Ross Coulthart Shows Patch Claimed of "Reverse Engineering Program at Area 51"

[Mendel]

The point is that picking and choosing who you choose to believe

Coulthart's source and the Dreamland forum say the same thing regarding the provenience of the patch. There is no choice involved. That's what the word "uncontradicted" (that you quoted) means. (Though I use it to mean, contradicted by facts, not by speculation over the meaning of an 8-bit number.)

 

[NorCal Dave]

Historically Ross has always been a good journalist. I would like to think he vets his sources

Maybe in the past, but I think he has shown himself to be an ardent believer in various UFO conspiracies. In this tread, there is long interview with Coulthart about UFO cover ups and even includes his claim that there is a crashed UFO so big the government simply constructed a building over it to conceal it. He knows about it, but of course he can't share the details yet:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ross-coultharts-huge-buried-ufo.13040/

It's not that I don't. I just lack proof that it comes from that. I'm trying to move us all away from the he said, she said stuff in this field. I think there's a chance, but along with Grusch's testimony, I don't buy it as proof until it is officially confirmed.

I don't think we are just going with the "he said" that we like better, I'm not, but rather trying to work out a bit of a puzzle.

We were presented with a convoluted 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hand story from Coulthart about some guy's great uncle's co-worker seeing or working on a UFO at Area 51. The patch was presented as something given to EE&G employees that worked at Area 51 and therefore was offered as corroboration of the Great Uncle's employment there. In addition to a photo of the patch, Coulthart claimed that his source also provided photos of his great uncle's coworkers, whom Coulthart claimed to recognize, but this photo and the names were not giving out, so we only have Coulthart's word for it. All we had was the photo of the patch.

Some sleuthing showed that the exact same patch had been offered on eBay by someone calling themselves "lockheedskunk117" or 'skunk for short. On the various eBay offerings, 'skunk claimed it was from a reverse engineering group that HE WAS PART OF. It was HIS patch.

Meanwhile, someone on Twitter/X we call Billy, was claiming to be Coulthart's source with the story of snapping a secret picture of the patch that belonged to his great Uncle. As it was the same patch that was on eBay, it's highly likely that Billy and 'skunk are the same person with differing stories about the patch.

Metabunk member @Duke is also a moderator on the Dreamland forum and knowing that a lot of ex-Area51 people are part of that, he asked about the patch. The consensus was that it likely had something to do with a radar group based on the iconography. It's known that EE&G was a contractor at Area 51 and that they operated various radar installations in and around Area 51, including some captured and/or reconstructed Soviet systems that can be construed as "reverse engineering".

One relatively new member of Dreamland produced a photo of the same patch, though not the one that Coulthart and 'skunk had, along with some vague claims. Case closed? Certainly not. In my dealings with Duke here on Metabunk and in private I find him to be levelheaded and reliable. If he is also a mod on Dreamland and that forum is full of real Area 51 employees, I would think it would be hard to show up and be a posser there for very long.

Nevertheless, the person with the photo of the patch has only been on Dreamland for a short while, so he could be faking it. I even suggested, half joking, that he and Billy and 'skunk are all the same person. He has a stash of these patches and is trying to bolster their price by "leaking" the photo and story to Coulthart and maybe showing up on Dreamland claiming they are real Area 51 patches. Billy/skunk has told multiple stories about the patch and has been misleading in his selling of the Jordan autographed ticket stub, so he's not a reliable source. Something Coulthart, a supposed investigative journalist should have picked up on.

As of now, it appears likely that the patch probably had something to do with radar installations, something EE&G was known to have worked on at Area 51. Not based on one "he said", but on a number of things.

 

[Stryer]

I'll take a likely logical uncontradicted explanation in the meantime.

That makes no sense my friend.

 

[Duke]

Maybe in the past, but I think he has shown himself to be an ardent believer in various UFO conspiracies. In this tread, there is long interview with Coulthart about UFO cover ups and even includes his claim that there is a crashed UFO so big the government simply constructed a building over it to conceal it. He knows about it, but of course he can't share the details yet:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ross-coultharts-huge-buried-ufo.13040/

Wasn't it Coulthart who initially claimed Grusch's medical records had been leaked by the IC? That's three inaccuracies in one claim. No medical records were involved, only police records. No records were leaked, they were obtained legally through a FOIA request. The source for those records was local law enforcement, not the IC.

