Many High-Ranking People Have Confirmed Existence of Secret UFO Programs. Who Has Already Made Similar Claims?

[Amathia]

Whilst I agree with what you wrote in the above about various reasons to believe in extraordinary things, there's no evidence the ratio of UFO believers amongst the intelligence community is any higher than anywhere else. The seemingly 'high ratio' is an observer error created by media coverage and the ufologist college pushing for that coverage. What seems obvious is that those from the IC who have "come out of the closet" are (a) no longer IC members (which may be indicative of the vast majority being not like them and considering it a career-ending move), and (b) very important for the ufologist cause to highlight as "former intelligence officers" to give their narrative an air of plausibility.

You won't see Knapp or Corbell at any UFO hearings sitting behind Bill the Contracted Plumber who claims to have seen shit at a USAF facility.

P.S. Oh well, as a plumber that's probably precisely what he's seen as I look back at my hasty fecal phraseology.

Right, though I wasn't so much suggesting that the ratio of UFO believers may be higher but rather proneness to conspiratorial thinking generally. Like you said, I don't think there's any evidence for that, but lack of evidence is sometimes due to lack of study in an area rather than studies failing to find evidence.

I'm obviously just speculating out loud here. Anjali's tweet made me wonder if the "circles" she's referring to happen to be the same ones Grusch was influenced by.

It's also just disconcerting to think people who work in the intelligence community might read a report from China saying they've found hostile NHIs on the dark side of the moon and believe said reports.

I suppose the explanation may simply be that you can be good at your assigned task but be terrible at others. Anjali herself has said her role while working for the intelligence community involved doing research on foreign leaders in an attempt to better understand and thereby influence them to further US interests.

Being good at that kind of task doesn't necessarily give you any kind of critical thinking skills to immunize you from believing obvious nonsense like NHIs on the moon, so just like the agencies themselves, our critical faculties themselves are compartmentalized and excellence in one ability doesn't always transfer to other domains.

 

[JMartJr]

"Secret Nazi Base on the Moon" has almost as long a history as it is possible to have, going back at least to 1947 when Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" was published.


Going into the plot in detail is not relevant here, but it's a classic Heinlein "juvenile" novel with Upstanding American Boys building a whiz-bang rocket and going to the moon, only to discover that post-war Nazis are hiding out there.

I don't know of an earlier iteration of "the Nazis survive in a base on the moon," if this is indeed the first appearance of the meme it is worth noting its origin in fiction.

 

[Amathia]

"Secret Nazi Base on the Moon" has almost as long a history as it is possible to have, going back at least to 1947 when Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" was published.


Going into the plot in detail is not relevant here, but it's a classic Heinlein "juvenile" novel with Upstanding American Boys building a whiz-bang rocket and going to the moon, only to discover that post-war Nazis are hiding out there.

I don't know of an earlier iteration of "the Nazis survive in a base on the moon," if this is indeed the first appearance of the meme it is worth noting its origin in fiction.

Since this is about Nazis rather than NHIs, would anyone happen to know how far the history of those claims go?

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

@Tezcatlipoca mentioned James Jesus Angleton as an example of that.

Thank you for checking me that day on linking incorrectly.

Some issues may not reach the extent like Angleton where it skewed more towards a mental health topic too, important to note. The truth is, they're provided tools to do their job, these tools can easily be just as harmful if applied wrong, if the data being put into them is skewed, etc. Kind of a reverse of the Angleton form where instead improper use breeds it, not due to paranoia, etc, but due to faulty analysis.

Without writing a wall out to visualize an example, something as simple as how a question is worded, or keeping a single data point instead of splitting it into 2-3 when it'd be better for analysis, can alter the entire conclusion of your analysis. There are a lot of personal matters behind this, like personal biases, knowledge of specific events or subjects, etc; the tools help you manage them, they do not inoculate you against them.

There is a very real possibility in some cases that the people may not have "slipped" like Angleton, but rather be applying the tools inaccurately and coming to faulty conclusions. This is why things like A Team / B Team analysis exist, and why for example AARO has an analytical team that analyzes the products of the A Team / B Team system they have.

