Many of us might have read thrillers or books about espionage or counter-terrorism, and might be familiar with the "taking a seat facing the door" trope.
That's a practice I have heard most frequently attributed to mob bosses ...or wannabe mob bosses. And if Elizondo mentioned his reason for choosing to sit that way, it sounds as if he was drawing attention to it, cultivating a tough-guy persona or emphasizing his own importance.
I wouldn't attach too much importance to the significance of the word "grey", though, other than the possible choice of a common name. After all, it might actually be his name.
That's a practice I have heard most frequently attributed to mob bosses ...or wannabe mob bosses. And if Elizondo mentioned his reason for choosing to sit that way, it sounds as if he was drawing attention to it, cultivating a tough-guy persona or emphasizing his own importance.
I presume that it's not entirely unrelated to the concept I have for chosing seats in a restaurant or pub - I always sit in the "no stab seats".
I wouldn't attach too much importance to the significance of the word "grey", though, other than the possible choice of a common name. After all, it might actually be his name.
The "greys" connection just jumped out too easily for me too, it's a bit too much of a coincidence to dismiss. However, there's also a third use of the colour that's been overlooked - the grey zone - in international relations, subversive statecraft that's not overtly aggressive. He's a foreign plant! (Maybe an alien, perhaps a triffid?)
I presume that it's not entirely unrelated to the concept I have for chosing seats in a restaurant or pub - I always sit in the "no stab seats".
The "greys" connection just jumped out too easily for me too, it's a bit too much of a coincidence to dismiss. However, there's also a third use of the colour that's been overlooked - the grey zone - in international relations, subversive statecraft that's not overtly aggressive. He's a foreign plant! (Maybe an alien, perhaps a triffid?)
Right now I'm thinking stealth fighter/bomber's a good one, that was about 10 years. And only was revealed because they chose to, and there even was a few years after it was in operations they kept parts of how it worked secret.
Sr-71 was only 4 years in development before it was revealed to the public.
the u-2 spy plane had a lot of secrets but I'm not sure how long they kept them.
I think the longest running secrets are records of everyone who worked at area 51.
I'm interested in trying to have a more detailed database of secrets and how long they have been kept. If we look to the business world, a lot of secrets are kept forever.
One of my favorite secrets that will probably never be revealed is:
Where are those 3 balloons shot down by the US military in 2023?
It's not really clear that they found the three balloons they shot down later; if one of them was that amateur radio balloon, it wasn't very big to begin with.
Article:
Recovery operations concluded Feb. 16 off the coast of South Carolina, after U.S. Navy assets assigned to U.S. Northern Command successfully located and retrieved debris from the high-altitude PRC surveillance balloon shot down Feb. 4, 2023,” reads a statement from NORTHCOM. “Final pieces of debris are being transferred to the [FBI] labratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and subsurface debris recovered. U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels have departed the area. Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted.”
Project A119 or more commonly known as nuking the moon was kept secret for 42 years. Technically it hasn't been ever been admitted by the American government.
Project A119 or more commonly known as nuking the moon was kept secret for 42 years. Technically it hasn't been ever been admitted by the American government.
I'm not sure how to rate that one -- a secret about a project that was never carried out in a program that was cancelled seems easier to keep than a secret about something that was done once (Truman met an Alien, say) or was carried out continually (we have UFOs warehoused in a hanger at Area 51, say). "Do secrets about things that were not in fact carried out need to be graded in a separate category or on a separate scale?" I guess is what I am wondering.
There's still a lot of intelligence related things from WWII that are still classified. Things like actual, definitive evidence that Canaris was a double agent or not, the details of the US intelligence operations inside the Soviet Union, and the transcript of Hess's interrogation. Not exactly mundane things that just escaped declassification out of obscurity, but information that could still have relevance.
Right now I'm thinking stealth fighter/bomber's a good one, that was about 10 years. And only was revealed because they chose to, and there even was a few years after it was in operations they kept parts of how it worked secret.
WIthin a limited, but entirely relevant sphere, the soviets have got you beat by decades. The Molotov-Ribentrop Pact (1939) was unknown behind the iron curtain until the 80s. Sure, it came out in the Nuremburg trials, but the unwashed masses in the east weren't privy to that information. Molotov even denied its existence until his death (as did various Communist parties in supposedly-enlightened western european countries until several decades after the war), despite the Germans having quite well-preserved records of it.
