Truth vs. Fantasy in Today’s Politics

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A recent poll showed that most Americans think they’re doing okay economically speaking, but think the national economy is in terrible shape. This chart is from a recent Federal Reserve report on the economic well-being of U.S. households.

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The top line shows that around 75% of us have been relatively satisfied with our own finances since 2017, despite the pandemic. That 75% includes people who thought their own finances were “okay” or better. The bottom two lines, however, show that people’s opinion of their local economies and the national economy went down quite a bit during the pandemic, with lots of people thinking the country’s economy is even worse than where they live.

What’s very odd is that those negative sentiments from 2020 have lingered, or even gotten worse, even though the percentage of us who think our own finances are okay or better hasn’t changed much at all.

Another oddity is that, although people aren’t thrilled about their local economy — only 38% saying it’s good or excellent — hardly anybody likes the national economy — only 18% saying it’s good or excellent.

Why would so many of us think we ourselves aren’t suffering economically although people who live near us are and the nation as a whole is even worse off? The obvious answer is that the national media have convinced people that the country is in deep economic trouble, much worse than where they live and work, and despite the fact that they themselves are in pretty good shape. (It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans have the worst opinion of other people’s economic situation, given where they get their news and what their favorite politicians tell them.

This brings me to an article in The Washington Monthly: “Republicans Say Inflation, Crime, and Immigration Are Out of Control. The Numbers Disagree”.

The Republican presidential candidates are on the same page regarding Joe Biden: He’s a disaster on inflation, immigration, and crime.

“We have no borders. We have inflation. We have everything going wrong,” said [their leading candidate] … in his apocalyptic fashion…. “Everybody is being murdered.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence … began a CNN-hosted town hall event with a pithy critique: “Literally, we have a crisis at our border. We have inflation at a 40-year high. We have a crime wave in our cities.” Pence suggested Biden’s border policies are to blame for “a flood of fentanyl coming into every city.” 

There’s one problem with this Republican portrayal of a Democratic president presiding over chaos: None of it is true.  

Inflation was at a 40-year high. During 2022, the inflation rate started at 7.5 percent, peaked in June at 9.1 percent, and ended the year at 6.5 percent, a mark that hadn’t been cleared since June 1982.  

But 2023 is a different story. The inflation rate for May is down to 4 percent, less than half of the June 2022 peak. But even back in March, when it fell to 5 percent, the “40-year high” talking point was obsolete. In July 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, inflation was 5.6 percent. And in October and November 1990, during the George H. W. Bush administration, it was 6.3 percent.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

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As we get further away from the pandemic and the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates, the rate of inflation should continue to fall (despite the fact that corporations have used inflation as an excuse to increase their prices and profits even more than they needed to, as reported by The New York Times). Back to the article:

Has southern border security collapsed? Hardly. Unlawful entries have dropped by 70 percent in the last few weeks, according to the Department of Homeland Security, after Biden implemented a new border management policy.  

… Border crossings spiked just before Biden ended “Title 42,” the public health emergency rules that Txxxx enacted in 2020, using the COVID-19 pandemic to expedite the removal of asylum-seekers…. Many skeptics … assumed that the end of Title 42 would prompt a surge of migrants. The opposite happened. 

If the current pace of border crossings—about 3,700 per day—remains stable throughout June, the monthly total would be 111,000, … somewhat higher than the 93,000 in the last full month of Txxxx’s presidency.  

When assessing those numbers, remember that while Title 42 made it easier for the Border Patrol to send back asylum seekers, it did nothing to prevent those removed from trying again. In turn, many of the illegal crossings in Biden’s first two and a half years—under policies designed by Txxxx—were made by repeat offenders. Between 2019 and 2022, the recidivism rate jumped from 20 to 49 percent.

In Biden’s new system, those illegally crossing the border can be banned from applying for asylum for five years and risk jail time if they violate the ban. We saw a spike in crossings just before the administration implemented the smart new policy because migrants hoped to avoid the Biden ban.To tame an unruly border, Biden is steering asylum seekers away from treacherous desert treks and towards a more orderly online application process.

