Another worker with connections to advanced government research programs has gone missing, adding to wave of deaths and dissapearnces that have ramped up since last year.
Steven Garcia went missing in August. The 48-year-old was last seen leaving his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico on foot, carrying only a handgun on him.
Garcia was a property custodian for the Kansas City National Security Campus, a facility that “ensures the security and reliability of our nation’s nuclear deterrent,” according to the contractor’s website.
He was granted a top security clearance to the building, which manufactures more than 80% of all the nonnuclear components that make up the U.S. military’s nuclear weapons. Garcia is the 10th worker with similiar links to go missing since last spring.
Garcia’s vanishing preceded William Neil McCasland’s. The 68-year-old also disspaeared from Albuquerque, where he was last seen in February. He oversaw classified space weapons programs and led research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
Before McCasland, his former colleague and material scientist Monica Reza went missing while hiking. Reza, an aerospace engineer who developed a special material used in rockets, worked on a project that was overseen by McCasland.
Other missing scientists and insiders include Novartis biologist Jason Thomas and Los Alamos National Laboratory employees Melissa Caslas and Anthony Chavez. There were also the deaths of Hicks, NASA’s Frank Maiwald, MIT’s Nuno Loureiro and Caltech’s Carl Grillmair.
Authorities have not established a link between the incidents, but the Trump administration this week said it may begin investigating the cases.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesdsay responded to a reporter’s question about any possible links into the deaths and dissapearances.
“I haven’t spoken to our relevant agencies about it. I will certainly do that, and we’ll get you an answer. If true, of course, that’s definitely something I think this government and administration would deem worth looking into. So let me do that for you,” Leavitt replied.
Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director, told NewsNation he did not believe the missing cases are connected.
“I think there’s a rational explanation for this,” he said. “If it’s not just random acts, it’s modern-day espionage.”