UFO Tales and Witness Credibility Falling Apart After Congressional Hearings
The new hearings were sparked by David Grusch, the former military intelligence officer who came forward in June with startling and increasingly bizarre new claims. He was widely and uncritically publicized after his claims –including stashed alien bodies and their retrieved crafts — were aired in an obscure pro-UFO publication The Debrief and a third-tier cable news network, NewsNation.
NewsNation, in turn, has been riding UFOs hard since snaring exclusive interviews with Grusch. The ratings boost for NewsNation has been so great it even beat CNN during its special on Grusch, as noted recently by The Washington Post. The broadcast stories on Grusch have been led by Ross Coulthart, a disgraced Australian journalist. Along with hyping other repudiated stories, Coulthart once relied on discredited witnesses to make bogus pedophile accusations against members of the UK parliament, leading to a fruitless $4 million police investigation. So, despite that questionable background, he remains a leading UFO conspiracist.
Still, in the weeks since the hearings, Grusch’s credibility has eroded on several fronts — even as most media outlets and members of Congress have paid little attention to the details undermining his shocking tales. As The Washington Spectator recapped last month, he has asserted that the government has been hiding a secret alien crash retrieval program; the Pope tipped off the United States to a UFO retrieved by Mussolini (a long discredited hoax); alien corpses have been recovered by U.S. officials; and humans have been killed by aliens.
The only fresh example with specifics that Grusch has cited since June is the purported 1933 alien landing in Magenta, Italy. This alleged visitation has been shown to be based on forged documents and an evolving hoax featuring Nordic-type aliens. Alex Chionetti, an Italian-born UFO researcher and TV producer who gave the first US talk on the original documents in 2001 (sans Nordic aliens), soon discovered the crash story almost certainly was a hoax when he looked in vain for any references to the incident in Italian government archives. The story was later seized on by the dubious Lue Elizondo after a visit in 2018 to Italy. “It’s being pushed to create a myth that this is vital to natural security,” Chionetti told The Washington Spectator. “That’s bullshit.”
Grusch hasn’t supported any of these assertions with a shred of hard evidence — now more than three months after his initial revelations. His reputation as a public-spirited truth-teller has also taken a hit, since he’s become the COO of a new foundation launched by alien mythologist and Stanford professor Garry Nolan, as first reported by The New York Post’s Steven Greenstreet. Nolan initially helped promote a dead alien documentary before eventually debunking it, and is openly seeking to cash in on the “goldmine” of federal UFO research money. Regardless of Grusch’s current spotlight, all his secondhand claims are based on what he was purportedly told by dozens of people who had supposedly worked on the mysterious programs. While he has admitted never having seen an alien spacecraft or a dead alien, he insists that others have.
UFO acolytes and influential propagandists such as hoax–promoter Jeremy Corbell claim that all of Grusch’s best evidence has been presented behind closed doors and is being blocked by an evil cover-up. But there are solid reasons to challenge that wishful thinking, and it’s far more likely just another “disclosure” delaying tactic that’s marked scams in the field since the 1950s.
It’s becoming clearer that some politicians and congressional staffers are having doubts about his astounding claims. When Grusch turned over what he claimed were his classified interviews with his sources about alien crafts and bodies to the House intelligence committee in a secret briefing last December, they weren’t found credible, a conclusion reportedly conveyed by congressional aides to Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). Burchett, who has claimed that proof of UFOs is found in the Bible, is the leading member of Congress charging a government cover-up and championing Grusch. In response to those staff concerns, Burchett suggested that these aides and other House members who have raised doubts about Grusch (a group that includes most prominently House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH)) may have been seduced and blackmailed into lying by “honeypot” vixens from Russia, the Deep State or military contractors.
At the hearings, however, Grusch continued to claim that he and other whistleblowers have been victimized with death and other threats. “It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he declared.
Indeed, he indicated some insiders may already have been murdered by the cabal of unnamed officials seeking to get them to clam up.
Such Deep State victim claims, no matter how improbable, serve two related goals: a) they help advance far-right, paranoid, anti-government conspiracy beliefs that can potentially be harnessed by aspiring GOP authoritarians and b) fuel the notion among UFO acolytes that if the whistleblowers are in such danger, then their alien tales must be true.
In fact, contrary to his ominous posturing, Grusch has actually been cleared by the Pentagon to go public with even his wildest assertions. Therefore, as DOD spokesperson Susan Gough explained in a statement to The Washington Spectator, his claims are NOT classified nor do they pose any security risk. She also pointed out: “Approval [for release] does not imply DOD endorsement or factual accuracy of the material.”
In other words, as critics such as UFO researcher John Greenewald have detailed, he’s free to make this stuff up.
In contrast, at the hearings Grusch and his compliant supporters have asserted his evidence is so “classified” he can only discuss it behind closed doors – or risk prosecution. Pardon all he jargon, but as DOD’s Gough noted in her written statement to this reporter, “Approval for release by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) means the material submitted by an individual does not contain classified information, controlled unclassified information (CUI), or other sensitive information such as that protected for operations security (OPSEC) reasons…” Translation: nothing he has said in any setting is classified and none of it risks exposing any sensitive information.
