Nothing I heard overturned my longstanding skepticism about UFOs.
As I discussed in a post last weekend, there was a clear distinction in terms of subject matter and (to a degree) presentational style between the witnesses at the House Oversight National Security Subcommittee hearing in late July on UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena — the “respectable” new name for UFOs) and, well, other stuff.
I watched recordings of the hearing online. Nothing I heard overturned my longstanding skepticism about UFOs. I would still be astonished if UAPs prove, as one of the witnesses has claimed in the past, to be “not of this world.” Nevertheless, I do think that (some of) the material that has emerged in recent years is worth a closer look, not least in case some of these UAPS are the product of previously unknown Russian or Chinese technology. Balloons don’t count.
As I mentioned in last weekend’s post, I felt there was a clear distinction between the testimony given by the two witnesses focused on UAPs (which should not be taken as an endorsement of everything that they had to say) and Dave Grusch’s, to me, somewhat shopworn — at least to anyone who has read enough ufological material — saga. Retrieved “non-human” spacecraft. Check. Retrieved “non-human biologics.” Check. Reverse-engineering of “non-human” technology. Check.
I quoted from Marik von Rennenkampff’s account of the hearing in the Hill (which is worth a read). In it, he writes that “two defense officials corroborated the broad contours of Grusch’s stunning claims.” The “broad contours” can, of course, mean as much or as little people choose to make of it.
Follow that link to an article by the Debrief, not, I reckon, the most skeptical source. In it, two or possibly three people with impressive resumes appear, to varying degrees, to support Grusch. There’s “Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army Colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there.” Nell is quoted as characterizing Grusch as “beyond reproach.”
He added:
[Grusch’s] assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence.
As my late father would have said, “How remarkable.”
Another name cited by the Debrief is that of “Christopher Mellon, who spent nearly twenty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, [and] has worked with Congress for years on unidentified aerial phenomena.” His Wikipedia entry (usual caveats apply) can be found here. It seems clear that, in 2016 anyway, Mellon was skeptical about the existence of any government cover-up over UAPs. He did, however, believe, that had there been UFO reports (he gave examples) that were “sufficiently well-documented to warrant a scientific investigation of the phenomenon,” a view he essentially repeated in 2020 (and before). He was frustrated at the lack of follow-up after these sightings, a view shared by witnesses at the subcommittee hearing.
All that said, not only did Mellon reject the notion of a government cover-up in 2016, but he also didn’t attach much credence to the idea of any reverse-engineering of alien technology. The latter would be too “explosive” to keep hushed-up. Even if you believe, unlike me, that E.T. has come calling, that’s a persuasive argument, and one, I reckon, that also applies to claims of a government cover-ups about UAPs. It would just be too big a secret to keep. The unwillingness to investigate even somewhat plausible incidents can probably be explained by inertia, a fear of seeming foolish (the stigma attached to reporting sightings was mentioned on a number of occasions at the hearing) or a feeling that the whole thing was not worth pursuing.
By 2019, Mellon (who has said that he was responsible for leaking the famous UFO videos to the New York Times in 2017) was quoted as saying that “we know that UFOs exist,” although he did not leap from that to explicitly attributing them to extraterrestrials: “The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from? And what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?” That said, perhaps it’s worth noting that at that time Mellon appears to been associated in some capacity with To the Stars, an organization located somewhere at the point (at least in part) where highly speculative “science” and entertainment meet.
Nevertheless, while Mellon believes that the government over-classifies some of its UAP records (a common enough and not unreasonable complaint) it was hard to read his carefully worded comments in the Debrief as an entirely wholehearted endorsement of Grusch’s claims:
“A number of well-placed current and former officials have shared detailed information with me regarding this alleged program, including insights into the history, governing documents and the location where a craft was allegedly abandoned and recovered,” Mellon said. “However, it is a delicate matter getting this potentially explosive information into the right hands for validation. This is made harder by the fact that, rightly or wrongly, a number of potential sources do not trust the leadership of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office established by Congress.”
The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is a part of the Defense Department, and is the most important part of the government’s effort to investigate UAPs.
The third official cited as supporting Grusch by Debrief is Jonathan Grey. He is described as
a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
According to Grey:
“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
Unfortunately, “Jonathan Grey” is a pseudonym (and one that he allegedly uses within NASIC), which makes it impossible (as an outsider) to assess the value of his comments (which go further than the passage I quoted). It may or may not be worth noting that a representative for NASIC has said that “the center has no record of an employee who has adopted that professional identity.”
The Hill’s Von Rennenkampff argues that it is unlikely that Grusch, who was testifying under oath, would have perjured himself “so brazenly” over the sort of falsifiable facts he provided during his testimony and from that concludes, among other matters, that
it is safe to assume that more than three dozen individuals did indeed tell Grusch of a decades-long UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering program, and that those with “first-hand knowledge” provided corroborating information to the intelligence community inspector general.
Hmm . . .