By Justin Snead
Every six months or so I like to revisit my assumptions around two key questions: is government-led UFO disclosure happening for real, and if so, what timetable do decision makers seem to be following? It’s good practice to update your answers to those questions to fit the latest round of facts. The past two months have given us a slew of new facts that are both encouraging and frustrating. The answer to the first question is clearly yes–several game plans seem to be in effect. The answer to the second is that the timetable might be longer than we would prefer.
After eight decades of UFO secrecy, it’s natural to assume that the truth will never come out. Even a year ago, when Scott Bray was still leading the Pentagon’s UAP efforts, it certainly felt like they were trying to squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube. But much has changed in a year, and the idea that AARO and NASA will yank the rug out from beneath us at the last minute, and claim UFOs were weather balloons, etc. the whole time, looks increasingly unlikely. On the other hand, those of us who have read some of the case histories, who know that somewhere there is a UFO in a box marked classified, we just want Sean Kirkpatrick and Bill Nelson to go on live TV and pull a UFO out of a box. The recent fact-pattern shows they have no intention of doing that, but that they might achieve disclosure by other means.
The Whistleblower Game Plan
Since at least early 2022, the UAP caucus in Congress has been interested in learning what UFO secrets might be squirreled away in Special Access Programs. In March of that year, Congress passed an act that required the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to cooperate with the new UAP office’s investigations. If there is a UFO in a box, it has been carted through the corridors of Wright-Patterson. Then, during the May 17 House hearing, they asked Pentagon leaders about the potential for whistleblower protections. In June, the Senate Intelligence Committee posted its draft of the annual Intelligence Authorization Act. It stipulated that the government must produce “a complete historical record of the intelligence community’s involvement” with UFOs, including efforts to conceal that involvement from the public. It also required reporting on “any Government or Government contractor activity or program” related to UFOs “previously prohibited from reporting under any nondisclosure written or oral agreement, order, or other instrumentality or means…” The House version called for reporting on “efforts to recover or transfer [UFO] related technologies to United States-based industry or National Laboratories…” And just so there was no confusion about what Congress wanted from DoD, the final version of the law, which passed in December, called for the revelation of “any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress.”
David Grusch is the whistleblower Congress has been waiting for. Just look at how his timeline dovetails with the above. In his Newsnation interview with Ross Coulthart, Grusch confirmed there the US government does indeed have several partial and intact UFOs in its possession (including dead UFO pilots), and that in 2019, while co-leading the UAP Task Force, he was denied access to a broad crash retrieval program. According to the Kean/Blumenthal article that broke this story, in 2022 he provided Congress with “hours of recorded classified information transcribed into hundreds of pages which included specific data about the materials recovery program.” This was the same time that Congress began making moves to get official access to that information. In May 2022, Grusch filed a formal complaint to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General stating that he had suffered reprisals for his investigative work–the very same period when the House and Senate were drafting language that explicitly forbids such reprisals.
Grusch’s story suggests that the disclosure process is working, and that the culture of secrecy is crumbling. The mere establishment of the UAPTF, according to Grusch, knocked loose “tens if not hundreds of individuals within the government on these programs that would like change.” Former Inspector General Charles McCullough III represented Grusch in his complaint. Congress is riding to the rescue. And now Grusch has followed the model established by Chris Mellon and Lue Elizondo, leaving government so he can bring what he knows into the public square. The DoD even cleared Grusch to speak out, including about one particular craft that crashed in Italy in 1933, allegedly in US custody. When Coulthart asked about the Roswell crash, Grucsh said, “those details were not approved for me to talk about right now.” Not now, but maybe soon. It may be only a matter of time before Congress gets what it’s after.
There are still challenges. David Grusch does not have the UFO in the box. He has some code names for the box, and the names of some people who say they have peeked inside it. The only game plan for accessing SAPs would merely transfer information to Congress. No one seems to know what the next move would be–what it would take to get the UFO out of the box and put it on display for all to see. There are no guarantees. Those of us who have read the case histories crave that information because it would confirm what we already know, but it may not be sufficient proof for everyone else, especially our skeptical elite intelligentsia (more on them in a moment).