One witness, Ryan Graves, never even saw a supposed UFO with his own eyes, but was just retelling stories others told him, and describing artifacts he glimpsed on radar screens that were likely created by a new military sensor system. Yet he basically doubled down on his improbable claim to 60 Minutes that he saw UFOs fly over his ship every day “for years.” Other experts, though, note that the updated, complex Aegis system has long caused visual errors during its breaking-in period on these ships – and that could well account for the plethora of UFOs he claimed to observe.
It also turns out that he’s not quite as selfless a whistleblower as he’s been portrayed. As Graves himself pointed out in a filing accompanying his testimony, he has a potential financial conflict because he’s the founder of a new UFO transparency non-profit, Americans for Safe Aerospace, that’s raising money from the public and that could also seek taxpayer funding for further research into pilot sightings. And he’s launched a slick new monetized podcast, Merged, that allows him to further cash in on his fame and UFO stories.
Graves’s headline-seeking reached a new low when he announced recently he would be testifying at a Mexican congressional hearing promoted by arguably the world’s most notorious UFO hoaxer, Jaime Maussan. Maussan’s scams include a pay-per-view Roswell alien corpse photos event – the “Roswell slides” – that was later exposed as an ancient mummy photographed in a museum.
In fact, the entire Congressional push for more UFO disclosure is starting to collapse of its own weight — in addition to a series of self-inflicted wounds by UFO advocates. It’s not just Grusch’s previously hidden mental health history or his wacky tales that nobody else has verified for over three months. Rep. Burchett gave front-row seats and praised at the hearing two notorious advocates who for years have advanced provably false UFO and paranormal tales, journalist George Knapp and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell; they were also friendly with Grusch before he went public. They have hyped the Skinwalker Ranch myths and fake Area 51 “scientist” Bob Lazar who, like Grusch’s supposed eyewitnesses, claimed to have worked on reverse-engineering alien spacecraft. Most recently, Corbell and Knapp released the results of their two-year “investigation” of a huge, hovering triangle-sized UFO near the 29 Palms Marine base in California. But it turned out to be, according to Pentagon records they didn’t request, just a video of flares shot during a training exercise. As Mick West and Steven Greenstreet pointed out in a scathing video commentary, it’s “baffling” and “ridiculous” that Congress takes them seriously.
https://washingtonspectator.org/ufo-tale...-hearings/
The new hearings were sparked by David Grusch, the former military intelligence officer who came forward in June with startling and increasingly bizarre new claims. He was widely and uncritically publicized after his claims –including stashed alien bodies and their retrieved crafts — were aired in an obscure pro-UFO publication The Debrief and a third-tier cable news network, NewsNation.
NewsNation, in turn, has been riding UFOs hard since snaring exclusive interviews with Grusch. The ratings boost for NewsNation has been so great it even beat CNN during its special on Grusch, as noted recently by The Washington Post. The broadcast stories on Grusch have been led by Ross Coulthart, a disgraced Australian journalist. Along with hyping other repudiated stories, Coulthart once relied on discredited witnesses to make bogus pedophile accusations against members of the UK parliament, leading to a fruitless $4 million police investigation. So, despite that questionable background, he remains a leading UFO conspiracist.
Still, in the weeks since the hearings, Grusch’s credibility has eroded on several fronts — even as most media outlets and members of Congress have paid little attention to the details undermining his shocking tales. As The Washington Spectator recapped last month, he has asserted that the government has been hiding a secret alien crash retrieval program; the Pope tipped off the United States to a UFO retrieved by Mussolini (a long discredited hoax); alien corpses have been recovered by U.S. officials; and humans have been killed by aliens.
The only fresh example with specifics that Grusch has cited since June is the purported 1933 alien landing in Magenta, Italy. This alleged visitation has been shown to be based on forged documents and an evolving hoax featuring Nordic-type aliens. Alex Chionetti, an Italian-born UFO researcher and TV producer who gave the first US talk on the original documents in 2001 (sans Nordic aliens), soon discovered the crash story almost certainly was a hoax when he looked in vain for any references to the incident in Italian government archives. The story was later seized on by the dubious Lue Elizondo after a visit in 2018 to Italy. “It’s being pushed to create a myth that this is vital to natural security,” Chionetti told The Washington Spectator. “That’s bullshit.”
Grusch hasn’t supported any of these assertions with a shred of hard evidence — now more than three months after his initial revelations. His reputation as a public-spirited truth-teller has also taken a hit, since he’s become the COO of a new foundation launched by alien mythologist and Stanford professor Garry Nolan, as first reported by The New York Post’s Steven Greenstreet. Nolan initially helped promote a dead alien documentary before eventually debunking it, and is openly seeking to cash in on the “goldmine” of federal UFO research money. Regardless of Grusch’s current spotlight, all his secondhand claims are based on what he was purportedly told by dozens of people who had supposedly worked on the mysterious programs. While he has admitted never having seen an alien spacecraft or a dead alien, he insists that others have.
