Incorporating Whistleblower Testimony Into UFO Research

Michael Salla, UFO Updates mailing list - 3/22/2005

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What I wish to do in this post is to discuss different categories of whistleblowers who have shared information about extraterrestrial vehicles or extraterrestrial beings they have encountered during their military or corporate service in classified military/government projects.

What I wish to do in this post
is to discuss different categories of whistleblowers who have
shared information about extraterrestrial vehicles or
extraterrestrial beings they have encountered during their
military or corporate service in classified military/government
projects.

Furthermore, I wish to come up with a strategy on how to
satisfactorily incorporate whistleblower testimonies into UFO
research given the hard evidence only approach that
characterizes UFO research. This may well result in simply
concluding that exopolitical research is a complement to UFO
research where both are very different animals and conflating
the two leads to problems in maintaining a dialogue. In that
case, we simply learn to live with the differences between
exopolitical research and UFO research in terms of differing
emphases on hard evidence, research methodologies, data
collection and alleged distorting factors by mil-intelligence
agencies. Then we can accept that exopolitical analysis will be
something that is quite distinct to the analysis of UFO data,
yet both deal with the UFO phenomenon which is what leads to UFO
and exopolitical research being complementary processes that can
lead to a beneficial dialogue between proponents of each.

There is strong sentiment among many UFO researchers that
"extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence" which
accounts for why whistleblowers are put under such critical
scrutiny. Put simply, if they don't have hard evidence to
substantiate their claims, then their testimonies are either put
into the gray basket of inconclusive, or they are dismissed as
liars, frauds, etc. On the other hand, there are those
researchers who believe that whistleblower testimonies need to
be taken seriously despite the lack of hard evidence and even in
cases where they suffer from credibility problems or have
insufficient documentation to support their credentials.
Basically, there is strong difference over what to do with
whistleblower testimony that has insufficent hard evidence to
support their claims. I've earlier made the case that
'extraordinary claims require an extraordinary investigatory
process'. Such a process would be more nuanced in how to deal
with a number of issues that are often raised in how to evaluate
whistleblower testimonies.

The first thing to consider when it comes to whistleblowers
whose testimonies involve claims of classified projects focused
on the recovery of, or reverse engineering of, extraterrestrial
vehicles, and/or official contact/agreements with
extraterrestrial beings, they are revealing information of a
highly classified nature. By definition a whistleblower is an
individual revealing information about 'wrong doing' by a
particular government agency or individuals in such an agency.
Whistleblower protection statutes give protection in cases when
the information disclosed by the whistleblower is unclassified.
However, in the case of classified information, the
whistleblower is breaking the law by going public. The only way
whistleblowers can legally divulge such classified information
in the US is to testify before a Congressional Committee or to
report to the Inspector-General of the agency in question.
However, no Congressional Committee has ever come close to
dealing with whistleblower testimonies concerning egregious
government practices involving ETVs/EBEs. Also, an in-house
process whereby an agency's Inspector General deals with
whistleblower testimonies carries significant risk and many
whistleblowers choose to forgo this option. Consequently, most
whistleblowers go public. Whistleblowers that reveal information
about classified programs concerning ETVs/EBEs go public in
three main ways.


The first are 'lone ranger' whistleblowers that simply declare
in public forums what they have seen as a result of their
involvement in classified government projects involving
ETVs/EBEs. They come forward due to their belief that the
general public has a right to know what is happening in such
projects despite the high classification. 'Lone ranger'
whistleblowers are undoubtedly the most courageous
whistleblowers since they come forward with little legal
protection and rely sole on the protection given by the public
exposure they receive in coming forward. In some cases, such
whistleblowers simply want to clear their conscience in their
earlier involvement in classified programs.

It is the lone ranger whistleblowers who are the most
controversial and often have great difficulty in providing
documents supporting their credentials and behave in ways that
lead to credibility issues. These whistleblowers claim that
government agencies play a role in the removal of public
documents such as school records, employment history, etc. Also
such whistleblowers claim that extensive government intimidation
is occurring. This often leads to what appears to be an
excessive degree of caution, paranoia, and/or aggressive
behavior by such whistleblowers which makes it difficult for
researchers investigating lone ranger whistleblowers. Examples
of lone ranger whistleblowers include William Cooper, Phil
Schneider, Clifford Stone, Bob Lazar and Daniel Burisch.


The second category are 'support group' whistleblowers who
create networks of former military service personnel or
corporate contractors on classified projects who share
information about ETVs and EBEs. These 'support groups' are
informal yet appear to be very significant in how these
personnel coordinate amongst themselves about how much
information to release, when and to whom. With the networking
and close relationships built in these support groups, there is
an effort to balance respect for legitimate national security
concerns, while disclosing to the general public the truth about
what is occuring in the classified projects concerning
ETVs/EBEs. Examples of 'support group' whistleblowers include
Robert Dean, John Maynard and Daniel Salter.


