I know you weren't presenting it as scientific proof of anything. I'm bringing attention to it as a psychological disposition we can all fall prey to without even noticing it's happening so we can maybe become more aware of it in ourselves when it does happen.
If I were to start interpreting the behavior of a person in the least charitable light possible on a consistent basis it'd be helpful for someone to point it out to me as well.
Except that I haven't interpreted anyone's person, including Grusch's, anywhere near the "least charitable light possible", which is rather your consistent misreading of what I've been suggesting. I've been consistent in accepting his sincerity for the most part. You mischaracterize and caricaturize my words, and then respond to your own mischaracterizations. Whilst in fact you appear to be the one assuming a derogatory attitude behind every skeptics' term intended as descriptive due to your own seeming bias towards the 'condescending skeptic'. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it comes across.
Your argument and epistemological premise seems to also exhibit false balance a.k.a bothsidesism whilst thinking it's a measure of impartiality as opposed to the 'skeptic' on one side and the 'ufologist' on the other.
Article:
False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.
You and @LilWabbit mentioned religious beliefs. You may not have examined the threads on the phenomena claims at Skinwalker Ranch, but Steven Greenstreet, a Mormon himself, explained some of the tenets of the LDS church that can lead their members into firm beliefs about things like UFOs. He claimed that they were all Mormons at the ranch, a place with which Puthoff was heavily involved. I have no idea of the religious beliefs of most of the players mentioned in this discussion and do not know if it's a thing that swayed Grusch, but it's a factor that we shouldn't discount completely.
Yeah that definitely was one of the most things he noticed and pointed out in his YouTube documentary. That they were all current or former Mormons and things such as the doctrine of other worlds are often invoked as being in line with this kind of thing:
Moses 1:33: "And worlds without number have I created, and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten."
That kind of assumes that these programs ever existed in the first place. I'm certainly prepared to believe that Grusch is entirely honest and sincere in his beliefs concerning these retrieval programs, but it seems entirely possible that the information he has about them is faulty.
I have little doubt such programs exist, at least in contingency form. I know they exist for the recovery of crashed foreign aircraft because I was on one of them. As for whether they've ever been deployed to recover an alien/non human craft I'm skeptical, but I cannot imagine the DoD not having that contingency covered. Seems like a far too significant potential event to trust to a hastily formed, ad hoc team.
So it's possible he could have been defensively briefed as to the existence of such a program, then later heard of crashes/recoveries from the like of Elizondo, Knapp, et al. and came to his conclusions.
You and @LilWabbit mentioned religious beliefs. You may not have examined the threads on the phenomena claims at Skinwalker Ranch, but Steven Greenstreet, a Mormon himself, explained some of the tenets of the LDS church that can lead their members into firm beliefs about things like UFOs. He claimed that they were all Mormons at the ranch, a place with which Puthoff was heavily involved. I have no idea of the religious beliefs of most of the players mentioned in this discussion and do not know if it's a thing that swayed Grusch, but it's a factor that we shouldn't discount completely.
This is the kind of subtle and sometimes not so subtle attribution of beliefs, motives, and emotions to people like Grusch based on not much evidence but our own projections onto him that I'm talking about.
Just notice how quickly and naturally it happens for even someone we know almost nothing about.
There is ultimately a truth, whatever it my be, behind all these UFO shenanigans. We might not yet know just exactly what that truth is, but one thing we can do is construct various plausible pathways to whatever the ultimate truth may be. We can mark out perhaps half a dozen variants and be fairly confident that one of them will be the final answer.
Thus, for example...there are either aliens or there are no aliens. If there are no aliens then Grusch is either being lied to, or ( more innocently ) being presented with misperceptions. Grusch has chosen to believe what his informants have told him....despite not having personally seen a single crashed craft or alien body. And Grusch is making pretty definitive 'we are not alone' statements ( as he did with Coulthart ) based on second hand reports. None of us can say definitively whether Grusch had sufficient testimony to be 'certain' but the whole thing does smack of a willingness to believe and a lack of the sort of skepticism Kirkpatrick has applied to the same phenomenon.
Except that I haven't interpreted anyone's person, including Grusch's, anywhere near the "least charitable light possible", which is rather your consistent misreading of what I've been suggesting. I've been consistent in accepting his sincerity for the most part. You mischaracterize and caricaturize my words, and then respond to your own mischaracterizations. Whilst in fact you appear to be the one assuming a derogatory attitude behind every skeptics' term intended as descriptive due to your own seeming bias towards the 'condescending skeptic'. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it comes across.
Your argument and epistemological premise seems to also exhibit false balance a.k.a bothsidesism whilst thinking it's a measure of impartiality as opposed to the 'skeptic' on one side and the 'ufologist' on the other.
Article:
False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.
I'm not accusing you of characterizing him as being insincere. You have pointed out many times that you can in fact accept his sincerity. But not being charitable to someone comes in other forms as well, such as portraying someone's actions as being naive, attributing beliefs to them that we are in no position to attribute to them given how little we know about them, and characterizing their belief as "blind".
In your earlier comment about religious belief you mentioned you're not an atheist. I haven't read any of the conversation in the religious belief post you mentioned, so I have no idea what your religious beliefs are nor if you do have any religious beliefs what your basis for said beliefs are. It would be mighty rude and uncharitable of me if I were to assume that if you do have a religious affiliation of some sort then you must be a blind believer simply because in my view there are no good compelling arguments for God's existence.
