House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said on Sunday that his panel will open an investigation into the deaths and disappearances of up to 11 American scientists tied to classified nuclear and space research, calling the pattern 'sinister' and demanding briefings from four federal agencies.
The Kentucky Republican told 'Fox & Friends Weekend' on April 19 that his office has sent letters to the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), asking each for briefings on a cluster of cases dating back to 2022.
Comer said the claims initially struck him as 'some kind of crazy conspiracy theory' before closer examination shifted his view. 'We want to know everything that they know about what happened with these scientists,' he told the programme.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer confirms on FOX News that eleven top US nuclear scientists have mysteriously vanished or turned up dead. The Trump administration is completely clueless and paralyzed as foreign adversaries actively dismantle American national security.pic.twitter.com/FnVaXU3uZC
He plans to call agency heads before Congress once officials have had time to determine which testimony might compromise classified investigations.
The figures under review held high-level security clearances and worked at institutions including Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
They include retired Air Force Major General William 'Neil' McCasland, who walked out of his Albuquerque home in February 2026 and has not been seen since. Aerospace engineer Monica Jacinto Reza, head of JPL's Materials Processing Group, vanished in June 2025. Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was killed on his front porch on 16 February 2026. MIT plasma physicist Nuno Loureiro was shot dead at home in December 2025 while working on nuclear fusion research.
Others include Los Alamos employee Melissa Casias, 53, last seen walking alone along a New Mexico highway, and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) property custodian Steven Garcia, missing since August 2025. Antigravity researcher Amy Eskridge, 34, died in 2022 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a case officially ruled a suicide.
Representative Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican on the Oversight Committee, said he had been tracking the cases for more than a year before President Donald Trump publicly ordered a review last week. Burlison called the cluster 'too coincidental' to ignore.
He has not ruled out foreign involvement, naming China, Russia, or Iran as potential actors that might target America's top scientific minds. 'These are some of the most advanced scientists, researchers in our nation, some of the most important people for national security efforts. And they all just mysteriously disappeared,' Burlison said.
Source: International Business Times UK
