[likeabbas]

> They were all regular joes with uneventful military careers

Grusch was a GS15 NGA officer that was read into over 2000 special access programs and prepared/delivered the presidential daily briefing in 2021. He’s quite literally one of the most credentialed intelligence officers in the US.

Dave Fravor was second in command of the USS Nimitz and is recognized as one of the top fighter pilots to come out of Top Gun.

[AndrewKemendo]

>Grusch was a GS15 NGA officer that was read into over 2000 special access programs and prepared/delivered the presidential daily briefing in 2021. He’s quite literally one of the most credentialed intelligence officers in the US.

This is way more common than you think it is and again, not special.

I prepped multiple PDBs from 2012-2015 while at DIA and then again while on the JS/J2 staff. Delivering a segment of the PDB is indeed noteworthy, but again, not particularly rare or an indication that you're somehow especially great or special.

This is the reality of the IC ... things that SEEM special to you are boring regular everyday events for us. Few people in the DoD/IC are exceptional and I can promise you that this guy wasn't one of them

[likeabbas]

What was your rank? How many SAPs were you read into?

Having Top Secret SCI clearance does not give you immediate access to every SAP you request to be read into. Most people are not read into more that a dozen SAPs.

I’ll also point out that if Grusch was an unexceptional IC officer, the pentagon would easily be able to discredit him as such. To date, the pentagon has not attempted to say anything about Grusch’s credibility. Many reporters have stated on the record that Grusch is very well regarded as a high level intelligence official.

What evidence do you have that this guy was not an exceptional officer, other than maybe you yourself were not exceptional?

[AndrewKemendo]

I answered all this elsewhere

My record is public so you can verify by yourself

[LargeTomato]

I don't know you. I don't know how to look up your "record". Why obfuscate? If you came onto HN to spread awareness then help us understand. Otherwise you've come here to brag and you are not helpful.

[likeabbas]

I’m not looking up some random online comment’s credentials to try to prove their own point. Your comment doesn’t stand on its own and if you’re not willing to clarify your credentials further then your argument is moot.

[sixstringtheory]

Why wouldn’t you just go on to apply all the same criteria to whatever response they would provide to you? Looks like they made the right decision not to engage with your demands.

[likeabbas]

I haven’t asked anyone to look up anything. I’m just discussing what’s in the article and the sources the article is referencing. I’m happy to give people plenty of things to read or watch to catch up if you’d like - I won’t make you sleuth for it in my comment history.

[hindsightbias]

> Most people are not read into more that a dozen SAPs.

What’s your rank? How many did you have access to? Citations please.

> Many reporters

Given the fundamental disregard HN has towards the MSM, this would be an appeal to authority.

When I was a sophmore the CIA recruiter said he knew coops who had done pdbs. I guess he was disreputable.

[DropInIn]

So.... argument from authority?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[voxic11]

What was your rank? How many SAPs were you read into?

[jschveibinz]

I knew a guy who made “flag badge” that sat at his desk, smoked cigarettes, read the newspaper and drank tea for at least half of his workday. So I agree with your assessment.

[mmcwilliams]

Does someone being a credentialed US intelligence official make their public statements more or less trustworthy than the average person?

[likeabbas]

Certainly to me, especially given he’s testified under oath to multiple congressional committees and the ICIG. He’s made some outrageous accusations that absolutely need to be investigated. Either he’s lying and we have crazy people in very high levels of government, or he’s not and we need to get this information into the public domain.

[wombatpm]

The existence of National Security Advisor General Mike Flynn would seem to support the thesis that we have crazy people who lie at the highest levels of government.

[likeabbas]

Don’t you think congress should investigate these crazy people then?

[smolder]

I wouldn't trust Congress to do a good job investigating practically anything. They have their share of crazies and chronic liars.

[likeabbas]

I used to think most politicians were cooks. Now I realize most of them are very smart and have very different private opinions from the ones they scream at their base. This topic is a good example of showing how intelligent some congressmen (who you thought were crazy) are. For example https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1684249806300905480?s=46&t=...

[mmcwilliams]

I understand the context, but what I'm asking is; do US intelligence officers make completely truthful statements as a public as a practice? Or is their expertise rather in acquiring, analyzing and compartmentalizing information.

[likeabbas]

> do US intelligence officers make completely truthful statements as a public as a practice?

No. Intel (especially counter intel) officers are, trained to give information to convince someone of a certain context. Whether that information is true depends on the situation.

But it’s certainly not common for anyone to lie under oath, especially when they are testifying that specific people and corporations are involved in illegal operations. He’s opened himself up to not only perjury, but also lawsuits of false accusations. I don’t think the billion dollar defense contractors would have any trouble suing David Grusch if he’s lying.

[tsimionescu]

I think there is a pretty good record of high-level intelligence officials lying to Congress under oath, and a similar history of no consequences whatsoever when the lie was later revealed. WMDs in Irak and the inexistence of the PRISM program were both testified about in Congress, and later turned out to be lies. Which high-level intelligence officials were ever even investigated for perjury?

[likeabbas]

Even still, you’ve completely ignored the other half of my comment. Grusch is alleging specific people and corporations are involved in illegal activities. The corporations should have no trouble suing Grusch for false accusations and defamation, which in this case would be equivalent to jail time. So even if congress didn’t refer him to the justice department for perjury, those corporations absolutely will sue Grusch if he’s lying.

[blincoln]

> Either he’s lying and we have crazy people in very high levels of government, or he’s not and we need to get this information into the public domain.