I'm not going to assume that I know what you believe, nor am going to assume on what basis you form those beliefs, and even less am I going to assume that whatever basis your beliefs have they are unjustified and therefore your belief is "blind".
I have absolutely no idea on what basis Grusch holds his beliefs. I'm not even exactly sure what the extent of his beliefs are given the generally vague nature of many of his statements and his inability to go into detail for much of the rest. Not only do I barely know what he believes, but I'm in even worse of a position to have any idea on what basis he has those beliefs. To assign the term "blind belief" to someone we know almost nothing about, much less know on what basis he even has arrived at his conclusions is unwarranted and every bit as unkind as if I were to use the label to describe you.
The rule for this website that we should "assume good faith" doesn't just mean assume people are generally being honest, it also means we shouldn't assume the people we're talking about are complete idiots.
One example that routinely comes up here is the assumption that some of the information Grusch has come to believe comes from individuals in the government who are "true believers". The assumption seems to be that these folks may genuinely believe the government is hiding bodies of aliens somewhere, and in the course of interviewing these people David Grusch never bothered to ask them if that claim is just something they personally believe or something they personally and directly have knowledge of. Even the most hardcore believer, when being interviewed, knows the difference between "What I believe is true" vs "what I know to be true because of directly being involved with the thing in question".
Grusch could have spoken to a thousand true believers inside of the DoD who believe all sorts of ridiculous shit. But the moment he asks the obvious "now tell me, on what basis are you claiming these things are true?" he would immediately rule out every single one of those people if their answer was anything other than "because I work in that program and I literally work with these bodies/corpses/technologies myself" or could provide him at least some official documentation for their claims.
This is what I was alluding to earlier when I posted the "idiot ball" trope. The general idea seems to be that this could all just be a huge misunderstanding that could easily have been cleared up if Grusch had been smart enough to know the difference between what his interviewees believe vs what they know.
But anyway, if you don't think there's a filter through which you're negatively interpreting much of what Grusch does and says then that's fine. I'm not going to convince you of it by just continuing to point it out.
I'm just calling attention to something I notice in your posts that you don't do with other people like Fravor or Graves. There's something about Grusch specifically that's bringing out a less charitable part of you than other people seem to. I see it because this is literally what I do every day as a therapist. I've pointed it out several times and obviously there's nothing to be gained by continuing to do so, so I'm not going to after this.
I have little doubt such programs exist, at least in contingency form. I know they exist for the recovery of crashed foreign aircraft because I was on one of them. As for whether they've ever been deployed to recover an alien/non human craft I'm skeptical, but I cannot imagine the DoD not having that contingency covered. Seems like a far too significant potential event to trust to a hastily formed, ad hoc team.
So it's possible he could have been defensively briefed as to the existence of such a program, then later heard of crashes/recoveries from the like of Elizondo, Knapp, et al. and came to his conclusions.
Question. I know you probably can't say much, but can you sketch out some plausible scenarios where individuals working on such a program (recovery of crashed foreign aircraft) would come to believe that what they're recovering, or have recovered, or the debris they're looking at, would be of non human origin?
A while back I asked Mick how likely it is that an individual working with recovered debris and material might come to believe that what they're looking at is not man-made. There are so many telltale signs of something being man-made: rivets, writing, labels, wiring, material composition, colors, etc. that would be dead giveaways that even if you don't know what country of origin the material is from, it's still very much made by people, no?
Even if you're being told that you're working on recovered alien tech, how likely is it that any engineer would look at what's in front of them and not immediately recognize that, no, this is obviously made by people?
What is the most likely scenario where a mistake of this kind snowballs into the kind of story Grusch is sharing? Where is the error most likely to pop up?
George Knapp addressed this matter himself. He was working at a small Nevada late-night AM station covering news/politics. One night a news story was a report of a UFO and the station had a multiple of their usual listening. Knapp learned that topic was profitable and today the station is called Coast to Coast with dedicated coverage of the paranormal.
Knapp is careful to frame himself as a journalist following compelling stories and interviewing credible witnesses.
Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll find that segment of that interview so you can review it yourself.
Question. I know you probably can't say much, but can you sketch out some plausible scenarios where individuals working on such a program (recovery of crashed foreign aircraft) would come to believe that what they're recovering, or have recovered, or the debris they're looking at, would be of non human origin?
A while back I asked Mick how likely it is that an individual working with recovered debris and material might come to believe that what they're looking at is not man-made. There are so many telltale signs of something being man-made: rivets, writing, labels, wiring, material composition, colors, etc. that would be dead giveaways that even if you don't know what country of origin the material is from, it's still very much made by people, no?
Even if you're being told that you're working on recovered alien tech, how likely is it that any engineer would look at what's in front of them and not immediately recognize that, no, this is obviously made by people?
What is the most likely scenario where a mistake of this kind snowballs into the kind of story Grusch is sharing? Where is the error most likely to pop up?
Way too many "what ifs" in your post for my comfort, but in the USAF, mishap investigation teams are made up of core members from various disciplines, plus SMEs in multiple areas as needed. So there are core members who are pilots, maintenance officers, medical (doctors) officers, life support officers, etc. The SMEs brought in would be experts in specific areas/technologies such engines, ejection seats, fuel systems, weapons, etc.