Analysts have specialties too, no one's a mega analyst. There are at least 6 distinct sub-fields of analysis geared towards different types of deception, that come with their own tools and sets of knowledge etc. Those sub-fields are mostly small and host their own analytical tools due to issues some can have. As an example, a mainstay Structured Analytical Technique, Analysis of Competing Hypothesis, which was created to counter deception in analysis, was discovered to make some analysis more prone to coordinated deception efforts. Due to that a new form was made called ACH - Counter Deception to specifically use in events where there is believed to be a more coordinated deception effort going on, this is not a very commonly taught technique outside the relatively small fields that deal with dedicated analysis of deception. Instead the normal ACH and a form called ACH-Subjective Logic are the most predominate.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/VASTcontest06/paper126.pdf

 

[Alexandria Nick]

I'm just over here trying to figure out what sort of ridiculous granularity you need to justify 28(!!!) additional levels of classification on top what we're already using.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Since this is about Nazis rather than NHIs, would anyone happen to know how far the history of those claims go?

One of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories from 1835 has a two-foot-tall moon man with gray hair in a chinese pigtail and no ears. I think that would count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unparalleled_Adventure_of_One_Hans_Pfaall

 

[Mendel]

Since this is about Nazis rather than NHIs, would anyone happen to know how far the history of those claims go?

The moon itself has been considered a NHI for millennia.

Article:

A lunar deity is a deity who represents the Moon, or an aspect of it. Lunar deities and Moon worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_deities

 

[Duke]

One of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories from 1835 has a two-foot-tall moon man with gray hair in a chinese pigtail and no ears. I think that would count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unparalleled_Adventure_of_One_Hans_Pfaall

That Poe story predates H.G. Wells' book "First Men in the Moon" by 65 years, will have to look that up.

The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford; and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites".

Content from External Source

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon

 

[Amathia]

That Poe story predates H.G. Wells' book "First Men in the Moon" by 65 years, will have to look that up.

The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford; and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites".

Content from External Source

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon

When I read the description my first thought was "this reads like the scifi inverse of Journey to the Center of the Earth". Sounds super up my alley and definitely gotta check it out too.

 

[Amathia]

The moon itself has been considered a NHI for millennia.

Article:

A lunar deity is a deity who represents the Moon, or an aspect of it. Lunar deities and Moon worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_deities

Sure. Maybe I should rephrase the question to the history of such claims within contemporary Ufology since the claim Anjali was referencing in her tweet seem to belong to that "genre", which is quite a bit removed from the more spiritual and esoteric moon worship and lunar deities stuff you're talking about.

 

[Mendel]

Sure. Maybe I should rephrase the question to the history of such claims within contemporary Ufology since the claim Anjali was referencing in her tweet seem to belong to that "genre", which is quite a bit removed from the more spiritual and esoteric moon worship and lunar deities stuff you're talking about.

Sure.

Article:

A True Story (Ancient Greek: Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata; Latin: Vera Historia or Latin: Verae Historiae), also translated as True History, is a long novella or short novel[1] written in the second century AD by the Syrian author Lucian of Samosata.

Shortly after leaving the island, they are caught up by a whirlwind and taken to the Moon,[10][12] where they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between Endymion the king of the Moon and Phaethon the king of the Sun over colonization of the Morning Star.[10][13][14] Both armies include bizarre hybrid lifeforms.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story

I expect something like centaurs and such.

 

[Duke]

When I read the description my first thought was "this reads like the scifi inverse of Journey to the Center of the Earth". Sounds super up my alley and definitely gotta check it out too.

There was a silent film made of "First Man in the Moon" back in the day. I took a history of film class in college where the movie was discussed, supposedly this was the first science fiction movie ever made. Or at least the first made dealing with space travel.

 

[LilWabbit]

Right, though I wasn't so much suggesting that the ratio of UFO believers may be higher but rather proneness to conspiratorial thinking generally. Like you said, I don't think there's any evidence for that, but lack of evidence is sometimes due to lack of study in an area rather than studies failing to find evidence.

I'm obviously just speculating out loud here. Anjali's tweet made me wonder if the "circles" she's referring to happen to be the same ones Grusch was influenced by.

It's also just disconcerting to think people who work in the intelligence community might read a report from China saying they've found hostile NHIs on the dark side of the moon and believe said reports.

The problem here is with the misleading term "intelligence community" used by military outsiders.

