Hi Everyone, 

The last few days have seen yet another (somewhat) interesting development from the USG regarding UFOs, or as they love now to say, UAP. This is the PURSUE initiative. That stands for Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. This was announced just a few days ago, on July 31, and you can read the memo (it’s very short) here. 

I am aware to two diametrically opposite reactions. One by Avi Loeb and the other by Matthew Brown. Essentially, Loeb sees this as a potential breakthrough in USG transparency on the matter of UAP. And to be fair, there are some things about this memorandum that could give cause for hope. Brown on the other hand has a very skeptical position, one which I definitely sympathize with. He is after all a whistleblower who got a severe runaround and backlash as a result of his good faith effort. He sees it as a potential trap. That is, the USG can bring the whistleblowers in with the promise of being able to discard their NDAs (under very controlled conditions of course) but might only be looking to collect as much info as possible and then just bury it. Which is what happened to him, and worse. 

When you read the memo, there’s absolutely nothing to make a potential whistleblower feel safe. Hell, if I were in such a position, I would be extremely hesitant to come forward. At least based on the current language of the document. 

Now it’s true that supposedly there will be a follow up memo that will clarify the procedures on all this. Who knows. Maybe there’s just a chance that there will be some genuine protections placed in there. 

Personally, I am unwilling to praise or condemn just yet. I want to see how this develops when the follow up memo is public. But I am doubtful. 

The way I see it, and how I described this in the video, is essentially as another round in the Red Queen game of disclosure. That is, as the Red Queen says to Alice, you have to keep running faster and faster just to remain in the same place. That applies to much of our world, and definitely to the process of UAP disclosure or transparency. Think of it as a kind of arms race.

Witnesses find new ways around classification barriers. The government then responds. Maybe they clamp down further, or maybe they create official reporting channels, as we see here. Or, Congress may strengthen whistleblower protections, and you find agencies interpreting those protections through new procedures, designed to protect them and make things difficult for those whistleblowers. This happens in every aspect of our world. One response provokes a counter response, which in turn provokes yet another response, and so on for infinity.

Regarding the UFO scenario, we aren’t dealing with just two sides. I think very likely we have multiple agencies and goals, all interacting with each other. Public and/or Congressional pressure, bureaucratic responses designed to protect, seriously insider/contractor moves of their own for additional protection, and so on. We’ve seen this going on for some time.

Forty years ago, Reagan Admin accountant Charles Bowsher stumbled into a Pentagon SAP UFO program. This was obliquely mentioned in the Davis-Wilson notes. The result was that they brought Bowsher into the program, just enough to keep him quiet. Then a few years later hid the SAP even more effectively under a reorg that happened in the early 1990s. And so it goes. 

Here is what I wrote for the YouTube description:

The new White House PURSUE initiative promises to loosen the secrecy surrounding UAP by allowing government personnel and contractors to report sensitive information through authorized channels without violating their nondisclosure agreements. Avi Loeb sees this as a potentially historic breakthrough, while whistleblower Matthew Brown warns that government reporting channels can identify witnesses and absorb their information without protecting them or producing genuine disclosure.

In this talk, Richard Dolan examines what the new memorandum actually does, what protections and oversight it leaves out, and why PURSUE may represent both a real opening and a new mechanism of containment within the evolving struggle over UFO secrecy.

I’m not especially worked up one way or the other about this — not yet, anyway. But I am interested to see how it develops. 

Oh yes …. Sound quality on this video is less than great. I’ll get it fixed next time. 

Richard