A gray beard SME would not recognize a particular item found in a crashed aircraft came from the Romulans. He would probably know by virtue of its design or material make up if it was something he's unfamiliar with and/or is different in how it functions compares to similar items (if identifiable) in our systems. In that event, intel groups would be tasked to determine if any other nation has or was experimenting with anything similar. If we strike out on finding any terrestrial source then, the only conclusions would be it came from a terrestrial source unknown to our intel guys, or came from elsewhere.
Very thumbnail explanation, and I'm not qualified to talk about how the lab rats analyze or reverse engineering something they've never seen. I've also never been involved with a mishap a/c, be it our's or someone else's, that we didn't know exactly what it was before the investigation formally began.
Edit--Lest I get my knuckles whacked again for using acronyms, SME=Subject Matter Expert.
A few people have asked a variation on the question of: "If this is a conspiracy to get people to believe in aliens... why would anyone do that?"
It may help to remember that the earliest UFO flaps were exploited by intelligence. I'm not sure how to make this digestible within this thread, as the sourcing for this comes from several places over the last 80 years.
With the advent of aerospace tech - Defense and Intelligence services started exploiting human behavioral research, and started using the UFO narrative in disinformation campaigns. (I am pretty sure this is well documented on this forum, but if anyone needs sources let me know.) In one document from 1954, the CIA even suggests it to their colleagues in Guatemala as way to distract from negative press:
If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.
I think the more recent flaps are even less cut and dried in terms of who / why, but one thread that stands out to me is that VCs have started becoming more open to Defense investments, with Peter Thiel now rumored to be funding AI for Alien Detection.
Defense tech can be a pretty broad term, but VCs are looking into areas like drones, satellites, cybersecurity, A.I., space, and communications. According to a new PitchBook report out this week, defense tech has experienced a boom in recent years: From 2016 to 2022, investors plowed $135.3 billion into the sector across 4,744 deals. There’s been a rise in deals in Q1 this year, with 89 deals compared to 60 in Q4, although deals are tracking lower for Q2 so far, according to PitchBook data provided to Fortune. There’s interest from some top players: Andreessen Horowitz recently announced that the firm is earmarking $500 million to invest in companies that support American interests, including in defense.
More recently, Enigma Labs tossed its hat into the ring, aiming to set up a sophisticated database to track UFO sightings and then use A.I. to sort signal from noise. Possibly a preemptive move to establish a presence in the field before potentially lucrative government contracts are available, the group's source of funds is unclear. One rumor suggests that it's getting money from the controversial venture capitalist and political financier Peter Thiel, whose name has also been bandied about as a possible secret financier for UFO research at Stanford and Harvard universities. (Thiel did not respond to a request for comment.)
While none of this is a bullet proof explanation, I think the truth lies in the middle of all of this: several factions within the government and private sector, pushing a narrative/belief that helps them cover covert actions, and to secure military, and private funding. It seems to be working very well.
George Knapp addressed this matter himself. He was working at a small Nevada late-night AM station covering news/politics. One night a news story was a report of a UFO and the station had a multiple of their usual listening. Knapp learned that topic was profitable and today the station is called Coast to Coast with dedicated coverage of the paranormal.
Knapp is careful to frame himself as a journalist following compelling stories and interviewing credible witnesses.
Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll find that segment of that interview so you can review it yourself.
I think you're confusing George Knapp with Art Bell, the originator of C2C. At least, your story of how C2C was founded is exactly how Bell has explained it. And C2C is not a station, it's a syndicated network program aired on multiple stations and on line. Knapp is only a guest host on C2C (a few times a month, usually on Sunday nights), and the show aired for many years before he joined the team of rotating rent-a-hosts.
You are dead on with regard to Knapp framing himself first and foremost as a serious investigative journalist, as opposed to a woo talk show host or ufologist. He's got the news awards to back that up.
Grusch could have spoken to a thousand true believers inside of the DoD who believe all sorts of ridiculous shit. But the moment he asks the obvious "now tell me, on what basis are you claiming these things are true?" he would immediately rule out every single one of those people if their answer was anything other than "because I work in that program and I literally work with these bodies/corpses/technologies myself" or could provide him at least some official documentation for their claims.
Some people Grusch may have talked to really have been involved in a wide array of CIA programs and scientific research efforts, so they would be in a position to provide plenty of documentation about those programs. In all probability none of their work has involved actual alien technology or 'biologics', or produced anything of use, but Grusch would probably take their statements and documentation seriously. I think that the fact that he is a relative newcomer to the world of UFO studies might make him more likely to take it all at face value.
Question. I know you probably can't say much, but can you sketch out some plausible scenarios where individuals working on such a program (recovery of crashed foreign aircraft) would come to believe that what they're recovering, or have recovered, or the debris they're looking at, would be of non human origin?
There are many plausible scenarios out of which a significant number do not even have to involve any direct observation of "non-human biologics" nor documentation of such biologics in order for Grusch's source to provide his "assessment" that such biologics have been recovered in a program the source remains marginally or nominally a part of.