In response to the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German–Soviet relations documents in the State Department edition Nazi–Soviet Relations (1948), Stalin published Falsifiers of History, which included the claim that during the pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world,[252] without mentioning the Soviet offer to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs, and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[252]
I've seen this discussed in many different subjects when people talk about conspiracies and how hard it is to keep a secret under wraps. Here in Sweden (where I'm from) this claimed difficulty of conspiracies to keep secret is usually brought up as an argument against any of the several plausible theories regarding the murder of Olof Palme that in some way depend on more people being involved than a lone gunman.
And that brings me to my example of a large secret that was known to many, many people in several countries and still kept secret for decades, which is the European Stay-Behind networks, of which Operation Gladio in Italy is the most famous. They were basically secret, completely off-the-books guerilla warfare cells that were supposed to "stay behind" in the case of a Soviet invasion to lead a resistance against the occupiers. It was not part of any official military or civilian command structures, because of course you couldn't trust the average soldier or politician to not be a secret communist sympathizer. So naturally the SB groups, from what we know of them, seem to have consisted mostly of convinced anti-communists, far-right extremists and outright Nazi Germany sympathizers who got scared after Germany lost the war. You will still find people who don't know that it existed and have difficulties believing that their own government would allow such a thing.
Basically, for those who don't know, after WWII, the UK and the US saw their former ally the Soviet Union as the largest threat. Using the knowledge and experience they gained setting up clandestine cells in Nazi-occupied countries during WWII, and the British stay-behind network created by Churchill (the Special Operations Executive), they coordinated the creation of Stay Behind-networks in most of the Western European countries. In some countries they set up, recruited, and financed the bulk of the operations themselves through the Western Union and then NATO, in some countries (like Sweden) local interested parties in the government, intelligence community, military, police and wealthy civilians provided most of it themselves (with some help and coordination from NATO and the CIA, because of course the CIA was involved).
These organisations involved thousands of people and were in operation for more than 40 years before it became known to the broader public when Gladio member and far-right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra revealed parts of it in 1984 when he was investigated for several terrorist attacks in Italy which were intended to be false-flags blamed on far-left groups such as the Red Brigades. His testimony led to a larger investigation in Italy and also made politicians in other European countries wonder if there was anything similar set up in their countries (there was). Except for in Italy, nothing much ever came out of it in terms of disclosure to the public. Only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland even had parliamentary inquiries. In Sweden, we know only of a handful of people who have been involved, and that the organisation (according to the Swedish Security Police) finally stopped its activities in 2001-2003, a decade after the Soviet Union had stopped existing, and some people doubt it actually closed down even then, but morphed into a different organisational structure with new priorities. We don't know, because there seems to be absolutely no political will to actually investigate what the hell these people were up to all those years. I'm guessing that is because it would be very bad PR for the Social Democrats, since they were heavily involved and the right wing parties do not care since they openly agreed with the anti-soviet and anti-communist position that led to the formation of the stay-behind networks in the first place.
My point is that governments actually can cover up conspiracies fairly well, when everyone involved is very motivated to do so, even when the conspiracy crosses borders and spans decades. I don't think this is the case with UFOs, there are many other arguments you can make as to why the whole ET/ED visitor angle is BS, but I want the whole "there could never be a conspiracy of this size, they would never be able to keep it secret!" argument to die, since it is demonstrably false. If, against all statistical probabilities, the US, Russia and China actually do have NHI-built crafts, materials and bodies in their custody and want to keep it a secret, I'm more inclined to think that those programs are kept secret enough that official UAP taskforce officals like Grusch would never even come close to the real thing.
If they were recovered, they might be in the same place as the big Chinese spy balloon.
Article:
U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the recovery operations ended Thursday and the final pieces are on their way to the FBI lab in Virginia for analysis.
In this image provided by the FBI, special agents assigned to the evidence response team process material recovered from the high altitude balloon recovered off the coast of South Carolina, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va. FBI via AP
Umh, I might have missed this if it was mentioned earlier in the thread (or on the Grusch DOPSR thread) but I don't think so...
...two similar newspaper stories, I noticed the one from the Daily Express first, but it seems to be, ahem, inspired by a Daily Mail story the preceding day:
Aliens have visited Earth and killed people, claims UFO whistleblower
I mean, this is one hell of a claim, and from what I've read here (and in articles linked to from here) I don't recall Grusch saying that aliens have killed people.
He alleges the U.S. has even retrieved bodies from other species
...
“Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed. Sometimes you encounter dead pilots and believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true,” he said.
This is the text of the Express article (last two sentences omitted as they deal with other claims), emphasis is mine:
David Grusch claims the US has run a top secret UFO retrieval program for decades and alleges that some of the 'non-human intelligences' discovered are malevolent and have killed humans.