What about fentanyl coming over the southern border? … Biden’s administration has intercepted more fentanyl than Txxxx’s ever did…. According to PolitiFact, Biden deserves partial credit for the higher seizure numbers because his administration is employing more and better detection technology at the border. Besides, immigration across the southern border has little to do with the fentanyl crisis. Eighty-six percent of people arrested for trafficking fentanyl are American citizens, as “the vast majority of fentanyl being smuggled in comes through ports of entry, not people trying to sneak into the country.”  

Republicans may talk up crime, and there are no shortages of alarming anecdotes, but there is no Biden crime wave. “Murder is down about 12 percent year-to-date in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022,” according to …The Atlantic, a trend that could lead to “one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded.” … In fact, over the past five years, the worst month for homicides was July 2020—when Txxxx  was president.  

Another set of promising data comes from the Violent Crime Survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which looked at data from 70 cities. During the first quarter of 2023, homicides, rapes, and robberies dropped about 8 percent from the first quarter of 2022….  

Where Republicans have the best argument is in the category of stolen cars: up 21 percent from 2021 and a whopping 59 percent from 2019. But they haven’t argued that we’re only suffering from a wave of car thefts. They assert America is suffering a collapse of law and order, on every front, solely on Biden’s watch. That’s not true. A mixed picture is not a crime wave.  

Republicans are not updating their talking points to reflect this new data, preferring to insist that America is falling apart. They’re betting that either the data trajectories will reverse course, belatedly validating Republican attack lines, or Americans will be so convinced everything is terrible that additional positive data won’t “feel” true, and voters will disregard it. At least, that is the Republican hope….

We can’t know what these metrics will be in the run-up to Election Day. But in the meantime, reporters and voters should not allow Republican candidates to paint a dystopian picture of America without being forced to address the numbers that don’t fit their narrative. 

November 5, 2024, is more than 500 days away. Let’s hope more of the good news sinks in by then.

I Find the Former President’s Criminal Case Very Interesting, Maybe Too Interesting

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Our former president (hereafter “the defendant”) will be in court tomorrow afternoon to formally be told what crimes he’s accused of. He may be ready to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty as well. It turns out that the proceedings won’t be conducted by the biased and incompetent Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon, even though she’s been assigned to handle his trial (for now). A magistrate judge, one step below a full-fledged, lifetime-appointment federal judge like Cannon, will be in charge tomorrow. That’s the normal procedure. It’s possible the magistrate judge will set some conditions for the defendant’s release, like telling him not to leave the country. I rather doubt the judge will lock him up.

There’s talk that he’s having trouble finding a lawyer willing to represent him. Would you want to be his lawyer, given how challenging it is to represent him? But he’s already got Florida lawyers who can go with him to court tomorrow, whether or not they represent him in further proceedings.

Judge Cannon being selected to handle this case raises two interesting questions. Why was she selected? Will she step aside or be forced to?

[A personal note/warning: I worked in the Los Angeles County Superior Court system for five years, so may find the following much more interesting than you do.]

Cannon’s assignment was random but not as random as it could have been. The New York Times described the process:

Under the district court’s procedures, new cases are randomly delegated to a judge who sits in the division where the matter arose or a neighboring one, even if it relates to a previous case. That Judge Cannon is handling [the defendant’s] criminal indictment elicited the question of how that had come to be.

Asked over email whether normal procedures were followed and Judge Cannon’s assignment was random, Ms. Noble [the chief clerk of the court] wrote: “Normal procedures were followed.”

Mar-a-Lago is in the West Palm Beach division, between the Fort Lauderdale division and the Fort Pierce division, where Judge Cannon sits. The district court’s website shows that seven active judges have chambers in those three divisions, as do three judges on senior status who still hear cases‌.

Ms. Noble wrote that certain factors increased the chances that the case would land before Judge Cannon.

For one, she said, senior judges are removed from the case assignment system, or wheel, once they fulfill their target caseload for the year. At least one of the senior judges is done, she wrote, adding that she was highly confident that the other two “are very likely at their target,” too.

In addition, she wrote, one of the seven active judges with chambers in Fort Lauderdale is now a Miami judge for the purpose of assignments. Another is not currently receiving cases.

