The IC and all its functionaries are, in fact, beholden to the law of our land, same as every other citizen or organization, related to the government or not.
You're entitled to your opinion as much as me. Nobody can prove our constitutional rights are always respected, alas.
@Tezcatlipoca stated a fact, not an opinion. There is no exception in the constitution for spooks.
The fact is that some IC members will occasionally break the law; this happens in most branches of government and is called 'corruption'.
When
@MapperGuy asked this, "
Can you imagine a worse way to protect secrets than creating a trail of bodies?", my afterthought on posting my reply was that the government breaking the law routinely was part of the "conspiracy theorist starter pack". However, it is my opinion that government comes with so much bureaucratic red tape and paper trails that it is much harder to break the law in government (and not get caught) than it is in the private sector. Even Iran-Contra tried to utilize a legal gray area to not intentionally break the law, and the wikipedia article on "NSA warrantless surveillance" has a long section on legal controversy. Guantanomo Bay prison and the US rendition flights are another operation set up to skirt the law and not outright break it.
What sets these operations apart from conspiracy theories is that a) we know who specifically did it (not just "the IC"), and b) because we know, we can see that the semi-legal operation aligns with the public goals of the agency performing it.
For UFOlogy, we have none of that. We have no agency whose goals encompass analysing NHI artefacts and bodies; and even if we had, we don't have a situation where lawlessness would further these goals. There's simply no reason to do it in secret.
Of course, a conspiracy theorist argues backwards: because there is no evidence, it must be secret; and because it is secret, there must be motivation to keep it secret; but those claimed motivations (e.g. "population panic") don't stand up to analysis—unlike the motivations for the aforementioned real operations.
Take, for example, AAWSAP. This was small-scale corruption: a Senator and his friends using funds for a different purpose than it was allocated for, to pursue a personal agenda. They didn't use government facilities (apart from Elizondo's desk and phone?), and still the project was presumably flagged in some internal review (red tape!) and discontinued. The whole thing way silently dying until Elizondo got his hands on the Navy videos and leaked them, establishing the modern-day "what the government knows but is not telling you" narrative of UFOlogy, which, given how thoroughly debunked those 3 videos are, was still wholly built on imagination.
(Elizondo is good at selling imagination.)
We now have, through the political pressure generated by those conspiracy theorists, actual USG programs tasked with collecting UFO information (first UAPTF, now AARO); they don't operate in secret, they don't break the law, and they find nothing, which, by the aforementioned CT reasoning, is taken as evidence that the secret UFO program is still hidden out there. (I bet it's not.) And with all the UFO whistleblower protections in force now, it shouldn't be hidden! So, again by reverse CT reasoning, it must be hidden because potential whistleblowers fear for their life. If you believe in the hidden UFO program, facts have driven you into that corner, where you now must believe in whistleblower murder squads, or abandon your belief.
I can tell you which belief makes for the better Hollywood plot and everyone's lives more exciting, but unfortunately it's the impossible one. Suspension of disbelief is fine in the cinema, but expensive in reality. The wallpaper in the rabbit hole is nice, but the air outside is healthier.
Grusch's "revelations" didn't change any of that, but with his reputation and publicity, he served as the Pied Piper leading more people deeper into that rabbit hole—wittingly or unwittingly. There's no profit being in that hole, except for those who want you there.
