(1) As per
@NorCal Dave 's
post #32 and other evidence for prior camaraderie with firebrand ufologists, there's good reason to doubt Grusch's sincerity behind his statement "
I agreed to join the UAPTF, hopefully to confirm a negative to prove this was all misidentification, witness error, or a flight of fantasy". It's plausible he's been in touch with Lou Elizondo at least since the 2017 NYT article whilst both Lou and Grusch were serving under the DoD.
(2) It's a common trope for a firebrand believer of any persuasion to accentuate they were skeptics before. This allows them to cast themselves as sensible scientifically-minded people merely following the evidence wherever it leads, and to highlight the credibility of the body of evidence that allegedly exists.
(3) Speaking from my own experience, in modern militaries and government agencies an official's security clearance level concerns the maximum security clearance level to classified information s(he) has
on a need-to-know basis and to
a type of classified information necessary for the discharge of their specific assigned duties. In other words, you may boast the highest security clearance level available whilst remaining legally forbidden to access even lower level classified information which is unrelated to your mission / assigned tasks.
(4) Having collaborated closely with whistleblowing mechanisms within organizations in both the public and the corporate sectors, I've often heard the complaint that most of the 'whistleblowing' turns out to be noise rather than signal, often stemming from personal grievance and dissatisfaction rather than genuine wrongdoing or abuses within the organization. Hence the personnel tasked to serve on these support mechanisms are often overworked separating the wheat from the chaff. And yet it remains an important task albeit often frustrating to listen to employees gossiping about other employees and slinging mud on people they don't like, whilst falsely calling it 'whistleblowing'.
(5) To repeat what
@Mendel wrote in
post #7 and
@Mick West in
post #29, the IC IG Monheim's office, and further possible formal proceedings, seem to be legally only concerned with whether or not security clearances have been withheld from Grusch illegitimately and in reprisal. Not with whether or not the DoD is illegitimately withholding evidence for aliens.
(6) However, contrary to the suggestion in
post #19, the DoD IG has a legitimate reason to alert the DoD on a potential leaker of classified information as per the following point 7, despite Grusch approaching the DoD IG confidentially as a self-styled whistleblower. The subsequent turn of events is unfortunate since the DoD IG's dutiful discharge of his over-arching mandate to act in the interest of national security (to alert the DoD of a loose cannon in information security) was bound to be taken as a personal betrayal by Grusch who approached him in confidence.
(7) Snooping around classified programs within the DoD with a mission to uncover epic secrets is bound not only to raise eyebrows but to be deemed as posing a legitimate national security risk, entirely irrespective of whether these programs involve aliens or not. As a result, such risky DoD personnel are destined to have their security clearances restricted, and thereby to become emboldened in their belief in a cover-up, to 'resign' and to go public. It's a bit of a vicious circle.
Yet the only reprisal and retaliation that's occurring and unfolding before us is actually on Grusch's side against the DoD. Which makes this whole case Elizondo Part 2.