There's no such thing as a centralized "intelligence community" within most military establishments, modern or not. Intelligence is a decentralized military staff function that cuts across DoD’s core organization in almost every branch and at every level, along with other staff functions such as logistics, operations, training and planning. You can be an intelligence officer at the joint staff level (J-2), an air force intelligence officer at the division level (A-2), an army intelligence officer at the battalion level (S-2). Most modern militaries use these same exact number-designations. The 2-numbered military personnel (which could all be broadly called intel officers) number in the tens of thousands in a huge establishment such as the DoD. They work intimately alongside operations officers, logistics officers, planning officers, training officers and are very much an organic part of every unit rather than forming some separate secretive 'state within a state' parallel structure. As a cross-cutting function across the entire DoD, they're so common and so normal as to entirely demystify the term "intelligence officer" which, unfortunately, is deliberately used as a trope to gain outside credibility and drum one's chest. Grusch and Elizondo are doing precisely that, whereas the naval aviator Brian Burke in Mick's interview warns about exactly this tendency and considers it a red flag when a military officer or a former one employs this trope.

Article:

G-2 refers to the military intelligence staff in the United States Army at the Divisional Level and above.[1] The position is generally headed by a Lieutenant General. It is contrasted with G–1 (personnel), G–3 (operations), G–4 (logistics),[2] G-5 (planning), G-6 (network), G-7 (training), G-8 (finance), and G-9 (civil-military operations).[3][2] These "G" sections have counterparts in other branches of the service, with the U.S. Navy using an N– designation, the U.S. Air Force using the A- designation, and the Joint Staff using the J- designation.[1] It is the higher level function of the S-2 (intelligence) with the "S" signifying intelligence directorates at the battalion or brigade level.[2]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-2_(intelligence)

In sum, there's no easily defined and specialized 'way of thinking' amongst military intel officers as opposed to their more centralized counterparts on the civilian side.

 

[JMartJr]

Since this is about Nazis rather than NHIs, would anyone happen to know how far the history of those claims go?

Let's see -- I got Cyrano de Bergerac's comic novels about trying to fly to the moon to meet the civilization living there. Published posthumously in 1657.

Frances Godwin's "The Man in the Moone" was published posthumously in 1638, where Our Hero eventually gets to the moone and discovers it inhabited by tall Christians in the habit of swapping their naughty children for nice Earth children.

In Kepler's "Somnium," the moon is inhabited by daemons who live in the shadows and rush to Earth during lunar eclipses. Written in 1608, published posthumously in 1634.

Had not noticed before that string of posthumous publications -- apparently writing books about mooninites was extremely hazardous back in the day...

Last minute update: Lucian's "A True Story" or "True History" has the hero at one point carried to the moon by a whirlwind, where he encounters half women half grapevine beings from whom a kiss would cause drunkenness, and men who reproduce by growing babies in their calves, and get's embroiled in a war between the people of the Moon and the Sun. Lucian lived in the 2nd century CE. If there is an earlier story about NHIs on the moon, I'll leave it for somebody else to go find...

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Taken together, there are many logical contradictions in the generic and oft repeated stories that lie behind these claims - first stereotypical example:

"the UFO crashed and we found alien bodies inside" vs "the UFO was seamless, no evidence of damage, nothing could cut it open, or scan inside"

So I suppose we are being visited by more than one alien civilization, and maybe they are in conflict with each other (to explain the crashing and differences in technology). And why in the vastness of space would their conflict happen near Earth? Because we must have something that they want (despite the many unoccupied planets and asteroids with any number of natural resources - even within our own solar system).

So it must be the specific life on Earth that they want (despite likely having the technology to clone any form of life they sample - they must prefer "free range" products, with a particular fetish for fresh cow blood apparently).

So humans must be wanted as slaves of course! (despite their robotics and AI likely being far superior and durable to any ignorant and flimsy human with incompatible biology - these aliens must be particularly sadistic).

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Second and third stereotypical example:

"we have a secret UFO and corpse retrieval program and aliens visit us all the time" (and somehow they never ask for the return of their property or people) vs "the UFOs are deliberately crashed on Earth so we can learn from them" (as though that is a remotely sensible thing to do).

Thousands of people over multiple decades, governments and nations being able to successfully hide ALL of the evidence goes beyond stretching belief.

"we can't even begin to understand this alien technology" vs "our study of alien technology has secretly been responsible for significant technological advancements for decades"

So I suppose "they" have been very careful to only disclose new tech that can plausibly be developed from our existing tech to avoid our international peer-reviewing scientific community from smelling a rat. But couldn't such new tech have been plausibly developed by humans anyway?

And why then has human exploration of space stalled for 50 years? During the height of the Apollo space program it was thought we'd have a base on the moon and be mining it in a few decades, and exploring Mars soon after (as in the alternate history of the TV series "For All Mankind").