A third active judge … draws 50 percent of his criminal cases from the Miami division, she wrote, decreasing his odds…. Judge Cannon, Ms. Noble wrote, “draws 50 percent of her cases from West Palm Beach, increasing her odds.”

Given the clerk’s explanation, my rough estimate is that there was a 1-in-4 chance that Cannon would receive the case, assuming the district’s normal process was followed. There could have been as many as 10 judges available, but it turns out there were only 5. In addition, one of those 5 had less of a chance and Cannon had more of a chance, so it was around 1-in-4.

Presumably, Special Counsel Jack Smith was aware of the likelihood that Cannon would get the case, but chose to file the case in Florida anyway, given that the alleged crimes took place in West Palm Beach. I’m pretty sure Smith wouldn’t choose Judge Cannon, given what happened last time she got involved. This is from the same Times article:

The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by [the defendant] challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, [whom the defendant chose to be a federal judge], effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.

One of the mistakes she made was to say the defendant deserved special consideration, since he is an ex-president. That’s not how the law is supposed to work.

The second question is whether Cannon will preside over the pre-trial proceedings and an eventual trial, all of which will go on for months (unless the defendant pleads guilty, is incapacitated, etc.). The New Yorker has an interview with Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus at N.Y.U. Law and an expert on judicial matters. He says the answer to that question should be “No”, according to the law that covers judicial assignments.

Going forward, what can the government do if it feels like a judge will not give it a fair shake?

It raises the question of recusal. There’s a statute dealing with federal judge recusal—it’s 28 U.S.C. § 455…. The very first sentence … says that a judge should recuse if the judge’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”

Now, the fact that a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned doesn’t mean that the judge is partial. The public may simply not trust the impartiality of the judge. Because public trust in the work of the court is a value as important as the work itself, the rule says that the judge should not sit when we can’t fairly ask the public to trust what the judge does. That rule is especially important in this case. One thing the prosecution can do is move to recuse Judge Cannon on the ground that, in light of her experience in the search-warrant case last year, her impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

And who would make that judgment if the government does push for this recusal?

The judge herself gets to make that decision in our system. If she denies the recusal, the government could go to the Eleventh Circuit and ask it to order her to recuse herself, and that’s a process called mandamus….In effect, you’re suing the judge to force the judge to recuse….

There’s one other thing the government can do, aside from doing nothing, and that is to write a letter to the judge suggesting the reasons she should consider recusing herself without being formally asked to do so. That’s done also, so as not to create a formal motion….

One factor to consider in deciding whether recusal is necessary is how important the case is to the public and to the need for public trust. If the [Court of Appeals] were to reverse Cannon’s recusal decision, one thing they might say is “We are not questioning the probity or the fairness or the competence of the judge, but we don’t think we can ask the public to accept her rulings.”

So, if the government decides that it’s not going to get a fair shake from Cannon based on its previous experience with her, we will end up with this three-judge panel.

Here, the questions are: Will they initially just write a letter suggesting that she recuse? If she does, that’s the end of it. If she doesn’t, will they make a formal motion to recuse? If she grants it, that’s the end of it. If she doesn’t, then they have to decide whether to seek mandamus. If they do, then the three judges, who are randomly chosen and who hear that mandamus petition, will have to decide whether she should be removed. If they decide that she should not, that’s the end of it. If they decide that she should, then there’ll be a reassignment….

Is there some advantage for the government to wait and see how the trial is going before it pushes for a recusal? Would it have a stronger case for recusal that way?

If there is a basis to move to recuse, you can’t wait around. You have to do it quickly. You can’t wait around to see whether the judge rules on motions in your favor.

Are there downsides to going for recusal right away?

The problem with going for recusal right off the bat is that you may lose in the circuit, and now you’re trying a case before a judge you’ve accused of being unable to appear impartial—and that’s not pleasant. So the government may decide that it’s just better to make the strongest case they can and hope that she behaves like a judge.

Given what we saw regarding Cannon’s behavior during the previous case, do you think that the government will or should go for a recusal?