Not what I'd call responsible journalism.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

https://www.metabunk.org/forums/people-debunked.18/
"Bunk comes from people, and is repeated and promoted by people. Sometimes it's the people themselves that need debunking."

(In case you feel so inclined.)

I guess more to the point, it's not something that belongs in this thread. But in brief, Coulthart used one unreliable evidence-free source for his 2015 exposé on a UK parliament pedo scandal for 60 Minutes - said he'd keep us updated on the story, but never did and the story turned out to be bunk.

He gave us Jim's ET ball with zero evidence of extraordinary powers beyond Jim's story, and Garry Nolan said he had a machine that would tell us if it was alien in one month. It's over a year later and we have no further info on this "alien scout ship", and Nolan says he needs $64M to analyze it.

And on a purely personal level, he insinuated on Twitter that he knows who I am. He clearly has a specific person in mind with these details. Others have attempted to track me down or dox me (what fun) and generally I don't respond in the negative when they're wrong because there would be no benefit to me. So I'll just say that in this case, since I am 100% sure of where I live and whether I claim in my book to be a scientist, I can definitively say (though not prove to others without doxing myself) that his research is crap and/or he's trusting crappy sources. That he chose to use that research/sources in order to "scare" me into thinking he knows who I am should tell everyone all they need to know about his character and his motivations as well as whether he's "always been a good journalist".


Source: https://twitter.com/rosscoulthart/status/1694313332168396923


He will say whatever he wants to say, regardless of how firm his information is, in order to promote his agenda.

 

[NorCal Dave]

And on a purely personal level, he insinuated on Twitter that he knows who I am. He clearly has a specific person in mind with these details.

His X "tweets(?)" (what the hell do we call them now "Exs"?) has a bit of a "I know who you are and you better be careful" vibe to it. I find him to have a bit of a pompous superiority complex when talking about UFOs. Similar to Knapp and Corbel, he's on the "inside" with info us plebs don't have access to, so we need to just trust them.

If that's the case and he has been giving all kinds of top secret info and has been on Aussie TV for decades, why would he care what some blogger called Charlie was talking about? Unless of course Charlie hit a nerve.

His claim of a crashed UFO so big, the government constructed a large building over it to hide it was the kicker for me. IF this is true and he knows where it is and he wants to bust open the UFO cover up, just tells where this crashed UFO is. He wouldn't be giving up any sources because IF the story is true the sheer number of architects, engineers and construction personal involved means any number of people could have filled him in.

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://twitter.com/rosscoulthart/status/1694313332168396923

Coulthart's use of "verified as credible" instead of "verified as true" illustrates that Coulthart's notion of what verification entails is somewhat flawed—or that he's trying to mislead.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Coulthart's use of "verified as credible" instead of "verified as true" illustrates that Coulthart's notion of what verification entails is somewhat flawed—or that he's trying to mislead.

His tweet is so dumb anyway - okay so I didn't state that specific thing, but that's because I was responding to some other thing, specifically rewording someone else's tweet so why would I include anything he wrote there?

He wasn't tagged in that thread AND had me blocked, so he had to search for (or be told about) my tweet in order to unblock me and respond to it. (He immediately reblocked me.)

@NorCal Dave

If that's the case and he has been giving all kinds of top secret info and has been on Aussie TV for decades, why would he care what some blogger called Charlie was talking about? Unless of course Charlie hit a nerve.

The nerve I hit was last year when I demolished his UFO TV special (Jim's ball etc) and I have indeed sniped at him since then too. And I agree with you, he has a pompous air - he's suddenly famous in (one tiny part of) the US and holding all the secrets. He loves it.

 

[Mendel]

he's suddenly famous in (one tiny part of) the US and holding all the secrets.

He hasn't made Grusch's DPSR cleared statement(s) available.
I suspect he's covering up how much Grusch's narrative evolved since then.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

He hasn't made Grusch's DPSR cleared statement(s) available.
I suspect he's covering up how much Grusch's narrative evolved since then.

And I think that's often the problem with people who claim they know more and promise to reveal it one day but never do - they come to realize that what they could reveal is either rather pathetic or has since been refuted with contradictory evidence.

Anyway it seems that the Area 51 reverse engineering patch has died a quick death just like his other stories - Jim's ball, the Aussie outback close encounter with a flashlight (he interviewed and "verified" the witness) and the building-over-a-UFO. Moving on!