UFO acolytes and influential propagandists such as hoax–promoter Jeremy Corbell claim that all of Grusch’s best evidence has been presented behind closed doors and is being blocked by an evil cover-up. But there are solid reasons to challenge that wishful thinking, and it’s far more likely just another “disclosure” delaying tactic that’s marked scams in the field since the 1950s.
It’s becoming clearer that some politicians and congressional staffers are having doubts about his astounding claims. When Grusch turned over what he claimed were his classified interviews with his sources about alien crafts and bodies to the House intelligence committee in a secret briefing last December, they weren’t found credible, a conclusion reportedly conveyed by congressional aides to Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). Burchett, who has claimed that proof of UFOs is found in the Bible, is the leading member of Congress charging a government cover-up and championing Grusch. In response to those staff concerns, Burchett suggested that these aides and other House members who have raised doubts about Grusch (a group that includes most prominently House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH)) may have been seduced and blackmailed into lying by “honeypot” vixens from Russia, the Deep State or military contractors.
At the hearings, however, Grusch continued to claim that he and other whistleblowers have been victimized with death and other threats. “It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he declared.
Indeed, he indicated some insiders may already have been murdered by the cabal of unnamed officials seeking to get them to clam up.
Such Deep State victim claims, no matter how improbable, serve two related goals: a) they help advance far-right, paranoid, anti-government conspiracy beliefs that can potentially be harnessed by aspiring GOP authoritarians and b) fuel the notion among UFO acolytes that if the whistleblowers are in such danger, then their alien tales must be true.
In fact, contrary to his ominous posturing, Grusch has actually been cleared by the Pentagon to go public with even his wildest assertions. Therefore, as DOD spokesperson Susan Gough explained in a statement to The Washington Spectator, his claims are NOT classified nor do they pose any security risk. She also pointed out: “Approval [for release] does not imply DOD endorsement or factual accuracy of the material.”
In other words, as critics such as UFO researcher John Greenewald have detailed, he’s free to make this stuff up.
In contrast, at the hearings Grusch and his compliant supporters have asserted his evidence is so “classified” he can only discuss it behind closed doors – or risk prosecution. Pardon all he jargon, but as DOD’s Gough noted in her written statement to this reporter, “Approval for release by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) means the material submitted by an individual does not contain classified information, controlled unclassified information (CUI), or other sensitive information such as that protected for operations security (OPSEC) reasons…” Translation: nothing he has said in any setting is classified and none of it risks exposing any sensitive information.
One witness, Ryan Graves, never even saw a supposed UFO with his own eyes, but was just retelling stories others told him, and describing artifacts he glimpsed on radar screens that were likely created by a new military sensor system. Yet he basically doubled down on his improbable claim to 60 Minutes that he saw UFOs fly over his ship every day “for years.” Other experts, though, note that the updated, complex Aegis system has long caused visual errors during its breaking-in period on these ships – and that could well account for the plethora of UFOs he claimed to observe.
It also turns out that he’s not quite as selfless a whistleblower as he’s been portrayed. As Graves himself pointed out in a filing accompanying his testimony, he has a potential financial conflict because he’s the founder of a new UFO transparency non-profit, Americans for Safe Aerospace, that’s raising money from the public and that could also seek taxpayer funding for further research into pilot sightings. And he’s launched a slick new monetized podcast, Merged, that allows him to further cash in on his fame and UFO stories.
Graves’s headline-seeking reached a new low when he announced recently he would be testifying at a Mexican congressional hearing promoted by arguably the world’s most notorious UFO hoaxer, Jaime Maussan. Maussan’s scams include a pay-per-view Roswell alien corpse photos event – the “Roswell slides” – that was later exposed as an ancient mummy photographed in a museum.
In fact, the entire Congressional push for more UFO disclosure is starting to collapse of its own weight — in addition to a series of self-inflicted wounds by UFO advocates. It’s not just Grusch’s previously hidden mental health history or his wacky tales that nobody else has verified for over three months. Rep. Burchett gave front-row seats and praised at the hearing two notorious advocates who for years have advanced provably false UFO and paranormal tales, journalist George Knapp and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell; they were also friendly with Grusch before he went public. They have hyped the Skinwalker Ranch myths and fake Area 51 “scientist” Bob Lazar who, like Grusch’s supposed eyewitnesses, claimed to have worked on reverse-engineering alien spacecraft. Most recently, Corbell and Knapp released the results of their two-year “investigation” of a huge, hovering triangle-sized UFO near the 29 Palms Marine base in California. But it turned out to be, according to Pentagon records they didn’t request, just a video of flares shot during a training exercise. As Mick West and Steven Greenstreet pointed out in a scathing video commentary, it’s “baffling” and “ridiculous” that Congress takes them seriously.
https://washingtonspectator.org/ufo-tale...-hearings/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
