Responding to CNN’s “Opinion” of UAPs

My response to the editorial by Jason Colavito
RE: Opinion: Congress is too credulous on UFOs

There are so many questionable statements in this CNN “Opinion” Piece by Jason Colavito, it is hard to know where to begin. The only aspect of this editorial that I agree with is that it is filed under “Opinion,” though it is written as if the reader should accept this force-feeding of false facts and misleading conclusions as if it is gospel. I don’t know how to properly address the author: Do we use the title Mister, Special Agent, or Comrade, in the event it was written by yet another Russian Cyber-Soldier trying to undermine the fact that the July 26^th Hearing on UAPs was truly a bi-partisan success – it was well run; the members respected their time limits and each other, and the testimony placed on record about UAPs, recovered technology from Non-Humans and the nature of the formidable, long-standing security measures that have been taken to keep the public and the Congress from exercising any oversight. What would happen if our elected officials started working together for the common good?

I don’t know the motivations for producing this op-ed article ridiculing former Intelligence Officer David Grusch and the House Oversight Committee members who interviewed him in a public setting on July 26. After carefully reading, I can’t decide if it is motivated by the author’s ignorance of 20^th century history in general, his apparent prejudices against any insight that might lead a more cosmic view of the human condition, or it is influenced perhaps by the author’s real employment.

A book titled The Missing Times – News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-Up by the late Terry Hansen offers a better perspective on how it is that CNN expresses it corporate (Substitute Military-Industrial Complex) opinion on the first minor victory the public has had in the fight to regain some control over the expenditure of tax dollars on Secret Compartmentalized Unacknowledged Special Access Projects devoted to retro-engineering recovered vehicles “not built by human hands.” Basically, since WW2, the intelligence agencies have placed agents or cultivated “friendly partnerships” with key people in the media industry. Keeping the public misinformed about the startling reality of UFOs is at the heart of their mission. CIA Director William Colby (Director from 1973-1976) once stated, “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”

The public needs to be kept dumb and happy, and this editorial was certainly written to further retard public awareness about UAPs.  Certainly, starting off with comparing the X Files TV series to what happened in the House Oversight Committee Hearing on July 26 when David Grusch, Ryan Graves and David Fravor testified under oath set the tone. Nothing to see here, folks. You can go back to sleep.

What the author dares not mention is that David Grusch has already provided over 11 hours of testimony under oath to key members of the Congress where he went into the specifics that he is not legally allowed to discuss except to personnel with the proper security clearances. The article does not mention his very high level security clearances, or the people who have vouched for his character who also hold high security clearances. Multiple times during the hearing last Wednesday, Grusch offered to completely answer the questions of the committee members provided they were in a “SCIF” setting (Secure Confidential Information Facility). That fact is deliberately not mentioned by the author.

The attempt at recounting basic US UFO history in the editorial is at best painting with a broad, sloppy brush. The story that is not mentioned by name is Roswell, the most infamous Crash Retrieval operation of all, where wreckage and bodies were recovered, false stories were used to misdirect the press, and citizens (Mac Brazel and Frankie Rowe in particular) were coerced and threatened illegally into silence by military authorities. The only specific incident identified is the Maury Island alleged crash and debris recovery, which most reputable UFO researchers avoid because of its dubious origins.

That is why the author mentioned Maury Island and not Roswell, a case that spans over 40 years on investigation, and some 600 witnesses who each know part of a much larger and greatly significant history. The reader is supposed to conclude without thinking it through, that if there exists one hoaxed account anywhere anytime, that the entire subject is hopelessly flawed.

When US Representative Steven Schiff from New Mexico pressed the General Accounting Office to find out how taxpayer funds were spent by the world’s first nuclear bomber squadron, the 509^th Bombardment Battalion stationed in Roswell, NM over the summer of 1947, the response he got was that some one “accidentally” threw out all the records. Oh my! All that cover-up just for a weather balloon.