Grusch, 36, served 14 years in the US Air Force, where he says he was told about the program by others who were involved.
He is a decorated Afghanistan combat officer who went on to work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
He was the NRO's representative when dealing with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force set up to investigate UFOs.
He claims that the US is in an arms race with Russia and China to understand the extra-terrestrial life.
"I think the logical fallacy there is because they’re advanced, they’re kind," he is reported as saying by the Dail[y] Mail.
[Note, below]
"We’ll never really understand their full intent and that’s because we’re not them.
"But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened. That’s based on nuclear site probing activities and witness testimony.
"While I can’t get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that."
Grusch claimed that the US government would do anything to protect the secret, including killing people itself.
"At the very least, I saw substantive evidence that white-collar crime was committed," he said.
"I’ve heard some really un-American things I don’t want to repeat right now."
He claimed some of the UFOs discovered have been as large as football fields.
[Note]: Daily Mail (MailOnline) "Pentagon UFO whistleblower claims people have been killed by 'non-human intelligences' and says US government will do ANYTHING to protect the secret", 12 June 2023, Jen Smith. Very similar to the Express article; link https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ms-people-killed-non-human-intelligences.html
The earlier Daily Mail account has a few significant extra words (emphasized below),
'While I can’t get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that,' he said, when asked specifically if any had killed humans
-Whereas in the Express article, Grusch's assertion
"...that there were malevolent events like that" could easily be read as following on from
"But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened. That’s based on nuclear site probing activities and witness testimony"
...without any reference to people being killed.
In fact, there's nothing in the Express article that supports the headline "Aliens have visited Earth and killed people, claims UFO whistleblower" and the claim "A Pentagon whistleblower claims that people have been killed by aliens..."
The Mail article's claim (that David Grusch has stated or implied that aliens have killed people), if it relies on the words spoken by Grusch as quoted in the article, is very dependent on the phrase "when asked specifically if any had killed humans".
Is this just manipulative (and frankly dishonest) journalism?
Or has Grusch really claimed/ implied that aliens have killed people?
I think the dodgy journo hypothesis is most likely at the moment.
(Incidentally, I do find this unintentionally funny:
Grusch claimed that the US government would do anything to protect the secret, including killing people itself.
"At the very least, I saw substantive evidence that white-collar crime was committed," he said.
Umh, I might have missed this if it was mentioned earlier in the thread (or on the Grusch DOPSR thread) but I don't think so...
...two similar newspaper stories, I noticed the one from the Daily Express first, but it seems to be, ahem, inspired by a Daily Mail story the preceding day:
Aliens have visited Earth and killed people, claims UFO whistleblower
I mean, this is one hell of a claim, and from what I've read here (and in articles linked to from here) I don't recall Grusch saying that aliens have killed people.
This is the text of the Express article (last two sentences omitted as they deal with other claims), emphasis is mine:
David Grusch claims the US has run a top secret UFO retrieval program for decades and alleges that some of the 'non-human intelligences' discovered are malevolent and have killed humans.
Grusch, 36, served 14 years in the US Air Force, where he says he was told about the program by others who were involved.
He is a decorated Afghanistan combat officer who went on to work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
He was the NRO's representative when dealing with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force set up to investigate UFOs.
He claims that the US is in an arms race with Russia and China to understand the extra-terrestrial life.
"I think the logical fallacy there is because they’re advanced, they’re kind," he is reported as saying by the Dail[y] Mail.
[Note, below]
"We’ll never really understand their full intent and that’s because we’re not them.
"But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened. That’s based on nuclear site probing activities and witness testimony.
"While I can’t get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that."
Grusch claimed that the US government would do anything to protect the secret, including killing people itself.
"At the very least, I saw substantive evidence that white-collar crime was committed," he said.
"I’ve heard some really un-American things I don’t want to repeat right now."
He claimed some of the UFOs discovered have been as large as football fields.
[Note]: Daily Mail (MailOnline) "Pentagon UFO whistleblower claims people have been killed by 'non-human intelligences' and says US government will do ANYTHING to protect the secret", 12 June 2023, Jen Smith. Very similar to the Express article; link https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ms-people-killed-non-human-intelligences.html
The earlier Daily Mail account has a few significant extra words (emphasized below),
'While I can’t get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that,' he said, when asked specifically if any had killed humans
-Whereas in the Express article, Grusch's assertion
"...that there were malevolent events like that" could easily be read as following on from
"But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened. That’s based on nuclear site probing activities and witness testimony"
...without any reference to people being killed.
In fact, there's nothing in the Express article that supports the headline "Aliens have visited Earth and killed people, claims UFO whistleblower" and the claim "A Pentagon whistleblower claims that people have been killed by aliens..."