Suppose Grusch wants to dig deeper into a classified program which actually concerns the recovery and analysis of advanced Chinese balloon technology but which he is unaware of due to the program being classified. He's been tipped off by a fellow UFO believer to dig deeper into the program. This fellow UFO believer could be (1) a driver whose main task is to transport officers and engineers to and from the facility/site where the recovered balloon is being analyzed, (2) a cleaner, (3) a plumber, (4) an electrician, (5) a security guard or (6) a military police officer assigned to secure the facility. The list could go on. This source (one of 1-6) has no access to the high clearance lab site of the facility nor is he apprized of its exact nature. However, because he (a) has come to realize he's working with some kind of a craft recovery program, (b) is already a strong believer that the DoD has a long history of secret alien craft reverse-engineering programs, and (c) has seen army coolers (military style ice boxes) being daily taken in and out of the facility (which actually contain food and drinks), he is convinced alien body parts have been recovered and are being analyzed. He shares this "assessment" with Grusch. Grusch records in his file that he has received an assessment from a source who is currently in a classified recovery program that non-human biologics have been recovered.
Since Grusch has been denied any further access to the program, this testimony is all he can go by. However, as a believer, he thinks this testimony is more significant than his better judgment would have led him to believe had he been totally impartial and disinclined to seek confirmation for a particular hypothesis (aliens). The sincerity of the source and the details he was able to provide add credence to the testimony in Grusch's eyes, just as Lou Elizondo saw much more in the leaked UAP videos than they actually contained. None of this implies Grusch or Elizondo are idiots or incapable of investigating these sources and videos more critically with the help of relevant technical expertise. Rather, it suggests they're seeking evidence to confirm a prior belief more than they are rigorously, patiently and critically analyzing the evidence, and following wherever the most solid pieces of evidence lead.
The relevant DoD commanding officers in charge of the program would not only have every right to refuse Grusch access to this program, but to complain to their chain of command about a person within the DoD sniffing around programs he shouldn't be concerned with: A person who doesn't take a "no" for an answer, but rather complains to the IG about a suspicious "wall of silence", is convinced of a coverup of alien secrets and regards himself as a whistleblower.
None of us can say definitively whether Grusch had sufficient testimony to be 'certain' but the whole thing does smack of a willingness to believe and a lack of the sort of skepticism Kirkpatrick has applied to the same phenomenon.
I think your view is inaccurate, and may be tainted a bit by skeptic prejudice on the subject matter.
From Grush' statement for the senate, given under oath:
My testimony is based on information I have been given by individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy and service to this country – many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony.
I have taken every step I can to corroborate this evidence over a period of 4 years and to do my due diligence on the individuals sharing it
So Grush has seen documentation and photographs and was very thorough in his investigation - a far cry from 'a willingness to believe and a lack of skepticism'.
Plus he had a Tiltle 50 authority, which means:
At the time, due to my extensive executive-level intelligence support duties, I was cleared to literally all relevant compartments and in a position of extreme trust in both my military and civilian capacities.
In spite of this, he was denied access:
I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional read-on’s.
Kirkpatrick only has a Title 10 authority, so if Grush (with Title 50 authority) was denied access and hence unable to verify further, Kirkpatrick will certainly not be able to verify anything. I wonder if Kirkpatrick is even cleared to see the documents and photographs that were shown to Grush. No wonder Kirkpatrick says he has 'no verifiable information' - it's all he can say because he does not have the required clearance. And even if he did (like Grush), he would still be denied access. That's why congress is now taking action, including the introduction of new legislation.
While none of this is a bullet proof explanation, I think the truth lies in the middle of all of this: several factions within the government and private sector, pushing a narrative/belief that helps them cover covert actions, and to secure military, and private funding. It seems to be working very well.
It seems to be working very well...? How? They are now on a path of having to answer to the Senate and justify every dollar they spend on their SAPs. If they want money, they should put out evidence that the Chinese are way ahead in technology, not spread rumors that budget is secretly spent on reverse engineering alien technology.
So Grush has seen documentation and photographs and was very thorough in his investigation - a far cry from 'a willingness to believe and a lack of skepticism'.
We've all seen documents and photographs. I can still recall Lue Elizondo and his team of 'experts' eulogizing over the 'go fast' video in the Unidentified series, and their claims of thousands of miles per hour. We now know with certainty that the supposed 'speed' of the object is entirely due to parallax effect.
Only recently we had the 29 Palms case, where there were claims from military people that they knew what flares looked like and would not mis-identify them. Yet it is clear from later evidence that mis-identify is precisely what they did.
So I place little or no faith in any claims of 'seen documents, photographs' etc, or claims of thoroughness.
Even if you're being told that you're working on recovered alien tech, how likely is it that any engineer would look at what's in front of them and not immediately recognize that, no, this is obviously made by people?
What is the most likely scenario where a mistake of this kind snowballs into the kind of story Grusch is sharing? Where is the error most likely to pop up
Someone plonks a cone shaped piece of metal in front of Bob Lazar and tells him its the propulsion system for that saucer he saw in the hangar. Of course, the piece of metal actually does nothing whatever....so Lazar 'concludes' that it must have some bizarre and exotic properties and magical tech if it can power that ( fake ) saucer in the hanger. It simply never occurs to Lazar why he can't figure out precisely how it works is that it doesn't. Lazar leaves the project and tells the world all about magical alien technology. The real project gets obscured in the process and Lazar serves his purpose.
