Yeah, basically the US has had an unofficial policy of "discredit and ignore" since the cold war when it comes to publicly addressing UFOs. The government recently realized that it wasn't just a smokescreen, the military was literally ignoring countless reports of UFOs entering restricted aerospace, sightings by military pilots, instrument recordings, etc. So now Congress is upset that the military has been ignoring potential security threats, and to throw napalm on the bonfire, if I understand correctly, the person currently at the head of the investigation team set up by Congress is telling them that they've talked to high ranking people in the military; and those people claim that the military has craft of non-human origin while also refusing to allow him access to them.

[–] PunchingBag@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's much more complicated than that, unfortunately. I've been following this for some time, purely for my own entertainment.

This primarily started with the Nimitz Incident, when the military released official video of what they claim is unknown technology. This received little attention, except for civilians taking interest and making it heard. Fravor, for example, was brought on talk shows to give his account.

Not much was then heard for a few years, until a new whistleblower hotline was implemented, ostensibly for the sake of digging up dirt on Democrats.

David Grusch's story is that he has been working for UAP-adjacent programs for some time, and in his career, has heard a number of very disturbing secrets. Claiming he's a boy scout, he has used this new whistleblower hotline to try and drag this out into the light, and he claims he has names and locations of ET material, as well as direct knowledge of the location of massive amounts of taxpayer money that the Pentagon "lost." To use a metaphor, a net that was meant for minnows may have caught a shark, and Congress has finally taken notice.

Now others are following his lead in using the whistleblower hotline. The other two in the hearing have similar stories and testimonies, and all three have staked their reputations and careers on this, to whatever end that means. According to Grusch, he has already been targeted and is currently being protected from further retaliation.

The purpose of the hearing was to put their testimonies into official record, which is VERY interesting, given how outlandish their claims are. This is the first time such testimonies were given credence.

Also very interesting, during the hearing, Matt Gaetz weighed in with a testimony of his own. Cautiously putting politics aside, Gaetz has, at the very least, said some VERY strange things for any sitting representative to say. He has risked being labeled a full on loon for this, which while not totally devastating for a Republican these days, I don't imagine is exactly preferred.

This is some of the most extraordinary events related to UFOs and aliens in many decades, even if you ignore the endless sea of bullshit that surrounds the UFO community.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I was trying to give a brief summary of it. There are also a lot of details being left out about why UFO fans think this is a step towards disclosure, or why there might (heavy emphasis on might) be something to it.

Once upon a time the US government actually took those claims seriously, seriously enough that there were multiple air force programs dedicated to trying to figure out what they were. The first was Project Sign, followed by Project Grudge, and finally, the most well known project, Project Blue Book. Over the course of the project (lasted 14yrs), it collected over 12,000 reports. The majority of the reports were easily explainable because most were just misidentified weather balloons, classified aircraft, flares dropped at night, etc.

However, there were just over 700 reports for which they were unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for. No matter how hard they probed (heh) the reports, they couldn't find a suitable explanation.

In the meantime, the US had begun publicly debunking UFOs in anyway possible because the government believed that the rise in UFO sightings was distracting Americans from the Red Scare and cold war. The Robertson Panel was formed with the goal to offer a reasonable explanation for seemingly supernatural phenomenon. However, in reality, they were just there to debunk reports and in the event they couldn't think of a reasonable explanation, they just made something up. The result is that UFOs were pushed into fringe conspiracy territory, despite there being reports going back to the 50s and 60s which no one was able to provide a good explanation for.

I think that's also part of the reason why it's exploding now. There are a lot of reports which seem plausible, but get buried under heavily debunked pop-culture sightings like Roswell and don't get enough attention. The explosion is a result of several people who are currently in power, putting their reputations on the line while saying, "non-human, non-human!"

[–] Blastasaurus@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Great summary, thanks. I haven't had time to pay attention, but I checked out a blip of the hearing and was surprised to see Gaetz sitting there.