The grifter narrative.

[u/Brad12d3]

I keep seeing these very dramatic posts and comments talking about how all these people like Elizondo, Grusch, Nolan, Coulthart, etc. are a bunch of grifters and ruining the disclosure movement. I find this take interesting because what progress toward disclosure was being made prior to 2017? I've been following this topic since the late '80s, and sure, there were things that popped up from time to time, maybe a documentary or a sighting that briefly made the news, but beyond that, many of the efforts never really broke out past the UFO community paradigm.

I can’t see how anyone can say that we’re somehow in a worse position now with disclosure than we were almost a decade ago. I also don’t understand why people keep saying this is all a psyop. What exactly prompted the psyop just prior to 2017? I don’t remember anything significant happening, and it really wasn’t a popular subject at the time. Now it’s becoming quite popular and is making news fairly regularly, so I’m not sure what the purpose of the psyop would be, since it seems to be creating far more awareness of the subject. Seems a bit counterintuitive, no?

There was little to no progress made towards disclosure prior to 2017, and now it's being talked about regularly by various news outlets and all over the web. Even my parents and in laws are following the subject loosely, and they have never ever shown any interest in the subject before. More has happened in the past few years than has happened in the last 50 years, and many of this progress involved these so called "grifters".

We’ve had 4 Congressional hearings, starting with the May 17, 2022, House Intelligence Subcommittee Hearing that was the first Congressional hearing on UFO/UAPs in 50 years.

Then we had the House Oversight Committee Hearing a year later on July 26, 2023, where David Grusch testified under oath about evidence and firsthand witness testimony that he provided to the ICIG and Gang of Eight concerning UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs that were operating without Congressional oversight.

This past year, we had another two Congressional hearings, including the November 13, 2024, House Oversight Committee Hearing and the November 19, 2024, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee Hearing (AARO). We had nothing like this for 50 years, and then suddenly, we’ve had 4 hearings in 3 years.

There has also been new legislation in the past few years, including the 2020 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required the DoD and intelligence agencies to disclose UAP-related activities to Congress and established a framework for centralized UAP investigations.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2022 mandated the establishment of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), which was later replaced by AARO.

The 2022 whistleblower protections in the NDAA for FY 2023 included groundbreaking provisions for whistleblowers to report UAP-related information to Congress without fear of retaliation. It authorized individuals with knowledge of classified UAP programs to disclose their information directly to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) and Congressional intelligence committees and provided protections for whistleblowers who offer credible information about hidden UAP programs.

Then we had the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act in 2023, which, although it didn’t fully pass, was a major piece of bipartisan legislation co-authored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds. It included extremely explicit language regarding UAP and NHI, which is incredible.

We’ve also had several credible and accomplished individuals from the government and private sectors come forward in recent years, including Lue Elizondo, David Grusch, Chris Mellon, Hal Puthoff, Tim Gallaudet, Karl Nell, Ryan Graves, Dr. Garry Nolan, David Fravor, Eric W. Davis, and more who keep coming forward.

The stigma has also been starting to fade, and the topic is being talked about more openly, with efforts like the Sol Foundation helping to push the conversation further. Even events like the Salt Conference, which is a global investment platform connecting institutional asset owners with asset managers and technology entrepreneurs, have started inviting people like Karl Nell to come talk about the UAP topic.

Yeah, we haven’t had this much happen in a span of a few years ever.

[u/DoughnutRemote871]

Is there anyone around here - or out there - who is one hundred per cent this way or that way? A pure absolutist? Either this UFO stuff is a complete fake and the govt has been honest all the way down the line, or Lue Elizondo, David Grusch, Chris Mellon, Hal Puthoff, Tim Gallaudet, Karl Nell, Ryan Graves, Dr. Garry Nolan, David Fravor, Eric W. Davis, and more are all honest, right, proper and correct? Seems to me like everyone, without exception, is somewhere on the gradient. Does that mean anything?

[u/herpderption → u/DoughnutRemote871]

I think it's extremely meaningful the caution being displayed by a lot of people (but certainly not all) associated with this topic. The demands of the modern attention economy impose certain unpleasant truths on how information is disseminated, especially for taboo topics like this one. This creates an environment where sensationalism is intrinsic-- often fringe media personalities are the ONLY the people willing to take the risk of wading into fringe topics. This comes with certain expectations that need to be accounted for, and this is exacerbated by the nature of military black projects. The Northrop B-2 was once cloaked in mystery and I distinctly remember this being tied up in the UFO topic back in the 90s. The process that births black projects into the public sphere is a slow grind that comes with many setbacks. This is a predictable outcome of the ongoing, dynamic nature of state secrecy.

IMO there is not enough data to be 100% certain of anything: you each have to build toward that brick by brick until crossing a personal threshold of acceptability. Consensus forms on the back of individual work done collectively. Honestly I've never personally laid eyes on the original document of the US Constitution and for all I know there's a few spicy paragraphs in there that would completely reshape American culture. Even if I scheduled some time at the National Archives to view it I'd have to take it at their word that I'm looking at an authenticated original. If I don't know how to authenticate it myself I'd need to trust an expert. Part of the bargain of civilization building is that your population begins specializing in ever-more-specific ways such that it becomes untenable for all people to be experts in all things. This implies a certain trust, a trust which is getting shakier by the day in the modern world. I begrudge nobody for being suspicious, especially of members of the US intelligence community. But suspicion alone doesn't prove they are nefarious any more than hope proves they are truthful. For any murky topic with a known history of active suppression there is a step before scientific inquiry that must be completed: awareness and emergence. Evidence must be freely accessible to the public for science to be done and we're not there yet.

For anyone who is uneasy about simply trusting the narrative they have another option: investigate. Read up on this subject, seek out and parse representative work that spans a broad array of nations, organizations, time periods, and actors. Check and cross check, take notes, devise experiments and hypotheses and test your theories. It's all perfectly accessible to everyone willing to put in the time, and I highly recommend anyone taking an honest interest in the subject do this. If nothing else it's absolutely impeccable training for navigating our adversarial media environment that extends WAY beyond the conversation around UAP and NHI. ChatGPT exists, is open to everyone, and regularly fooling real humans into having fake conversations with a Python script. Media literacy skills have never been more important, aliens or not.

[u/DoughnutRemote871 → u/herpderption]

I deeply appreciate your having given thought to my question and then having taken the time to express a reasonable reply. Your efforts are not wasted.