A while back I asked Mick how likely it is that an individual working with recovered debris and material might come to believe that what they're looking at is not man-made. There are so many telltale signs of something being man-made: rivets, writing, labels, wiring, material composition, colors, etc. that would be dead giveaways that even if you don't know what country of origin the material is from, it's still very much made by people, no?
I am reminded of the Tomato Man case. What were ostensibly (and originally concluded to be) photos of wreckage of some terrestrial craft -- there were apparently wire-framed eyeglasses and a hex bolt visible in the debris -- eventually turned into absolute proof of a wrecked ET craft and ET body for some ufologists, based on a compelling (to them) narrative around the origins of the photos. This led to a split in the ufology communities, with true believers claiming a cover-up and disinfo campaign (possibly orchestrated by the government) to deny the photos showed real ET, and otherwise ET believing skeptics claiming credulity and eagerness to believe from the other side in accepting the photos as showing real ET.
I bring this case up because it touches directly on your question re identifying debris, as well as some of the broader issues being discussed in this thread. Human psychology is complex, and we have an ability to create complex narratives and self-deceiving beliefs that protect those narratives. This applies to believers and skeptics alike. I don't think it's fair to characterize believers as simply credulous rubes, or skeptics as automatic cynics (not addressing this specifically to you, just speaking in general). It is certainly possible for Grusch, or those he has entrusted, to have misinterpreted the photographic or physical evidence they have seen in a way that supports a previous narrative, contrary to what an objective analysis would determine. It's also possible that skeptics have been too quick to jump to that conclusion.
The fact that Grusch is part of a circle of true believers, who, in my opinion, have previously shown multiple times their willingness to misinterpret evidence in favor of the narrative, leads me to evaluate his claims against that backdrop. But then maybe that's just my own bias showing through. This is why we need access to whatever actual evidence is available to be able to make our own informed conclusions.
It seems to be working very well...? How? They are now on a path of having to answer to the Senate and justify every dollar they spend on their SAPs. If they want money, they should put out evidence that the Chinese are way ahead in technology, not spread rumors that budget is secretly spent on reverse engineering alien technology.
Read the articles I linked! Congress is not the sole target of these efforts, and the money was already on the table well before any accountability efforts could actually occur.
I also think whether they are on a path toward accountability remains to be seen. If your goal is to stoke social, military, government, and business interest in UFOs - and then collect whatever dividends come back - I would say it's inarguably going GREAT.
If you are watching social media, many are using the mere existence of the hearings to support all kinds of claims. If your goal was to cover the tracks of defense research and enemy capabilities, it's working very well with the target audience.
You only need to convince a relatively small amount of people in order to start converting belief into dollars, or belief into obfuscation of [fill in the blank.]
*edit to add*
I am in no way saying that I know for a fact that this is the case, my goal was to help fill in the logic for people who feel that this explanation is BUNK. I remain open-minded but all of my research has led me to the conclusion that the main figures in the public push have unstated ulterior motives that point to this explanation being close to the truth.
Luna: To your knowledge are there safety measures in place with foreign governments or other superpowers to avoid an escalatory situation in the event that a UAP malevolent event occurs?
Grusch: Uh yeah you're referring to an actual public treaty in the UN register, uh, it's funny you mentioned that, yeah the agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of a nuclear war signed in 1971, uh, an unclassified treaty publicly available and if you cite the George Washington University National Security archives you will find uh, the Declassified in 2013 specific provisions in the specific, uh, Red Line flash message traffic with the specific codes pursuant to article 3 and uh, also situation two which is in the previously classified NSA archive, what I would recommend, and I tried to get access but uh, I got a wall of silence at the White House, uh, was the specific incidents when those, um, message traffic was used, I think uh, some scholarship on that would open the door to a further investigation uh, using those publicly available information.
Mr Grusch is almost certainly referring to the USA, USSR "Agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war" treaty of 1971.
Link here, US Department of State website https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4692.htm
PDF attached below.
It's a very short treaty, and more a mutual show of goodwill than anything else.
There are no mechanisms whereby either party could check compliance by the other.
Article 3 of the treaty (which Grusch mentions) states,
The Parties undertake to notify each other immediately in the event of detection by missile warning systems of unidentified objects, or in the event of signs of interference with these systems or with related communications facilities, if such occurrences could create a risk of outbreak of nuclear war between the two countries.
(My emphasis).
That's it, that's all of Article 3.
The treaty wasn't secret, and would've been news at the time.
It was signed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Gromyko.
Sometimes overlooked now, Gromyko was an extremely influential member of the Politburo, and big on the World stage.
If Grusch thinks that the use of the term "unidentified objects" in this treaty was a public confirmation of the existence of alien spacecraft, signed by the Secretary of State and Andrei Gromyko, then he's wrong.
I don't claim to be an 'expert' on physics, but my knowledge is considerable. The holographic principle is a means by which the equations of relativity ( and hence gravity ) can be derived from string theory by means of an encoding in lower dimensions. The term 'holographic' is a misnomer, as the result is not a hologram in the classic sense. The entire thing is really just a mathematical construct that allows relativity and quantum mechanics to be linked. It is, to date, just about the only thing in favour of string theory.....a theory increasingly coming under criticism as having failed to produce any results in 40 years or so.