Given the importance of this case, perhaps the most important criminal trial in the history of the United States—certainly the most watched—and in light of what Judge Cannon did in the search-and-seizure case last year, I think she must step aside. I think she must grant a motion to recuse herself, unless she does it before a motion is even made.

And the reason I say that is that she treated [the defendant] as special, or, to put it another way, she was partial to [him] as a former President, which should not have any influence on the way this trial is conducted…. The partiality she expressed in her decisions last year creates a reasonable perception in the mind of a fair-minded person that she is not impartial—which is the test. Her behavior when she was ruling on the search-and-seizure case creates a reason to doubt her impartiality.

But when you say “must,” you mean from an ethical sense.

No, “must” in a rule sense. There’s a rule.

O.K., but there’s also no way to enforce the rule, right?

Except through mandamus.

That suggests to me that [unless Cannon recuses herself] you think the government should or will go to mandamus.

… If the government does so, she must grant the recusal, and if she doesn’t the Eleventh Circuit must order it.

That’s “must” according to the law. Other legal experts have said the same thing. But it’s judges who decide what the laws mean.

As far as I can tell, the experts aren’t too concerned that the defendant chose Cannon to become a federal judge. Maybe they don’t want to imply that judges tend to favor the politicians who got them their jobs. For us mortals, however, we might ask, as someone did:

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A Few Thoughts on the Indictment, and a Disturbing List

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The Mueller investigation implied that our former president was guilty of obstruction of justice. Mueller’s final reported listed 10 times he may have committed that crime. But the Department of Justice doesn’t like to prosecute presidents. Nothing happened. For reasons unknown, in 2021, the new attorney general let the matter drop, even though the former president was now a private citizen.

Now, more than two years later, the Department of Justice has convinced a grand jury that private citizen Donald J. Trump has committed a new set of crimes. The grand jury’s indictment is entitled “United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta, Defendants” (Nauta is one of Trump’s employees).

An important thing to note is that this ex-official isn’t accused of doing anything when he was in office. He could have removed all kinds of sensitive material from the White House when he was still president (like others have done before him) and nothing would have happened except justifiable criticism for being loose with government secrets. But when he was no longer president, he was required to give it all back, like others have done. His crimes boil down to lying to the FBI about which documents he had, hiding them and refusing to give them back.

These are the specific felonies he’s charged with:

  1. Willful Retention of National Defense Information (a section of the Espionage Act)
  2. Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
  3. Withholding a Document or Record
  4. Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record
  5. Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation
  6. Scheme to Conceal
  7. False Statements and Representations

They probably could have added another crime to the list, since he shared what he had with other people.

Note: There is absolutely no evidence that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Mike Pence ever committed any of these crimes even though sensitive material was found in their possession at some point. (A major difference being that none of them refused to return anything or lied to the cops.)

Assuming the defendant pleads Not Guilty on Tuesday, it will be months before there’s a trial (assuming he doesn’t drop dead, lose his mind, change his plea, flee the country, etc. etc. in the meantime). In our judicial system, a “speedy trial” is hardly ever a quick one.

Although a biased, incompetent right-wing judge (Aileen “Loose” Cannon) will accept the defendant’s plea next week, it seems impossible that she will handle the rest of the case. Has a judge ever presided over a federal criminal case in which the defendant chose her to be a judge? No. It would be like a kennel club official deciding who’ll be the judge at a dog show and then entering her own dog in the contest.

Finally, the part of the indictment that mainly describes the movement and concealment  of boxes, which goes from page 17 to page 26, is kind of boring, but one of the things after that is very interesting. I don’t think anybody in the government knows if the defendant is still holding on to stuff he shouldn’t have. It’s also possible the prosecutors didn’t list the most sensitive documents he took (it would make the U.S. government’s ability to keep secrets look even worse). But take a look at the documents listed:

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On Some Who Choose to Ignore Reality

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Massive Canadian wildfires and an unfortunate weather pattern have resulted in the worst air quality we’ve ever experienced on the East Coast of the United States. The air quality index for New York City reached 405 yesterday. Anything above 300 is considered “hazardous”, i.e. an environmental emergency that may harm even healthy young people.

