At the beginning of June, The Debrief, a hitherto confidential web magazine and presenting itself as a “reception area for credible information on science, technology and defense”, published the staggering revelations of a “former agent of the services of the services of intelligence and whistleblower” named David Charles Grusch.
According to him, the US government and its allies are said to have in their possession “intact or partially intact non-human-made flying machines” along with the corpses of their extraterrestrial pilots and have been studying them in secret for years.
The Debrief article is by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, two well-known UFO journalists. As they report, “Grusch states that recoveries of partial fragments and even entire vessels by the government, its allies, and defense professionals have been carried out for decades and up to the present day.”
Still citing Grusch, the article describes the craft as “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, extraterrestrial or unknown origin)” based on “vehicle morphology and scientific testing of materials present” and the fact that they possess “unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures”.
Furthermore, to the US Congress and the Inspectorate General of the Intelligence Community, Grusch claims to have turned over a whole bunch of supposedly exhaustive classified information on top secret programs. “We’re not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” he reportedly assured them.
In the face of extraordinary assertions, extraordinary proofs are demanded. Except that the lengthy Debrief article contains no photos, illustrations, reports, or documents of any kind to support Grusch’s claims. In addition, journalists admit that Grusch has never personally seen extraterrestrial craft, that he does not know where they might be stored, and that he has refused to detail the reprisals he claims to have suffered from of government officials.
He talks about “the morphology of the vehicles and the scientific testing of the materials present”, their “atomic arrangements” and their “unique radiological signatures”, which is scary… But how does he know all this? Does it present these chemical analyzes or these scientific tests on these materials? Absolutely not.
In an exclusive interview with Grusch on NewsNation, journalist Ross Coulthart admitted, “We haven’t seen the alleged evidence he provided to investigators and he says he can’t show it to us for national security reasons. He also tells us that he himself has not seen any photos of the alleged vessel. »
So why should anyone believe Grusch or his stories? When people – and journalists are no exception – are confronted with unsubstantiated UFO stories, they are visibly willing to throw all rationality overboard.
Kean and Blumenthal, who pen the Debrief article, are often referred to as journalists, suggesting disinterested investigative work and objectively presented conclusions. In reality, Leslie Kean is a ufologist who believes extraterrestrials have visited – or are still visiting – Earth. Ralph Blumenthal is the author of a complacent biography of John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist, now deceased, who had taken at face value the testimonies of individuals claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials.
Given that the two authors had previously published an article on UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, with “anomalous” now replacing “aerial”) in the New York Times in 2017, one wonders why they chose for Debrief and not a more established publication like the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Blumenthal indirectly responded to it on Twitter, saying, “The Washington Post didn’t get our story. We and Leslie gave it to the Debrief because we were under increasing pressure to release it very quickly. The Post needed more time and we weren’t able to wait.”
Under increasing pressure from whom or what? The story does not say. As to why the Washington Post needed more time to publish this article, one can reasonably infer that its editorial staff wanted to ensure its factual soundness.
And that when the daily’s reporters discovered that there was no photograph of said spacecraft, no scientific analysis of its alleged composite materials, no memo, letter or document of any kind detailing the wreckage of the craft or the corpses of its pilots, perhaps they wisely decided not to offer Grusch a platform his unsubstantiated claims did not deserve.
What do you do when you believe a story for which there is no evidence? References and credibility of witnesses are emphasized. Thus, Kean and Blumenthal begin by establishing Grusch’s seriousness: “Whistleblower David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Recognition Office (NRO). He was the Reconnaissance Office representative on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021. the representative of the working group. »
The reporters add that Grusch “has received numerous awards and decorations for his participation in covert and clandestine operations to promote the security of the United States.” They even cite a retired Army colonel and aerospace executive, Karl E. Nell, who worked on UAP analysis from 2021 to 2022 alongside them and who describes Grusch as “flawless.”
Other sources sound like letters of recommendation touting an “expert staff officer and strategist” and a “total force integrator capable of designing innovative solutions and achieving real results.” Except that if a “whistleblower” or witness has solid evidence to adduce, whether or not they have an arm’s length resume doesn’t matter.
For three-quarters of a century—since the Roswell affair in 1947—ufologists have consistently demanded “transparency” from the U.S. government about what it knows about extraterrestrials. If the government has not always complied with good grace, we still owe it to have made public a lot of information on the subject, in particular on the side of the Air Force with its Roswell report: Facts and Fiction in the New Mexico Desert released in 1994 and its Roswell Report: Case Closed the following year.
Needless to say, this was not enough to calm the ufologists. Their mantra? “They are lying to us!” Granted, for national security reasons, the government had actually lied about Roswell in the first place by calling it a “weather balloon.” In reality, it was a spy balloon picking up the acoustic signature of the nuclear tests carried out by the Soviet Union in the upper atmosphere. But just because the government sometimes lies doesn’t mean it always lies, or that a conspiracy theory is therefore true by default. Each case should be considered separately and on its own merits.