Another well known conspiracy explains our stalled human exploration of the moon was because aliens had a base on the "dark side" and secretly told us to stay away (for some reason they waited until after we had landed six Apollo missions first). And some believers continue to claim ALL our photos of the moon are doctored to conceal the evidence. Apparently these aliens kindly offered to move out and remove all evidence, because we are about to continue human exploration with the Artemis space program!

In reference to the title of this thread, fantastic claims without evidence do not constitute "confirmation" of anything, and until proven otherwise these will remain squarely in the realm of fantasy.

I enjoy fantasy as long as it is recognized for what it is.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

"we have a secret UFO and corpse retrieval program and aliens visit us all the time" (and somehow they never ask for the return of their property or people) vs "the UFOs are deliberately crashed on Earth so we can learn from them" (as though that is a remotely sensible thing to do).


"we can't even begin to understand this alien technology" vs "our study of alien technology has secretly been responsible for significant technological advancements for decades"

To be fair, I don't see these things as contradictory or irrational. Both statements and both halves of each statement can apply to the industrial world and the Sentinelese people.

They have a metal retrieval program and we never attempt to retrieve materials accidentally left behind or that otherwise arrive during our observations of them. We have also left metal objects intentionally, so that we can observe their use of them and we can also use them as a sign of friendship by not attempting to retrieve them. They have extremely limited understanding of metallurgy, being limited to cold working metal, and primarily iron. It is likely they do not understand the technology behind refining ores into finished alloys. Yet the arrival of steel and aluminum on the island was a major advance for them.

 

[NorCal Dave]

So I suppose "they" have been very careful to only disclose new tech that can plausibly be developed from our existing tech to avoid our international peer-reviewing scientific community from smelling a rat. But couldn't such new tech have been plausibly developed by humans anyway?

I've always thought this was a good rebuttal of the revere engineered claim. UFOlogist rarely give examples and if they do it because they are ignorant of how their example actually came about. The microchip in my phone is pretty magical and I have no idea how it works or how to make it, but in a few hours of research I'm sure I can find a complete history of said chip and its antecedents.

 

[tintintintin]

Going a bit back on topic, the name Karl E. Nell is missing from the list of people making these claims. According to the debrief

[Nell is] a recently retired Army Colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch.

“His [Grusch's] 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,” said Karl Nell

Content from External Source

And his own Linkedin bio states experience both inside the DoD and the defense industry.

Vice President & General Manager with >25-years of progressive P&L leadership in top-tier / FORTUNE 500 firms: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Lockheed Missiles & Space, Northrop Grumman / TASC, CACI, ENSCO. Actualizes Board initiatives creating $250(+)-million revenue streams in IC, DoD, Fed-Civ markets. Proven success achieving operational excellence, new-growth, and business transformation in diverse, high-end aerospace R&D, large-scale integrated solutions, and SE&I advisory services. Distinguished Fellow, Congressionally-chartered IT Acquisition Advisory Council (IT-AAC). Ivy League graduate, multi-disciplinary engineer, certified-PMP®, published author, War College alumni, and successful Brigade Commander supporting XVIII Airborne Corps and JSOC.

Content from External Source

 

[Alien Chess Fiend]

Hadn't heard this name before and a search here doesn't find it.

[Coulthart]: Are you able to confirm to me that the US has been trying to develop recovered alien technology?

[Kobitz]: Yes, I can say that's so.

— Nat Kobitz

Director of US Navy Science and Technology Development

2020 | In Plain Sight, p. 282

Content from External Source

https://www.uap.guide/quotes/USG-may-have-materials

Source is a "UAP Guide" linked from Americans for Safe Aerospace: https://www.safeaerospace.org/#learn

Kobitz died in 2020 not long after Coulthart claims to have talked to him, so could just fit into Grusch's "4 years" time frame.

Nat Kobitz had a long career in program management, direction of research, development, science and technology programs, ranging from the first Navy Ship to exceed 90 knots, directing the NAVSEA (Naval Seas Systems Command) Research & Development and Ship Design Research & Development programs, to the industrial program management of the Airframe of the Titan III missile, to the Navy's Bullpup program and the Air Force's Mace program.
[...]
Nat Kobitz passed away peacefully, at the age of 92, in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sunday, April 5, 2020.