The Mail article's claim (that David Grusch has stated or implied that aliens have killed people), if it relies on the words spoken by Grusch as quoted in the article, is very dependent on the phrase "when asked specifically if any had killed humans".
Is this just manipulative (and frankly dishonest) journalism?
Or has Grusch really claimed/ implied that aliens have killed people?
I think the dodgy journo hypothesis is most likely at the moment.
(Incidentally, I do find this unintentionally funny:
Grusch claimed that the US government would do anything to protect the secret, including killing people itself.
"At the very least, I saw substantive evidence that white-collar crime was committed," he said.
We do know pilots/aircrew have died while trying to intercept/chasing UFOs. The two that come readily to mind are Mantell (over Kentucky) and the two man crew of the F-89 (over Lake Superior) in the "Kinross Incident." There's also the USAF exchange pilot who crashed into the North Sea chasing a UFO in an RAF Lightning that you might be familiar with. All three are part of ufology lore and claimed by some in the field to have been a result of aggressive actions on the part of UFOs they were looking for/chasing. I wonder if such mishaps are what Grusch and/or the UK tabloid were alluding to?
RC: I've been told that there have been attempts to bring down craft, that we've acted offensively agains non-human craft.
DG: There have been instances and there are certain techniques.
RC: Have numan beings been hurt or killed by a non-human intelligence?
DG: While I can't get into the specifics because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that.
RC: Now I'm really scared: People have just heard you say non-humans may well have murdered human beings!
DG: That seems to be the case at one point, yeah.
Note that the conversation starts with 'our' offensive actions, and Grush adds "at one point, yeah". So there may have been one such case and it may well have been caused by offensive actions from our side.
We do know pilots/aircrew have died while trying to intercept/chasing UFOs. The two that come readily to mind are Mantell (over Kentucky) and the two man crew of the F-89 (over Lake Superior) in the "Kinross Incident." There's also the USAF exchange pilot who crashed into the North Sea chasing a UFO in an RAF Lightning that you might be familiar with. All three are part of ufology lore and claimed by some in the field to have been a result of aggressive actions on the part of UFOs they were looking for/chasing. I wonder if such mishaps are what Grusch and/or the UK tabloid were alluding to?
Yeah, forgot about him. I'm more aware of the three I mentioned since they involved USAF aircrew. There are also the claims of US military killed by aliens in the underground gunfight at Dulce. Don't remember that guy's name.
Bit of a coincidence- I didn't know anything about this until I chanced across a story about it about 2 weeks ago.
Captain William Schaffner, USAF, lost as you describe; the plane retrieved (without Capt. Schaffner) 3 months later.
I think the events have been realistically explained- found an old BBC local news webpage which includes a transcript of the comms involving Capt. Schaffner, his wingman and control. One of Schaffner's sons replied in the "Reader's Comments" section (pretty bad that his response wasn't put in the main article IMHO).
BBC Inside Out, "Yorkshire Alien Abduction" 16 September 2002 https://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/yorkslincs/series1/alien-abduction.shtml
There's still a minor mystery (not minor for his family of course) if we accept the explanation- the canopy was shut. And,
Three weeks later the aircraft was located by Royal Navy divers who said that Captain Schaffner's body was still in the cockpit. However when the aircraft was brought to the surface and returned to [RAF] Binbrook there was no trace of a body.
Valentich was studying part-time to become a commercial pilot but had a poor achievement record, having twice failed all five commercial licence examination subjects, and as recently as the month before his disappearance had failed three more commercial licence subjects. He had been involved in flying incidents, for example, straying into a controlled zone in Sydney, for which he received a warning, and twice deliberately flying into a cloud, for which prosecution was being considered. According to his father, Guido, Valentich was an ardent believer in UFOs and had been worried about being attacked by them.[1]
A 2013 review of the radio transcripts and other data by astronomer and retired United States Air Force pilot James McGaha and author Joe Nickell proposes that the inexperienced Valentich was deceived by the illusion of a tilted horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his aircraft into a downward, so-called "graveyard spiral" which he initially mistook for simple orbiting of the aircraft. According to the authors, the G-forces of a tightening spiral would decrease fuel flow, resulting in the "rough idling" reported by Valentich. McGaha and Nickell also propose that the apparently stationary, overhead lights that Valentich reported were probably the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury, along with the bright star Antares, which would have behaved in a way consistent with Valentich's description.[1]
The inexperienced, visual conditions-only rated pilot getting lost at night is not so much a mystery as a tale of foolishness. And him seeing UFOs is readily explained by him wanting to see UFOs: as always, we don't deny he saw lights, but we doubt he identified them correctly.
