Eight scientists with ties to space, nuclear, and UFO research are dead or missing.
Now the White House is paying attention.
Karoline Leavitt told Fox News this week the Trump administration would deem this pattern worth investigating – and she hadn't even been briefed yet.
Three Years of Disappearances. Biden's Agencies Saw Nothing.
It started in July 2023 when Michael David Hicks – a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who spent 24 years working on asteroid and comet research – died at 59.
His cause of death was never released.
A year later, Frank Maiwald – another JPL scientist designing instruments to detect signs of life on Jupiter's moons – died at 61 on the Fourth of July.
https://twitter.com/RedWavePress/status/2041979554751775232?s=20
His cause of death was never released either.
Here is what makes that worse.
Biden's Pentagon stood up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in 2022 – specifically tasked with tracking national security threats connected to advanced science programs and unexplained phenomena.
By 2024, AARO had full operational capacity.
Fully funded. Fully staffed. Watching.
The scientists started disappearing anyway.
In June 2025, Monica Reza – a NASA aerospace engineer who had been working on a government-funded rocket materials project – vanished during a hike in Angeles National Forest.
https://twitter.com/InterstellarUAP/status/2038759426514104817?s=20
That project was overseen by General McCasland – the same man who would vanish eight months later.
Four days after Reza disappeared, Melissa Casias – an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Labs, the facility that built nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project – dropped off lunch for her daughter and was never seen again.
Her mobile devices had been wiped.
In August 2025, Steven Garcia walked out of his Albuquerque home carrying only a handgun.
Garcia worked as a contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus, which manufactures 80% of the nonnuclear components that go into America's nuclear weapons stockpile.
He had a top secret security clearance.
He hasn't been seen since.
AARO, throughout all of it, said nothing publicly.
Biden's UFO Office Was Too Busy Attacking Whistleblowers
The Biden administration's posture on UFO transparency wasn't passive.
It was hostile.
When decorated intelligence officer David Grusch testified before Congress in 2023 that the U.S. government had concealed a multi-decade UFO retrieval program, Biden's AARO director didn't investigate the claims.
He called the congressional hearing "insulting."
He said Grusch had "refused to speak with AARO" – while Grusch had an open whistleblower reprisal case pending against the very agencies AARO represented.
Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace said what Republicans were all thinking: "AARO is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to bring forward the truth."
That was the Biden position on UFO transparency: discredit the people asking questions and protect the agencies doing the hiding.
https://twitter.com/legitgov/status/2043067201205538898?s=20
Then a retired Air Force general disappeared.
The General Who Led the Lab Where Roswell Debris Was Shipped
William Neil McCasland is not just a missing person.
He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio – the facility where, according to UFO researchers, materials from the 1947 Roswell crash were taken.
He holds degrees from MIT and Harvard and oversaw billions of dollars in advanced materials science and future weapons research during his military career.
In 2016, hacked emails published by WikiLeaks showed Blink-182 guitarist and UFO disclosure activist Tom DeLonge describing McCasland to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta as someone with deep knowledge of what the government had recovered.
DeLonge wrote that McCasland had been "in charge of all of the stuff" and was "very, very aware" – referring specifically to the Wright-Patterson laboratory and its connection to Roswell.
On February 27, 2026, McCasland walked out of his Albuquerque home.
He left his phone, his glasses, and his wearable devices on the counter.
He took a handgun, a red backpack, and hasn't been seen since.
"There's no indication we are putting forward that Mr. McCasland was disoriented or confused," said Lt. Kyle Woods of the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office. "Arguably, he would still be the most intelligent person in the room that any of us would be in."
https://twitter.com/TheCalvinCooli1/status/2032245606807138791?s=20
Ten days before McCasland vanished, Caltech researcher Carl Grillmair – personally involved in NASA space telescope projects – was shot and killed on his front porch.
A 29-year-old named Freddy Snyder was charged with the murder.
No motive has been made public.
Trump Is Doing What Biden Refused to Do
The contrast between the two administrations on this issue is not subtle.
Biden's AARO spent three years stonewalling Congress, dismissing whistleblowers, and watching nuclear and space scientists vanish from New Mexico without a word of public alarm.
Congress had to fight Biden just to get the UAP Disclosure Act signed in 2023 – and the most significant transparency provisions were stripped before it reached his desk.
Trump's team has operated differently.
Tulsi Gabbard has publicly said she believes aliens could be real.
The administration has moved to consolidate UFO intelligence under direct executive control rather than leaving it buried in a Pentagon bureaucracy with no accountability to the public.
And when Peter Doocy raised the scientist deaths in the briefing room Wednesday, Leavitt didn't deflect.
She said the government would look into it.
Eight people connected to America's most sensitive science programs are dead or missing, and Biden's agencies treated the people raising alarms as the problem.
Trump's White House just called it worth investigating.
Sources:
- Peter D'Abrosca, "Mystery clouds deaths, disappearances of scientists with UFO research ties: timeline," Fox News, April 16, 2026.
- Joseph MacKinnon, "Speculation mounts over mysterious deaths and disappearances tied to US space and nuclear program," Blaze Media, April 16, 2026.
- "Biden administration distances itself from Pentagon official who bashed UFO hearing," Fox News, August 1, 2023.
- "UFO whistleblowers tell Congress 'we are not alone in the cosmos,'" Space.com, November 13, 2024.
- "Neil McCasland," Wikipedia, accessed April 16, 2026.