There was a congressional press briefing this morning unlike any I’ve ever seen. It was held by Congressmen Tim Burchett, Eric Burlison, and Jared Moskowitz, and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.
It was, in a word, incredible.
I’ve never in my life heard members of Congress say in a public briefing that members of the military and intelligence communities are straight out defying their attempts to get answers on matters they are well within their rights to demand. Here’s a transcript of that part of the presser, beginning at 9:30 in the video, with Burchett (TB) and Luna (APL) alternating speaking:
TB: What Representative Luna and I experienced was, um, our colleague Matt Gaetz was contacted by some folks that said that some people would like to talk about some information, some things they'd seen. And we, uh, we contacted the Air Force, and we flew… we were told we were going to be briefed on this issue—the UFO, UAP—I like the UFO. And, um, we got down there, and it was the traditional skiff, James Bond stuff. You leave your phone, your Fitbit; we go in. And the synopsis had nothing to do… it was some pretty, pretty big, important stuff, but it was not anything to do with the UFO. And we stopped the thing rightfully right in the middle of it and said, 'Hey, this is not what you all told us we were coming down here for,' and they basically told us ‘we're not going to give it to you.’
TB: The arrogance of this General was beyond belief.
APL: The Pentagon, this is the Department of the Air Force, it was the commanding…it was the commanding, uh, General of Eglin Air Force Base. And ultimately, even before we got down there, the Pentagon actually tried to cancel the field hearing, and also, it's important to note that these were whistleblowers. These were pilots that had come forward to Representative Gaetz’s office with information saying, 'This needs to be investigated. We have an increase in sightings in this region, and it's a cause for concern for national security reasons. We don't know what it is.'
APL: So we went down there; we were stonewalled. They would not give us access to testimony from some of the pilots. They were hiding images and information.
TB: We were told there were pictures available which we still haven't seen.
APL: And ultimately, what ended up happening is we had to actually call House Armed Services Chairman Rogers got involved, the Pentagon got involved, the Department of the Air Force got involved, and we actually got into an argument with the General of that base. And I just... it's important to note that we were there simply to follow up on the whistleblowers that came forward with information. And so, if the Department of the Air Force, if the Pentagon thinks that they're above Congress, they have something else coming to them. We told them we were going to do this if they continued to hide information, and ultimately the American people deserve the facts.
TB: And also, I'd like to make for the record, numerous pilots have told us, and I'm sure they've told Representative Luna that, when they come forward with this, they're supposed to be provided some sort of whistleblower protection, but they're not. They—the brass will tell you they're debriefed—well, they're interrogated for eight hours, I believe, at some point. Then they have a blemish on their record, and then they carry this stigma. And we've been actually told that they will destroy video evidence because they don't want to have to go back in and have to be pulled off the flight line for and be interrogated for eight hours.
This adds so much weight to the testimony of David Grusch, who has been ringing the bell that secret UFO programs have been illegally concealed from Congress. If you missed that story, you can read more here:
As they keep asking: “If there’s nothing to hide, why are they working so hard to stop us from getting answers?”
An old Air Force Lt. Colonel I used to work with liked to use a certain colorful phrase I’ll borrow here: the people in the military and intelligence apparatus who are obfuscating have “trick-fucked” themselves. By refusing to cooperate where they are legally obligated to do so, they have only increased the credibility of claims that they have been doing so illegally for decades, and have drawn immense public scrutiny. I’m a bit worried about the lives of the men and women giving this briefing. I’d hate to hear they went to conduct a field hearing and their plane had some catastrophic malfunction. I do not put it past the powers that be to do anything to stop this from coming out. The ramifications are that immense.
The full presser is here. What an interesting time we’re living through.
> I do not put it past the powers that be to do anything to stop this from coming out.
That's conspiracy thinking, you know better than that.
This fails any reasonably skeptical thought experiment.
First, how could any government keep this a secret? These are the same bozos that couldn't keep the break-in of a random office in the Watergate Hotel secret for more than 18 months and destroying Nixon, and somehow they've managed to maintain this secret for 70 years. (Well, I guess there was the constant flood of people, magazines, newspapers and AM radio that disclosed Area 51's secret stash of aliens and starships. But other than that they kept it a secret!)