I think the events have been realistically explained- found an old BBC local news webpage which includes a transcript of the comms involving Capt. Schaffner, his wingman and control. One of Schaffner's sons replied in the "Reader's Comments" section (pretty bad that his response wasn't put in the main article IMHO).
BBC Inside Out, "Yorkshire Alien Abduction" 16 September 2002 https://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/yorkslincs/series1/alien-abduction.shtml
Michael Schaffner, Ohio, USA
My name is Michael Schaffner. I am the youngest son of Captain William Schaffner. I would like to thank Ian Cundall and the rest of the Inside Out team for helping us put an end to this "mystery". Having read some of the comments that have been posted I would like to take this opportunity to respond.
For many, this has become a complicated question of conspiracy theories, allegations, deceptions and the like.However, I think that this is a situation that best illustrates Ockham's Razor: the simplest answer is usually the best. It is an unusual stretch of the imagination to believe that UFOs and government coverups are responsible for the tragic death of my father. This is especially true having read the Summary Report of the RAF concerning this accident. Contrary to the assertions made by UFO "enthusiasts", it is far simpler, and more logical, to understand these events in their factual context.
My father simply did not notice that he had lost altitude while trying to decelerate to the proper intercept vector. Given the inclement weather, poor instructions, improper training, and overall stress of flying at high speed and high G, it is no stretch of the imagination to believe that he simply made a mistake. I am completely satisfied that my father died because of a chain of unfortunate events, none of which had anything to do with someone's subjective need to believe in UFO's.
Although I do not doubt that there is life outside of our terrestrial realm, there has been no substantial evidence demonstrated by these "enthusiasts," such as Tony Dodd, to support their claims concerning my father. Not one single, solitary shred of objective proof. I challenge any of these enthusiasts to support any element of their claim with germaine evidence. Their assertions that "they will (n)ever get to the bottom of what happend because the RAF will never accept that a UFO could be involved," is only begging the question. They should be ashamed to call themselves UFOlogists, a name that insinuates professionalism and qualified academic study. I would suggest that they are no more qualified to study UFOs than the average public school student. To say anything more is a waste of breath.
To those of you who still doubt, rest assured that there is no story here. Only the tragic death of a beloved father who is truly missed and who will never be forgotten.
We do know pilots/aircrew have died while trying to intercept/chasing UFOs. The two that come readily to mind are Mantell (over Kentucky) and the two man crew of the F-89 (over Lake Superior) in the "Kinross Incident."
Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen; his plane went into a downward spiral and crashed.
That's hard to subsume under "human beings hurt or killed by a non-human intelligence".
The Kinross incident is the genuine mystery in this list; there's simply not enough information to go on to be certain what happened. What we can say, taking Schaffner and Valentych into account, is that flying at night alone over open water is dangerous. And it doesn't require extraterrestrial intervention for that to be true.
Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen; his plane went into a downward spiral and crashed.
That's hard to subsume under "human beings hurt or killed by a non-human intelligence".
Nope. There are still those who believe the stories about Mantell's last radio calls about seeing aliens in the craft, reports by witnesses (including his wingman) that the craft fired on and disintegrated Mantell's Mustang in midair, and that Mantell's horribly mutilated body was found in the crash.
Some claimed the F-89 pilot crashed after suffering vertigo. I think he may have stalled his aircraft trying to slow down enough to identify the wayward, low and slow RCAF C-47 he was scrambled to intercept. The F-89 was a big, underpowered beast not known for it handling qualities or nimbleness.
Regardless of how/why these men truly died, the more lurid lore surrounding their deaths has been around for a long time. Not saying it makes sense, just that it is.
Except he did not report seeing lights, but an 'aircraft' with a long shape which was very fast and had a shiny metallic surface..
As always, the pilot's observations are reduced to 'lights' and subsequently mapped onto celestial objects, followed by a statement that their observations 'match' the constellation of said celestial objects, happily ignoring he actually reported a fast moving 'aircraft' with an elongated shape and a shiny metallic surface.
But the Valentich case is not the topic of this thread so I'll stop discussing it here.
I mean, this is one hell of a claim, and from what I've read here (and in articles linked to from here) I don't recall Grusch saying that aliens have killed people.
Here's Davis' reaction when he was asked about it:
It contains notes he (Dr. Eric W. Davis) allegedly made from a 2002 Meeting with VADM Thomas R. Wilson.