Don’t forget, the recovered UFOs are old, from an era that few people have any living memory of. They come encrusted with decades of lies, misdirection, and a murky chain of custody. There are non-nefarious reasons why other actors might decide that trying to get access to them is not particularly useful right now. This is because there are cleaner paths to UFO disclosure that are being set in motion, particularly by AARO and NASA.
The AARO Game Plan
First, we know that AARO, under Kirkpatrick, is making serious attempts to capture real-time UFO data that can be analyzed as truly anomalous. The office has designated several global UFO hotspots (East and West Coast training ranges for example) and is setting up permanent sensors calibrated to record data on any UFOs that may appear there. At NASA’s UAP panel discussion on May 31, Kirkpatrick said he is trying to answer the question “what is normal?” for these areas.
“I have all these hotspot areas, but… [military personnel] don’t operate all the time. So to have a 24/7 collection monitoring campaign, in some of these areas for three months at a time is going to be necessary in order to measure out what is normal, then I’ll know what is not normal, when we have additional things that come through those spaces. And that includes space and maritime.”
AARO’s database now has data on over 800 UAP, with 50 to 100 reports coming in each month. While most of these are unresolved, Kirkpatrick said that between two and five percent are truly anomalous–the really interesting cases. That means he’s got about 40 UAP that exhibit inexplicable, physics-defying characteristics, with perhaps two to five genuine anomalies showing up every month. AARO has distilled those characteristics into its sensor-calibration formula and purpose built sensors “to detect, track and characterize those particular objects.” These will soon be deployed in the hotspots.
Even if Kirkpatrick thinks that all UFOs might have conventional explanations when all is said and done, he has got to prepare for the possibility that his sensors might eventually capture solid and complete data that proves one of those anomalies is genuine non-human technology. In that event, in order for his analysis to have any credibility, he must prove that he did all his homework and checked the math three times over. Most of his public statements reveal that he is fixated on this phase of the process and that AARO is preparing for it.
When Kirkpatrick says that he still lacks “sufficient scientific-quality data” of non-human technology, it’s frustrating to those of us who know there must be good UFO data somewhere (maybe in that secret box). But there is another way to interpret these statements. I believe Kirkpatrick is telling us that he needs fresh, uncompromised data that he owns and understands and can vouch for completely. Without this framework firmly in place, he said to the NASA panel (emphasis added):
“we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution. … AARO is approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytical rigor. This includes physical testing and employing modeling and simulation to validate our analyses and the underlying theories, and then peer reviewing those results before reaching any conclusions.”
That could all sound like a colossal waste of time if all you expect Kirkpatrick to do is pull the UFO out of the box. But as is clear by now, that is not how he sees his job. Kirkpatrick’s task, as he sees it, is to do nothing less than capture verifiable evidence of a UFO in real time, and then prove it to the world. He knows that if he succeeds, no one will take his word for it, or even take the video and sensor data at face value. As he said in the April 19 Senate hearing, he is going to need to provide “scientific, peer-reviewed theoretical underpinnings of observed data.” This level of scientific analysis is the only thing that can clinch the case, and Kirkpatrick is laying the groundwork for that to be airtight. He told the Senate, “I will not close a case that we cannot defend the conclusions of.”
This is why he keeps lecturing the public about “why we have to do the things we have to do.” He reiterated this at the NASA meeting: “The greatest thing that could happen to me is I could come out and say, ‘Hey, I know where all these things are. Here you go.’ Alright, but I don’t, right. And it’s gonna take us time to research all that.”
That is not to say that the old cases–what Elizondo has called cold cases–will not be valuable. Kirkpatrick mentioned that AARO’s historical study of government involvement with UFOs will be released in 2024. That will help him put any new UFO data into proper historical context.
