“When will this be over,
this cold and bitter season?
The government is lying.
The truth is found with reason.”
– Box Car Racer, “All Systems Go.”
“The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”
― attributed to Noam Chomsky.
Despite my resistance, into this insipid drama I descend, if only in an effort to sort it out. As I do so, however, please tread forward pained with the knowledge that I absolutely fucking hate myself.
In my September 14, 2023 post with an admittedly convoluted title, “UFOs, Congress, and the Pentagon (Kirkpatrick VS Grusch, Enter: Hicks)”, I detailed to the best of my knowledge and ability the drama that had unfolded between UFO whistleblower David Grusch and Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who was at the time the Director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). However much I would like to be allergic to such drama, I am human, after all, and in addition, I shamelessly confess that I feel particularly drawn to such drama when it’s inextricably associated with an alleged century-long global conspiracy that, if ultimately disclosed, could entirely upend what our civilization regards as conventional reality. So please excuse that over-half-a-year-old post as well as this one, which serves as a follow-up, for recently more has come to light regarding this drama. As before, I intend to sort through it the best I can.
Before doing so, however, I must introduce another character: Mr. John Greenwald, Jr.
I. John Greenwald, Ken Klippenstein, FOIA, & Signal.
In 1996, when he was fifteen, John Greenwald began submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents relating to UFOs and other interesting subjects. Believing that there should be an online repository for such received government documents, he gave birth to his website, The Black Vault, containing over millions pages of FOIA material. Later, he began a podcast, started writing articles and books, started appearing on television and selling T-shirts, and became a producer and writer for television series regarding UFOs. He has also engaged in non-related pursuits, and still considers The Black Vault a hobby.
Since Grusch came on the scene in early June 2023, Greenwald has made abundantly clear his suspicions regarding him. At least from what I’ve gathered until recently, this primarily stemmed from his interpretation of DOPSR, though it may go beyond that, as I do not frequently view his YouTube channel. On April 18, 2024, it became clear that his distrust of Grusch extended beyond that, however, as that was when Greenewald published an article entitled, “FOIA Documents Reveal AARO’s Authorized and Repeated Attempts to Engage with David Grusch.” As implied by the title, according to Greenewald, this article documents the fact that ARRO, while headed by Kirkpatrick, “made numerous attempts to interview UFO whistleblower David Grusch regarding his claims of U.S. Government engagement with extraterrestrial materials and technologies.”
The documents released to The Black Vault and included in Greenwald’s article included not only a January 8, 2024, Memorandum – that, yes, some suspect was written by Kirkpatrick, though there is no conclusive evidence of this – but also screenshots of relevant Signal text messages and emails. Greenwald also includes his summary of the documented events along with his article.
There is some suspicion with respect to how quickly his FOIA request was responded to, however, as well as what he specifically received.
In Shaun Raviv’s May 6, 2020 article on John Greenwald, “Inside the Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire,” he probed an interesting question: how long did it typically take a FOIA request to bear fruit? Back in the 90s, Greenwald said, it really wasn’t all that bad:
“Back then, the turnaround time for a request was far quicker than it is now. ‘It’s really night and day,’ he told me recently. It averaged, by Greenewald’s estimate, a couple of months before he heard an answer; today the wait is often measured in years. […] In one case, documents he requested took thirteen years to arrive. That was fine. His patience, he believes, is a large part of what makes the Black Vault valuable.”
This is admirable, broadly-speaking.
In this particular case, however, I find it incredibly interesting, as Greenwald filed this FOIA case (24-F-0266) on November 2, 2023, as previously mentioned, and received it recently, he said in his article, which would be April 2024. In other words, it took roughly half a year. From what can be gathered from the above quote and in many other FOIA cases filed by others, this seems to be a rather prompt response, relatively-speaking. As a matter of fact, it’s suspiciously akin to the unnaturally swift response journalist Ken Klippenstein received with respect to his FOIA request involving Grusch.
According to Klippenstein, in response to Grusch’s Congressional testimony four days previously, he allegedly spoke with his contacts in the DOD and IC. As I wrote in my August 20, 2023 post, “On the Smear Campaign Against David Grusch,” he then apparently “spread a net to receive tips outside his comfort zone, and ultimately received a ‘mosaic’ of general suggestions as to where he should look to substantiate their claims.” At the direction of the suggestions received, he made his FOIA request on July 30, 2023, which was received and responded to by August 1, at which point he was told “it was being forwarded to the Leesburg Police Department in Virginia.” Klippenstein’s article in The Intercept was published nine days later, on August 10.