Content from External Source

https://memorials.sollevinson.com/nat-kobitz/4600662/
(nothing about UFOs on that page)

There's an interview from 2 years ago where Coulthart talks about him. Says Kobitz saw some magic metal (strong & light with advanced welding) but was told the rest by other people. Talks about the Foreign Technology Division and people not being told what they were working on, which again could point to misunderstandings and rumours. (It should start at the right place, 41:52. I only watched about 20 minutes from there.)


Source: https://youtu.be/MM-xW8YsXKU?t=2512

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

In regards to materials of "alien" origin:

NPR - They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth. That's only the start of the story.

This is the story of the discovery of Tetrataenite an iron and nickel alloy that could replace rare earth magnets. It is an "alien" alloy that originates in meteorites rather than non-human intelligence. How easy would it be for someone to take this and run a mile down the conspiracy highway?

 

[MonkeeSage]

In an interview from last year with George Knapp, TTSA co-founder and 25 year veteran of the CIA Directorate of Operations Jim Semivan related a story how in the 1990's he and his wife experience an "entity" in their bedroom and had negative health effects and experiences since that time. He says he eventually told John Alexander about it in around 2014 and was put in touch with "a group you [George] know" who took blood and did other tests. I have not been able to find another upload of the video and it appears the original video has been deleted.

Just documenting that I found a vid with Jim Semivan doing a podcast a few days later, telling the same story he told Knapp on Coast to Coast in the deleted video, and being even more explicit that John Alexander put him in touch with Hal Puthoff and Jaques Vallee and he became part of a program studying it.
Source: https://youtu.be/fJjmbSba33Y?t=43

 

[NorCal Dave]

Karl E. Nell is missing from the list of people making these claims.

Not anymore! Thanks, tintintintin.

There's an interview from 2 years ago where Coulthart talks about him. Says Kobitz saw some magic metal (strong & light with advanced welding) but was told the rest by other people. Talks about the Foreign Technology Division and people not being told what they were working on, which again could point to misunderstandings and rumours. (It should start at the right place, 41:52. I only watched about 20 minutes from there.)

Coulthart is giving George Knapp a run lately for the go to "I-believe-investigative-journalist" role. I'll have to look it up when I have more time, but I think Foreign Tecnology Division or a very similar term was used in reference to the fleet of captured MiGs kept at Area 51 along with some captured Soviet radar systems among other things. The official term seems to be "exploited" but can easily be swapped for "reverse engineered".

 

[Alien Chess Fiend]

I think Foreign Tecnology Division or a very similar term was used in reference to the fleet of captured MiGs kept at Area 51 along with some captured Soviet radar systems among other things. The official term seems to be "exploited" but can easily be swapped for "reverse engineered".

The wikipedia page mentions that and gives this link as the source: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-...0-29/area-51-file-secret-aircraft-soviet-migs

 

[AmberRobot]

In regards to materials of "alien" origin:

NPR - They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth. That's only the start of the story.

This is the story of the discovery of Tetrataenite an iron and nickel alloy that could replace rare earth magnets. It is an "alien" alloy that originates in meteorites rather than non-human intelligence. How easy would it be for someone to take this and run a mile down the conspiracy highway?

Humanity has been making materials that don’t occur naturally on Earth for a very long time.

Yet another science news article that assumes the science must be couched in science fiction language to be palatable to the general reader. Sigh….

I recently saw another article about Earth/sun magnetospheric interactions in which the scientists unfortunately used the word “portal” to describe their subject. Naturally the press release had two paragraphs of sci-fi intro.

 

[Mendel]

In regards to materials of "alien" origin:

NPR - They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth. That's only the start of the story.

This is the story of the discovery of Tetrataenite an iron and nickel alloy that could replace rare earth magnets. It is an "alien" alloy that originates in meteorites rather than non-human intelligence. How easy would it be for someone to take this and run a mile down the conspiracy highway?

Excerpts from the npr article:

It sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie: humans are destroying the Earth, gouging huge scars in its crust, and polluting the air and the ground as they mine and refine a key element essential for technological advance. One day, scientists examining an alien meteorite discover a unique metal that negates the need for all that excavation and pollution. Best of all, the metal can be replicated, in a laboratory, using base materials. The world is saved!

OK, we amped the story a wee bit there. No aliens, for one thing (unless you know something we don't). But the rest of it is true.

We spoke to Laura Henderson Lewis, one of the professors on the Northeastern team, and she told us the material found in the meteorites is a combination of two base metals, nickel and iron, which were cooled over millions of years as meteoroids and asteroids tumbled through space. That process created a unique compound with a particular set of characteristics that make it ideal for use in the high-end permanent magnets that are an essential component of a vast range of advanced machines, from electric vehicles to space shuttle turbines.

