The United States is now officially investigating a potential conspiracy, because at least 10 scientists linked to US nuclear secrets and rocket technology have either vanished or died under mysterious circumstances in recent years. This groundbreaking investigative lead was, of course, sourced from the rigorous reporting of The Daily Mail and The York Post.

Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, specifically Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), have sent deeply concerned letters to the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, FBI, and NASA. They cited the tabloid reports as raising "questions about a possible sinister connection." The letters, dated April 20, sternly noted that if the reports are accurate, this could be a "grave threat to US national security." They demanded answers by April 27.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that President Donald Trump is actively working with the FBI to probe the theory by "holistically" reviewing "all the cases together." "No stone will be unturned," she promised. FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News his agency is looking for potential links to classified information or "foreign actors."

NASA, for its part, took to X to dispute the idea of a national security threat, stating, "At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat." Trump, however, said he hopes it's all "random" but expects to know more within a "week and a half."

The concern appears to have started after the 2023 death of Michael David Hicks, a former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist involved in the DART Project. No cause of death was made public. Then, Monica Reza, director of the NASA Lab's Materials Processing Group, went missing while hiking in California in June 2025. Most recently, retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland disappeared in February 2026 from his New Mexico home, taking a .38 caliber revolver with him.

The lawmakers' letters list others: two more affiliated with NASA JPL, two with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), an MIT scientist working on nuclear fusion, a pharmaceutical researcher, and a government contractor at a nuclear weapons component facility.

The tabloid reports provide colorful details. The Daily Mail, in an April 11 report, quoted an anonymous source about missing government contractor Steven Garcia, who vanished in August 2025. The source said Garcia was "a very stable person," making suicide less likely than him being a target of foreign spies, which "makes the most sense." Other scientists, like LANL workers Anthony Chavez and Melissa Casias, also vanished from New Mexico without their wallets or phones.

One missing scientist, pharmaceutical researcher Jason Thomas, was found dead three months after disappearing. Searches for McCasland have been complicated by "unseasonably warm" weather hindering thermal drones and the "vastness of the search area."

McCasland's case adds a spicy UFO angle. The NY Post reported he had links to the UFO community and retired due to "mental fog" after commanding the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base - a lab rumored to house debris from Roswell. His wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, confirmed the UFO association on Facebook but stressed he had no special knowledge of "ET bodies" and that "No sightings of a mothership... have been reported." He disappeared six days after Trump announced plans to release UFO files.

Another death involves former intelligence officer Matthew James Sullivan, who died in 2024 before testifying in a federal UFO whistleblower case. Rep. Burlison finds that suspicious.

Despite the probe, law enforcement has found no connections, and cases vary widely. Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) expressed skepticism, telling CNN, "The United States has thousands of nuclear scientists... It's not the kind of nuclear program that potentially a foreign adversary could significantly impact by targeting 10 individuals."

Families are also pushing back. Hicks' daughter, Julia Hicks, told CNN she couldn't help but laugh at the theory. The family of Amy Eskridge, who co-founded the Institute for Exotic Science and died in 2022, said, "People should realize that scientists die also and not make too much of this." Rep. Comer, however, remains convinced, telling Fox News, "It's very unlikely that this is a coincidence."