Given that Klippenstein’s father works for the DOD, I naturally find it relatively easy to believe that he might have been smearing Grusch on behalf of his contacts in the DOD and IC. Greenwald? I’m far less inclined to take that bold and entirely unjustified leap. I think Greenwald provides an invaluable service to not only the UFO community, but towards the efforts of government transparency in general. Particularly in an era in which the mainstream media is failing as what I once felt was its role, which was to serve as the unofficial fourth branch of government composed of watchdogs for the citizenry with respect to the Powers That Be, we desperately need guys like him.
In light of his previous suspicions regarding Grusch, which he was not shy about, and his subsequent FOIA request, however, I think he may have been perceived and subsequently used by The Powers That Be in this particular instance as convenient conduit for data and could be reasonably confident how it would be slanted by him. Given his previous public perceptions, they knew how he would interpret this data and they knew it would serve their agenda, which is to throw shade on Grusch – much like Klippenstein’s article in The Intercept. They assumed the public would focus on Greenwald’s summary, which was hardly an elaboration on the Memorandum, which was a misleading summary of the provided text messages and emails, in my opinion. That said, I’m sure I have my biases as well.
It wasn’t just how relatively swift his FOIA request received a response, either, as I formerly suggested, but how much he received as a result of his request. Even Greenwald said – in his own YouTube breakdown and during his discussion about it with Patrick on the Vetted podcast on April 19 – that he was surprised at the material he got.
Specifically, the aforementioned documents in question provided five screenshots of Signal text messages between Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, head of ARRO at the time, and Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and current UFO disclosure advocate. The provided text exchange occurs for the most part through June 12-13, followed by a brief text exchange that took place at some undetermined date after the original texts. In his later YouTube breakdown, Greenwald said he has issued FOIA requests for the earlier texts (suggested by a “Thank you” from Mellon at the top of the first screenshot, dated June 11) as well as one rather large text by Mellon which was cut off due to length.
He wasn’t the only one surprised by the Signal text exchange being provided. So was Mellon. My impression of him, which I will get to shortly, was only reinforced when I later learned of his tweet on X, which he posted on April 18, the same day Greenwald published his article:
“To my surprise, parts of a conversation I had with Dr. Kirkpatrick on Signal were recently made public via a FOIA request. These messages simply relate to my effort to facilitate a meeting between AARO and Dave Grusch at Dr. Kirkpatrick’s request. I don’t give out people’s contact info without their consent, but I told Sean I would be happy to convey his request to Dave. My recollection is that Dave was going to consult his attorney and proceed from there. Dave has an excellent attorney, so if he was advised by counsel not to meet with AARO or others I certainly don’t blame him. I was not in a position to judge the legal arguments and issues involving conflicting IC IG, DOJ, and AARO jurisdiction and claims, I was simply trying to facilitate communications in the hope of helping the Congressionally mandated investigation.”
We can also add Lou Elizondo to the community of the wide-eyed, as his response to Mellon’s tweet the same day conveys:
“Chris, I wonder when did DoD authorize Kirkpatrick to use the Signal app for official U.S. business and correspondence? You and I would have been crucified for doing that while we were in the Government. And when did they allow personal identifiable info of U.S. citizens to be released contrary to [the] Privacy Act of 1974? I guess [it’s] more of the same regarding rules that apply ‘to thee, but not to me.’”
According to what Greenwald said in his interview on the Vetted podcast, hosted by Patrick Scott Armstrong, any emails or text messages with a government official are potentially accessible through FOIA. Even so, he reiterated that he “was surprised to see that method of communication” and was uncertain as to whether it was the preference of Kirpatrick or Mellon. He obviously wasn’t aware of the tweets of Mellon or Elizondo at the time. If it was due to anyone’s preference, Kirkpatrick must be the one.
Now, if you’re as ignorant as I was, you might be wondering just what the hell “Signal” is. As I’ve learned, it’s an app that allows end-to-end encrypted communications, which means that only the intended target can receive them. The Signal app apparently also has a feature where you can set it to entirely wipe out (for instance) your text messages after one week. As the final screenshot of text messages reveals, the user had this setting, as between the 12-13 communications and the subsequent brief exchange formerly mentioned the app reminded the user: “You set disappearing message time to 1 week.” The user, as we’ve discerned, was evidently Kirkpatrick. So far as I’m aware, this only implies that it was at that point in his conversation with Mellon that Kirkpatrick implemented that setting, from which we can infer that he felt he had no reason to do so beforehand.
