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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

Has cammikebrown held a high position within the intelligence community? Has he been tasked as part of his official duties with finding any possible legacy reverse-engineering projects? Did he interview forty witnesses, including people who report being part of these programs currently? Did he collect evidence of wrongdoing and report it to the ICIG through the officially-sanctioned whistleblower process? Did the ICIG interview other witnesses and find his claims significant enough to forward them to Congress? Did cammikebrown eventually testify under oath in front of Congress, in both classified and non-classifief sessions?

Well, if all that is true then I think we should pay a little attention to what cammikebrown is saying and demand that his claims are investigated, because either cammikebrown is full of shit and needs to end with his bones in jail, or he is not and there is some serious corruption that needs to be addressed within the DoD.

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We have not even a single person directly involved in these supposed programs who is willing to testify.

We have not even a single video that isn't uselessly low-quality, clearly fake, or of something ordinary.

We have not even a single shred of physical evidence.

We just have the same thing we've always had: a bunch of people telling stories which cannot be verified, imply the existence of evidence they cannot produce, and which—purely coincidentally, I'm sure—make them famous. None of these stories has ever led to hard evidence.

Wake me up when you have something to show me. I will take any evidence beyond tall tales.

> We have not even a single person directly involved in these supposed programs who is willing to testify.

Multiple first-hand witnesses have testified to several congressional committees, in classified sessions. At the same time, nobody from these legacy programs testified in the single open session we've had so far.

> We have not even a single video that isn't uselessly low-quality, clearly fake, or of something ordinary

The four videos of UAPs released in the past few years by the DoD are ambiguous blurry messes, indeed.

Anything from an anonymous source is automatically suspect, regardless of how clear it might look.

Academia in general appears wary of surveying our atmosphere in search for UAPs, so no such projects have been funded so far, with the very recent exception of Avi Loeb's Galileo project. Loeb's project so far only has a single surveying station around Harvard since the beginning of this year, to my knowledge. Nothing has come out of it so far.

> We have not even a single shred of physical evidence.

Completely agreed. Grusch has provided the ICIG and some congressional committees information regarding the location, people, project names, funding mechanism, etc. of legacy UAP reverse-engineering programs, but that information is classified and has not been made public. I hope it will be investigated, but so far nothing has come out of it.

> We just have the same thing we've always had: a bunch of people telling stories which cannot be verified, imply the existence of evidence they cannot produce, and which—purely coincidentally, I'm sure—make them famous. None of these stories has ever led to hard evidence

I completely understand your skepticism. At the same time, I think there are some indications that there may be something to it.

In particular, the people with the best access to classified information, such as the Gang of Eight, appear to be the most in favor of transparency and investigating the subject. See for example the "UAP Disclosure Act" that is included in the 2024 NDAA.

> Wake me up when you have something to show me. I will take any evidence beyond tall tales

Evidence will not be forthcoming if we don't pressure our elected representatives to release the information they have already gathered, and/or start funding academia to survey our atmosphere for UAPs.

Galileo didn't find the rings of Saturn without first building a telescope.

Hitler : message board arguments :: Galileo : scientific debates.

How do any of us know that info about "cammikebrown"?

I think you're describing specifics of David Grusch.

I'm a little surprised at how retributive you want to get if he's exaggerating. (he is)

I take lying under oath in front of elected representatives seriously, and so does the law. I don't see it as retributive.

The law does not in fact take that seriously, in the least.

Virtually none of this is true of Grusch.

Please be specific. I'm on mobile, but at least you can start here [0].

[0] https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re...

You should listen to Ezra Klein's interview with Leslie Kean, the author of that story. It's pretty comical.

I have listened to it [0] and didn't find any comedy in it. On the contrary, I found both Klein and Kean approached the subject fairly and treated each other with mutual respect. I wish I could say the same here.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/podcasts/ezra-klein-podca...

Thanks for linking that. I think it's a good interview. I take it as extremely damning of Grusch's claims. You might take it otherwise. People can make up their own minds, and we can leave it at that.

What david-gpu wrote matches my understanding, based on his testimony (and his being vouched for by other DoD folks). I'm curious if there are reasons to doubt these parts of his story that I'm not aware of?

