The Grusch Affair continues to suck up the air in ufological space. The usual suspects continue to keep the story spinning (see this “roundtable” with George Knapp, Jeremy Corbell, Ross Coulthart, and Bryce Zabel, for example). In the mass(er) media, News Nation (…) isn’t much better, bringing together “experts” Sean Cahill, Steven Greer, and Avi Loeb for a yack. At least PBS for its part went to a journalist author of a forthcoming book on the matter, Garrett Graff. Even more serious thinkers are scratching their heads: Bernardo Kastrup (in a not very informed or profound manner) and Mike Cifone more scrupulously.
Those who swallow Grusch’s tale do so, it seems, for the most part, because they want to believe or on the grounds of the man’s credentials. Anyone who watched to the end a recent conversation between Mick West and Steven Greenstreet, however, would have been treated to a link that waves five red flags with Grusch’s story. The one that should catch the eye of everyone interested in the topic is that “in accordance with protocols, Grusch provided the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review at the Department of Defense with the information he intended to disclose.” Nothing Grusch has said is considered secret by the U.S. Department of Defense. So, is he blowing a whistle, or smoke?…
Some, such as those I’ve noted here earlier, Luke Harrington and Caitlin Johnstone, are able to look awry at the matter to consider its societal implications aside from the question of the factual truth of Grusch’s claims. Günseli Yalcinkaya, too, insightfully raises the point that “In this new and uncharted era of disinformation, it’s easy to see how stories of technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence and unexplained phenomena can fan the flames of cover-ups and conspiratorial thinking…” Thus, “it’s hard not to question the motives behind how this information is being fed to us – and why.”
Yalcinkaya is informed enough to recognize that the suspicion of cover-ups goes back to the beginning (however much she points to Roswell as the watershed event…). In fact, it’s in 1950 Frank Scully publishes tha archetypal crash-and-retrieval tale Behind the Flying Saucers; Donald Keyhoe publishes The Flying Saucer Conspiracy five years later, a title that underlines suspicions he’d been voicing from the start, in The Flying Saucers are Real (1950). In this regard, she quotes Mark Pilkington: “This UFO belief is intrinsically tied to notions of a government and military cover-up, and is powerful and pervasive within society,” a society wherein (as Yalcinkaya writes) “social media chips away at any notion of a consensus reality,…which amplifies fringe beliefs and makes it harder to distinguish what’s real or not.” Cannily, she observes that “Even the positioning of UAP sightings as classified information plays into this narrative, with officials capitalising on our collective distrust of mainstream media to uncover hidden truths,” this skepticism toward mainstream media further eroding a shared sense reality. “It’s important to consider why these conversations are entering the mainstream now” she goes on to write, “and it’s not a coincidence that it’s during a time when space tourism is on the rise and conversations around AI and non-human intelligence are reaching their peak and posing very real existential threats.” However much I find there to be more pressing concerns than those Yalcinkaya remarks, we would surely agree that The Grusch Show serves to keep “us distracted from anything more shadowy beneath the surface.”
Aside from distracting from graver problems (I’ve remarked Tim Burchett’s and Anna Paulina Luna’s skepticism about global warming…) and further dissolving consensus reality, the Grusch Affair stirs a deeper, troubling current, a particular, bipartisan suspicion of government. The roots of such distrust go to the very founding of the Republic, and, unsurprisingly, sprout after the Second War, one flower of which is precisely the myth of a UFO cover-up as articulated by Keyhoe. More acutely, “Big government” has been the target of Neoliberal attacks: Ronald Reagan famously stated that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” This overt ideology has been behind the drive to rollback those gains made by working people after the war, particularly in the institutions of the welfare state. The consequences of such thinly-veiled laissez faire capitalism have not been for the best. And, at a time when then nations of the earth need work together over decades to mitigate and adapt to climate change (and other threats to life on earth), such a distrust of public institutions is, to say the least, counterproductive.
There is, morever, a blindness at work in this suspicion. “If there’s not a cover-up, the government and the Pentagon are sure spending a lot of resources to stop us from studying it,” Burchett told The Hill. His Republican colleague, Luna, adds, “We know that enormous sums of money are being spent on UAP-related activity, whether it’s retrieval/recovery, research and reverse-engineering, or just security for whatever the government is hiding.” This exclusive focus on government is curious, given that Grusch claims that “recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors” [my emphasis]. The private sector, therefore, is no less guilty of a cover-up than government. Indeed, corporations have shown themselves no more transparent, when quarterly profits are at stake. Big Tobacco lied about nicotine’s being addictive, Big Oil knew about global warming, Boeing’s cutting corners crashed several 737 Max aircraft, and, more recently, Johnson and Johnson ignored research that linked its talcum powder to cancer. Ironically, it’s only via public institutions, such as the courts, that such corporate malfeasance can be brought to justice (not to mention the role of the much-maligned mainstream media in investigating corporate deceit).
