The "Truth Tellers" Desperately Need Some Fact Checkers

"Real whistleblowers don't get approval by the DoD." It's the most consistent justification from journalists & alleged critical thinkers for why they attack UFO WB credibility. Let's look into it

There's a very large, vocal segment of the independent media space that seems to be incurably ignorant on the topic of UFOs. They'll do all the performative gestures as if they are good faith actors. "Where's the evidence? I want to hear from first hand witnesses."

Not only are those reasonable questions, I've asked them myself. But what you'll notice from that insatiably skeptical hoard of media personalities is, when evidence is presented and first hand witnesses speak publicly they have no galaxy brain analysis to add.

This influential segment of the chattering class floats in between two contradictory poles of analysis that are suspiciously convenient for the argument they are making at any given moment. They'll only give a UFO related story the time of day at the height of the most sensational breaking news story, be it genuine or manufactured. Suddenly overnight, everyone becomes a Matlock tier expert in a topic with over 80 years of existing research on the spot during the day of David Grusch congressional testimony, or the New Jersey Drones, or the Chinese spy balloon story.

If the foundation of your analysis of the UFO topic comes from headline surfing at the exact moment when the zone is being flooded with inaccurate information and intentionally placed propaganda you've already lost. But the only thing worse than being wrong while covering a trending topic, is to just not cover it at all.

This unscrupulous media bunch have a conveniently different approach when the evidence they claim to want, becomes publicly available but contradicts their previously stated position. When researchers and journalists publish their dense well sourced findings, as they have for decades, it's met with deafening silence.

The same crowd who went out of their way to accuse a whistleblower, who's already been retaliated against, of fabricating his story have noticeably nothing to say when there's been a steady stream of supporting evidence coming to light over the last two years that backs key parts of David Grusch story. Absent the moments of fact free media frenzies, its perceived as an insult even suggest any amount of these personalities professional time might be well spent making formal corrections of their own egregious errors or at the very least educating themselves on a topic they publicly made an ass of themselves covering.

It takes some nerve to let the thought even cross your mind that all these serious people could divert their time and energy away from all the serious work they are doing on other topics just to spend even a moment informing themselves on a topic as unserious as UFOs. At first I bent myself into a pretzel giving personalities, many of whom I respect, the benefit of the doubt that maybe they just don't have the time to commit hours digging through the research to make sense of such a complex topic. Then I personally compiled very compelling source material. But even browsing a tailor made archive is too much ask people who apparently now have a vested interested in not correcting the record.

I know there's nothing you can say to convince a person who's committed to being closed minded. That is a battle I can never win. But providing a counter narrative to the audience that they're unrepentantly misinforming is a fight worth having.

Here's the reality that none of these smear merchants are willing to vocalize: These witnesses have testified to official investigatory bodies, that they have collected evidence of illegal unauthorized programs being run in the most highly classified corners of the government. A lot the new media critical thinkers have helped normalize reflexive mocking and character assassination at the mention of a UFO related whistleblower. These influencers have given themselves no wiggle room. The most grace I've seen extended to people like David Grusch is they got taken for a ride by nefarious actors who fabricating this UFO psyop behind the scenes.

Let's entertain an alternative. Maybe all these witnesses over decades with varying levels of supporting evidence that has been corroborated by independent civilian research over 80 years aren't all liars, stupid and gullible?

In my experience of doing journalism on this topic for 2 years, plus writing this article, I know the media personalities screeching about a psyop have done little to no actual research. It would not shatter my world view to learn that this crowd said something incorrect on the topic of UFOs.

But what if they are wrong that this is some circus distraction with fake whistleblowers? Then that would mean they've essentially engaged in a years long smear campaign against people who spoke out at great personal risk.

This would be a particular shameful state of affairs. Those same hypocrites have justly waged campaigns to defend whistleblowers like Edwards Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Daniel Hale from character assassination by lazy media voices who can't be bothered to read the facts of the story. But now, because of a culmination of their own bias, laziness, and unwillingness to issue what would need to be a litany of public retraction, the shoe's on the other foot. It's perfectly acceptable to be a gear in the national security states whistleblower meat grinder if the topic is UFOs. *que X-Files music*

Real Whistleblower Don't Get Approval to Speak

One of the most insidious attacks brought against UFO whistleblowers has been the allegation that somehow, complying with the legally mandated Defense Office for Prepublication and Security Review process before making public statements, automatically disqualifies someone from being labeled a whistleblower.