In any case, why would he take screenshots of this conversation at any point? After all, it seems to contradict the very point of the Signal App. Does he perhaps possess some degree of precognitive ability, and this is what inspired him to trap these text messages in photographic amber, as he anticipated they might serve some use in the future?
Maybe I’m missing something here. If I am, please enlighten me in the comments. As for now, this remains incredibly suspicious to me.
II. Mellon in the Middle.
According to Greenewald’s summary, between June 8-13 2023 – which is to say starting just three days after the airing of Coulthart’s NewsNation interview with Grusch and the article in The Debrief was published – the documents provided revealed that “[i]initial contact was made with known associates of Grusch, urging them to have him speak with AARO. These efforts were clarified during dialogues between AARO’s Director and individuals close to Grusch.” The memorandum, it read as follows: “Between June 8th, 2023 and June 13th, 2023, Director, AARO engaged in a dialog with [REDACTED] regarding AARO’s authorities and encouraged [REDACTED] to have Mr. Grusch contact AARO. Note that [REDACTED] is a known close associate of Mr. Grusch and the dialog made it clear that [REDACTED] was in contact with Mr. Grusch.”
As stated earlier, these email communications through the Signal app occurred through Kirkpatrick and Mellon, who is obviously the “REDACTED” referred to above.
As far as my general impression of the conversation itself, Mellon seems very cordial, polite, professional, and fair, whereas Kirkpatrick comes off as an aggressive asshole with a superiority complex. Despite his attempts to project the image of someone who is intimidating and – however intelligent and educated he may be – far more intelligent and educated than he actually is, he fails at every turn.
In any case, in the Signal text conversation, Kirkpatrick says:
“Grusch has made claims that he’s contacted us and we’ve never responded. That’s just not true. He’s also made claims that we don’t have access to investigate his claims. That’s also not true. If I recall correctly you indicated he refused to come talk with us, and you’re quoted as suggesting as such. I’d suggest you emphasize the need to come speak with us. You have the contact email.”
To this, Mellon expresses his confusion:
“Do you have a specific example of Dave claiming he’s contacted AARO and your office refused to respond? That sounds strange as during a conversation yesterday he told me AARO was not a [lawfully] designated recipient of his [whistleblower] info, hence his reason for not contacting AARO. I also do not recall saying Dave refused to come talk to AARO, I certainly did not do so in the Debrief article or my article in Politico and I’ve done no interviews yet about Dave.”
Kirkpatrick then says Grusch made those claims during the June 5 Coulthart interview. Mellon’s confusion was therefore understandable, as Kirkpatrick was either misunderstanding or purposely misrepresenting what Grusch actually said.
During the June 5, 2023 interview with Coulthart, Grusch claimed to have known Kirkpatrick for eight years. In April of 2022, prior to Kirkpatrick becoming the director of ARRO that July, Grusch said he’d had a classified conversation with him dealing with the concerns he had resulting from his discoveries while working at the NGA as the “agency’s co-lead in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and trans-medium object analysis,” as he put it in his July 27, 2023, Congressional testimony, which entailed him “reporting to UAP Task Force (UAPTF) and eventually the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).” According to Grusch, however, Kirkpatrick had failed to follow up with him since that conversation, at least as of July 27, 2023.
Grusch mentioned this conversation he had with Kirkpatrick at least twice directly, and would again do so indirectly. The first occurred during the aforementioned June 5, 2023 NewsNation interview.
“I told him what I was starting to uncover and he didn’t follow up with me,” he said. “He has my phone number. He could’ve called me. I hope he ultimately does the right thing. He should be able to make the same investigative discoveries I did.”
Then there was the Congressional hearing held at the end of the following month. When asked if he knew why Kirkpatrick had failed to follow up with him, Grusch seemed reluctant to assume any motivations.
“Unfortunately, I cannot read his mind,” he responded. “I wish he did. I was happy to give sage counsel to him on where to look when he took the helm of AARO.”
In other words, Grusch never claimed that he contacted ARRO and that they failed to respond, but rather that he had a personal and classified conversation with Kirkpatrick in April of 2022, three months before he became ARRO’s director on July 20, and that, despite having his phone number, Kirkpatrick never got back to him.