Climate scientists have been saying for years that one effect of the climate crisis will be more dangerous wildfires. But pundits at Fox “News” don’t want to admit there is a climate crisis. They also don’t want to admit that wearing masks helped save lives during the pandemic. For these reasons, some have told their viewers, many of whom are over 65, not to worry. No need to stay indoors. No need to wear a mask outside.

The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro took issue with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who issued a call to “adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, and healthcare” in response to the “climate crisis.” In response, Pirro said: “Other Democrats are pumping up climate hysteria and bringing back, you guessed it, mask insanity.”

This remarkable right-wing reaction to an undeniable problem brought to mind a couple things I’ve read recently.

An article in The New York Times describes an experience the author Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne had at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in June 1968. Sen. Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated, shortly after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King….

A television had been set up on the Royal Hawaiian’s lanai, a large veranda. When the couple arrived, it was already crowded with viewers, and … a musical variety program was playing…. “Hollywood Palace” was scheduled to air next, but the evening’s programming was pre-empted by the special news program on Kennedy’s assassination. The lanai crowd wasn’t happy. Some stood up to leave.

The ABC news special … opened with a rendition, by the actor Hume Cronyn, of William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” the same poem from which Ms. Didion had drawn the title of her first book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

As the three-hour special wore on, Ms. Didion looked around the veranda and noticed that everyone who was sitting there earlier in the evening had left. A few guests stopped to ask about the program she was watching, but at the reply — Bobby Kennedy — they continued on their way…. “It was as if they were shutting their minds to it, shutting their eyes,” [Dunne later said]….

For Didion, “it was, in some ways, a very radicalizing experience for me”. These tourists from the mainland, she realized, enjoying their Hawaiian vacation as if nothing had happened, were not going to have any part of a national tragedy — even as, on the hotel’s television, Robert Kennedy’s casket was transported by rail to Washington and along the tracks nearly two million people lined up to pay their respects.

To Ms. Didion, the contrast between these scenes and the Royal Hawaiian’s conspicuously deserted veranda felt appalling. With Kennedy’s assassination, she said, “it was as if all the disturbances of the whole past couple of years came to a head that night. And here was a whole part of America that wasn’t having it … It was like something snapping”…

“It seemed as if these people did not count themselves as part of the community. That they came from another America”….They could watch “The Lawrence Welk Show” but ignore a political assassination. The same economic system that put these specific Americans in the position to take this vacation — the white-collar stability, the inequality sustaining it — was what allowed them, now, to turn their backs. They didn’t really care about any of it; the broader narrative of patriotism and pride was just an excuse for doing what they wanted — for their self-interest — a narrative they could apply and discard from one situation to the next as they saw fit.

The implications weighed heavily on Didion: How could this country continue to exist if the people who’d gained the most from it refused to contribute? How long until the dark pattern she and [her husband] saw in Kennedy’s murder reached its natural conclusion? It’s a sense of catastrophe — of that rough beast in the distance slouching closer — that, to many current Americans, feels strikingly familiar.

Writing for New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait describes the Republican Party’s “authoritarian acceleration”:

For a time in early 2021, Txxxx’s support for the insurrection was a black mark on his record that even many loyalists couldn’t condone. That taboo is fading from memory. Txxxx has said he would “most likely” pardon “many” of his allies arrested on January 6 and has turned Ashli Babbitt, who was shot trying to break into a sealed hallway while storming the Capitol, into a martyr. [Another Republican presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis] has promised to pardon at least some J6-ers….

Most instructive of all are the rationalizations used by Txxxx’s erstwhile skeptics within the party. They have concluded, more in sorrow than in anger, that since the party contains a very large faction of voters who believe Txxxx is entitled to legal impunity, the only choice is to placate them. “Republican voters do not respond well to Republican lawmakers who make the case against [his] legal misconduct in plain terms. I wish they did, but they don’t,” says National Review’s Noah Rothman, defending DeSantis’s position on the insurrectionists…..