There is nothing in the holographic principle that specifically generates the idea of overlapping realities or dimensions, as such concepts are already a part of quantum mechanics ( for example the many worlds interpretation ). Thus one does not really even need to invoke the holographic principle to envisage dimension jumping aliens and I'm surprised Grusch didn't simply mention the many worlds theorem that most people are rather more familiar with.
It's worth adding.....dimension jumping time travelers ( one hypothesis I have seen ) cannot jump to their own timeline or you get the 'grandfather paradox'. So the whole notion of time travelers from 'our' future coming back to prevent us having nuclear war is a logical and scientific absurdity. And the irony is that time travelers jumping backwards into a random other timeline ( which to them might be ours ) would actually be creating a new branch...not preventing anything. The original timeline they intersected would still go on to have the nuclear war. Even in the many worlds theorem you cannot alter the past. You would simply generate new timelines...and be responsible for whatever new misfortune occured in them ! It's all a bit like the infamous 'death in Samarra' tale.
Yeah, when people like Steven Greer, Bob Lazar and now Grusch invoke theoretical physics in order to explain the impossible, it just makes them look silly as they don't know what they're talking about for one and two these aren't even proven theories but based on math concepts.
Yeah, when people like Steven Greer, Bob Lazar and now Grusch invoke theoretical physics in order to explain the impossible, it just makes them look silly as they don't know what they're talking about for one and two these aren't even proven theories but based on math concepts.
It also demonstrates a pattern of presenting unproven ideas and hypotheses as fact which, if it so evidently applies to their scientific misstatements, can also reasonably be expected to apply to their unscientific conviction that the anecdotal or low-information evidence they've gathered demonstrates facts about aliens.
As to @AR318307 's consistent discomfort with words such as "true believer" and "naivete" -- which he takes as derogatory rather than descriptive, or hasty conclusions based on isolated and sketchy observations rather than a reasonable conclusion derived from a deeper and broader process of studying the relevant characters and context -- the true belief of Grusch has been consistently apparent to me and some other posters here from the fact that Grusch himself admits having had no direct access to the hard evidence he's been told about whilst presenting oral testimonies with great conviction as evidence. True/blind belief, at least in my usage in the present context, is defined as 'accepting something as true and speaking about it with conviction without being supported by what scientifically can reasonably be regarded as reliable evidence.'
Bothsidesism is not impartiality and objectivity. I notice @AR318307 and sometimes even @MonkeeSage doing it, perhaps unwittingly, although I really enjoy reading much of what both post. It's an unfounded assumption that, at the outset of any of us embarking on a personal investigation into the UFO flap, UFO skepticsm and ufologism are equally poorly supported by evidence and equally up for grabs scientifically. And yet it takes but a little Bayesian method to establish for oneself the evident fact that there's a vast amount of evidentiary priors to the phenomenon of strong prior belief creating selection and other bias in observation, scientific pursuit or other data-collection, whilst there are zero priors of clear and hard evidence on alien visitations. The evidence is not equal on both sides even at the outset of any further investigations. The burden of proof is really on the claimant of any epistemological equivalence between these two alternatives.
Fortunately, we have even more than that to sway us on the 'side' of skepticism. We have ample evidence, compiled and analyzed in multiple threads at Metabunk, regarding historical 'UAP investigation entities' and their various recruits invariably linking back to a known group of UFO believers (Skinwalker Ranch) and hence supporting the hypothesis 'strong belief precedes and unduly informs most known UAP investigations.' In fact, AARO seems to be the first one to start on a cleaner slate, thanks to Sean Kirkpatrick being appointed at its helm. Even the NASA associated expert group is riven with UFO enthusiasts such as Avi Loeb. And yet even Loeb had the scientific integrity to come out and respond to Grusch's hearing as being unscientific hearsay:
Article:
A theory of alien visitors has been taken up by one of the most respected cosmologists, Avi Loeb, a Harvard science professor who was chair of the university’s astronomy department for nine years. Loeb does not attach weight to Grusch’s testimony: “He didn’t provide any evidence, and he didn’t witness the evidence,” he says. “It’s all hearsay. That’s not the way science is done.”
1) 40 or so witnesses (including Fravor & Graves) interviewed by Grusch, some of whom have direct first hand testimony, some of whom are still working in said "program", are all mistaken in their beliefs in a sufficiently similar manner such that a coherent narrative emerges powerful to convince Grusch to make these claims to the world under oath. (Broken Telephone Hypothesis)
2) 40 or so witnesses (including Fravor & Graves) interviewed by Grusch are all part of, or have been used by, a government conspiracy to hide SAPs, which has involved a continuous disinformation / psy-op campaign against their own military & intelligence departments to avoid internal oversight. (Psyop Hypothesis)
3) 40 or so witnesses (including Fravor & Graves) interviewed by Grusch are telling the truth, and there has been a near century long government conspiracy to conceal the truth about UAPs & NHI which they are now coming clean about. (Aliens Hypothesis)
these all seem highly improbable, but here we are. 2 of these options are conspiracies and 1 means there's a deranged cult at the upper echelons of the most powerful military in the world.
i honestly don't know what to believe, but the default should be 1 until hard data is provided and verified. 2 sounds at least possible, and well i obviously want 3 be true but seems very unlikely.