The third time it was referenced by Grusch, it was done so indirectly, with Mellon serving as the intermediary, as revealed in those same released text conversations between Mellon and Kirkpatrick. Mellon told Kirkpatrick that Grusch’s “claim about contacting you dates to a conversation the two of you had many months ago on a ‘Tandberg* (sp?) system and that you didn’t follow up after that call. I’m not trying to adjudicate that issue[,] just telling you what he said. Apparently that is what his statement was referring to.”
My immediate curiosity was what a “Tandberg system” was, so I did some Googling. According to John Gans’s May 13, 2019 Wired article, “How Tech Helped Unknown Staffers Change the US Way of War”:
“The Tanderberg Video-Teleconference monitor is sleeker than the average desktop computer but not much bigger. Developed by a Norwegian concern now owned by Cisco Systems, the desktop units — which look like knock-off iMacs, with a handset for dialing — support seamless and, when enabled, classified video-teleconferencing. Although businesses are the predominant market for the machines, they have become almost as common as the US flag in government offices around Washington, at embassies, and in war zones.”
So the alleged April 2022 classified conversation took place on a classified video-conferencing call. One might hope that the confusion would now be cleared up now that Kirkpatrick was informed that Grusch wasn’t talking about ARRO but about Kirpatrick himself. Not so. Actually, this almost seems to make things worse, as Kirkpatrick flat-out denies this conversation ever took place.
“All of that is both absurd and false,” he texts. “I [haven’t] had a conversation with him for years.”
He didn’t let up, either. Over four months later, Kirkpatrick continued to deny this conversation took place, this time in public – though in this case, in a strangely less forceful way. This is revealed on the DOD’s website, where there is a transcript entitled, “AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick Holds an Off-Camera Media Roundtable” dated October 31, 2023, where Kirkpatrick was asked about Grusch directly:
“Q: And so, he also says that he briefed you before you assumed your position in AARO. Have you had the chance to follow up on any of the inquiries that he made or talked to any of the witnesses?
DR. KIRKPATRICK: So, the last time I believe I spoke with Mr. Grusch was when I was in the J2 at U.S. Space Command about five years ago [2018], and it was not on this topic. Now, we have interviewed a whole range of people, over 30 people now. I think we’ve interviewed most of the people that he may have talked to, but we don’t know that. And we have extended an invitation at least four or five times now for him to come in over the last eight months or so and has been declined.”
Two interesting things in what Kirkpatrick said here.
First, as previously stated, he seems to deny the classified conversation Grusch claims they had in April 2022, and in this case he does so in a suspiciously indirect, wishy-washy, and semi-dodgy manner, at least it seems that way to me. Having initially given him the benefit of the doubt, I considered at first that perhaps Kirkpatrick could neither confirm nor deny this conversation legally given its classified status. I quickly found it difficult to swallow this, however. After all, given Grusch’s strict adherence to law and official procedure and the fact that he nonetheless referenced this classified conversation without providing details, it seems reasonable to assume that Kirkpatrick could’ve easily done the same. Then there came the text conversations in Greenwald’s FOIA documents, however, where Kirkpatrick flatly denied that it had taken place. Why deny it so aggressively in what, at the time, he must have presumed to be a private conversation (though, granted, he did screenshot the conversation… ) and then deny it in such a distinctly different and suspiciously qualified statement on public record?
Unless it’s clarified by Grusch or Kirkpatrick, or further materials are declassified and released through FOIA, I suppose this element will remain frustratingly ambiguous.
Now let’s delve into the second claim, which involves Kirkpatrick’s insistence that ARRO has repeatedly “extended an invitation” to Grusch for him to come talk to them and all invitations have been declined. In response to this allegation, Grusch reportedly texted NewsNation’s Brian Entin on November 2, stating in no uncertain terms:
“I have received zero emails or calls from them. That is a lie.”
It should be noted that what Grusch said here is technically true. While ARRO kept urging people surrounding and connected with Grusch to have him contact them, AARO never contacted him directly, at least insofar as the released documents specifically reveal. One should also bear in mind that Grusch’s comment was the only quoted portion of the text conversation between Entin and Grusch. The full text Grusch sent was not provided, nor any text Entin himself might have sent to Grusch, and the precise nature of how the question was worded might add some clarity.
III. Grusch’s Concerns Regarding AARO.
To get back to the June 11-13 text conversation between Mellon and Kirpatrick that Greenwald provided in his article, however, Kirkpatrick’s general vibe seems unmistakable to me. It’s familiar as well. On July 27, 2023 – two weeks after the temporal scope of this text conversation (aside from the short, undated ones at the end, of course) and a mere day after Grusch provided testimony to Congress – Kirkpatrick posted “Hearings and Transparency,” a public LinkedIn post that carried the same emotional atmosphere, though unlike these formerly private texts, clearly checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There, as here, he seems incredibly butt-hurt and frustrated, and the source of this seems to be the reluctance of Grusch to reach out to ARRO. The discussion between Mellon and himself in the texts seems to clearly indicate the concerns that reside at the heart of Grusch’s reluctance to do so as well.
One of Grusch’s concerns was referenced by Kirkpatrick, actually. At one point, previously quoted, he says that Grusch has “made claims that we don’t have access to investigate his claims” and that this was “not true.” To this, Mellon responded that he thought that sounded strange, as during a conversation with Grusch he’d apparently had the previous day he suggested that “AARO was not a [lawfully] designated recipient of his [whistleblower] info, hence his reason for not contacting AARO.” Kirkpatrick returned by insisting that Grusch’s “assertion that we aren’t lawfully empowered is clearly incongruous with the law.”
Is it, though?
During the April 19 Senate Armed Services Subcommittee Hearing on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Senator Jacky Rose asked him if he needed any authorities he didn’t have access to in order to do his job, and before she could even finish, Kirkpatrick blurted out:
“There are some authorities that we need. We are currently operating under Title 10 authorities, but we have good relationships across the other agencies. But having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counter-intelligence – those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
According to “Case Not Closed: DoD To Review 2019 West Coast UFOs Which Harassed US Warships,” a May 2023 Liberation Times article written by Christopher Sharp: “This means that he can access information from DoD and military operations,” but not access data from the intelligence community (IC), more specifically “from intelligence agencies, intelligence activities, and covert action.” For this, Kirkpatrick and ARRO would require Title 50 authorities, allowing them to access and verify the existence of the programs the whistleblowers that had confided in Grusch were involved in. Without Title 50 authorities, ARRO cannot verify any whistleblower claims, even if they wanted to.
It doesn’t stop there, however. At least according to Matt Ford of The Good Trouble Show – an excellent and dreadfully underrated channel on YouTube, I might add – ARRO and its agents do not have 1811 authority, either, which is to say that while they could at least receive (presumably through their Title 10 authority) certain classified information, they weren’t Special Agents, and consequently “could not conduct search and seizure, they couldn’t make arrests, they couldn’t depose people, they couldn’t subpoena anyone.” Granted, this wasn’t mentioned in the text exchange, nor has it ever been mentioned by Grusch himself, but I find it difficult to believe that, if accurate, Grusch and his attorney wouldn’t be well aware of it.
If indeed ARRO only had Title 10 Authority and neither Title 50 or 1811 authorities, anyone who provided testimony to them regarding necessarily compartmentalized and illicit programs would never have a hope in hell of having those allegations being properly investigated, let alone legally “confirmed” or “verified”. On the contrary, upon receiving this classified data, all ARRO could legally do would be to call up the alleged authorities and politely ask them:
“Hey, do you have any illicit, compartmentalized programs that deal with the collection and back-engineering of recovered craft from Non-Human Intelligences and the acquisition and study of the bodies of their occupants? While we’re at it, do you also have any illicit, compartmentalized programs dealing with a broad cover-up and disinformation campaign against your very own citizens, which might have involved intimidating, discrediting, even murdering individuals who knew too much and/or were threatening to reveal your broad swath of illegal and deeply unethical activities? No? Are you sure? You are? Okey-Dokey artichokie.”
In short, ARRO was utterly impotent, and should we be surprised? ARRO is an office within the Pentagon, which it was in part tasked with investigating, which essentially amounts to demanding the fox guard the hen house. And the guy originally put in charge of this five-sided-body’s feeble appendage was a man that I honestly, originally suspected might just be a useful idiot but now confidently perceive to be a narcissist who knew he could ultimately get what he wanted if only he played the game and served his masters well. It is no wonder that, as Coulthart and others have expressed, many whistleblowers within the overarching Program that Grusch exposed didn’t feel comfortable coming to ARRO and confessing all, but instead went straight to Congress and the Office of the Inspector General.
This is not the only reason suggested in these texts that Grusch was reluctant to reach out to ARRO, however, as Mellon’s response to Kirkpatrick revealed.
In the Signal texts, Mellon conveyed to Kirkpatrick that he had spoken to Grusch and that his first question had been why ARRO has not simply gotten the relevant data from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), where it was all “[fully] documented to include confirmation the program is real from active, cleared insiders.”
