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Thomas A. Monheim, nominee for Inspector General of the Intelligence Community speaks at a hearing with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill on July 20, 2021, in Washington, DC.
In August, shortly after U.S. government UFO whistleblower David Grusch gave testimony to Congress about crashed spacecraft and alien "biologics," many observers wondered how much credence to put in his testimony. After all, Grusch is just a single individual. The other two individuals who testified before Congress were former Navy pilots who said they had no evidence of a government program to retrieve and reverse-engineer spacecraft of exotic and apparently nonhuman origin.
But at least 30 other whistleblowers working for the federal government or government contractors have given testimony, or a "protected disclosure," to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG), the Defense Department Inspector General (DOD IG), or to Congress over the last several months, according to multiple sources interviewed by Public.
When told that whistleblowers had come forward to share information similar to that shared by Grusch with Congress, Mick West, a prominent skeptic of UFOs, said, "It'd be very interesting. You know, more people saying the same thing independently makes it more likely to be true."
And yet the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Thomas A. Monheim, on September 15 appeared to deny,
in a letter to Congress, that his office was investigating these claims. Monheim said that his office "has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation, or review of alleged UAP programs within responsibility authority of the DNI that would enable ... a fulsome response."
But the way Monheim worded his response suggests he gave himself some wiggle room. Matthew Pines, a civilian intelligence analyst,
noted last week that "the official taxonomy for IC IG activities includes: 'audits, investigations, inspections, and reviews.' Is it curious that an 'investigation' is not denied?... The Investigations Division is structurally separate from the Audit and Inspections & Evaluation Divisions."
Comment: In the paid-only portion, Shellenberger et al. focus on three individuals actively trying to block these developments: SecDef Lloyd Austin, Rep. Mike Turner, and Sen. Mark Warner.
All three have close ties to the aerospace industry:
More from the paid-only portion:
Several of these whistleblowers spoke to Public on the condition of remaining anonymous. All expressed fear of retaliation for sharing the information but said they felt compelled to do so because of the unethical and illegal behaviors they had witnessed. "People are scared to death," said one source. "You could be court-martialed or, worse, dropped in the desert and left six feet under.
New legal protections for government whistleblowers have resulted in a historically unprecedented number of individuals coming forward to report unethical or illegal activities relating to the U.S. government's engagement with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), previously referred to as UFOs.
Stephanie O'Sullivan, a former associate deputy director of the CIA and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), is aware of a UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program, people close to the issue say, but denied its existence to Senator Rubio in a private meeting recently.
As for the ICIG Monheim letter to Burchett and Luna, Pines said that it seemed "to be an attempt to get members of Congress — who are not on the intelligence committees the IC IG is legally responsible to — off their back."
"I could see them punting everything to this review board to navigate the 2024 elections and deliberately release information drip like the JFK commission, at least until national leadership is prepared to have a difficult conversation with the American and global public. As the Schumer bill says, it's a 'controlled disclosure campaign.' And so that would explain why you'd not want ICIG to openly validate too much of the stuff being deposed to them, behind the scenes, until they get the institutional mechanisms and political frameworks in place." - Matthew Pines (civilian intelligence analyst)
"But, as you know," said Pines, it just takes a few more Gruschs to throw a monkey wrench in that plan."
Comment: This one is relevant here: