Fallout from the UFO hearing turns into a full-blown sh*tstorm
Fallout from the UFO hearing turns into a full-blown sh*tstorm
A pattern we've seen many times before
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So as nearly everyone has heard by now, the congressional hearing on July 26, 2023 went exactly as UFO skeptics (myself among them) said it would. Three witnesses told years-old (in some cases decades-old) UFO myths, all of which have been long debunked. Two retired pilots told about the events from the hoary and debunked Navy UFO videos, and one newcomer to the public eye repeated the stories he and UFOlogist friends have been reading about and retelling for a long time. There was literally not a single new thing here, and not a single interesting thing.
The newcomer David Grusch’s tales were horrifying in how old and ridiculous they were, and he was telling them as if he just learned about them yesterday and was so shocked he had to run and tell the government. They included an old story about how two government investigators were rubbed out to protect the Truth about recovered alien debris (this was in 1947, my Skeptoid episode has the facts) and a time when innocents were injured by a marauding alien spaceship (this was in 1980, my Skeptoid episode shows how it was made up out of whole cloth). (We don’t, of course, know that these are the cases Grusch was referring to, because he refused to give useful specifics — but to my knowledge of the canon, these are the stories his associates have referred to most often as examples of murders and bodily harm.)
Luckily for Grusch, his large circle of UFOlogist friends included career UFO/alien authors George Knapp and Leslie Kean. They persuaded him to self-style as a “whistleblower” and also persuaded a UFO-friendly congressman they knew, Tim Burchett, to organize a hearing to present all these old stories. (During the hearing, Burchett actually credited Knapp and Kean with having done this, just so you don’t think I’m making it up.)
So with murders and coverups apparently behind every tree, it was pretty easy for this team to present a compelling case that new legislation and protections are needed. Grusch also told about deadly threats to livelihood and career from inside the government (I don’t know exactly which stories he had in mind, but obviously UFO mythology is thick with such tales of the vengeful Men In Black).
Well, those claims didn’t go over so well with Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the DoD’s AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office), which actually doesn’t go around threatening people. He quickly issued a statement. Before we get to it, a tad of background: AARO is the already-in-existence office in charge of investigating all these stories, rendering Burchett’s hearing redundant. Most of these stories, or all of them, AARO has already heard and yawned at. As Kirkpatrick says in his statement, they’ve never found any evidence of aliens or bodies or crash debris or any such nonsense.
It is not a stretch to assess that this failure of AARO to confirm the Alien Truthers’ preferred narrative of “Skies Full of Aliens” is why Corbell, Knapp, Kean, and the many others in their circle went “over AARO’s head” to make this new hearing happen and tell their more shocking fairy tales.
Here is the statement:
The money quote: “I cannot let yesterday’s hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of the department of defense and intelligence community… allegations by its witnesses of retaliation, to include physical assault and hints of murder, are extraordinarily serious.”
Burchett was not about to take that lying down. He quickly tweeted:
While I think most reasonable people can agree that wasting a billion dollars on UFO stories is pretty lame, I’m not persuaded Burchett would do any less, given his enthusiasm for the bedtime stories he’s being told. The budget mention is also a red herring. Tim, if you disagree with Kirkpatrick’s characterization of your hearing, tell us how and why; don’t shout “Squirrel!” and point at something else.
Anyway, who knows how this bickering will proceed this week. It doesn’t really matter, because this is a desperately familiar pattern. Ever since 1947, the Alien Truthers have been dissatisfied with government’s reluctance to endorse their beliefs. In this week’s microcosm of it, we see the pattern yet again:
Alien Truthers persuade the government to form a new UFO committee to supersede all past efforts.
New UFO committee finds nothing.
Alien Truthers accuse committee of corruption and hiding the Truth.
Repeat.
How many UFO committees and task forces have we had now, in just the past few years?
Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results — seems to me there’s a saying about that.