President Donald Trump has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to lead an inquiry into whether there are links between a series of deaths and disappearances involving scientists who worked on sensitive space and defense matters, the White House announced Friday.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X to reveal that the White House was “actively working” with the FBI and “all relevant agencies” to “identify any potential commonalities that may exist” between cases involving a number of government scientists and officials who’ve either vanished or died in recent months.
Leavitt justified the move by citing “recent and legitimate questions about these troubling cases” and said “no stone would be unturned” in the multi-agency effort.
Her announcement appeared to have been prompted by a question posed to her by a Fox News correspondent during a press briefing on Wednesday, which referenced as many as 10 people linked to space programs or nuclear research who have either disappeared or died under varying circumstances.
At the time, she replied that the matter, “if true,” was “definitely something I think this government and administration would deem worth looking into.” But Trump was also asked about the disappearances as he headed to Las Vegas on Thursday.
Asked about the possibility that there could be connections between the disappearances, Trump told reporters that he’d had a meeting with advisers about the matter, which he said was “pretty serious stuff.”
“I hope it is random, but we are going to know in the next week and a half,” he said. “Hopefully, coincidence… but some of them were very important people, and we are going to look at it.”
Online influencers and commentators began speculating about possible foreign or other malign subterfuge directed at American scientists after retired Air Force General William McCasland was reported missing by his wife in early March.
The 68-year-old was last seen in Albuquerque, where his wife told investigators that he’d left home sans his watch or mobile phone.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office later issued a “Silver Alert” for McCasland, indicating particular concern for his wellbeing because he suffers from an unspecified medical condition.
Before entering the private sector after his retirement from service in 2013, McCasland led both the Kirtland base’s Phillips Research Site and the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson in Dayton, Ohio, where he was responsible for managing the Air Force’s $2.2 billion science and technology program, as well as its public-funded research efforts.
Earlier this month, the Daily Mail published a story suggesting that there might be a connection between McCasland’s disappearance and the disappearance last June of Monica Reza, a 60-year-old NASA scientist plus as many as eight other cases.
The Mail cited concerns expressed by former FBI official turned frequent Fox News commentator Chris Swecker, who speculated that “several foreign powers” could be “abducting, blackmailing, torturing and even killing” scientists and other officials as part of a plot to gain access to American national security information.
Reza, who was last seen in June 2025, had worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on advanced metallurgical projects with utility in aerospace applications. She vanished while on a hiking trip in California with friends.