So far as I'm aware, there are no firsthand witnesses that corroborate Grusch's claims that have been identified, let alone testifying to Congress. The lack of identified firsthand sources is an obvious gaping flaw in Grusch's story. The bigger flaw, of course, is the fact that he's telling it at all; if it were true, it would be one of the most important military secrets in the history of human civilization. The DoD seems to care not one whit about what he has to say.

You'll see a lot of arguments that take the form "x, y, and z numbers of DoD people agree with Grusch". When you read things like that, I'd encourage you to keep in mind that there are over 950,000 employees of the DoD on the civilian side alone, and far more than that if we include former DoD people. It would be weird if you didn't have DoD and former DoD people believing that the Vatican has orchestrated a coverup of extradimensional beings whose bodies and equipment are hidden in a crypt in St. Peter's. At some point the law of large numbers takes over; you should be able to get any belief out of the DoD, even if it manages to be weirder than that one.

> So far as I'm aware, there are no firsthand witnesses that corroborate Grusch's claims that have been identified, let alone testifying to Congress

Not in public sessions. According to journalist Ross Coulthart and Sen. Marco Rubio [0], several first-hand witnesses were called to testify in front of the ICIG. It was on this basis that the ICIG directed Grusch's whistleblower complaints to Congress, where he presented further supporting documentation and deposed in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and others.

> The bigger flaw, of course, is the fact that he's telling it at all; if it were true, it would be one of the most important military secrets in the history of human civilization. The DoD seems to care not one whit about what he has to say

His central argument is that the nature of these programs is only known to a handful of people. In order for his DOPSR [1] to prevent him from talking, two conditions must be met:

1- The people performing his DOPSR must know about the existence of these programs; and

2- By law they would have to indicate which specific agencies deny him the right to state specific things, which in turn he would have been able to fight in court.

Regarding first-hand witnesses of these legacy programs, would their testimony sincerely change your opinion on the subject, or would you dismiss anything they claim as well? What is the basis for that difference?

Ultimately we must all ask ourselves what sort of evidence would be sufficient for us to change our mind, then follow that up by wondering what would it take for that evidence to be available to us, and what would it take for that evidence to be hidden from us. Only then we can have reasonable shot at understanding where things are.

So far I haven't seen convincing evidence, but at the same time I can see how such convincing evidence would be very difficult to obtain even if the NHI phenomenon was true.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hmaflNoKU

[1] https://www.esd.whs.mil/DOPSR/

So far as I'm aware, Ross Coulthart's source is David Grusch, and David Grusch does not say he's witnessed anything firsthand; he says rather that he knows other people who have. But he can't identify any of them. Neither person is credible.

This bit about the legal loophole Grusch is sneaking through here is similar to an argument Leslie Kean tried to make with Ezra Klein; in fact, that argument is the point the interview starts to fall apart, because none of this is how military classification works. If any of this is real, there is no possible way Grusch could be talking about it.

The DOPSR is simply the department in the DoD that performs pre-publication review. It's not a special instrument Grusch signed. Classification is classification, we can just use the normal words.

> So far as I'm aware, Ross Coulthart's source is David Grusch, and David Grusch does not say he's witnessed anything firsthand; he says rather that he knows other people who have

And multiple such people have already testified in front of several congressional committees. I have already provided two sources. There are more sources if you look for them.

> But he can't identify any of them.

He is not legally allowed to disclose classified information to the public. He has already provided that information to the ICIG and congressional committees.

> Neither person is credible

What specifically makes then non-credible? Because if the reason you don't find them credible is the fact that they are making statements you find implausible then that suggests that you will not accept any information that clashes with your preexisting beliefs.

> because none of this is how military classification works

Please inform us of how the DOPSR works. Be as specific as you feel may be necessary.

> The DOPSR is simply the department in the DoD that performs pre-publication review. It's not a special instrument Grusch signed.

Did I say he signed anything? I said he submitted a list of subjects he wanted to discuss in public and sent that list to the DOPSR for review, which was granted to him and currently establishes the boundaries of what he is allowed to disclose in public. If your understanding is different, please elaborate.

I was asked upthread if there were reasons to doubt Grusch. I've provided some. We could add his Vatican conspiracy to the mix, I guess, but I feel like what's on the table is already pretty damning.

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