Because witnesses, at the direction of their lawyers, have opted to go through the legally protected channels for whistleblowing and making public statements explicitly to avoid retaliatory criminal prosecution prosecution, this somehow proves a lazy evidence free incoherent theory that this some 80 year loosely defined psyop is true.

It's actually quite disgusting how easily so many people can levy this essentially non falsifiable charge against whistleblowers, who in many cases have already been subject to documented retaliation. Formal Inspectors General complaints about retaliation, loss of security clearance, job and benefits, opening retaliatory investigations, the government deleting incriminating evidence can all be hand waived away when you have an all powerful, ever omniscient psyop at play fabricating all the evidence that contradicts your narrative.

See how easy it is for people who've done no research to poison the well so badly that now their audience won't even look into the story for themselves? All the media figures you trust seem so sure that this is all some psyop being implemented to conveniently distract the audience from the topic that podcast host xyz prefers to cover the most.

The list of people who've repeated this lie, and in an exercise of cowardice refuse to engage with any well researched critics is staggering. The catalyst that made this article unavoidable was a series of interviews on the biggest podcasts in the world by media figure AJ Gentile. On Shawn Ryans show he said

"I don't believe any of the whistleblowers, I don't believe anyone fron Naval intelligence, I don't believe any of them... if you're cleared by the DoD I definitely don't.."

He repeated similar sentiments on Joe Rogan earlier this year. Describing how his internal meter of skepticism of UFO whistleblowers works AJ says:

“it's starts with, do you have a background in intelligence, Air Force intelligence, are you still on the payroll, did you get your information cleared by the pentagon, do you have a book."

For the record, none of those are definitive in determining a whistleblowers credibility. Every whistleblower with mainstream name recognition (i.e. Manning, Snowden, Daniel Hale, Kiriakou) all have intelligence backgrounds. Every single one of them with the exception of Hale have written a book about their experience. So what?

Notice how conspicuously missing AJs process to determine a whistleblowers credibility is anything to do cross referencing their claims with open source material to determine if there’s any supporting evidence. Will AJ do any research to see what the review process even entails before attacking whistleblowers credibility? Of course not. Maybe you lost your security clearance, job, benefits and career path to expose wrongdoing or maybe you're a liar? Who gives a shit? And of course Gentile has no responsibility to relay factual information as he speaking on the largest media platforms on the planet because he's just a YouTube host that posts fun videos.

In a poorly organized livestream AJ spends a considerable amount of time proving Grusch is lying by analyzing his body language.

When commenter's start relying heavily on body language to make their point, you've already lost me. Even more so when you have no discernable expertise in the already shaky field. And when you're analyzing the nefarious head movements of an autistic man and using that to determine he's a liar, not even GPS and a real time Google Maps can help me track the path your rabid mind is on.

Let's look at definitions. This brain dead talking point regurgitated by people who have no idea what the legal or dictionary definition of a whistleblower is. They also have no idea what the DOPSR process even is, and have done no research into documented retaliation against the whistleblowers they’re smearing.

The literal definition of whistleblowing is to inform on an organization engaging in unlawful activities. When someone like Grusch files formal complaints with Inspectors General and congressional committees, by definition he’s a whistleblower. People have the wildly inaccurate impression that the only act of whistleblowering is leaking to the media. That’s one way to be a whistleblower, that may even be your preferred mode of whistleblowing, but you’re ignorant if you think that’s how the whistleblower process plays out 99% of the time. Most whistleblowers, in corporate and government settings typically report internally. That’s why every federal department has its own inspectors general to handle whistleblower cases. There’s an entire practice area of law around whistleblower protections.

You’ve never even heard of most whistleblowers. Are they all liars because in addition to going through a legally protected, confidential process they didn’t also post their internal complaints on social media to appease the arbitrary whistleblower checklist of randoms online who can’t even be bothered to look up a definition?