Wilson tells him he was refused access to a SAP. According to the program manager of that SAP:
Here's Davis' reaction when he was asked about it:
It contains notes he (Dr. Eric W. Davis) allegedly made from a 2002 Meeting with VADM Thomas R. Wilson.
Wilson tells him he was refused access to a SAP. According to the program manager of that SAP:
I'm surprised this case still draws discussion, I thought discussing this case was like beating a dead horse. I followed the whole detailed breakdown on it done by John Greenewald Jr. where he gets to a "nothing burger" conclusion about it (in other words no evidence offered as proof to back it up).
The admiral at the center of controversial notes describing his inability to access a classified UFO research program says the documents are bogus. Furthermore, he says the alleged author of those notes, physicist Dr. Eric Davis, never interviewed him.”
I'm surprised this case still draws discussion, I thought discussing this case was like beating a dead horse. I followed the whole detailed breakdown on it done by John Greenewald Jr. where he gets to a "nothing burger" conclusion about it (in other words no evidence offered as proof to back it up).
I know. That's why I am surprised it is now available on the Congress' website. Maybe the 'horse is being resurrected' in light of Grusch' testimony? If it was simply a fake, I would have expected a different reaction from Davis.
[speculation] Progress is hindered by secrecy according to the Wilson-David memo. What if there is some concern that the Chinese made more progress on this than the US? That some of these strange spheres - seen 'all over the world' according to Kirkpatrick - are suspected to be Chinese? That would probably put growing pressure on the reverse engineering program to lift the veil of secrecy in order to mobilize the collective scientific brains of the country. [/speculation]
While I don't believe for a minute the Dr Davis/Adm Wilson tale is true, I can certainly believe someone like the admiral in question would react as is claimed in the narrative. In the military, especially at that level, knowledge is power personified. To say it another way, lack of knowledge is a seen as a weakness and defines someone's relative standing in the system. No one wants to admit he's not "in the know," particularly someone who considers the effort being withheld to be within his official purview. At that level, senior leaders are very protective of their responsibilities/authority as it usually ties directly into budget appropriations and control. "Egos and rice bowls" is the phrase used in the DoD.
edit:
Rice Bowl---A jealously defended institutional resource such as a program, project, or budget.
Big claims indeed! Though also a rather standard one. One of the things I always felt would lead some credence to this notion involves the reverse-engineering claim of alien technology:
“His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence,”
It seems this would be an easy bit of evidence to provide. If there has been reverse-engineering of alien technology for the past 80 years, what are a few examples? None are ever giving. I've heard the transistor or the computer chip in the past, but the origin and development of these can be traced back. Same with space flight, stealth technology, CAD/CNC and so on.
There has never been a valid example of some technological "breakthrough" that didn't have appropriate antecedents. An iPhone14Pro can be traced back to Wozniak's garage in the early '70s. Step by incremental step.
I suppose the argument would be that whatever was reverse engineered is still classified. For 80 years? And if that's the case, we're talking about classified craft of unknown origin that were used to create classified technology, so there is nothing to go on, except claims of such classified things.
This is not a strong argument. Brutally, **an attempt to reverse engineer and success in doing so are two very different things: you can NOT prove that an attempt wasn’t made via the absence of a success!** Many things were attempted for centuries without success: they were still attempted, yes?
And this isn’t just my being fussy with the rules of logic. If ufos are products of a technology that can travel interstellar distances, I dont think any sane person would expect the technology to be reverse engineered in anything less than centuries. Imagine you gave an iPhone to Issac Newton: what would he learn from it???
I don’t think anyone has really addressed the big problem with these claims. Which is that that the aliens are so clumsy that the USA alone has “quite a number” of ufos in its collection, which implies a global number of crashes and captures in the scores (yes, I know that Americans tend to forget the rest of the world exists - but it still does.) And at the same time the aliens are so superbly competent no one has ever managed to get a decent photograph. This is, of course, an extraordinary claim. Photographs should be hundreds of times more common than crashes or captures. This doesn’t easily make sense.
Also, the whole idea of aliens observing from low altitude in manned - well, aliened - craft seems bizarre. If they can get here, their tech should be thousands of years ahead of ours. So why are they behaving like it’s world war 2? Why buzz f18s instead of sprinkling nano bots and infiltrating computer systems? Big question.
While you may not think much of some interview/interrogation techniques and analysis (including body language), they are fairly standardized and taught to professional investigators, law enforcement, lawyers, physicians etc. These processes aren't perfect or foolproof, and some are better at applying them than others, but they are good indicators of inconsistencies, deceptions, and outright lies. In any event, conclusions reached using these techniques aren't a means to an end, they still must be proven.