Permanent sensors in UFO hotspots, and analytical and historical frameworks that will make sense of the data. The outcomes of these efforts will be a complete reset of government, societal, and global awareness of UFOs. At that point, Kirkpatrick is going to reap a whirlwind of very difficult questions aimed directly at him, especially from our skeptical intelligentsia. He needs to be prepared. Pulling a UFO out of the box now, even if he could, won’t prepare him or anyone to answer those questions, and may in fact harm the ultimate goals of disclosure.
The NASA Game Plan
Since the day it announced its UAP study group, NASA has been clear that it’s not going to sift through all the old case histories and archived data, but like AARO, will help develop a new “roadmap” to guide the study of the phenomenon from this point forward.
Nadia Drake is a science journalist who sits on the panel. Her self-described role is to synthesize the “variety of opinions and ideas” that exist on the panel, and craft summaries that distill the group’s thinking and their conclusions. Safe to say she will play a major role in drafting the final report due this summer. At the May 31 meeting, she shared the conclusion that as of right now, “there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP.” When she invited any in the group to quibble with her representation of their views, no one challenged that conclusion. Kirkpatrick has made the same statement publicly now on at least three occasions.
It is tempting to assume that this panel is hopelessly uninformed, or even reach for more cynical judgments about them. But there is another way to look at it. If this group of scientists have truly set themselves to the task of designing a framework for the study of UAP, they are going to do it their way. They have deeply ingrained standards of practice around what constitutes usable data. They also have institutional experience studying difficult questions–from cosmic waves to Fast Radio Bursts to techno signatures and astrobiology. They also know from experience how easy it is to jump to wobbly conclusions based on compelling data. Of course they are going to say “there is no conclusive evidence” of alien life. Remember, they do not have the UFO in the box, and even if they did, they would still have to do the science to prove that is in fact what it is.
NASA’s task, as the panel sees it, is to do nothing less than wrest UFOs from the realms of pop culture and modern myth, and recast it as a respectable field of science. Most of the panel’s conversation focused on quantitative data, sensor platform calibration and AI modeling, while eyewitness accounts were dismissed as essentially useless to science.
Drake, again speaking for the entire panel, said that eyewitnesses “on their own can be interesting and compelling, but often lack the information needed to make definitive conclusions about an object’s provenance.” This is a factual statement that even long-time ufologists would have a hard time disagreeing with.
Astrophysicist and data scientist Federica Bianco was more blunt: “Witnesses reports… cannot ascertain the nature of UAPs.” Nicky Fox, a NASA Associate Administrator for Science, described eyewitness reports as “muddled.” This all sounds like the same stigmatizing dismissals that UFO witnesses have endured for generations. But it’s not when you consider the scientists’ point of view. In science, all witness testimony is muddled compared to the pristine clarity of math, chemistry, and physics.
It’s true that the only reason this panel exists is due to the extremely compelling witness narratives, particularly the Navy aviators who have come forward, and I wish the NASA panel would be more up front about that. But the entire point of science is to try and extract all the human messiness out of an analysis of the natural world. As scientists, they could not behave any differently.
Put another way, they are culturally appropriating the topic of UFOs away from the witnesses, and from the researchers who have been carefully archiving their stories in our basement filing cabinets, and recasting it in the pure language of science. Cultural appropriation can sometimes be extremely off putting to the originating culture. But it can also lead to new insights and breakthroughs.
The Stigma Game Plan
Everyone from NASA to AARO to Congress agrees the stigma that has calcified around the UFO topic must end. Sean Kirkpatrick told the NASA panel that while UFO stigma has lessened, it still “exists inside the leadership of all of our buildings.” One of the recommendations of the NASA panel, voiced by former NASA associate administrator Mike Gold, is to leverage NASA’s reputational brand to legitimize the UFO topic in the eyes of the public and the scientific community. Gold envisions panels, symposia, and research projects on UFOs plastered with the NASA logo. And yet we continue to hear statements that sound a lot like the UFO stigma of old, even from Kirkpatrick and members of the panel. Turns out there may be non-nefarious reasons for that as well.
