Overview
- Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday the administration is working with the FBI and relevant agencies to review the cases and to look for any common threads.
- Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday the Department of Energy has a formal probe as part of the broader effort and reported no alarming findings yet.
- Roughly 10 to 11 cases since 2022 involve people tied to sensitive work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Caltech, MIT and a federal nuclear security campus.
- Authorities say the circumstances differ by case, exemplified by a Silver Alert for retired Maj. Gen. William ‘Neil’ McCasland with no evidence of foul play, a charged homicide in the killing of astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, the shooting death of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro linked to a separate suspect, and the recovery of Novartis researcher Jason Thomas with no foul play reported.
- Members of Congress have requested records and briefings, while national security experts caution that online theories about a single cause lack evidence and that investigators have not established a connection.