One of the most paradoxical aspects about Ufology as a subculture, is that despite its iconoclastic nature —as a result of always being relegated to the fringes of society—it has always retained a weak spot for anything that has the whiff of officialdom. If a newcomer to the field arrives presenting credentials of having being involved with some branch of government, that person’s testimony and/or opinion is immediately given more credence, than those of other people regardless of their education and past contributions.
Among those ‘g-men VIPs’ (and most of them do tend to be male) none enjoy more special privileges than the whistleblowers—people who claim to have had some special access to classified official information pertaining to UFOs. The reason these individuals are so popular within Ufology is two-fold; (a) their claims reinforce the field’s suspicions of a massive cover-up of explosive information, zealously guarded within the halls of government; and (b) their revelations are supposedly shared at a great personal cost on their part—loss of their jobs, marital problems, death threats, etc—hence they are praised as martyrs to the great cause of revealing the UFO truth to humanity, fighting the government Goliath with nothing but a slingshot of Revelation.
There’s something about outsiders always rooting for the underdogs in any fight.
To assume UFO whistleblowers are something new would show a great deal of ignorance about the history of Ufology. Almost since the term ‘flying saucer’ was coined, the field became fertile soil for the cropping of whistleblowers over the decades. Pop culture also took advantage of this when creating iconic characters like ‘Deep Throat’ in Chris Carter’s The X-Files—the name being a direct reference to one of the most successful cases of whistleblowing in American history, that of the Watergate scandal which ended the presidency of Richard Nixon (and also showing how hardcore references were not frowned upon in the more progressive years of the 1970s).
But there is no denying that, with the publication of the 2017 NYT article, the term attained even more cultural relevance, catapulting individuals like Lue Elizondo and Dave Grusch to international fame. Steven Spielberg’s summer movie Disclosure Day could have been perceived as the ultimate encumbering of the UFO whistleblower icon, as the single-handed changer of a social paradigm… if the movie hadn’t turned out to be so mediocre.
…And yet, Spielberg got something right: the worth of a whistleblower’s claim is measured by the weight of the evidence they provide. In the case of Deep Throat with Watergate, or Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon papers, that evidence is usually delivered upfront; it is then the job of the journalists they choose to associate themselves with, to vet that evidence and find the best way to release it to the public. This is the power of journalism in a democratic society, that we overlook at our own peril.
With the UFO whistleblowers, on the other hand, it is usually the opposite: they come crashing into the field with mind-blowing stories and unconfirmed revelations, but when it comes times to put-up-or-shut-up, it often turns out that most of their claims are unfalsifiable—they can’t back their testimony with hard data, they say, because everything got censored by the managers of the cover-up. In other disciplines, this catch-22 would instantly get them unceremoniously kicked out of the room; but in Ufology it has the opposite effect—because now the rest of the members feel the call to rally upon the clarion call of the whistleblower, and joining their voices into demanding government transparency.
Lue Elizondo, for example, rose to the top of other whistleblowers who preceded him because his claims were seemingly backed by some form of material evidence—a couple of fuzzy IR Navy videos, and (more substantially) the testimony of pilots willing to come forward to put a human face into those scraps of ambiguous video. At the beginning, Elizondo’s words were compelling not only because of his (alleged) position as former director of the government AATIP program, but also because his claims were very measured and cautious—this is not really a search for “little green men,” he kept assuring reporters, but an attempt to improve the United States’ ability to detect and assess the ‘potential threats’ of unknowns invading its airspace; which could very well be novel technology developed by foreign adversaries, like China or Russia.
But, over time that PR restraint eroded, and Elizondo’s claims got bolder and bolder: the threat seemed to come from outside our world, after all—not only that, but it was seemingly weirder, and more terrible than we civilians could possibly imagine. And the bolder he got, the more he kept insisting he was impeded to come clean with all he really knew, because he was still bound by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) he signed while still being a federal employee.
After the NYT revelations, several federal initiatives within the US government were implemented to facilitate the procurement of reports from military personnel and members of the other branches. First, measures were taken so that servicemen could come forward with their sightings without the fear of ridicule or endangering their careers—the measure has been so successful, in fact, that now it seems AARO (the current official UFO office within the US government) is literally flooded with hundreds of sightings of varying degrees of relevance (from trivial observations of balloons and other mundane objects, to a handful of genuine cases worthy of a follow-up). The natural end result of casting a wider net without really knowing what exactly it is that you’re looking for.
Other initiatives came into place attempting to invite ‘whistleblowers’ to come forward. The latest one signed into effect by Trump himself (whatever takes the public eye from his many legal problems the better). And yet, Elizondo keeps insisting that Nope, he still can’t come forward and blow his whistle to the fullest. Sorry!
It’s 2026. How long is this guy pretending to play this ‘mum’s the word’ game?
The basis of this week’s Sunday strip is because I’ve often wondered what would have happened if insiders would have had the knowledge to stop tragedies like Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, or 9-11, and chose not to because the fear for their personal security outweighed the consequences of saying nothing. If all these UFO whistleblowers are still waiting for the perfect opportunity, when all the planets align and all the amendments are voted in so they can finally come forward, then surely the threat UFOs represent can’t be that terrible or imminent, can it?
In my mind, the last true whistleblowers who put the need to let the public know the truth over their safety were Edward Snowden, Joseph Darby and Chelsea Manning.
To all the UFO whistleblowers out there: The ball has been in your court for ten freaking years. Time to make a play, or GTFO.