The third category of whistleblowers are 'public process'
whistleblowers that come forward in a coordinated public
campaign whereby a number of whistleblowers simultaneously
reveal their information. The most well known process is the
Disclosure Project led by Steven Greer who to date can draw upon
a data base of 400 whistleblowers who have agreed to the process
adopted by Greer to present whistleblower testimony to the
general public through a Congressional Inquiry. The
whistleblowers included in the Disclosure Project are
representative of a range of whistleblowers whose credibility
and credentials meet a minimum threshold set of standards
maintained by Greer. This is quite helpful in providing a pool
of whistleblower data that has been screened by a competent UFO
researcher which other researchers can use for exopolitical
analysis. Examples of public process whistleblowers include Dan
Morris, Don Phillips and Bill Uhouse.

Due to the very real possibility that some if not all
whistleblower claims concerning government intimidation and
document removal are accurate, there is a very real need to
include this into the investigative process. Thus a 'normal
investigative' process such as occurs in the interviewing of
witnesses using a methodology advocated by Allen Hynek in terms
of a 'scientific investigation' of UFO sightings, is
inappropriate when it comes to whistleblowers. Put simply, a
whistleblower is not like the witness of a UFO sighting and an
entirely different investigatory process is needed.

Similarly, legal/judicial procedures that involve detailed cross
examining or questioning of whistleblowers as would occur in a
typical legal/judicial case is similarly inappropriate given the
lack of legal and physical protection enjoyed by such
whistleblowers. A whistleblower is often put in the position of
a witness in a typical legal/judicial case that is expected to
respond to all questions put to them in order to have their
testimony considered credible. However, given the lack of
legal/physical protection of such whistleblowers, this is not
realistic since whistleblowers may put themselves at further
risk by answering all questions. Once again, an entirely
different investigatory process is needed.

A more nuanced or flexible methodology is needed that factors in
some of the constraints that lone ranger whistleblowers suffer
from. In terms of interviewing whistleblowers, training is
required for investigators along the lines of a more ethical and
sensitive approach to these whistleblowers. Aggressive
questioning or detailed background scrutiny may be inappropriate
for such whistleblowers that may have numerous constraints upon
them in terms of what they can truthfully divulge without
comprising their physical safety and financial security.

A criticism for any public process initiated for whistleblowers
is that the biases of the researcher may influence the threshold
criteria used to include whistleblower testimony. This may lead
to the unnecessary exclusion of some whistleblowers on the basis
of 'paranoid beliefs' concerning negative extraterrestrial
activities and official complicity in these. While such beliefs
are typically considered to symptomatic of paranoia, there is a
strong pool of data supporting the validity of such beliefs and
whistleblowers should not be excluded. Again, there is a need
for flexibility and sensitivity in coming up with the threshold
criteria for adopting whistleblower testimonies, and also a need
to exclude researcher biases in terms of what data will be
included or not.

The question that now arises is what to do with the different
categories of whistleblower testimonies and the growing pool of
data that hitherto remains to be analysed by traditional UFO
researcher who are dissuaded from doing so due to the lack of
hard evidence? I understand that there will be great resistance
to modifying the investigative procedures used to assess
whistleblower testimonies by members of this forum. Some may
argue that it is appropriate to resist the modification of the
criteria in order to maintain the scientific rigor of UFO
research. Others will claim that the opposite is true in that
the kind of constraints under which whistleblowers operate under
require a modification of the investigative process in order to
maintain scientific rigor.

Science requires developing an appropriate investigatory process
for both physical phenomena and humans operating in social
environments. Ultimately, whistleblowers are humans in a
particular political and social context, and not physical
objects operating under laws of physical science. As humans,
whistleblowers have a great number of social and political
constraints that influence how and what they can reveal in their
testimonies. This requires a flexible, nuanced and sensitive
investigatory process and appropriate questioning procedures for
UFO researchers who question whistleblowers and draw conclusions
based on their responses. While there is certainly merit to the
idea that hard evidence is important for UFO research, this
should not be used as a reason to systematically exclude
whistleblower testimonies concerning ETVs/EBEs.

Finding a means of satisfactorily incorporating whistleblower
testimonies into UFO research is a challenge given the debate
over the role hard evidence plays in corroborating whistleblower
testimonies. Despite the difficulty of this challenge, it's
important to work with whistleblower testimonies so I'm
proposing along the lines of what Bruce Maccabee earlier
suggested that we simply go ahead with exopolitical analysis of
whistleblower testimonies while acknowledging that this for the
time being is something different to what happens in UFO
research generally. With such a solution those interested in
exopolitical analysis of whistleblower testimonies can offer
their insights without having to constantly defend themselves
against criticisms that they are damaging the credibility of UFO
research as a scientific endeavor. Exopolitical research and
analysis is a new field that deserves to have a voice in UFO
research despite the very different methodologies they
respectively use.


In peace

Michael Salla