K: “DOJ has to release it since it’s part of a criminal investigation. They haven’t yet. He needs to come tell us separate from his criminal complaint.”
M: “He obviously doesn’t have to do so and he even said “How do I know Sean is not a target of the ongoing criminal investigation[!]”
And there we have the second potential reason why Grusch was reluctant to reach out to ARRO: that Kirkpatrick specifically, and not merely ARRO in general, may be the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. I again refer to my September 14, 2023 post, UFOs, Congress, and the Pentagon (Kirpatrick Vs Grush, Enter: Hicks), where I wrote the following:
“Let’s assume that Grusch had indeed briefed Kirkpatrick in April 2022 on what he’d gathered regarding The Program but that Kirkpatrick had failed to follow up with him. This would have certainly communicated to Grusch that Kirkpatrick either wasn’t taking the allegations seriously, or worse, that he knew these allegations were serious and was intentionally not following up on them — for reasons unknown.
If that were the case, and the reprisals Grusch spoke of happened afterward, why would he bother briefing Kirkpatrick a second time? If we instead assume that the [reprisals] had happened before April 2022 and Grusch had indeed told Kirkpatrick about the issue during the briefing and Kirkpatrick had failed to follow up, his concerns would understandably be even greater than in the first scenario.
Yet Kirkpatrick also said in his LinkedIn letter that “the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO,” which suggests that either Kirkpatrick or ARRO representatives have since reached out to Grusch – he doesn’t suggest when, but let’s assume for the moment that it was after Grusch went public in early June when he first spoke on how Kirkpatrick hadn’t followed up – and that Grusch has since refused to respond.
Well, I apply the same logic here as before: Why would Grusch be willing to have a conversation with him now, after he had been ignored for so long and Kirkpatrick suddenly had interest in following up after the public heat had been turned up? It’s also possible, and I’d go so far as to say probable, that Grusch’s lawyer – Charles McCullough III, senior partner of the Compass Rose Legal Group in Washington and the first ever Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IGIC) – had at this point advised him not to speak with Kirkpatrick.
He’d had his chance, after all, and now higher authorities were taking over the job he refused to do, and any further communications with Kirkpatrick might hinder the investigation.
Again, this is all assumption – I’d certainly like to think it is to some degree educated assumption, but it is an assumption nonetheless. Until more information is made publicly available on this circumstance, this is unfortunately what we’re left with.”
Well, we’ve got more now.
Accepting all that Grusch has conveyed directly and indirectly up to this point as true, or at least true from his perspective, we can surmise that his reluctance to reach out to, much less provide testimony to ARRO, comes down to at least four central concerns, some but not all of which have been covered above.
First, Grusch was not convinced that ARRO had the authorities necessary to hear, let alone properly investigate and verify, his testimony.
Second, even if ARRO were cleared to hear about and even investigate the information about UFO programs regardless as to their classification per se, there may be a loophole Grusch was concerned about, though he never stated it overly, at least to my knowledge. In any case, two journalists, Ross Coulthart (with whom Grusch has clearly been in close communication with both prior to and following the interview) and Micheal Shellenberger – both of whom have spoken with UFO whistleblowers, at least some of whom we can reasonably assume were the same ones who had spoken with Grusch – have mentioned how those whistleblowers tend not to trust ARRO as far as they could throw them. While neither journalist ever expressed specifically why, I suspect it comes down to the aforementioned “fox in the hen house” analogy, and seems to echo a suspicion some in the UFO communities on Reddit have developed. The general hypothesis posits that ARRO serves as the Pentagon’s “honeypot” and “legal trap.” They draw in UFO whistleblowers, make them feel comfortable in divulging classified information regarding UFO programs, and in the process goad them into briefing them about associated but ultimately non-related classified programs that may be necessary to provide context or confirm their allegations. This, as a consequence, could make those whistleblowers legally liable and enable the Gatekeepers to silence them for violating the law.
Even if he didn’t know for certain this was true, Grusch, having been the recipient of over 30 whistleblower claims in the course of his investigations while working for the government, would no doubt be well aware of this suspicion among them, and given what he had to reveal dealt with those accounts, would have been understandably concerned that by talking to ARRO he might also be falling into a trap. This trap would not only lead him to fucking himself, either, but the dozens of others who had confided in him, and were counting on him.