Miscommunication and Poe's law are plausible, taking jokes and sarcasm literally. Misinterpreting "I'll kill you if you tell anyone" as a serious death threat.
Cover stories are plausible. When the Glomar Explorer retrieved a Soviet submarine with the bodies of six submariners, there was a cover story that it was extracting manganese nodules from the ocean floor.
Or the witnesses want to get the attention of Congress without violating their nondisclosure agreement, and making up a story about UFOs is not a crime unless they do it under oath.
Let's assume for a moment that...he doesn't want to snoop around classified programs because he trusts there's a good national security reason for their classification.
I'm sorry but it's his job to uncover the truth on this. If it's black programs that are unaccounted for then that's wrong.
Also let's bear in mind that the Nimitz incident was now nearly 20 years ago and we've still not seen hide not hair of tic tac in conflict zones.
Miscommunication and Poe's law are plausible, taking jokes and sarcasm literally. Misinterpreting "I'll kill you if you tell anyone" as a serious death threat.
Cover stories are plausible. When the Glomar Explorer retrieved a Soviet submarine with the bodies of six submariners, there was a cover story that it was extracting manganese nodules from the ocean floor.
Or the witnesses want to get the attention of Congress without violating their nondisclosure agreement, and making up a story about UFOs is not a crime unless they do it under oath.
I'm sorry but it's his job to uncover the truth on this. If it's black programs that are unaccounted for then that's wrong.
Also let's bear in mind that the Nimitz incident was now nearly 20 years ago and we've still not seen hide not hair of tic tac in conflict zones.
I note that Graves seems to allude to the 'racetrack' UAPs seen by airline pilots, most of which seem to be caused by Starlink flares (as demonstrated on this forum).
One question eludes me; has Graves actually got any first hand experience of UAPs, or is it all second-hand reporting?
I noticed especially the following sentence in Fravor's opening statement:
As we pulled nose onto the object at approximately ½ of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft
I can't be sure without checking through hours of Fravor's previous accounts, but this struck me as being more explicit on some points. Notably, it suggests that Fravor was never closer to the object than about half a mile. That is quite close for two aircraft to come together (I'm not sure if it would count as an 'air miss'), but still not very close. At that distance an object 40 feet long (a figure often given for the tic-tac) would subtend a visual angle of about 1 degree. That's about half the apparent width of a thumbnail held at arm's length. It is worth noting because some accounts of the incident (by others if not Fravor himself) imply that he got really up close and personal to the object..
One theory explored here on Metabunk is that the 'tic-tac' was actually significantly smaller than Fravor realised, so its apparent movement was affected by parallax-related effects.
The parallax theory might be contradicted by the account of the other pilot witness (Dietrich) who said that she also saw unusual manoeuvres by the object, which corresponded to Fravor's impressions; but it also appears that Dietrich only saw the object for a very short period (seconds), whereas Fravor described the encounter as lasting much longer (minutes). So it is difficult to make an objective assessment of the encounter which integrates both statements.
The UK daily newspaper The Times usually has three editorial articles (known as leaders) each day. The 'third leader' is traditionally relatively short and lightweight, giving a humorous or satirical comment on some news story of the day. Today's third leader, headed 'Out of this World', is a comment on this week's Congress hearing. As the Times is paywalled I will quote a few snippets:
The most stellar performance was that of David Grusch... There were two scenarios concerning Mr Grusch: one, he was telling the truth, which was slightly alarming, and two, he wasn't but had somehow managed to wangle himself a job dealing with spy satellites, which was very alarming.
Mr Grusch said he himself had not seen alien material but was told about it by colleagues - presumably ones who were later discovered to have accidentally shot themselves twice in the head. His audience lapped it up: here at last was proof that black projects were eating the money and the Department of Defense was only pretending to waste billions. Some people will believe anything.
Notably, it suggests that Fravor was never closer to the object than about half a mile. That is quite close for two aircraft to come together (I'm not sure if it would count as an 'air miss'), but still not very close.
At that distance an object 40 feet long (a figure often given for the tic-tac) would subtend a visual angle of about 1 degree. That's about half the apparent width of a thumbnail held at arm's length. It is worth noting because some accounts of the incident (by others if not Fravor himself) imply that he got really up close and personal to the object..
Luna: To your knowledge are there safety measures in place with foreign governments or other superpowers to avoid an escalatory situation in the event that a UAP malevolent event occurs?
Grusch: Uh yeah you're referring to an actual public treaty in the UN register, uh, it's funny you mentioned that, yeah the agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of a nuclear war signed in 1971, uh, an unclassified treaty publicly available and if you cite the George Washington University National Security archives you will find uh, the Declassified in 2013 specific provisions in the specific, uh, Red Line flash message traffic with the specific codes pursuant to article 3 and uh, also situation two which is in the previously classified NSA archive, what I would recommend, and I tried to get access but uh, I got a wall of silence at the White House, uh, was the specific incidents when those, um, message traffic was used, I think uh, some scholarship on that would open the door to a further investigation uh, using those publicly available information.
Mr Grusch is almost certainly referring to the USA, USSR "Agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war" treaty of 1971.
Link here, US Department of State website https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4692.htm
PDF attached below.
It's a very short treaty, and more a mutual show of goodwill than anything else.
