three were prepared to speak publicly if given legal cover, arguing that only an order from the president stood between them and full disclosure. The administration's move, by contrast, routes potential witnesses into internal reporting and says nothing about the UFO whistleblower NDAs that govern public testimony.

The request is the latest escalation in a disclosure campaign that has run all year. The Pentagon's earlier releases drew congressional scrutiny and a widening circle of claimants, and lawmakers from both parties have pushed for stronger protections for witnesses who come forward. The whistleblowers' coalition is betting that a direct public appeal to the president will succeed where years of closed-door testimony have not. Their calculation is that the UFO whistleblower NDAs themselves, more than any single classified file, are what keep the public in the dark.

Fourteen new videos, most still under wraps

On Sept. 18, the Pentagon published the sixth batch of its UAP records on its public War.gov portal. The release, labeled PURSUE Release 06, added fourteen previously unreleased videos of unidentified objects, most recorded by military reconnaissance platforms at locations around the world between 2022 and 2025, along with a recording of a 1952 briefing by Capt. Edward Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book, and a set of declassified documents. Much of the sensor metadata that would help independent analysts evaluate the footage was redacted or removed before publication.

Disclosure advocates say the pattern is familiar: the government releases narrow tranches while the most consequential material stays classified. Investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell has claimed that Congress requested forty-six UAP videos for public release and the government delivered only a fraction of them. Corbell and journalist George Knapp say they independently released two of the forty-six videos themselves. The fight over those videos is, in the whistleblowers' telling, a distraction from the UFO whistleblower NDAs that block their testimony. The sixth batch is the latest step in a transparency effort that began in May 2026, when the Pentagon released its first batch of UAP files following a presidential executive order directing the declassification of UFO and UAP records.

What the three men say they saw

Grusch is the most established of the three. An Air Force officer and former intelligence officer at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, he testified to a House Oversight subcommittee in 2023 that the United States had operated secret UFO crash retrieval programs for decades. He told the Post he had seen photographs and video of recovery operations, including craft and non-human occupants, with his own eyes, and said he was prepared to deliver a full historical accounting to the National Security Council and the White House chief of staff.

Brown, a former defense industry contractor, came forward on the Weaponized podcast in early 2026 with claims about an alleged secret government program he called Immaculate Constellation, which he said collected UFO data from across the government. Brown told the Post that the lifelong UFO whistleblower NDAs he signed bar him from publicly sharing classified information from his national security work without prior written government authorization. He argued that Trump could reset international relations and lead humanity into what he called a new era of awareness by publicly confirming that humans are not alone.

Borland, an Air Force veteran, testified to Congress in 2025 about a silent triangular craft he said he saw at Langley Air Force Base in 2012. He told the Post that disclosure had to come from Trump directly, and claimed the government had recovered materials and biological entities. None of the three men's claims have been corroborated by the released files; the men themselves say the evidence they cite remains classified.

Congress weighs in

Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican and a longtime supporter of the whistleblowers, told the Post that Trump had already gone further on the topic than any previous president, and that each of the Pentagon's file releases would have been a landmark in UAP history before this administration. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who chairs the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said many whistleblowers had been afraid to go public for fear of retaliation, and that securing protections for them was her top priority.

Two paths, one locked door

The difference between the two approaches is now the whole story. The Pentagon's path routes witnesses into internal channels and releases curated batches of historical material with heavy redactions. The whistleblowers want the opposite direction: presidential immunity that would let them describe classified programs in public, in their own words. Until one of those requests is granted, the UFO whistleblower NDAs stay in place, the files keep arriving in installments, and the most dramatic claims in the debate remain impossible for the public to verify.

For readers keeping score, the scoreboard so far is straightforward. The whistleblowers have made their ask in public. The Pentagon has answered with a waiver that keeps testimony inside the building and fourteen videos that raise as many questions as they settle. Whether the UFO whistleblower NDAs survive the year may depend less on the footage than on a single decision in the White House. That decision, as of this writing, has not come.

Read the New York Post's report on the whistleblowers' request, and see the breakdown of the Pentagon's Sept. 14 waiver.