Trump vows to investigate UFO scientist deaths —but experts warn it's a trap

President Donald Trump has promised to look into the mysterious deaths of officials and scientists studying UFOs — but experts say this is one enigma that has more to it than appears to be the case at face value.

“The accounts were published breathlessly online in social media but also by rightwing press accounts,” reported The Guardian’s Edward Helmore on Sunday. “Trump himself was asked about the story and promised to look into it. Soon, Republican lawmakers joined the debate demanded in a letter that the FBI, the Department of Energy, Nasa and other agencies investigate a ‘possible sinister connection’ in the disappearances.”

The “disappearances” in question include those of retired US air force major general William “Neil” McCasland, 68, who in February walked out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico home, never to be seen since; Michael David Hicks, a scientist who worked at the NASA jet propulsion lab from 1998 to 2022 and died in 2023 at age 59 of unknown causes; Monica Reza, a scientist who disappeared last June after serving as director of the NASA lab’s materials processing group; astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who was shot dead on his porch; Amy Eskridge, an Alabama-based researcher who claimed to be working on “gravity-modification research” and was found dead by an apparent suicide in 2022 despite telling NewsNation that “if you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not”; MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro, who was killed by a former classmate; and Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist at drugmaker Novartis, who disappeared in December with his remains being discovered in March.

“Then, last week, UFO researcher David Wilcock, 53, used a gun to kill himself outside his home in Boulder county, Colorado,” Helmore reported. “Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett responded to a social media post announcing Wilcock’s death by writing: ‘Not cool.’ Burchett told the Daily Mail: ‘I just don’t think there’s any chance that this is just all coincidental.’”

Speaking to The Guardian, Penn State history and bioethics professor Greg Eghigan contextualized the UFO scientist story within the broader paradigm of American conspiracy theory history.

Greg Eghigian, professor of history and bioethics at Penn State and author of After the Flying Saucers Came, is different from the New Jersey drone scare of late 2024.

“It’s one of those things that get folded into other kinds of concerns and conspiracy theories that are out there about science and medicine that have been circulating around since Covid,” Eghigian explained. “That fold neatly into the decades-old notion that UFOs are spotted around nuclear facilities and some of these facilities may be masking UFO-related projects.”

He added that a convergence of factors make UFO-based conspiracy theories so appealing at this specific juncture in American history.

“So when people want to connect these dots it falls readily into a sweet spot for UFO lore because you have all the elements that have always been there – the military, state secrets, nuclear facilities and technologies, and fear of figures that are missing,” Eghigian said. “What is it? Are they being abducted? Assassinated because they know too much? The seeds of this were planted decades ago.”

Speaking to this journalist for Salon last year, Haley Morris, co-founder of the military pilot-led nonprofit Americans for Safe Aerospace, the world's largest UFO advocacy organization, argued that Trump should declassify those documents, echoing an argument made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Yet she also warned that those declassifications may disappoint UFO fans.

“Keep in mind that declassification doesn’t necessarily come with explanations,” Morris said at the time, adding that the “best case is that with transparency, people can see the [UFO] mystery for themselves and hard data is made available for the scientific community to try and get some answers.”

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