The compound is called tetrataenite, [...]

But it will be a long time before tetrataenite is in a position to disrupt any existing markets, Laura Lewis says. She says there is still a lot of testing to be done to find out whether lab tetrataenite is as hardy and as useful as the outer space material. And even if it turns out to be as good, it will be five to eight years "pedal to the metal" before anyone could make permanent magnets out of it.

Content from External Source

 

[MapperGuy]

The problem here is with the misleading term "intelligence community" used by military outsiders.

There's no such thing as a centralized "intelligence community" within most military establishments, modern or not. Intelligence is a decentralized military staff function that cuts across DoD’s core organization in almost every branch and at every level, along with other staff functions such as logistics, operations, training and planning. You can be an intelligence officer at the joint staff level (J-2), an air force intelligence officer at the division level (A-2), an army intelligence officer at the battalion level (S-2). Most modern militaries use these same exact number-designations. The 2-numbered military personnel (which could all be broadly called intel officers) number in the tens of thousands in a huge establishment such as the DoD. They work intimately alongside operations officers, logistics officers, planning officers, training officers and are very much an organic part of every unit rather than forming some separate secretive 'state within a state' parallel structure. As a cross-cutting function across the entire DoD, they're so common and so normal as to entirely demystify the term "intelligence officer" which, unfortunately, is deliberately used as a trope to gain outside credibility and drum one's chest. Grusch and Elizondo are doing precisely that, whereas the naval aviator Brian Burke in Mick's interview warns about exactly this tendency and considers it a red flag when a military officer or a former one employs this trope.

Article:

G-2 refers to the military intelligence staff in the United States Army at the Divisional Level and above.[1] The position is generally headed by a Lieutenant General. It is contrasted with G–1 (personnel), G–3 (operations), G–4 (logistics),[2] G-5 (planning), G-6 (network), G-7 (training), G-8 (finance), and G-9 (civil-military operations).[3][2] These "G" sections have counterparts in other branches of the service, with the U.S. Navy using an N– designation, the U.S. Air Force using the A- designation, and the Joint Staff using the J- designation.[1] It is the higher level function of the S-2 (intelligence) with the "S" signifying intelligence directorates at the battalion or brigade level.[2]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-2_(intelligence)

In sum, there's no easily defined and specialized 'way of thinking' amongst military intel officers as opposed to their more centralized counterparts on the civilian side.

I would add that military intel officers move from assignment to assignment every few years. The depth of knowledge they can build on any topic is kind of limited by this, they see what was going on from one perspective and then off they go to somewhere else working some other issue.

The DoD civilians at the 3-letter intelligence agencies on the other hand often work a single topic for decades. They are in a better position to see how their particular area of interest has evolved over the years, which I think would make them more skeptical of people saying "everything you know is wrong" because someone said something on the internet.

 

[LilWabbit]

I would add that military intel officers move from assignment to assignment every few years. The depth of knowledge they can build on any topic is kind of limited by this, they see what was going on from one perspective and then off they go to somewhere else working some other issue.

The DoD civilians at the 3-letter intelligence agencies on the other hand often work a single topic for decades. They are in a better position to see how their particular area of interest has evolved over the years, which I think would make them more skeptical of people saying "everything you know is wrong" because someone said something on the internet.

And yet there are bound to be outliers like Lacatski.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Sorry to bump a old thread. I was looking through my comments for the link to the Hal Puthoff talk I had posted previously in this thread and I guess Project Unity has now deleted it from their youtube channel. I found it on archive.org so linking it for posterity. I guess I should just link to the archived version in general for vids like that.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211108163319/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOxcUKzrY_U

And here's the Semivan interview archived for similar reasons.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231103100358/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJjmbSba33Y

 

[FatPhil]

The BBC documentary about US army types who try and kill hamsters by staring at them and walk through walls is on my channel.

(The BBC do normally allow programs on YouTube if they can monetize the content however, I suggest you watch or download with something like free 4k downloader sooner rather than later)

That's easily debunked, it's a Channel 4 documentary, not a BBC one.

It's Jon Ronson's /The_Men_Who_Stare_At_Goats/ which was part 1 of the three-part /Crazy Rulers of the World/ documentary series, based on the book of the same name ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats ).

If you search the site, you'll see that it's been discussed several times.