Edward Ruppelt is mentioned in the editorial, but here again the adage from Ben Franklin is proven: “Half the truth is often a great lie.” Ruppelt, as a former head of Project Blue Book published a famous book on UFOs in 1956, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. His conclusions: That many of the best UFO reports do not provide evidence for a definite conclusion but there remain cases that cannot be explained, especially the cases involving radar confirmation that unknown aircraft have been observed by pilots and radar to easily outdistance the fastest military aircraft in the world.

Also not mentioned in Ruppelt’s history is that in 1959 after he left the Air Force and went to work for an aerospace company, he repudiated what he had reported in his book. He stopped assisting the efforts of Retired Major Donald Keyhoe of NICAP, a civilian UFO investigation organization Ruppelt had praised for its efforts to fight the secrecy surrounding UFOs. In other words, Ruppelt was silenced by threatening his livelihood.

Turning to Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s UFO office, he laments that he hasn’t received any good cases. This may be likened to the detective who complains that the criminals just never stop by the police station to confess. If you are investigating claims that there is extreme secrecy surrounding evidence possibly possessed by agencies and contractors who use taxpayer funds, and dubiously legal methods to maintain silence about their activities, does anyone wonder why they haven’t queued up outside Sean Fitzpatrick’s door to confess?

Turning to the statement that the UFO community is still not convinced as long as there is one case remains unidentified, I can only quote the statement from the philosopher William James, “In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.”

There was a time that meteors were “scientifically” declared to not exist, because there were no rocks in the sky. We in the UFO community are not greedy – we will accept one crashed vehicle not created by human hands, or one alien body. There has never been one explanation that will explain everything that people observe. There is a huge difference between Investigating the Unexplained and Explaining the Uninvestigated.

The logic involved in describing what has happened so far from the efforts of Eric Davis and David Grusch seems to imply they have failed in their efforts to persuade Congress to take action about Crash Retrieval programs, as if persuading Congress was their only purpose in life. No one had heard of David Grusch before June 5 of this year. Davis has been very involved in many projects for the DOD as well as running his own company. You can’t criticize someone for not having persuaded Congress to act when they have only just started communicating with Congress. This argument, like so much else in this editorial involves circular logic designed to mislead.

The testimony of David Fravor and Ryan Graves is minimized by stating, they “have only claimed to have seen objects they could not explain or to have observed sensor signatures of such objects.”  Yes, they only piloted some of the world’s fastest and most technologically advanced fighter planes. Their sightings only involved multiple sensor systems as well human eyeballs recording contact with true UAPs. And now their testimony is on an official, public record. But we should only keep playing the X-Files theme and pretending everything is already known, and there is nothing in the universe we can’t explain.

The editorial claims without explanation that if more data is collected, then the case is more likely to be “solved.” The non-critical reader will then accept the next statement that if a UAP case is “solved,” it will be just a balloon, never something extraordinary.

USAF Special Report on UFOs No. 14 completed in 1955 by the Battelle Institute analyzed 3,201 Reported UFO Cases, resulting in 21.5 % are classified as UNKNOWNS or 688 Cases. From that total, 308 are classified as Excellent Quality. Of the 308 excellent quality reports, 35% or 108 could not be explained. In other words, the higher the quality of the report, the greater the percentage of the cases cannot be explained. This is often reflective of the professional training or qualifications of the witnesses.

The Cover-Up that began in Roswell, NM in July 1947 has only been strengthened ever since. By hiding the evidence in Classified Unacknowledged Special Access Projects with Waived Oversight and Bigoted Access, the truth is kept “Out There.” And people like the debunker who wrote the “Opinion” have served their masters.

Apparently expanding human awareness off the Earth and into the Cosmos is of no importance to Mister Colavito. He wants you to relegate all talk of UFOs and UAPs to the category of sci-fi fantasy. Stay asleep, but before you slumber, make sure you aren’t too close to the world’s edge, because in his cosmology, you might fall off the flat Earth.

James E Clarkson
UFO Detective
Port Townsend, WA
July 31, 2023

PS Here is the link to the editorial that triggered my response:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/opinions/ufo-testimony-aliens-congress-credulous-colavito/index.html