While we’re on the topic of willful ignorance by those who refuse to attach any evidence to their most incendiary claims, let’s talk about these “statements approved by the department of defense.” It’s pretty egregious that so many have formed such strong opinions about what a whistleblower is for years without once ever consulting the actual definition of the word. But with that complete contempt for basic fact checking on display, one shouldn’t expect those same unscrupulous blow hards to actually look into the convoluted Defense Office for Prepublication Security Review before continuing to attack the credibility of whistleblowers.

The Enforcement of DOPSR

Anyone who’s ever had a security clearance to access classified government information, is legally required to submit a DOPSR review for any written or spoken public comments that relate to sensitive information they had access to. DoD claims the process is necessary to remove an mentions of classified information that hasn’t been declassified from public comments.

The ACLU, who engaged the executive branch in several Lawsuits and FOIA requests around the DOPSR process. They describe the processes as

"a far-reaching system of government censorship that prohibits millions of current and former intelligence-agency employees and military personnel from publishing or speaking about their time in government without first obtaining government approval."

Regardless, if you have a security clearance and you publish without going through DOPSR you’re exposing yourself to a number of legal issues, including potential criminal prosecution under the espionage act if at any time someone in authority interprets even one line of publicly released material as containing classified information. It’s well documented what happens when whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Daniel Hale release information without going through DOPSR.

John Bolton

Recently former National Security Advisor John Bolton had his home raided by the FBI. Unfortunately this wasn't related to any warranted war crimes investigation. This all stems from the first Trump administration accusations that Bolton included classified information in his book.

The DoJ launched a criminal investigation and pannelled a grand jury before the Biden administration came in and reversed course. The wild part is, Bolton did submit his book for review and he was told there was no classified information in it, but for personal/political motives they still chose to criminally pursue the highest ranking national security official in the country. It's not just me alleging that this how the process was manipulated. This are the words of the person who was in charge of Boltons review.

Ellen Knight and her team reviewed Boltons manuscript for hundreds of hours, and she personally spoke with Bolton for over 14 hours over the course of months. She said there was no classified information in the book, she told the National Security Council lawyer she was prepared to clear the book for release. She communicated this to Bolton and his lawyer

What ultimately followed was, as she described in a letter for the court, was the deliberate attempt the Trump administration to delay giving the final written DOPSR approval in an effort to prevent Bolton from releasing his critical book. And when he did it anyway they triggered a criminal investigation into leaks of classified information.

This is the process bunch of raving baboons are inviting whistleblowers to circumvent with no protection as if the DoJ would hesitate throwing them in prison for an unauthorized release of classified information.

Victor Marchetti

Victor Marchetti was a career intelligence officer. The peak of his career was serving as Assistant the the CIA Deputy Director. Working at the executive level in the CIA gave him a rare birds eye view of the agencies operation. Upon his resignation in 1969, Marchetti published scathing criticism of the CIA based on his 14 years of experience. He was clear the agency had overstepped their mandate of intelligence gathering and turned into a rogue, lawless organization with no oversight of their operations. Marchetti pulled no punches placing blame for massacres in Asia during the Cold War.

Declassified documents from the Deputy General Council at the CIA, elaborate in great detail about the lengths that the CIA & DoJ went to censor Marchetti while establishing legal precedent to use the security review process to undermine former employees turned critics.

John Warner acknowledged Marchetti had access to information that would rock the CIA if it came out. He lists Marchetti roles and the access they provides him. Marchetti was putting it all out there. Somehow the CIA obtained draft articles Marchetti was writing but hadnt submit for review. "Included were names of agents, relations with named governments, and identifying details of ongoing operations." In a call Warner was asked what legal action could be taken, and after ruling out opportunities for criminal prosecution the decided on going for an injunction.

The report steps back and provided a more broad analysis of the CIAs tactics for dealing with critics. It's actually refreshing to see that despite the absolute willingness to throw critics in prison, they legitimately had a more difficult time doing it before the over-broad interpretation of the espionage act from the Obama administration. Now the default position is to charge anyone who makes releases any classified information, regardless of context, with spying for a foreign government.

"For years the Agency had recognized the practical impossibility, under existing law, of applying criminal sanctions to employees and former employees who disclose classified information to unauthorized persons." Warner described how a new strategy was formed in the 60s based on employment law. The idea was if corporations can use contracts to silence their employees, the federal government should be able to aswell.