Third, he suspected that Kirkpatrick himself may be the subject of a criminal investigation, perhaps the one relating to his reprisals, and that providing him testimony may compromise that investigation.
The fourth concern requires that we keep in mind the far grander and more personal context here, namely the history between Kirkpatrick and Grusch. Consider that Kirkpatrick and Grusch knew one another for eight years, as Grusch attested, and they did indeed have that classified conversation via a Tanderberg Video-Teleconference call in April of 2022, before Kirkpatrick became the director of ARRO, during which Grusch provided the suspicions he’d developed in the course of his investigations. And despite the fact that Kirpatrick had his personal phone number, he failed to follow up with him – until, suspiciously, just three days after the groundbreaking June 5th, 2023 interview with Coulthart, where Grusch publicly spilled all beans DOPSR would allow regarding those classified concerns. And even then, Kirkpatrick didn’t follow up with him personally, but through an associate, and via text. And not personally, not really, the texts suggest, but as the head of ARRO. And to top it all off, Kirkpatrick flatly denied that the classified April 2022 conversation had ever happened at all.
If anyone of reasonable intelligence were in Grusch’s shoes, I feel confident that they would be incredibly suspicious of the whole situation, especially after having already experienced reprisals, particularly if the suspicion was that those reprisals seemed to have stemmed from (and I’m making an entirely unfounded assumption here, mind you) the concerns formerly conveyed to Kirkpatrick.
I mean, there is paranoia, yes, but there is also reasonable concern. In Grusch’s shoes, within the context of what I would imagine his personal experience must have been at that point – especially after having already experienced reprisals, as I said – I would imagine his noting of the fact that Kirkpatrick was intent on taking this indirect avenue of “reaching out to him” despite knowing how to contact him personally would raise alarm bells — nay, vibrant, neon-blazing, blood-red flags in his mind.
Despite all this, however, Grusch ultimately did reach out to ARRO. He sent them an email in November of 2024.
IV. Did Grusch Stand ARRO Up?
Again, from the Memorandum:
“On November 10th, 2023, Mr. Grusch contacted AARO, at the urging of Congressional Staff Members, and agreed to be interviewed in Arlington, VA on November 14th, 2024 [2023, of course — it seems clear this is a typo]. AARO provided Mr. Grusch with a memorandum from the Director of Special Access Programs, Department of Defense that made it clear AARO is authorized to receive compartmented information (Enclosure 1). Mr. Grusch was also told that AARO would obtain a similar memorandum from the Director, Controlled Access Programs Office, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”
Then Grusch allegedly stood them up, as the next item on the Memorandum documented.
“On November 14th, 2023, Mr. Grusch failed to show at the agreed upon location and time for an interview with AARO. Upon contacting Mr. Grusch, he stated that he is not convinced that AARO is authorized to receive varying levels of classified and sensitive information.”
At 10:34 in the morning, some half an hour after what was apparently the agreed-upon time of the meeting, an anonymous personal emails Grusch to ask:
“I’ve been waiting in the lobby over 30 minutes. Are you showing up?”
On the Vetted podcast, Armstrong and Greenwald both actually cut Grusch some slack in this case, too, it should be noted. As Armstrong says:
“It seemed like some miscommunication and misunderstanding, and to be fair to Grush, Grush did apologize for not showing up to that meeting. I do want to make sure that I read that as well. He did say thank you or I apologize for the confusion this morning about my whereabouts, I should have been more clear in my email on Monday. Because again, from what I could tell that’s what was holding up. He felt like, yes, I agreed to come in at 10 am on this date, but I asked some questions and in his mind those questions didn’t get answered so, therefore that’s why he didn’t show up to that meeting.”
To this, Greenwald responds:
“I think you’re absolutely right. I made sure that his apology was in the article and I made reference to that. I believe, just from a professional courtesy standpoint, I’m glad that he did that. I’m a little surprised though that it went so far as to it being scheduled. Something like this just isn’t, you know, a lunch date between buddies, but rather something pretty important, and it went right down to the wire, where these guys are are are sitting in the lobby for thirty minutes. So I’m kind of surprised at that.”
In his YouTube breakdown on the documents, Greenwald also provides commentary on this incident, justifying his continuing suspicion regarding Grusch’s integrity on its basis:
“If he didn’t set up the meeting and didn’t show, I can understand his concern was really the root cause of that, but how is it that he could go all that way, set up the meeting, the time, and just not show? What happened? Was it under advice of counsel? Maybe, but why wouldn’t he have that advice prior? We know who his attorney is. Charles McCullough, the former ICIG. So clearly he has got an incredibly intelligent attorney behind him. So if it was based on legal counsel, why didn’t he get that counsel prior? Because he was clearly proactively – after declining a bunch of invitations, it seems proactively – now reaching out to AARO and saying, ‘Hey, let’s chat.’”