[A] Republican strategist recently explained the calculation to Politico’s Jonathan Martin in similar terms: “The conservative media ecosystem has built a giant wall of inoculation around everything Txxxx…. To forcefully condemn Txxxx as a menace to democracy is to echo the other tribe, to put on the blue jersey … Shaming your own voters is not a recipe for victory.”

It is sobering to see such an unblinkered description of the party’s intellectual rot attached to such a fatalistic conclusion. The party’s leader is an authoritarian and a crook, and its media apparatus is rank propaganda, making it impossible to identify or correct even the grossest crimes. This is the definition of an internal culture that is beyond repair. The only possible response for anybody possessing a minimal commitment to democracy is to get out.

Yet the years since Txxxx arrived on the Republican scene have instilled in the party’s elite a learned helplessness. The notion that the party could grow so dangerous that they must abandon it for the sake of the Republic is unimaginable to them. Txxxx is planning a second term that can break down every guardrail that held him back the first time. The Republican “opposition,” as it were, is dedicated to bringing more planning, intraparty support, and ruthlessness to the very same project.

While she was still in Hawaii, Didion had “an attack of vertigo, nausea and a feeling that she was going to pass out,” for which she “underwent an extensive psychiatric evaluation and was prescribed an antidepressant”. She later wrote: “By way of comment, I offer only that an attack of vertigo and nausea does not now seem to me an inappropriate response to the summer of 1968″.

How about to the late spring of 2023?

Former and Current Government Officials Say We Are Not Alone

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This is a very big story if it’s true. The people telling it don’t appear to be cranks or easily misled. Far from it. The Guardian, New York Magazine and other outlets have repeated the story. A reporter asked the White House press secretary about it and was referred to the Defense Department, but they’re not talking.

This is from the original article for The Debrief, a site devoted to “science, tech, and defense news”:

A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.

The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time.

Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record.

The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer …is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force.

The task force was established to investigate what were once called “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, and are now officially called “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP….

Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said.

In filing his complaint, Grusch is represented by a lawyer who served as the original Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

… Karl E.Nell, a recently retired Army colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there, characterizes Grusch as “beyond reproach”.

[Nell said Grusch’s] “assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence. (In a 2022 performance evaluation, Laura A. Potter, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence,  Department of the Army, described Nell as “an officer with the strongest possible moral compass.”)

Christopher Mellon, who spent nearly twenty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, has worked with Congress for years on unidentified aerial phenomena. “A number of well-placed current and former officials have shared detailed information with me regarding thisalleged program”, Mellon said.

… Jonathan Grey … currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus….“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon….”

In his statements cleared for publication by the Pentagon in April, Grusch asserted that UFO “legacy programs” have long been concealed within “multiple agencies … without appropriate reporting to various oversight authorities.”

He said he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material – a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.”

Beginning in 2022, Grusch provided Congresswith hours of recorded classified information transcribed into hundreds of pages which included specific data about the materials recovery program. Congress has not been provided with any physical materials related to wreckage or other non-human objects.

Grusch’s investigation was centered on extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials, some of whom are directly involved with the program. He says the operation was illegally shielded from proper Congressional oversightand that he was targeted and harassed because of his investigation.

Grusch said that the craft recovery operations are ongoing at various levels of activity and that he knows the specific individuals, current and former, who are involved.

“Individuals on these UAP programs approached me in my official capacity and disclosed their concerns regarding a multitude of wrongdoings, such as illegal contracting against the Federal Acquisition Regulations …”, he stated.

Associates who vouched for Grusch said his information was highly sensitive, providing evidence that materials from objects of non-human origin are in the possession of highly secret black programs. Although locations, program names, and other specific data remain classified, the Inspector General and intelligence committee staff were provided with these details. Several current members of the recovery program spoke to the Inspector General’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint.

Grusch left the government on April 7, 2023, in order, he said, to advance government accountability through public awareness.

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The only reason I have for doubting this story is that it’s hard to believe something like this could have been kept secret (or almost secret) for so long. Members of Congress and other journalists need to pursue this. If it’s true, overly secretive officials may be embarrassed, but most people will handle the information just fine.

PS: It might not be correct to say we aren’t alone. Whoever sent this stuff our way may be long gone by now.