There are some other possibilities. My main theory for what Grusch specifically is talking about is that intelligence agencies probably deliberately sprinkle different fake programs into the lists that different people are given access to, so that when information leaks, they can track who is doing the leaking.

Someone probably had a little too much fun creating fake documentation of alien corpses and crashed spacecraft instead of something less world-changing, and some of the folks who ended up being assigned material from that set felt like that was getting into territory that the public really did deserve to know about, because it would change everything if it were true.

It would not only explain the entire Grusch side of this discussion, but the reactions it's gotten from different branches of government. Everyone who knew about the leak-detection mechanism would be tight-lipped because they wouldn't want to disclose its existence. So it would look like an attempted coverup, but it would be a coverup of a security mechanism, not space aliens.

I actually found the story more believable until some of the specific testimony today. A red cube with sides as long as a football field? Where would Boeing even hide such a thing from other countries' spy satellites? Three-dimensional shadows of hyperdimensional objects? That's a really neat idea, but I think it fails the test of Occam's Razor in this case.

Military pilots encountering strange phenomena is a separate bucket, IMO. The US military has some of the best pilots and equipment in the world. I trust that if a bunch of them say they saw something strange, especially with visual, radar, and thermal evidence, there was something strange out there. But OTOH, I think it's an enormous stretch to attribute it to space aliens. It's probably a mixture of rare natural phenomena, classified/experimental aircraft of one sort or another, and mundane objects behaving very oddly when they're far outside their normal context.

When I used to work in a skyscraper, I once looked out the window and saw what looked like some sort of tear in spacetime dancing around the sky. Absolutely black, but with a chaotic silhouette that would smoothly ripple, then suddenly jerk into a new shape. I watched it for several minutes, and it kept going. Eventually it got close enough for me to see that it was just a black garbage bag that had somehow ended up in the right air current to be whisked around almost endlessly. I never did see it land, or even get close to the ground.

I'd love for Grusch's story to be true, but at this point I'll believe it when I see it.

[likeabbas]

He’s testified under oath to the ICIG who found his claims “urgent and credible” ( which are legal terms. Credible meaning he’s corroborated some claims, and urgent meaning the ICIG had to forward the claims to the intelligence committees in both chambers of congress.

So with your idea, the ICIG is in on it too?

[blincoln]

In the scenario I'm suggesting, if I understand you correctly, the ICIG talked to the same people that Grusch had. Those people said something to the effect of "yes, I have seen intelligence documents and other evidence that described alien spacecraft and biological material." I.e. Grusch and the people he talked to believe what they're saying because of documents intentionally made to appear legitimate.

A well-designed hypothetical leak-detection mechanism would include literally everyone in the organization, except maybe the most senior leadership. So even if the ICIG knew of its existence, if the system were designed well, they would have no way of knowing which documents were false.

If the ICIG were aware of the existence of the system, they'd also have to keep it secret, which would mean that even if they suspected Grusch was referring to intentionally false documents, they'd have to handle it as though the documents were genuine and forward it on to Congress just like you're describing, right?

I suspect what will happen is that the intelligence committees will meet with the involved parties in a SCIF. Someone will explain that the documents were intentionally false information. The committees will verify this discreetly. After that, I could see three main approaches for handling the situation:

* The committees make a vague statement that they've investigated the claims and there's actually nothing to worry about after all. They'll have Grusch support that claim, but not discuss specifics.

* Same as previous, but with the inclusion of some sort of excuse for the misunderstanding, like the Project Azorian "mining manganese nodules on the ocean floor".

* They'll decide that the amount of detail Grusch has disclosed publicly is too great to convincingly sweep under the rug, and decide to come clean about the leak-detection mechanism.

If they go with either of the first two, it will fuel decades of conspiracy theories about how the government covered up their secret captured alien spacecraft once again, but that's nothing new.

If I'm right about this kind of mechanism, the people running it might even encourage such things to create a pool of far-fetched lore in the fringes of the public. That way, they could randomly sprinkle in false documents related to those things specifically to catch people likely to leak fringe-related material early in their careers, before they're given access to really sensitive information.

[likeabbas]

You are 100% correct that this could be a giant psy-op constructed to convince people of something insane like aliens. From what I’ve heard, the ICIG has gotten testimony under oath from people purported to be apart of the reverse engineering programs, and they have provided locations and photo evidence. There’s also a report that one of these craft are [so large that it can’t be moved](0). Congress could send a special envoy to investigate this and find out right now if this is a ruse or not. Do you think they should?

[0] https://youtu.be/r-zjLas_WbM

[flarg]

We had a crazy President

[AndrewKemendo]

Neither in my experience - hence you should take my position with salt and do your own research

[likeabbas]

How many times have you or any other intelligence official you know lied under oath to the ICIG or congress?

[mmcwilliams]

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta seems to believe that his agency has done it several times[0].

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/08/cia.congress/

[likeabbas]

Grusch has made the allegations that specific people and defense contractors are involved in illegal operations and are illegally withholding information from congress. So if you don’t think he will be tried for perjury as that article might claim, he can certainly be sued for false accusations. These are heavy allegations that go beyond just the standard lie

[mmcwilliams]

In the perjury statute, how does it differentiate between standard lies and "heavy allegations"?

[alephnerd]

GS15 is not that impressive. Don't get me wrong - it's a good rank and the pay is decent by DMV standards, but like there are thousands of people with GS15 ranks. Now if he was an SES level that might be more intriguing...