Before I could finish writing this post, Grusch re-emerged from his months-long radio silence on May 3, 2024 to provide some clarification that confirmed many of my suspicions:
“AARO officially made contact with me in November 2023 as indicated by the email chain in the FOIA release. Prior to this, neither my attorney nor myself had been officially contacted in any way by AARO. To date, my 8 January 2024 email to AARO requesting them to answer my security-related concerns I sent to them via email on 13 November 2023 has gone unanswered. The DoD SAPCO and DNI CAPCO memorandums do not address the variety of serious procedural issues I voiced in November 2023 as it relates to non-UAP related compartmented programs, as well as National Security Council SAPs and CIA Directorate of Operations human intelligence programs. Protecting classified information is a lifelong obligation. To be clear, AARO does not have access to the information I provided to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) and the Congressional Intelligence Committees under the PPD-19 whistleblowing process. I trust in the investigative and law enforcement/criminal referral authorities ICIG has independent of DoD oversight.”
V. Conclusions.
David Grusch is a patriot. Despite having found evidence that an aspect of the US Government has gone rogue and has been engaging in incredibly illicit activities for decades, he seems to perceive this as at best an anomaly, at worst a cancer, and still finds value in this system if the lies and their crimes were properly investigated and exposed to the public in a slow, controlled manner.
I, on the other hand? I am not a patriot. While our system as it presently stands may be better than most if not all others in a relative sense, it desperately requires evolution. Even so, from the very first day I began looking into Grusch, I couldn’t help but respect the guy – and that respect has only been reinforced every step of the way.
His psychology naturally gravitates him towards serving a group, being part of a family, and fighting on behalf of that tribe. And early on, in his eyes, that family was his country, the ol’ US of A. For foreigners, as I’ve gathered, it’s known as The States. In service to his elected family, he has brought all he has in his psychological arsenal to bear, which includes his autism, his clearly high intelligence, his sense of integrity, and his unwavering knowledge of and commitment to following the letter of the law with all its elaborate nuances and intricacies. His military and civilian careers provide testament to this, as does his broad clearances – as does his ultimate choice to retire early to become a whistleblower.
As previously mentioned, while performing his duties he amassed sufficient evidence that a sector of the US government had gone rogue. Not only were they breaking the law in general, they had been dodging proper Congressional oversight, and he felt it his responsibility – damned be the personal cost – to inform the proper authorities, including inspector generals and the Congress, and after running what he wished to convey through DOPSR, bring this knowledge to the public so far as he could through legal means, and rally a crowd to rectify this illicit and immoral travesty.
In tandem with this, I’ve increasingly come to suspect there was an impulse to expand not only his sense of family to the whole of humanity, but to expand the whole of humanity’s sense of family to itself – to a species-wide global consciousness. After all, what he had discovered in his duties suggested that we were not alone as an intelligent, technological, planetary species, and that rogue sectors within world governments knew damn well that this was the case, and that if publicly known this knowledge might inspire cohesion amongst increasingly polarized human tribes, and tribes within tribes, in the light of a more cosmic perspective.
If what he desires to disclose proves to be the truth – and it should be clear that I, for one, am pretty much sold at this point – and he helps to generate its ultimate disclosure, I feel certain he wouldn’t want to be seen as a hero. And I get that perspective. But if he isn’t ultimately recognized as a key figure in shaping not only the history of our country but of human history, we have done our descendants a great disservice.
Not as great a disservice as we would do them if we were to continue to allow the Powers That Be – a small number of arrogant, power-hungry, unethical tyrants within the US Government, and likely other governments throughout the globe – to continue propagating the greatest of deceptions and the most heinous of crimes, however.
ARRO is just another tool for them to brainwash us all, Just like the disinformation campaign Robertson Panel recommended, just like Project Bluebook ended up, undoubtedly aiming for the former success of the Condon Report, they want to continue to cover up, misinform, disinform, and as I think this case demonstrates, fucking distract the populace with respect to the truth – and demoralize, stigmatize, bribe, and, if necessary, eliminate those who fight to bring it to light, all to convince the populace:
“There’s nothing to see here, folks.”
Bullshit. There is so, so much more to see here…