There are no mechanisms whereby either party could check compliance by the other.
Article 3 of the treaty (which Grusch mentions) states,
The Parties undertake to notify each other immediately in the event of detection by missile warning systems of unidentified objects, or in the event of signs of interference with these systems or with related communications facilities, if such occurrences could create a risk of outbreak of nuclear war between the two countries.
(My emphasis).
That's it, that's all of Article 3.
The treaty wasn't secret, and would've been news at the time.
It was signed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Gromyko.
Sometimes overlooked now, Gromyko was an extremely influential member of the Politburo, and big on the World stage.
If Grusch thinks that the use of the term "unidentified objects" in this treaty was a public confirmation of the existence of alien spacecraft, signed by the Secretary of State and Andrei Gromyko, then he's wrong.
No I don't think he was using it as evidentiary support of the existence of alien spacecraft. It seems the bolded "unidentified objects" portion just means "unidentified to the nation observing them" , probably meaning if the USSR picked up something on radar or elsewhere that gave them a reason to suspect the US might be tampering with their systems in such a way that may be cause for immediate retaliation that could then lead to nuclear war. Just a provision that they agree to call each other first before annihilating each other and the rest of the world.
I'm only speculating here that Grusch may have been looking for information as to any historical examples of such communication between each country taking place in response to picking up activity from unidentified craft around these sensitive areas (such as claims about UFOs being spotted and messing with the US nuclear arsenal). It's likely the scholarship he's saying would be useful is any scholarship related to if such communication has taken place between the two countries, and if so, if it was ever determined what it is that caused the nation that initiated said communication to make the call in the first place.
Sounds like the kind of evidence you'd want to look into if you're trying to study the "Nukes and UFOs" angle of Ufology.
I'm only speculating here that Grusch may have been looking for information as to any historical examples of such communication between each country taking place in response to picking up activity from unidentified craft around these sensitive areas (such as claims about UFOs being spotted and messing with the US nuclear arsenal).
Including the armada that flew south over Europe. I guess it was 1963. About 50 UFOs. And the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe was concerned; about to press the panic button. Unfortunately, they all turned around and went back over the North Pole. So he was satisfied they weren't Soviets and that they had to be in fact extraterrestrials. So he ordered a study to be done and it took three years. And what the study concluded was that there had been at least four species at least four visiting earth for thousand of years.
Yeah, when people like Steven Greer, Bob Lazar and now Grusch invoke theoretical physics in order to explain the impossible, it just makes them look silly as they don't know what they're talking about for one and two these aren't even proven theories but based on math concepts.
If that's as close as he ever got (IF) then it becomes hard to understand how he saw the two little projections described on the underside of the object.
Yeah, when people like Steven Greer, Bob Lazar and now Grusch invoke theoretical physics in order to explain the impossible, it just makes them look silly as they don't know what they're talking about for one and two these aren't even proven theories but based on math concepts.
But that is likely precisely why they hired Lazar ( which I believe they did ). He's no Einstein. He's just some guy who tinkers with stuff in his back yard. If the real purpose of his brief work at Area 51 was to persuade him advanced alien technology exists....he seems to me to be precisely the guy to fool.
And the reason for this deception plan would really be quite simple and understandable . Just as the CIA got involved in remote viewing for fear that the Russians were using it, so the same sort of paranoia that the Russians might have alien technology would lead to a ' we are already investigating this and maybe have some too ' response. What military wouldn't want to have 'maybe we have crashed alien technology we can use' as a psyop ?
So various people have been fed BS for years...and that is what Grusch 'uncovers' and thinks is real. I think that is the most plausible explanation. There has clearly been something going on that has led to '40 people I have interviewed' and who appear to confirm the stories. I go with the psyops explanation.
It's possibly a useful smokescreen but there are also legal limits to deliberate public deception by government agencies. The USG has historically deceived the public both, under the protection of the Law and in violation of the Law.
Two citations from the above fascinating article on 'National Security Lies' by Law Professor Floyd R. Gibson:
"The President or other high-ranking Executive Branch official may authorize a known false or materially misleading national security statement if he or she determines such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States."
"Typically, we would not expect the Executive Branch to make false or misleading statements without having been prompted to do so, as silence would obviously accomplish the goal of keeping the existence of such programs from being known by the public. However, when an Executive Branch official finds themselves publicly questioned in a way in which either a truthful response or, critically, a refusal to answer will reveal the secret program, a false or misleading answer may be the only way that the official can continue to conceal the existence of the program."
The instigators of any deception might be guilty of deceiving within government circles, but its the true believers who'd be relied on to deceive the public.
I'm kind of confused about what's going on w.r.t classification. How can it be that Grusch can't comment on the existence of a program without commenting on where that program is and in what department? How is it that he can comment on non human intelligence piloting craft, yet somehow can't comment on any specifics of those intelligences?
Surely the very existence of such a program would be closely guarded and classified, and so revealing that information would be dissemination of classified info right? So either that information is not classified, which beggars belief, Grusch is simply stating his opinions (seems pretty likely to me tbh), or Grusch is confused himself about what constitutes classified info. He seems to think he can comment on the DOPSR cleared stuff; which must mean that DOPSR thought none of that was classified?
If that's as close as he ever got (IF) then it becomes hard to understand how he saw the two little projections described on the underside of the object.
