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UFOs & UAP

Grusch on Rogan: A Crashed 'Tic Tac' Craft, Dead Grays and Reptilian Beings, Told Secondhand

On The Joe Rogan Experience #2560, released Sept. 30, 2026, former intelligence officer David Grusch said friends who worked crash retrievals told him of tall reptilian beings, a crashed craft with dead grays nearby, and U.S. personnel hurt and killed. He says he never saw the beings himself, and several of the most-shared lines were Rogan's.

JRE #2560 By Dead of Night Dispatch

Illustration: a podcast studio at night, two empty microphones under a red lamp, a blurred archive photo of a wrecked craft in a dark forest on the monitor

(Released Sept. 30, 2026) — David Grusch has said before that he can’t believe some of the things he finds himself saying. On episode #2560 of The Joe Rogan Experience, released Sept. 30, 2026, he said it again, and then described, as it was told to him, a crashed craft, dead “grays,” tall reptilian beings and a deadly confrontation with U.S. personnel.

Where it started

The original social media post

  1. PowerfulJRE @joerogan

    David Grusch is a former United States Air Force intelligence officer, former representative of the National Reconnaissance Office to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, and former co-lead for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena analysis at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

    From the description of “Joe Rogan Experience #2560 - David Grusch,” the full episode.

    2,144,226 views · 34,812 likes · 14,092 comments as of Oct 3, 2026

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Grusch was careful about one thing throughout: he wasn’t there. “I hope through this process some of those people are allowed to speak publicly about it,” he said near the end of that exchange, “so you could just hear it from the horse’s mouth, not through me secondhand.”

Here’s what was said, and who said it.

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

  • The episode. Joe Rogan Experience #2560, with Grusch as the guest, was posted to the show’s YouTube channel on Sept. 30, 2026, and runs about two and a half hours. Coverage followed on Oct. 2 from the disclosure site NHI Anomalous and from Britain’s Daily Star.
  • The guest. Grusch, a former intelligence officer, testified to Congress as a UAP whistleblower in 2023. On the episode he said Rep. Burlison later hired him as a professional staff member, a job he said he held for about a year and a half before winding down around Labor Day.
  • Secondhand, by his own account. Asked by Rogan whether he had spoken to anyone who examined bodies, Grusch said he had not, “not on that side of the program.” Instead, he said, “I know people that are good friends of mine that were on retrievals and saw them as well in person.” The Daily Star likewise reported that Grusch “admitted his account came from a colleague, rather than his own experience.”
  • What he says he saw himself. Earlier in the interview, Grusch said he had seen contemporary video of a dead being at a crash site, which he described as “very human,” “very beautiful” and “bluish white.” He said he verified material like that independently before trusting it.
  • No official confirmation. The Daily Star noted that both the White House and the Pentagon have repeatedly denied holding physical evidence of extraterrestrial life or alien spacecraft.

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

All of the following is Grusch’s account of what others told him, as said on the episode.

  • “The pop culture… reptilian looking.” Grusch said some of his colleagues saw beings “alive.” Asked what they saw, he answered: “the pop culture… reptilian looking,” and added, “the grays, yes, as well. Those are real.”
  • Seven feet tall. “Now, I’ve never seen them in person,” Grusch said, before relaying a description: “very almost like, um, seven foot tall plus, uh, sort of gorilla looking skin.” He said there are “multiple types,” including some “more humanoid looking,” and added: “I’m not an expert on that one… I never saw it in person.” Phrases that went viral afterward, such as “gorilla with scales” and “scaly gorilla,” come from crosstalk in which the speaker isn’t clear from the captions. NHI Anomalous reads them as Rogan paraphrasing.
  • The craft. Asked what the reptilian craft looked like, Grusch said: “that one is tic tac looking,” then qualified it: “of course it’s not always a tic tac… that tends to be them… hopefully I’m not wrong, but I’m, you know, pretty good sourcing on that.”
  • “NHI versus NHI.” “Some of it is NHI versus NHI,” Grusch said, using the shorthand for non-human intelligence. When Rogan put it as “NHI versus NHI warfare,” Grusch said, “We’ve documented that… in collection,” describing it as “what we perceive as warfare.” When Rogan said a reptilian crash had been assumed to be the result of conflict, Grusch agreed, “cuz there was dead, uh, dead grays there, too.” The line “so the grays and the reptilians were duking it out” was Rogan’s. Grusch replied: “Yeah. I guess… I know the people who were there.”
  • How it came down. Asked if the craft had been hit by something, Grusch said: “I don’t remember exactly what happened in that regard, but it did crash… I don’t want to misspeak.” Asked how often such things had happened, he said “it seems to be at least a dozen or two” adversarial crashes, adding, “I don’t know.”
  • The firefight. Later, Rogan asked what happened to the living reptilians. “Deceased. They were killed,” Grusch said. “We shot the reptilians” was Rogan’s line; Grusch answered “Yeah.” Asked why, Grusch said “it just posed a threat,” and “US personnel started, you know, getting hurt and dying.” The phrases “US personnel was killed by these reptilians” and “the fight broke out” were Rogan’s. Asked how many were killed, Grusch said: “I don’t know the exact numbers.”
  • A caution on “malevolent.” Grusch also urged care in reading the beings as hostile: “that’s a humanistic lens,” he said, comparing it to an “animal lash out in captivity.” “Are they actually scary,” he asked, “or is it just because of the situations we’ve been in with them?”

“Kooky talk”

Grusch acknowledged how it all sounds. “I realize kooky talk,” he said. Rogan replied: “If it was real, there’s no way it doesn’t sound kooky. Even if it’s real.”

“I sound like a crazy person,” Grusch said a moment later. “But once again, it’s true, and I know who I talked to, I know what I saw.”

He also said he expects others to tell the story themselves. “I’ll let the people who were there tell their story,” he said when Rogan pressed for details. Until they do, the account of the crash, the dead grays and the shooting rests on what Grusch says he was told, and on his promise that the people who told him are real.

Sources

  1. Joe Rogan Experience #2560 - David Grusch — PowerfulJRE (YouTube) Released Sept. 30, 2026. Quotes in this story are checked against the episode's captions; where the captions don't make the speaker clear, we say so.
  2. Greys vs. Reptilians: What David Grusch Actually Told Joe Rogan, and What He Didn't — NHI Anomalous Oct. 2, 2026. The reptilian images accompanying that coverage are AI-generated reconstructions; we don't reproduce them.
  3. UFO whistleblower says US troops opened fire on 7ft 'reptilian' beings during alien battle — Daily Star Daniel Smith, Oct. 2, 2026.