Warner continues on the details of Marchetti's case by summarizing the behind the scenes of this courtroom drama of secret witness testimony and sealed court records. Ultimately the judge issued a restraining order to prevent the release of the articles. A further order explicitly said Marchetti was to submit any written work to the CIA for security review. He complied, ultimately the CIA applied hundreds of redaction, Marchetti fought to have some lifted and he won.

Marchetti's case established much of the legal precedent that the CIA/DoD use to this day to censor critics and enforce prepublication security reviews. Again, it's truly hard to put into words how gross it is to watch ignorant hordes of armchair whistleblower protection attorneys malign genuine whistleblower who are legally compelled to engage in a censorious review process that the masses are wildly ignorant of.

And while we're on the topic of Marchetti. He's one of the many former CIA officers to speak out about the CIAs secret UFO program in an article titled "How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon."

John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou is a celebrated CIA whistleblower who exposed the torture program. Ultimately Kiriakou went to prison for speaking out. But as CIA Deputy General Council explicitly described in multiple pages, they will find some way to put critics in prison if they can concoct some legal justification to do it. Funny enough, in another parallel with Marchetti, Kiriakou actually had the same job decades later.

DoJ did charged Kiriakou with some ancillary crime. But since he's been out, Kiriakou has created an impressive career in political commentary as his previous career was burned.

A criminal complaint against Kiriakou alleges he made false statements to the CIA in relating to the submission of drafts of a book manuscript to the Publication Review Board (PRB.)

In an email allegedly from Kiriakou to the co author about a torture technique he wanted to add, Kiriakou said:

"Here you go, [first name of coauthor]. I laid it on thick. And I said some things were fictionalized when in fact they weren't. There's no way they're going to go through. years of cable traffic to see if it's fictionalized, so we might get some things through. Enjoy. John"

So how does this square with the narrative around statements submitted for review? If you take the word of people who never even googled publication security reviews, all statements approved for release are the product of some coordinated PR campaign between the person making the statements and their former employer. So why would the DOJ be seeking prosecution around false statements during the review process?

It's also worth noting that current first hand whistleblower Jake Barber who claims to have worked on UFO recovery teams for the government and private contractors seems to to be employing a similar strategy to navigating the security review process as Kiriakou.

I wrote a lengthy thread of Barber addressing the question about how he's allowed to say what he has. The witness who testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee and The DoD AARO office gave a very elaborate explanation on how he essentially played the DOPSR process.

As much as the DOPSR process clearly serves the national security apparatus, it does provide some protection to the person who makes the submission. If the DoD used all their available resources to check a submitted statement for classified information, declared there is isnt any and ultimately gives the requester an approval to publish the statement they cant turn around and prosecute you explicitly related to any information published. But this leaves secret keepers vulnerable to loopholes.

What if the reviewer doesnt have the necessary clearance to verify if the information even exists, much less any details about its current classification status? What if a book includes information learned during a classified mission but was never put in any official report? How can a review know a specific exchange happened or if its made up dialog.

It cuts in the opposite way too. In order to propose redaction the review will bring the material to Subject Matter Experts, to determine if anything is classified. But this creates a trail directly back to who's objecting to specific information being released. If you want to block information on a classified program, UFO related or not, you're going to have to put your name behind it and the reason you're objecting to the information being released. So it might not come out, but it is internal conformation the programs exist.

Barber knew the system was rife for exploitation so he did. Eventually publishing a book called Sentinels of Ether that recounts stories from inside a crash retrieval program.

Now he's free to talk about his experience as long as he doesn't, now say it with me, go beyond what was approved it in his DOPSR submission.

In closing this section on Kiriakou, I'll also point out Kiriakou has come out in defense of the UFO whistblowers on principle. In several interviews he's made it clear that while he wasn't personally involved with the program he's sure it exists. Looks like Kiriakou needs a coming to Jesus moment with his biggest supporters. Despite holding Kiriakou as a leading expert in all things whistblower related, they have no problem smear whistblowers who followed the same exact publication review process that Kiriakou abides by himself.

Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter is another person to go from war machine turn coat to new media darling. Ritter servered as an intelligence officer in the Marines from 1984-1991. In 91 he joined the UN as weapons inspector. It was from this role Ritter resigned and wrote his first book lambasting the Clinton administration failed policy in Iraq.

