David Grusch and his UFO claims

I received a text from radio host Graeme Hill the other day, alerting me to a Newshub Nation piece on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena) - the new, more “serious” name for UFOs. In the 10 minute video report, Rebecca Wright and Simon Shepherd interviewed Australian investigative reporter Ross Coulthart about his investigation into David Grusch. If Ross is to be believed, David Grusch is the most important whistleblower ever in the history of UFO/UAP revelations.

So, what's going on here? Who's David Grusch, and what's he claiming. And what about Ross? Has this award winning journalist figured something out that we've missed? Are we all going to have to change our minds?

The believers

David Grusch

David Grusch was, until recently, an intelligence official, and is currently a member of the US Air Force. His major whistleblowing claim is that the US government is in possession of “non-human” craft. He has apparently heard about this from nameless work colleagues. You can read more about his claims on the Wikipedia page for this incident. The claims are nothing new, but what is new is that David has been able to make official complaints to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General about both the supposed cover up, and his treatment by his bosses. So, basically, his position within government seems to be allowing him to make more waves than other people have managed.

Ross Coulthart

Ross is most well known for his work on the Australian version of the 60 Minutes current affairs TV program, but as a journalist he has also written several books around some of his more in-depth investigations. One of those books is titled “In Plain Sight: An Investigation Into UFOs and Impossible Science”, so it seems like he has a prior interest in this topic. Rather than read the book myself, the following one star review on Amazon seemed to do a good job of summarising it:

_I really wanted to like this book. Alas, I gave up after 1/3rd into it. What was the tipping point? The cattle mutilations. Or the Skinwalker ranch. Or Roswell. I could go on and on. Some readers compared it to Leslie Kean's book which although much better and thoroughly researched, still fell flat in providing any credible evidence. I've read several UFO books so I'm not a "debunker", whatever that means. I simply apply the same set of principles in formulating my belief system as I would any claim, especially an extraordinary one; mainly, I want to see evidence, preferably evidence that can be analyzed by legit scientists — chemists, physicists, engineers, etc. Unfortunately, Mr. Coulthart doesn't apply any critical analysis of these UFO cases. He seems to be a journalist who's unaware of arguments against his position. I knew what I was in for with the beginning story about the woman in the Australian military base. She saw a triangular object and was swiftly taken away by "men in black". There is no corroborating evidence to support anything she says other than her word. A UFO over a military base would not be picked up by advanced radar? Oh, I forgot, it has cloaking evasion technology. Another example is the nonsense about Roswell. Many of these witnesses, both military and the ranch, have been vetted and inconsistencies pointed out, including changing timelines and stories. Roswell is old news. The only critical commentary is of Stephen Greer, a self-possessed, conspiracy monger that would make Alex Jones proud. The supposed meeting at the Pentagon and the details of what was said was taken out of context. Again, we are left with Mr. Greer's and this author's conjectures, clearly biased towards the alien hypothesis. There is no recording of or any authenticated document to support any of this nonsense. Similarly, no offense to all the Bob Lazar fanboys, but his claims are even more preposterous. I understand Joe Rogan took an interest and catapulted this pathological, fantasy prone "witness" to fame, but let's not forget, Rogan, as much as I like his more sordid content, also believed the moon landings were faked. Just because Lazar's mannerisms on video have been said to be of a person who is being truthful doesn't mean that personality analysis, by "professional" psychiatrists/psychologists, isn't a fallible practice. Penn and Teller have always been able to dupe scientists with magic tricks showing us that even "experts" are prone to visual cue errors, exaggerated claims of velocity, altitude, parallax errors, and other such mistakes in identifying what was observed. Lazar's educational credentials have been thoroughly shown to be lies. Yet we're supposed to believe that everything about this man was erased by the government. It makes more sense to me that he has consistently held on to this lie over the decades for financial reasons. I mean, this was a man that went bankrupt and owned a brothel in Nevada. Quite the integrity. And I won't even get into the litany of his bull&*it understanding of physics. There are many online reviews of his nonsense by real physicists. The cattle mutilations are just a rehash of the Chupacabra monster of Puerto Rico. Once again, the author accepts a farmer's account of "surgical precision" and that "only robots could do this" at face (palm) value. I could type another two pages criticizing this book because on so many levels, it is a disservice to readers and adds nothing to the evidence that UFOs are of alien origin. I will not waste your time. For a proper video analysis of the Nimitz UFO encounters and Farvor's account of what he saw, see Mick West's videos on Youtube and other sites and save yourself from reading this cursory opinion by this author. And I'll leave it at that. This will be my last UFO book I will have attempted to finish. It is the only book in the last several years that I could not waste my time to finish. There are too many great books and this book is not one of them._

Rebecca Wright and Simon Shepherd

It was disappointing to see the Newshub Nation reporters interviewing Ross Coulthart so credulously. Browsing back through show segments online suggests that this might have been a one-off slip, rather than a persistent issue, but it was still a pretty big gaffe on their part. As we'll see below from the skeptics, there really is nothing of note in this story - it's just hearsay, and definitely not anything news-worthy, at least yet. If something substantial comes out, some actual evidence, then it'll be worth reporting on, but for now any reporting is just fuelling one of our oldest conspiracy theories - an evidence-free idea that refuses to lie down and die.

The Skeptics

So, what are skeptics saying about this series of revelations? In this case, as always, some cooler heads have prevailed. Let's see what they have to say about this:

NASA

"One of NASA's key priorities is the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but so far, NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial. However, NASA is exploring the solar system and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the universe”

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office

"To date, AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads"

Skeptoid

Brian Dunning has some choice words to say about the people who have propelled this story into the media via a story on The Debrief, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal:

_“When you assemble all these puzzles pieces, David Grusch has no personal knowledge of alien bodies or crafts, but he heard all about it from Eric Davis (Davis, Grusch, Elizondo, Kean and Blumenthal appear to all be personal friends). Eric Davis's connection to all this is that he was one of Robert Bigelow's “scientists” at Skinwalker Ranch, which they called the National Institute of Discovery Science.

So this new, grand revelation — that the whistle must be blown upon — is that some guy heard from one of the old Skinwalker Ranch ghost hunters that he thinks the government has alien bodies and alien crafts.”_

Skeptics Guide to the Universe

Steve Novella makes some good points, and they're the same points that can be made for pretty much any story about UFOs:

1. There's no actual evidence - just second or third hand stories that we're being asked to trust. Somebody talked with somebody else who saw something years ago.
2. How are aliens both so technologically advanced that they can fly interstellar distance, but so backward that they keep crashing into our planet or getting shot down by our very primitive armaments
3. Hiding this kind of grand conspiracy so well for so many years would be nigh on impossible - especially with people like Trump as president, and with a secret that's been kept for decades by multiple countries.
4. The claims being made are vague, in this case about the US government “hiding information” rather than concrete and definite. Claims are suggestive and tantalising rather than definitive.
5. Multiple government departments have come out and risked their reputation saying there is no evidence of secret alien technology.
6. Despite the whistleblower supposedly having explosive information that would be damaging to the government, they haven't been arrested, murdered, or otherwise silenced.

(I'd add to this list the implausibility of any alien species having access to advanced technology that could a) detect that we're here, and b) journey to us)

Mick West

As recommended by both Graeme Hill and the anonymous Amazon reviewer above as a good resource on UFO claims, Mick West has done a great job of dissecting this case in a recent video:

Andrew Little

Finally, even our own Minister of Defence, Andrew Little, had something to say, when the issue of Five Eyes involvement in the cover-up was broached with him:

“I've never believed in aliens and have seen nothing in this job that's changed my mind.”