A brief explanation of David Grusch's recovered UFO wreckage
Yes, it's an old story. And no, it was never more than a story
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Take another look at that photo of David Grusch testifying at the July 25 UFO hearings in Congress. Do you know who those two guys are sitting right behind him — the guy on the far left with the red tie, and the guy on the right in the gray-green buttonup? They are the UFO podcasters George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell of the podcast Weaponized, the title of which is opaque to me, but seems to imply that UFO knowledge is somehow being weaponized by some party — I guess. From their podcast it’s clear that they believe just about every UFO story is factually true, and that they are indeed all alien visitors. Knapp is a former reporter and now a full-time UFO author and speaker; Corbell is a yoga and martial arts instructor.
Why would they be occupying such a prominent place in a Congressional hearing?
Because the whole thing was a farce of embarrassing proportions. The principle witness was David Grusch, a longtime UFOlogist and military veteran who used to be one of the guys who analyze aerial photography, and had been on the Navy’s UAP task force. Introduced as a “whistleblower,” Grusch’s appearance was at the coaxing of a large circle of friends in the UFO world — Knapp, UFO author Leslie Kean, and others — those two are the ones committee chairman Rep. Tim Burchett thanked by name during the hearing.
Grusch’s purpose was not to give any evidence or personal testimony, but to say that he’d heard stories from as many as 40 people over the years! From the few details he gave, the UFO and alien stories he’d been told weren’t even second hand — they were always stories of stories.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look in detail at one of the two stories he mentioned by name: Roswell was one, which was a terrible start for someone hoping to be taken seriously, but the main story was the 1933 Italy UFO crash. This is a UFO story that’s very obscure and virtually unknown to most American UFOlogists, because it came from Italy and was never taken seriously enough by Italian UFOlogists to make it into print beyond a couple of mentions.
Here is the timeline of the story Grusch chose to represent to Congress as fact.
The story was invented in 1996 by some anonymous Italian hoaxer, who created a set of fake government documents purporting to be from the Mussolini era, in which Italy had a crack team of UFO investigators called RS/33. Among their tasks was analyzing the wreckage of an alien spaceship that had crashed in 1933. The papers were mailed to newspapers, which all ignored them; and then mailed again to Italian UFOlogists, all but of few of whom recognized they were fake and ignored them. This hoax was likely inspired by the Majestic 12 hoax in the United States, in which some anonymous American hoaxer did exactly the same thing, in 1984.
Anyway, the UFOlogists Alfredo Lissoni and Roberto Pinotti were the two who thought some of the documents might be genuine. They mentioned the 1933 wreckage in a book and in an article or two.
In 2003, the British magazine Flying Saucer Review published an English translation of Lissoni’s article. At this point, the 1933 crash story still lacked any real details.
In the United States, that article was read by a strange man named Billy Brophy. Brophy has had a lifelong habit of reading UFO articles, and then writing letters to their authors claiming to have all sorts of new details about the story. These details always invoke Brophy’s father, who had been an Air Force transport pilot. Brophy wrote to Lissoni and Pinotti and told them all this new information. Amazed, and unaware of Brophy’s history and possible mental health issues, Pinotti invited Brophy to speak at an Italian UFO conference.
Brophy did so in 2010. He added the following story elements: (1) tall blue eyed alien bodies were found with the wreckage. (2) the Japanese learned about it, and formed the Axis Powers in World War II based on a shared fascination with these aliens. (3) The Pope knew all about the aliens, and when he heard Mussolini was going to turn the wreckage over to the Nazis, he called Roosevelt and told him everything. (4) When Italy fell to the Allies, Roosevelt had the UFO wreckage and bodies collected (by Brophy’s intrepid father, of course) and returned to the United States, where (5) they are now kept at the apocryphal Hangar 18.
Another associate of Pinotti’s is American UFOlogist Lue Elizondo, who is also in the circle of friends with Grusch, Knapp, Kean, and a whole host of others. Elizondo had Pinotti on his TV show Unidentified, and Pinotti has had Elizondo over to speak at Italian UFO conferences…
…where Pinotti showed him the 1996 hoax documents. Elizondo called them “compelling” on at least one of his many UFO podcast appearances.
…and Elizondo and Grusch are friends.
…and so there’s your timeline, and it’s the only data point we have for the quality of David Grusch’s congressional testimony. He heard a story from Elizondo, who heard it from Pinotti, who bought into a pure fiction which was a combination of hoaxed documents and imaginary details from the mind of a serial story embellisher.
Yes. The July 25 hearing truly was that pitiful. The subcommittee should be ashamed of themselves.