Ideology (in the sense I use the term here) is revealed in such contradictions and omissions. By these same fissures and silences, UFO talk, as a social phenomenon, can’t help but betray, too, the “necessary fictions” that keep in place and reproduce the present order. “Disclosure,” therefore, is a mere distraction, from the true cover-up, of what’s at work in social reality, a reality of which UFOs/UAP are inescapably a part.
Talk of “nonhuman biologics” doubtless to many brings to mind “extraterrestrials” (however much the more informed might as much think of cryptoterrestrials, extradimensionals, or extratemporals). Wade Roush, in the excerpt from his book Extraterrestrials, surveys ideas about “the plurality of worlds” from the ancient Hellenic philsophers Leucippus and Democritus on down to the present day. Leucippus and his student are often credited with founding Atomism, “the belief that the visible universe consists of tiny, indivisible, indestructible atoms, churning in the void without purpose or cause.” Atomism, later, grounds the ethics of Epicurus and orients the great, scientific-epic poem of his follower Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Roush quotes a telling passage from the poem:
If store of seeds there is
So great that not whole life-times of the living
Can count the tale …
And if their force and nature abide the same,
Able to throw the seeds of things together
Into their places, even as here are thrown
The seeds together in this world of ours,
’Tmust be confessed in other realms there are
Still other worlds, still other breeds of men,
And other generations of the wild.
Surely striking is how much the thinking here resembles that of contemporary astrobiology. The spatiotemporal immensity of the cosmos and the universality of the physical laws that govern it imply a likelihood of “Still other worlds, still other breeds” of life, sapient and “wild.”
I’ve proposed that the line of thought that posits that chemistry gives rise to life, which evolves to awareness and intelligence, which in turn develops technology is metaphysical, Platonic. And the deep, historical roots of the basic astrobiological schema, as evidenced in Lucretius’ poem, suggests, possibly, a no less deep, subterranean inheritance of related ideas in the sciences that are part of today’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). One could as well recognize in the thinking at work in Lucretius and SETI a version of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, that the churning of matter over vast periods of time gives rise to the same patterns, especially if the universe is thought to be in a state of constant creation. The important question, in this regard, is if the thinking here is merely probabilistic or if this strictly statistical thinking is not, at the same time, however unwittingly, determined by a stubborn, metaphysical residue. Interestingly, Henri Poincaré posited that “certain dynamical systems, such as particles of gas in a sealed container, will return infinitely often to a state arbitrarily close to their original state.” Surely a matter for further research…
Skunkworks 
I agree with much of your meta-analysis about public perception of UFO secrecy historically bleeding into what has become increasingly bipartisan mistrust of the US government, albeit more virulent on the right). However, the West-Greenstreet “red flag” that DOD’s review concluded “nothing Grusch [intends to say] is considered secret” is incorrect. Based on my USG experience (including a “pre-publication review”), matters classified under a secrecy seal (which generally last from 15 to 25 years unless extended) are a priori OFF THE TABLE: Were I intending to write/broadcast/publicize a specific Special Access Program, its location and the specific work that it is conducting – which are classified Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information or Top Secret/SCI – I would be warned that to do so would subject me to loss of my security clearance, arrest and prosecution. After all, a pre-publication reviewer can not wave a wand and remove the security provisions I swore an oath not to violate! However, were I intending to write FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION in general terms that such Programs exist because I have been informed about them by credible/reliable sources, well, those are ideas without specificity, not actionable and thus permissible, as long as I don’t reveal enough incidental/anecdotal material that could be used to identify the sources, methods, locations, etc.
Moreover, there is no need for a Pre-Publication Review if one intends to discuss highly classified matters with others cleared to hear them! Members of DOD, the Intelligence Community or Government officials do not have to undergo a prior review before testifying to Congress! There wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to vet their testimony and it would only happen if tyrannical secrecy lockdowns were implemented. Indeed, Grusch has already provided specific details to select members of Congress with such clearances, but he could not broadcast them at a public hearing. (His telling members of the House Government Oversight Subcommittee that he would be happy to provide classified intel behind closed doors was somewhat disingenuous since only one Member present at the hearing possessed a clearance high enough to hear the intel.)