Not just a US secret, it's a world-side secret. Grusch claims one of the spaceships fell into US hands when Pope Pius XII told the US that Benito Mussolini had one. Ignoring the fact that sentence sounds like a tag line for WWII fan-fiction, it means the Vatican knows and Italy knows. At least China, the EU and Russia have space programs, and about 150 countries have pilots to report their own close encounters. Don't any other countries have their own alien spaceships?
I think it's likely many countries know the truth. Wasn't there a single administration in any country that knew "the truth", that in the past 70 years would have seen a benefit in disclosing said secret? Man, "they" must be working overtime.
Second, how did the aliens get here? Century-old settled science says FTL travel is impossible, and we don't even have realistic ideas as to how you might do FTL. I'm going to steal from the amazing Rebecca Watson for the next few sentences: "Just to get to Earth, an alien civilization would need incredibly advanced technology allowing them to travel at the speed of light, or have enough food and fuel for thousands of year, plus ships equipped to withstand cosmic radiation, all of which COULD absolutely be done. But this civilization that did all this, they get to Earth and just eat shit? Like, they did ALL OF THAT, they made it ALL THAT WAY just to lose all navigation abilities at the last minute and crash into a 7-11 like my neighbor’s kid did on the day she got her learner’s permit?" You go, Ms. Watson.
The idea that aliens came some thousands of light years to (checks notes) "play hide-and-seek in the clouds with vastly inferior technology" is not plausible. Tell me the aliens set up some satellites to watch the planet, that's at least a borderline sensible thing they might do. But, no, they dive-bomb jet fighters in the clouds and flash sparkly lights in the night sky.
What is it with the lights, anyway? Terrestrial planes have lights so they don't freaking run into each other in crowded airspace. Why do the aliens need lights on their space craft? Are there so many alien craft around the planet they use lights to avoid each other? Thousands, or millions, of years of technology ahead of us, and these idiots still need flashing red lights to avoid other aircraft.
Third, our exciting new witness has offered exactly nothing to support his claims. David Grusch has not shared any verifiable evidence—photographs, artifacts, or any other manner of data—and ALSO has not personally seen or touched any of the objects he references. But he's willing to give 11 hours of testimony to Congress about stuff he hasn't seen, attested to by people he won't identify. That feels squishy to me. (To represent the other side fairly, he says he has seen “some interesting photos” and “read some very interesting reports.”)
Oh, and the spaceships might not be from space. He says they might be from another dimension. Another dimension, you ask, quizzically? Another dimension, he confidently replies, whatever the fuck that means.
And we should trust Grusch, after all, he was a military intelligence officer (for 3 years). Let's consider retired US general Michael Flynn, who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and is now literally batshit crazy. Flynn said that '"international agencies run by global elites, including George Soros and Bill Gates, intentionally spread Covid-19 so these big shots can “control humanity” and “rule the world.”' There's more from Flynn online, but you can Google as well as I. Or consider retired US general William Boykin, who was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and who is also batshit crazy. He said Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. … And the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Or consider that martial arts instructor who claimed he once killed a goat by staring at it very hard and who was subsequently recruited by the US Army to train special forces how to kill goats by staring at them. (Look up "The Men Who Stare at Goats" if you find that fact a little more than you can accept without some proof. Then ask yourself if there might be some waste in the US government's budget.)
tl;dr:
- There's nothing new here, we've seen the exact same shit for 70 years.
- As a species, we love our stories and we especially love stores about conspiracies. There's lots of science on this, but you can just review any top 20 NetFlix list to prove it to yourself.
- Science is the only thing our species has found that reliably counteracts the fact that humans go batshit crazy on a regular basis. If the science or skepticism doesn't allow for the story, the story is almost certainly wrong.
By next year, there will be no results whatsoever from this kerfuffle, except for the usual grifters looking for a few dollars, or maybe a book and/or a movie deal, based on their claims that the nefarious "they" are concealing the overwhelming evidence of space aliens. If you pony up, you too can be one of the few that know the truth.