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

One note I love to make with Coulthart, outside of his other issued reporting, is the fact he's willingly and knowingly participated in media manipulation as part of a perception & reputation management effort. That alone is a bit of an ironic issue, not even touching on what the effort was for.

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ecret-report-into-war-allegations-court-hears

 

[Mendel]

One note I love to make with Coulthart, outside of his other issued reporting, is the fact he's willingly and knowingly participated in media manipulation as part of a perception & reputation management effort. That alone is a bit of an ironic issue, not even touching on what the effort was for.

Short version:

Article:

Coulthart was last seen being commissioned by Seven Network commercial director Bruce McWilliam to investigate war crimes allegations against Ben Roberts-Smith. He subsequently worked as part of the soldier’s spin team, trying to convince media figures that BRS was squeaky clean. In June, the Federal Court found Roberts-Smith was a war criminal who killed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, a judgment he is appealing.

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/cbd/ben-roberts-smith-backer-ross-coulthart-now-leading-ufo-truther-20230824-p5dz82.html

 

[Charlie Wiser]

One note I love to make with Coulthart, outside of his other issued reporting, is the fact he's willingly and knowingly participated in media manipulation as part of a perception & reputation management effort. That alone is a bit of an ironic issue, not even touching on what the effort was for.

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ecret-report-into-war-allegations-court-hears

Yeah I don't object to someone taking a job to pay the bills but his decision to do this does indicate something about his character - as well as leaving a very bad taste in the mouth.

 

[knobby]

Yeah I don't object to someone taking a job to pay the bills but his decision to do this does indicate something about his character - as well as leaving a very bad taste in the mouth.

I looked into that event and found a troubling sign. It was reported that Coulthart had contacted some journalists and told them he had a witness who would support his story which would be put out soon. The witness and the story never appeared and as we know from the court case, Coulthart was wrong. Sounds very much like his UFO playbook - talk up secret witnesses but never provide any evidence.

Coulthart told Nine’s journalists he had found a witness who contradicted their version of events and he was putting together “a story” of his own, the court was told.

Content from External Source

https://www.news.com.au/technology/...h/news-story/2232be0ea52995dcfc37798db6f9a4c9

 

[Mendel]

It was reported that Coulthart had contacted some journalists and told them he had a witness who would support his story which would be put out soon.

Exactly (highlight mine):

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ecret-report-into-war-allegations-court-hears

BRS did file a witness list that included 19 witnesses for "justification" (the public docket is at https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/ben-roberts-smith ), maybe Coulthart "verified" these for "credibility"?

Article:

One of the key murder allegations Nine made about Ben Roberts-Smith was that on a mission to Chinartu in 2012, he ordered an Afghan soldier, called Person 12, to shoot a man who was being questioned.

That allegation was found to be substantially true.

During evidence, Mr Roberts-Smith's witnesses suggested Person 12 could not have been present on that mission because he had earlier shot a dog and been stood down from the team.

But under questioning, several witnesses — including one codenamed Person 35 — admitted he was wrong about who shot the dog.

Justice Besanko's judgement found Mr Roberts-Smith had made the story up with Person 35, who repeated the "deliberate lie" in court.

"The applicant and Person 35 colluded to put forward a false story that Person 12 had been removed or stood down following a shooting incident on 31 July 2012," the judgement reads.

Source: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102442100

So perhaps Coulthart was deceived about BRS's innocence, which would exhonorate his character; but would still suggest he's somewhat gullible.

 

[knobby]

So perhaps Coulthart was deceived about RBS's innocence, which would exhonorate his character; but would still suggest he's somewhat gullible.

Between getting the BRS story wrong and getting multiple facts wrong on the Grusch police report, calling him gullible is generous. For his UFO reporting where he declines to share evidence, we can only rely on his good judgement which has been found to be lacking.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Between getting the BRS story wrong and getting multiple facts wrong on the Grusch police report, calling him gullible is generous. For his UFO reporting where he declines to share evidence, we can only rely on his good judgement which has been found to be lacking.

Someone please ask him what's his evidence for me being a scientist/author living in South Yarra. I'd actually love to know how he came to that conclusion. Could prove informative about the kind of sources he trusts.

 

[Mendel]

https://www.metabunk.org/forums/people-debunked.18/
"Bunk comes from people, and is repeated and promoted by people. Sometimes it's the people themselves that need debunking."

I made a topic on that subforum, at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ross-coulthart.13159/ , so we can find this later. It has most of the relevant posts from this thread quoted.