Generations ago, Bob Lazar blew smoke that he knew to be delusional seemingly to cover his violation of security procedures or some other non-ufological difficulty, leveraging his friendship with a notable saucer believer. On the other hand, it seems to me that Grusch expresses an earnest belief in the allegedly HIGHLY CLASSIFIED SPECIFICS he learned on his job from allegedly CLEARED INFORMANTS but he is not at liberty to reveal them to anyone NOT CLEARED to hear them. Whether others blew smoke at him is yet to be determined. I am keeping an open mind but frankly having followed this matter for decades, I am torn. (I was recently taken aback when I found my recent novel was listed as my second publication on GoodReads.com. A VERY thin paperback, one of 149 books published by the indefatigable saucer schlock-meister Gray Barker, consisting of a 1965 “Saucer News” issue, lists me as a “Contributor” because of a letter to the editor I have only a dim recollection of writing as an adolescent.)
Specifically, I am torn between: 1) getting a somewhat definitive answer that the UFO phenomenon is real, validating to others why I should have been fascinated by the subject for much of my life; and 2) that revelation putting an unsatisfactory end to the mystery. Much the same feeling upon reading a compelling mystery novel that raises all sorts of ontological issues and is then resolved by the cozy British ending: “The butler did it.”
For me there are two preferred outcomes: 1) Grusch’s claims lead to validation that the Government has evidence of a non-human intelligence but has no idea from whence it emanates – that the Government withheld informing the public in order to avoid shock and panic, and perhaps even more importantly, to avoid informing our adversaries; or 2) Grusch’s claims are never FULLY investigated (sort of a Condon Commission Redux), resulting in a status quo ante bellum, but adding yet another addition to the maze we buffs can speculate about while gobbling our mentally-invigorating popcorn.
Well, as R.E.M. sang “Oh no, I’ve said too much, but I haven’t said enough.” Thanks for listening and please keep writing – each new essay in my InBox has been a welcome treat for years.
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Joe,
thanks so much for the procedural clarification, one echoed by Mike Cifone at his blog Entaus in response to my raising the same issue, there.
I do agree Grusch appears to “earnestly” believe what he says, regardless of the ultimate truth thereof. There is some circumstantial evidence that one of his “sources” is Lu Elizondo, who recently peddled the 1933 Italian crash story. As you write, “Whether others blew smoke at him is yet to be determined.”
My intuition is that no resolution to “the mystery” is forthcoming. Arguably, the matter is _essentially_ mysterious (which I think I’ve touched on at _one_ time, here!). The outcome, to this chapter, is forthcoming!
And thanks for letting me know my efforts here are appreciated!
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Bryan, good idea to call attention to the long history of the UFO government cover-up scenario, as well as to the even longer history of suspicions on the part of Americans (left, right, and center) regarding secret government activities, cabals, etc.
That Grusch and two others recently testified under oath before a Congressional committee about their knowledge of UAP, etc. was an important and unusual step. There are serious penalties for lying under oath. What the three people had to say was consistent with what many other people (including previous whistleblowers) have been saying for decades. Nevertheless, even if the three witnesses told the truth as best they could, this doesn’t mean that what they were told by others was the truth (obfuscation or deceit by those with whom Grusch and others spoke is clearly a possibility, although why manufacture such deceit unless doing so was designed to cover up something else? But then back down the rabbit hole…). Even if the Air Force hauled out a partly crumpled, allegedly ET-piloted flying saucer for examination by experts, this would in and of itself simply give rise to a whole series of examinations, metal tests, suspicions about objectivity of THEIR experts vs. OUR experts, so that that the whole “disclosure” would be contested (“Surely this so-called UFO is a sophisticated Hollywood fabrication…”) Layer upon layer of manipulation, misdirection, misinterpretation, and so on have created a situation in which we may never come to an agreement about the “truth” of the UAP matter. Not even mentioned so far is at least the possibility that in fact there are alien others (of some sort), and that a major part of their activities aim at misleading and confounding us, so that their other activities will remain hidden. Over the years, John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and plenty of other serious researchers have underscored this possibility. Alien “thinking” may also be so different from our own that efforts to communicate would inevitably be difficult or even impossible. Maybe this is one source of the Oz factor in many reports of sightings and encounters.