This is a classic example of junk ”evidence.” Yes, perhaps such techniques are taught to a very small minority of physicians and lawyers. Why aren’t they universally taught? Because they are junk. As for law enforcement, law enforcement does a lot of stupid things - eg tge whole USA suspect interviewing system was rejected decades ago in the UK because it produces false confessions…
>However, the link between honesty/dishonesty and body language is tenuous. Meta-analyses and experimental studies in the field of deception detection found that neither verbal nor non-verbal cues act as reliable predictors of deception.
Ie it is junk. And, yes, some cops and lawyers will still use it. Because some cops and lawyers are lazy and not as smart as they should be. If you are going to say that anything that some cops do is right, then you have just endorsed racism, perjury, corruption, alcoholism and spouse abuse.
He would recognise that it was a deliberately-manufactured artefact.
The accounts of his life and achievements indicate that he would show others, who would be free to make their own observations and notes.
Supposition: the 'phone would be described and archived in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, available to generations of scholars
The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.
The symbols on the keys would tell him that the user used Latin script and Arabic numerals (in the sense that we describe "our" letters and numbers as such- contemporary Arabic numerals are different to contemporary "European" numerals).
Markings on some internal components would further support this.
He would be intrigued by the tiny lenses. I'm sure he would study them.
If the 'phone was functional, charged and unlocked, Newton would find that manipulating the keys caused the display to change. He would probably find further evidence for the language of the user (or the 'phone's intended user).
He might work out that the battery was a power-source and that the 'phone only worked when the battery is connected.
He might find that the 'phone could generate sounds, and might identify the components responsible.
If the battery were identified as a power-source, Newton might have successfully identified connections (even without any assumptions regarding electricity) and deduced that the discrete components within the 'phone somehow manipulated that power to enable the device to fulfil its aims. I doubt if he could have deduced much about the 'contents' of integrated circuits.
And Newton would probably "invent" the Phillips screwdriver.
But we are not in Newton's position.
We have spectrometry, X-ray crystallography, scanning electron microscopy, and people who can use these techniques effectively.
We have the ability to share images of, and data about an artefact on an arbitrarily wide scale if we want to.
We have a much better understanding of chemistry and physics (thanks to people like Newton).
The structure and composition of any conventional matter, down to the scale of individual molecules (and arguably atoms) can be found if we really want to. Of course, if we found artefacts made of, or including, "exotic" matter, that would point to an unusual origin.
Clumps of slag or bits of wire comprised of alloy which don't have the constituent metal ratios found in a cursory search of US alloy manufacturer's catalogues are not exotic matter, nor do they in any way whatsoever indicate a non-terrestrial origin.
Sorry, Avi Loeb
Also, the whole idea of aliens observing from low altitude in manned - well, aliened - craft seems bizarre. If they can get here, their tech should be thousands of years ahead of ours. So why are they behaving like it’s world war 2? Why buzz f18s instead of sprinkling nano bots and infiltrating computer systems? Big question.
I actually agree with you but there are many reasons one could think of why they hypothetically may prefer to observe physically rather than via proxy like ''nano bots''. But to assume that just because they are technologically thousands of years ahead of us means they must understand our technology is a logical fallacy in itself. For example, we are much smarter and more technologically advanced than a 'ant' but we are unable to hack into an ant's antenna systems and communicate to other ants, neither do we fully understand the behaviour of certain animals and how they communicate with each other.
Our idea of aliens ultimately comes down the amazing ability of the human mind to invent what he sees based on the technology and culture of the time period, just like in the medieval times there were sightings of supposed 'dragons' and flying boats/ships in the sky, in the late 1800s there were people that saw flying 'airships'. There are never any sightings of flying saucers pre-1930s.
So why do we assume aliens would observe from low altitude in manned craft? It's because it's what we would do.
In Grusch's particular situation, I can accept he is being truthful to the point of believing/recounting what he claims he was told, but to date I've seen no evidence to prove what he claims. Nor do I expect to.
On another note, just out of curiosity, do you have some knowledge about the level of David Schindele's involvement with ufology, if any?
You know, he's a retired U.S. Air Force captain involved in an alleged UFO incident at a missile launch control center in the Minot missile field in 1966. He's just yet another one more of them coming forward in defence of Grusch -- he has “nothing but tremendous gratitude, admiration and respect for UFO whistleblower David Grusch”, and is one more coming up with extraordinary claims without any evidence to support them. I just can't stop wondering, what in the world these people actually have in mind when coming forward only to continue making such inconsequential statements?? Oh well...
