NewsNation’s Joe Khalil asked Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) at the U.S. Department of Defense, this: Given his high level of authority, couldn’t he have already found a way to either refute or verify Grusch’s claims?

“I can’t comment on anything he’s told other people. The only way we can get anything that he has shared to other people is if he gives permission to them to share it because he’s protected under those same laws,” said Kirkpatrick. “But I have a whole range. I’ve got almost 40 other people that have come in and provided a lot of rich information that we’ve been investigating and crossreferencing and researching and trying to figure out the truth. And again, that’s what I’m saying.”

Grusch testified before Congress the Pentagon has in its possession crashed UFOs it has retrieved. He claims the Pentagon has long been running a covert program to study and reverse engineer those alleged crafts.

AARO’s official stance is that it is “not aware of any such programs.”