Ritters job at the UN didn't require a security clearance. If you think about it, that makes sense. The UN is an international diplomatic organization. Despite it being a tool of US empire, the UN isn't part of any individual countries security state. The work is done in coordination with multiple countries.

Who'd even be issuing clearances? Countries like the US typically restrict foreign nationals from obtaining a security clearances. Issuing US security clearances to and endless list of foreign nationals, often with connections to their home countries military services would seem counterproductive.

In fact, the idea that an international peace keeping organization would also be carrying out covert military/intelligence operations for which you would even be the purpose of obtaining a security clearance, is counter to the entire explicit purpose of the UN. I'm emphasizing the fact that the primary function of Ritters UN job didn't require handling classified information for a reason.

That being the case, Ritter wasn't legally required to submit any public statements he made as a former UN employee to a Prepublication Review office. That didn't stop the DoD from contacting Ritter and his attorneys in an attempt to intimidate them into submitting his manuscript for review before release. There were negotiations, that led to Ritter offering to submit his book under certain conditions.

"because I am an American, and I have no desire to do anything that would harm the national security of the United States, I voluntarily offered my manuscript for prepublication review, but put in place certain conditions, because I was concerned that the Clinton administration, given its record of hostility towards me, would misuse this access."

The conditions were never met by the DoD so Ritter published anyway. The take away here isn't that he's a real whistleblower because he didn't submit his book for review. He was under no legal obligation, like he was while under signed contract with the Marines, to submit public statements through security review.

In his own words, he's a patriot who doesn't want to harm national security. If he had blown the whistle on anything related to classified information he would have gone through official channels including submitting his public statements for review by the DoD. Yes, the same process that the new media sphere wants to pretend automatically discredits whistleblowers.

The core point for bringing up the Ritter example is to highlight that even when they have no legal right to request it, the DoD will go out of its way to force critics to submit to the security review process. So this idea that UFO whistblowers are engaged in some coordinated public disinformation campaign simply by submitting to a process that they would legal be compelled to anyway is absurd.

Will Anyone Make A Public Correction?

Call it whatever you please: an unrepentant lie, conspiracy mongering, unwillingness to do basic fact checking. There's a verifiably false interpretation of what it means for whistleblower to get statements approved for release by the DoD or CIA. To avoid beating a dead horse, let me approach this scenario in the opposite direction.

We know none of these narrative managers did any work to actually test the claims of Grusch and others, but did they even fact their own bold assertions? Of course not. Because if the prevailing narrative is DOPSR is just some coordinated PR campaign between fake whistleblowers and the government where's the evidence? No emails, texts, on the record statements, FOIA returns? It's almost like people invented a story out of thin air to justify not looking into the topic any further.

Plenty of Valid Critiques of Whistleblowers

One more point I want to make is, we should all be critical of these whistleblowers and do our due diligence to fact check their claims. All these stupid contrived points of contention make it very hard to find room for valid criticism. There's enough evidence that Barber has made his first hand whistleblower complaint to the senate intelligence committee and the DoD UFO investigation office AARO. He's given over 6 hours of interviews to media. I don't think he's fabricating his whole story.

At the same time there are a lot of questions being raised about his Skywatcher effort. He has a team of people who he's worked on crash retrievals with, using proprietary technology to allegedly summon non human made craft. He has funding from the tech industry and is working with government agencies and now it seems the whole operation which was sold as a public interest project seems to be a way for Barber and co to go public to get out of employment situation where he felt his life was in danger, but continue the same work with enough visibility to avoid retaliation. He turned whistleblower but the problem still remains, he's just doing the same work for a different company under a different government contract and the public doesnt have access to the details.

How can we have a nuanced conversation about how to approach these claims when the default position from so many start from a place of irrational evidence free condemnation for following a strategy that you approve for other whistleblowers?

Choosing to go through the DOPSR process, is a binary choice. Are you going to do everything possible to avoid opening yourself up to legal exposure or are you going to circumvent that process and invite a criminal investigation by a government that won't hesitate to give whistleblowers an unfair trail before throwing them in prison.

If you think it's an acceptable position to actively smear whistleblower unless they are in prison or on the run you are part of the problem. How about you do some research to judge whistleblowers veracity by using discernment instead of waiting for the easily digestible "I had my life destroyed for telling truth" newsletter to come out.