I don’t think anyone has really addressed the big problem with these claims. Which is that that the aliens are so clumsy that the USA alone has “quite a number” of ufos in its collection, which implies a global number of crashes and captures in the scores (yes, I know that Americans tend to forget the rest of the world exists - but it still does.) And at the same time the aliens are so superbly competent no one has ever managed to get a decent photograph. This is, of course, an extraordinary claim. Photographs should be hundreds of times more common than crashes or captures. This doesn’t easily make sense.
At around 10:20 Mick uses a comparison to our current number of planes/crashes, and extrapolates that since they would likely be safer than us, then there would have to be hundreds out thousands of uaps flying around in the sky everyday to crash at this rate.
On another note, just out of curiosity, do you have some knowledge about the level of David Schindele's involvement with ufology, if any?
You know, he's a retired U.S. Air Force captain involved in an alleged UFO incident at a missile launch control center in the Minot missile field in 1966. He's just yet another one more of them coming forward in defence of Grusch -- he has “nothing but tremendous gratitude, admiration and respect for UFO whistleblower David Grusch”, and is one more coming up with extraordinary claims without any evidence to support them. I just can't stop wondering, what in the world these people actually have in mind when coming forward only to continue making such inconsequential statements?? Oh well...
He would recognise that it was a deliberately-manufactured artefact.
The accounts of his life and achievements indicate that he would show others, who would be free to make their own observations and notes.
Supposition: the 'phone would be described and archived in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, available to generations of scholars
The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.
The symbols on the keys would tell him that the user used Latin script and Arabic numerals (in the sense that we describe "our" letters and numbers as such- contemporary Arabic numerals are different to contemporary "European" numerals).
Markings on some internal components would further support this.
He would be intrigued by the tiny lenses. I'm sure he would study them.
If the 'phone was functional, charged and unlocked, Newton would find that manipulating the keys caused the display to change. He would probably find further evidence for the language of the user (or the 'phone's intended user).
He might work out that the battery was a power-source and that the 'phone only worked when the battery is connected.
He might find that the 'phone could generate sounds, and might identify the components responsible.
If the battery were identified as a power-source, Newton might have successfully identified connections (even without any assumptions regarding electricity) and deduced that the discrete components within the 'phone somehow manipulated that power to enable the device to fulfil its aims. I doubt if he could have deduced much about the 'contents' of integrated circuits.
And Newton would probably "invent" the Phillips screwdriver.
But we are not in Newton's position.
We have spectrometry, X-ray crystallography, scanning electron microscopy, and people who can use these techniques effectively.
We have the ability to share images of, and data about an artefact on an arbitrarily wide scale if we want to.
We have a much better understanding of chemistry and physics (thanks to people like Newton).
The structure and composition of any conventional matter, down to the scale of individual molecules (and arguably atoms) can be found if we really want to. Of course, if we found artefacts made of, or including, "exotic" matter, that would point to an unusual origin.
Clumps of slag or bits of wire comprised of alloy which don't have the constituent metal ratios found in a cursory search of US alloy manufacturer's catalogues are not exotic matter, nor do they in any way whatsoever indicate a non-terrestrial origin.
Sorry, Avi Loeb
Firstly, no, you can’t assume that Newton would have told the public about the iPhone. National security and intelligence, as shocking as this may be to you, were already concepts known to Stuart England - there is a very interesting example in the suppression of experimental catamaran technology, and another in the role of superior Parlimentarian code breaking techniques in the Civil War.
As for Phillips screws, you have hit on one of the worst examples possible. You obviously don’t know anything about screws - I am shocked! - but they were at the centre of the precision engineering revolution. You can‘t usefully make them until you very advanced lathes and you can’t deduce the construction of such a lathe from looking at a screw. And also the Phillips is bloody pointless unless screws are being torqued by machines - the whole point is that it feeds easily but torques out automatically. So, no, Newton wouldn’t have been stupid enough to copy it. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Good_Turn_(book) He might, being really brilliant, deduce that the screw was meant for assembly by some kind of advanced machine, especially as the precision in tge screws would already imply such technology. **But again, he would have no clue at all that would let him produce modern screws.**
As for detecting electricity… If the phone was in good shape, yes. But so what? The phone doesn’t provide a clue that lets you manufacture a battery or generator accessible to your technology level.
And, no, assuming that you can point a spectrometer at anything and Its Secrets Shall Be Revealed is not an intelligent assumption. Technology thousands of years in advance of ours might use quantum information effects or god knows what we simply have no idea exist. And - again! - even we can detect something, that doesn’t mean we can understand it in a useful way. You can’t understand how to make precise screws from looking at - for that you need the screw making machine.