In response to the Debrief article, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that it had “uncovered verifiable information to support claims that programs regarding the possession or reverse engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist at the present time”.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t dazzle ufologists either. What could satisfy them? Nothing less than an embarrassed admission of actually hidden alien spacecraft and established contact with extraterrestrial intelligences for ages.
This sentence from the Debrief article adds further confusion: “In his statements cleared for release by the Pentagon in April, Mr. Grusch claimed that ‘historical programs’ relating to UFOs have long been concealed within of “multiple agencies inserting PAN activities into conventional secret access programs without reporting appropriately to the various supervisory authorities”. »
So the revelation of the concealment of “historical programs” relating to UFOs would have been authorized for publication by the Pentagon? According to NewsNation, the Department of Defense even approved Grusch’s interview questions, but did not certify it with “photographs, images, exhibits, captions” or “other supporting documents.” And he added the following caveat: “Our agreement to publish does not imply endorsement by the Department of Defense or confirmation of the factual accuracy of the material presented.” »
But then, who is lying? David Grusch or the Pentagon? If the Ministry of Defense allowed David Grusch to speak in the press and knew what he was going to say, who could possibly threaten this “whistleblower” with reprisals? Again, history does not say so.
And what about John Greenewald Jr.’s video, in which we “learn” that David Grusch allegedly approached ufologists George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell over a year ago to ask them to get his story out…as they were at a Star Trek convention and were reciting the opening scene from The Wrath of Khan (1982) in their hotel room?
How crazy can this story go? Time will tell, but in my opinion, we are doomed to repeat past experiences. When your institutional memory of a subject like this goes back a long way, it’s hard not to be cynical, even when impartial skepticism prevails. After all, there is nothing new here, except for the change of name and date. I’ve been hearing these kinds of stories since we started Skeptic magazine in 1992.
In 1995, the same year the second official U.S. government report on Roswell was released, an “alien autopsy film” made the rounds in the media. It was a 17-minute black-and-white film, purportedly depicting the US military’s secret examination of an alien corpse recovered from a flying saucer that crashed in Roswell in 1947. A film “leaked” to the press by a British businessman, Ray Santilli, who claimed the footage was given to him by a retired military cameraman who (of course) insisted on anonymity.
Ten years later, Santilli will admit that the film was bogus and made from chicken entrails and sheep’s joints and brains obtained from a local butcher. While arguing stubbornly, in an excessively implausible way, to have seen the “real” film in 1992 but was too degraded to be exploited. And that he had therefore been forced to “rebuild” it.
In 1997, the “lights of Phoenix” would spark another media circus. Arizona Governor Fife Symington will even hold a press conference with an aide dressed in an alien costume. The man had a personal belief that what we know today to be military flares were actually alien spaceships bobbing around the local military base.
Then there was the “Bonsall UFO” in 2000, the Mexican UFO in 2004, the USS Nimitz UAP in 2004, the O’Hare International Airport UFO in 2006, the multiple sightings of USS Theodore-Roosevelt UFOs in 2014 and 2015, and the “Go Fast”, “Gimbal” and “Tic Tac” videos that we would get excited about like never since Roswell – which remains the mother of all stories of aliens.
Except that none of these stories have confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial visitation or contact with intelligence from elsewhere – let alone Chinese or Russian technology that is decades or centuries old. ahead of ours. We have no more evidence of contact today than in 1947.
Believers are convinced that there must be fire under all this smoke, given the plethora of evidence we have about UFOs and UAPs. But we have here nothing more than the product of an availability bias – we remember more easily what is fresh in our mind – and a faulty memory, of all the previous stories devoid of credible evidence. .
This time, they tell us as always, things are different. Maybe it’s the right one. Finally, we have an authentic whistleblower exposing the greatest discovery in human history. In Bayesian reasoning, there is “Cromwell’s Law”, named after Oliver Cromwell, known to have exclaimed: “I adjure you, by the bowels of Christ, to believe that it is possible that you are wrong . According to this rule, we should never assign a probability of 0 or 1 to anything, in case we are wrong.
So okay, I give this last UFO story a probability of 0.01 – that’s a 1% chance of being true. And I’m even willing to walk the talk: I’ll give $1,000 to anyone who can produce “unmistakable, irrefutable, and undeniable evidence” of contact with extraterrestrials by December 31, 2024, on the condition that he evens the bet. I challenged everyone who believes in the existence of UFOs but so far I have had no response to my offer. Weird, what have they got to lose? Don’t they believe contact disclosure is quite imminent?
* Michael Shermer is editor of Skeptic magazine, host of “The Michael Shermer Show” podcast, and a presidential fellow at Chapman University. You can follow him on Twitter.
** This article appeared in Quillette, an Australian online journal that promotes the free exchange of ideas on many, even the most controversial topics. This young publication, which has become a reference, seeks to revive the Anglo-Saxon intellectual debate by giving a voice to researchers and thinkers who are struggling to be heard. Quillette tackles topics as varied as political polarization, the crisis of liberalism, feminism and racism. Le Point publishes a weekly translation of an article published in Quillette.