A retired Los Alamos scientist walked out of his home last May and left his keys, his glasses, and his phone behind.
He was the first of eleven Americans with nuclear clearances to disappear or die in the span of eighteen months.
What a Congressman just told Peter Doocy changes the entire nature of this story.
Five Los Alamos and NASA Scientists Vanished From Their Homes and Left Everything Behind
Anthony Chavez retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory – the birthplace of America's nuclear arsenal.
In May 2025, he walked out of his home and has not been seen since.
Melissa Casias also worked at Los Alamos.
She disappeared within days of Chavez under identical circumstances – left every device and belonging behind and walked out with nothing.
Monica Reza vanished on a hiking trail one month after Chavez disappeared.
Steven Garcia – who was actively working on America's nuclear weapons programs – followed in August 2025.
He left his home carrying one thing: a firearm.
In February of this year, Major General William Neil McCasland did the same thing.
Five people connected to America's most classified programs – nuclear weapons, aerospace secrets, national security research – all walked out of their lives within a nine-month window.
No goodbye notes.
No explanation.
Operation Fox Hunt Proves China Has Run This Espionage Playbook on American Soil Before
Doocy pressed Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison directly: could a foreign government be scooping up American scientists and putting them to work?
Burlison didn't hedge.
"That would be the most likely explanation," he said.
He's right – and it's not speculation.
China runs two documented intelligence operations targeting scientists on American soil.
Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Skynet are specifically designed to either repatriate Chinese-affiliated scientists back to China or intimidate them into compliance.
The DOJ has prosecuted Fox Hunt operatives on American soil.
This is not a theory.
This is documented foreign intelligence activity inside the United States – already prosecuted in federal court.
Burlison invoked Operation Paperclip – the post-World War II program where the United States recruited German nuclear scientists through persuasion while the Soviet Union used extreme intimidation to do the same.
The Soviets didn't ask nicely.
They pressured, threatened, and in some cases disappeared scientists who refused to cooperate.
China ran that same operation against American scientists in 2025.
There is one more case that doesn't fit the walked-out profile – and it may be the darkest of all.
Amy Eskridge, a scientist who died in 2022, has been identified as a possible 11th case.
Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress in 2024 that Eskridge had reached out to a retired UK intelligence official – Frank Milbour – after experiencing harassment and unexplained events she couldn't explain.
Milbour concluded she was the victim of a directed energy weapon.
He also concluded she was likely murdered by a US aerospace company.
Those are not fringe claims from a conspiracy theorist.
Those are the conclusions of a retired British intelligence official presented as evidence before the United States Congress.
White House Directs FBI to Investigate All Eleven Missing Scientists as One Case
This week Karoline Leavitt confirmed the Trump administration has directed the FBI and every relevant federal agency to pull all eleven cases into a single review and determine whether a pattern connects them.
Every case.
Together.
At once.
That is not how you handle eleven coincidences.
That is how you handle one coordinated operation.
President Trump was asked about it directly.
"I hope it's random," he told reporters. "We're going to know in the next week and a half. I just left a meeting on that subject. Pretty serious stuff."
Trump doesn't use the phrase "pretty serious stuff" about routine security reviews.
He says it when the intelligence is disturbing enough to require a closed-door meeting of senior officials at the White House.
America's nuclear secrets don't walk out of Los Alamos on their own.
Neither do the scientists who hold them.
The Biden administration let China's intelligence apparatus operate inside this country for four years with almost zero accountability – prosecuting a handful of Fox Hunt operatives while the broader infiltration continued unchecked.
Now eleven Americans with classified access are either missing or dead.
Five of them left their own homes without their phones without their keys without any trace of where they were going.
The FBI is now asking the question the Biden White House refused to ask: what do all eleven of them have in common?
Peter Doocy got a congressman to answer it on live television this week.
The rest of Washington needs to catch up.
Sources:
- Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Briefing, April 2026.
- Congressman Eric Burlison, Fox News Sunday Briefing, Fox News, April 2026.
- Michael Shellenberger, Congressional Testimony, U.S. House of Representatives, 2024.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Operation Fox Hunt," DOJ.gov, multiple dates.