Overall the situation is so fraught that I can understand why some people just walk away from the whole UAP field after decades of ultimately fruitless research into sometimes tantalizing reports, physical traces, photos, radar tracking which in the end don’t get the ball into the net. Despite all these obstacles and uncertainties, however, I’m not ready to give up yet, even though I probably won’t live long enough to see any generally agreed upon resolution to the whole issue.
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Well put, Michael.
Grusch seems to have been hanging with Elizondo, Eric Davis, et al. and there has been some suspicion they, at least in part, have been feeding him the stories he shares.
And you make a very good point in remarking the disbelief that would be the likely response to presenting the evidence. In my essay on ontological shock, you’ll remember, I proposed an equally possible reaction would be a collective shrug, given how acclimatized we are to what the whistleblowers have been tooting about for decades, at least Symbolically.
I like the Deception Hypothesis, as it segues at least into the idea that human culture is being “played”: led down a path of self-destruction, or something else? Grist for the poetic if not speculative mill…
The absence of resolution, happily, is no obstacle to my work here, poetic and cultural critical. It all suggests that Revelation/Apocalypse/Disclosure is a slow motion, and perhaps (with any luck!), an _unendlich_ process…
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Revelation/Apocalypse/Disclosure = An Unending Process = RAD-UAP…A very useful acronym, me thinks!
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Ha! Rad, wot. Indeed…
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Great!
Incidentally, I’ve been reading Curtis Peeble’s “Watch the Skies!” He relates the disclosure narratives of Keyhoe and others (this has an air of the final point about gas particles finding themselves in the same configuration, though I wouldn’t carry the analogy too far since there is historical and institutional continuity at play and so it isn’t simply a repeat of something that’s happened before). Pilkington, in “Mirage Men”, also quotes the Robertson Panel’s conclusion about the danger that the Soviets might try to exploit or engineer a UFO flap to clog up American reporting channels in lieu of a surprise attack on the United States – a theme that is eerily similar to the apparent failure of Jay Stratton (Grusch’s boss at the UAPTF) and others who should have been on the look-out for Chinese spy balloons and the like but were too busy seeing UFOs instead because of their paranormal/Skinwalker Ranch commitments. Someone on my blog posted the following (make of it what you will, but I think he has a point):
“Some more motives for Grusch, Elizondo and Co:
– Attack on democracy and trust in institutions.
– Possible election platform for DeSantis or RFK Jr, “vote for me and I’ll show you the aliens”.
(for extremist candidates with nothing else to offer, who could never deliver on such a wild promise)
– Psyops by the US IC, bad faith think tanks, or independent chaos agents. The intention is to screw people’s minds, stochastic terrorism, brainwashing with sky fairy tales (see “American Psyop” podcast, Wes Clark Jr was fed New Age UFO nonsense by FBI counterintelligence, when he was involved in left wing protests at Standing Rock).
– Ops by GRU or MSS for subversion and getting SAP access for high tech weapons.
– Ditto GRU operation to (falsely) force the US into disclosure, so that Putin can nuke Ukraine, blame aliens, and avoid NATO article V being triggered. This sounds crazy but was posited by Dave Troy, who is very serious, very well researched, and he is rarely wrong.”
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Luis,
Peebles’ book is a cornerstone reference. As I note, this whole narrative goes back to 1950, Keyhoe’s work the _locus classicus_. That the elected representatives and bureaucrats have failed to find _anyone_ to brief them on the background needed to see through what Grusch et al. is serving up is a little brow-raising. They couldn’t call in Greg Eghigian, for example, for an afternoon (and ideally a fair fee), not to mention more-or-less informed military intelligence personnel?
I can’t say I’m very persuaded by your commenter’s speculations. A version of Occam’s Razor might be of use here: “The simplest explanation is likely the correct one.” On one hand, assuming all the players are sincere believers, then, as Luke Harrington observes, we would have a case of an “infiltration of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory into the halls of American government,” which “materially undermine[s] the American military much in the way the Nazi preoccupation with the occult served to undermine the German military-industrial complex at the end of World War II.” On another hand, a set of grifters, like Scully at the beginning of all this, are using aforesaid infiltration to “seize the opportunity to pilfer the national security budget,” my preferred explanation, given the earlier attempt to launch TTSA, or the ongoing exploitation of this post-2017 story by the History Channel, and various journalists… This octopus or Cthulhu squid surely has other hands on other arms!
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Glad you found the “t” and the “e” in Johnstone. She is so smart and so amusing.
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Yeah, I had the suspicion I had misspelled it in an earlier post. Glad I got this latest right, and have gone back and corrected that first one!
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