House Oversight Asks FBI for Briefing on Missing Scientists

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has requested a staff-level briefing with the FBI over the recent mysterious deaths and disappearances of at least 10 scientists or government employees with connections to U.S. nuclear secrets or rocket technology.

The committee sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on April 20, announcing a probe into the reported disappearances and deaths of U.S. scientists.

“These reports allege that at least ten individuals who ‘had a connection to U.S. nuclear secrets or rocket technology,’ have ‘died or mysteriously vanished in recent years,'” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote in a statement.

“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets.”

The lawmakers said they are requesting briefings from the respective agencies on any information “regarding these deaths and disappearances, as well as the processes and procedures in place to protect American scientific secrets and ensure personnel safety.”

The briefings must come as soon as possible, or no later than April 27, Comer and Burlison said.

“Public reports raise questions about a possible sinister connection between a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances which began in 2023 with the death of Michael David Hicks, who worked as a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1998 to 2022,” the two wrote in their letter to Patel.

“Another JPL alum, Monica Reza, who served as the director of the NASA Lab’s Materials Processing Group, disappeared while hiking in California in June 2025 and remains missing.”

The White House said on April 17 that it was working with the FBI to investigate the now at least 10 U.S. scientists and government employees with access to nuclear or aerospace material who have died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances in recent years.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration would actively work with the relevant agencies and the FBI to “holistically review all of the cases together and identify any potential commonalities that may exist.”

In addition to the NASA-related Michael David Hicks and Monica Reza, who died and disappeared, respectively, between 2023 and 2025, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland vanished on Feb. 27, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico.

McCasland, 68, previously served as head of research at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Ever since the 1947 Roswell UFO incident—which the U.S. military has repeatedly tied to a weather balloon crash—some have speculated that Wright-Patterson houses an alleged Pentagon-related UFO crash retrieval program.

The Pentagon has dismissed any association between Wright-Patterson and UFOs and has denied ever possessing a crash retrieval program for unidentified anomalous phenomena.

McCasland also worked at the Pentagon as the director of space acquisition in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force before serving as director of special programs for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.

His wife reported last seeing him at about 10 a.m. on Feb. 27, when he was speaking with a repairman. When she returned from an appointment just after 12 p.m., McCasland had vanished.

Although McCasland left without his phone, prescription glasses, or wearable devices, investigators later discovered that McCasland’s hiking boots, wallet, and a .38-caliber revolver with a leather holster were missing from his residence.

“The Committee is concerned with this fact pattern and seeks to understand whether U.S. national security or American scientific personnel are at risk, and what each relevant agency is doing to mitigate such risk,” Comer and Burlison wrote in their letters to the Energy Department, FBI, Pentagon, and NASA.

Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.