Who gets the spotlight?

I wonder who will enter the fold. And how much of that will be staged too.

We've heard government-connected whistleblowers talk about what they're allowed to say. Some of it is absolutely bizarre. Then another detail comes up and suddenly, “I can't talk about that.” As someone listening, that is such a strange place to be. You're being asked to take a huge possibility seriously while part of the conversation is happening somewhere you can't follow.

There's a concrete example in David Grusch's 2023 congressional testimony. Grusch, a former intelligence official, said people with direct knowledge whom he'd interviewed assessed recovered biologics as nonhuman. Representative Nancy Mace then asked what evidence supported that assessment. He said the specific documentation would have to be discussed in a SCIF, a secure setting for classified information.

That supporting material is a big deal. The public gets to hear “nonhuman,” but we can't inspect the documentation being discussed. So now we're reacting to something that could be enormous, trying to work out what it means, while other people may be having a much more informed conversation behind a closed door. I can understand why that would leave people excited and frustrated at the same time.

Prepublication review adds another boundary. DOPSR, the office that reviews material before release, explicitly says clearance doesn't certify an author's account as true or endorse it. I wouldn't take an approved book as proof that the government wrote the story. But knowing there are limits on what can reach us absolutely affects how I think about the account we're hearing.

Now, what if PURSUE becomes the stage for the people the government wants us listening to? An official invitation could give someone a lot of legitimacy. If certain people get encouraged to participate, and their accounts get attention while other accounts stay out of view, that could shape the whole impression of what's happening. You wouldn't have to persuade every witness to lie for the public to come away with a very particular picture.

They set up the playing field and pick who receives the disclosures. If they also nudge their preferred players into it and keep deciding what reaches us, they've pretty much set up the whole thing. It's brilliant, in a bad way.