This brings us to the Brothers Kelly. Scott and Mark Kelly were astronauts who served at NASA for many years. Scott Kelly, who sits on the UAP panel, explained that UFOs were simply not discussed among NASA employees. The stigma was so effective that it was a non-topic.
“in my 20 years at NASA, no one, either officially or unofficially, in my recollection, have ever discussed or briefed us or had any kind of discussions about anything that would be considered UAP, or UFO or anything like that.”
But what they apparently spent a lot of time discussing, officially or not, was how conventional objects were misidentified as UFOs. He told the panel his brother’s story about how the shuttle crew once mistook the International Space Station for an unknown object within the shuttle bay doors (you can hear Mark Kelly tell the story to a reporter here). Then he told a story about how his co-pilot in their F-14 Tomcat swore he saw a UFO that was in fact a Bart Simpson balloon.
Scott Kelly has been telling himself and others this story his whole career. People like Kelly are going to need to trot this old chestnut out a few more times before they start revising and extending their remarks. Expecting him, at this stage of the process, to step up to the podium, throw up his hands, and declare he’s been wrong and a fool is not how people usually operate.
There are stages to UFO acceptance. Anyone reading this has taken that last step through the threshold into an uncanny new world. But there are many steps before that one wracked with doubt and disbelief. At some point your mutterings that it can’t be true are supplanted by a small voice in the back of your mind that says, my god, it’s all true. We don’t know how far along the AARO and NASA teams are on this journey, but they may be farther along than we think, otherwise they would not even be speaking about this. Sure, they are keeping an open mind about what the final “provenance” or “resolution” will be, but they can probably see where this is headed–even Scott Kelly.
And so Kelly is reminding himself, and the rest of us, where he started from. Doing so allows him to chart his own path toward what he always believed was impossible. We are unlikely to ever hear the end of the Bart Simpson balloon stories. It’s personal for them. Afterall, Kelly’s co-pilot really did think that Bart was a UFO. They will be able to say they were never totally wrong, that their skepticism was justified. After disclosure, the stigma and shame will reverse polarity and blow back on the skeptics. They are laying the predicate for their self-defense.
These are the psychological and emotional hurdles to disclosure that leaders cannot ignore and must prepare for. Imagine what it feels like to know that you are one of the people who will have to shepherd an entire society through that process.
The day after the David Grusch story broke, David Frum released some stigmatizing comments on his Twitter feed. He recounted a conversation with a NASA employee about “conspiracy types” who always ask NASA to reveal what it knows about Roswell and Area 51. The NASA guy said he had figured out how to shut down that line of questioning with the reply, “Do you think that if NASA had super-secret frozen aliens in our basement – we would put up with these budget cuts for even 10 minutes?” Frum was impressed that this “truly silenced the pinheads.” When someone in the thread mentioned the possibility of reverse-engineered UFO technology, Frum scoffed, “Well if you heard it from a guy down the corridor, who knows, that’s good enough for many!”
Frum worked in the White House as a speechwriter for Geroge W. Bush. He is a senior editor for The Atlantic. He is one of the leading intellectuals of the anti-Trump movement, and he is a capable historian. He is one of the trendsetters, one of the hallowed few who script elite opinion. A very few of the younger members of his class are paying cursory attention to the rolling UFO revelations, but the vast majority of them are going to be completely blindsided.
What they will find hardest to accept is not that our government has withheld knowledge about extraterrestrial life. No, the hardest thing to accept will be that they have been wrong more than they have been right; that they are the fools; that they have been uncharitable and unkind. Worst of all will be the realization that the people they have been making fun of since 5th grade–the pinheads, the nerds, the weirdos–are better than them at something. Their brains are simply going to melt. They won’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or scream in rage.
The Sean Kirkpatricks and Scott Kellys of the world will be there to hold them by the arm as they shuffle through the threshold, stammering. It’s alright, they’ll say. You weren’t wrong. We all missed this one. It won’t be true, but it will be necessary.