For Fuchs Sake

The Case for UFO Secrecy?

I want to take a contrarian viewpoint in this post, because I think it might be helpful in framing some of what is going on right now in the aftermath of the David Grusch interview.  The whole problem of UFO secrecy is reaching levels of discourse in the mainstream and popular media to the extent that it can be manipulated by political actors who care less about UFOs and more about weaponizing paranoia and distrust for their own short-term gain.  Now any of you who are familiar with my books knows I am no friend of secrecy, especially government secrecy, but I don’t want my personal feelings and admittedly unusual background to obscure a rational view of the situation, so I have forced myself to take an opposite view, just to see what happens. 

I have had discussions for a number of years with people connected to the UFO/UAP Phenomenon in a variety of ways, from experiencers and contactees to government and industry insiders to researchers and journalists.  One thing everyone agrees upon is that the need for government secrecy concerning the Phenomenon is long past its sell-by date … up to a point, that is. 

Most people I know just want the Powers-That-Be to throw open the doors and dump all those classified files on the carpet like it’s any given Saturday night at Mar-A-Lago. So why isn’t it happening?

In fact, virtually everyone else I have spoken to on this claims that there are a handful of UFO secrets that are classified so stratospherically high that an actual classification doesn’t even exist.  These are not legacy programs in any traditional sense of the word.  You don’t get “read in” to these secrets.  There is only a scattering of individuals in the whole country that are entrusted with this data, and they don’t share.  In fact, you could be working on one aspect of one of these programs and never even know it.  Never suspect it.  Because the data you are working on has been so isolated from the main program that there is no way to tie it to anything remotely identifiable.

And, so they say, much of this research has already and effectively been terminated long ago with no prospects of starting it up again anytime soon.

The reasons for this are depressingly simple.

In the first place, it has to do with the technology in our possession.  Technology that resists any and all attempts to analyze it, duplicate it, or reverse engineer it.  Technology we have had for decades, but to no avail.  Basically, at least from an outsider’s perspective, we’ve given up.

In the second place, and more importantly, we can’t be trusted with it.  We can’t be trusted knowing about it.  We can’t be trusted with any of the details concerning it.  We are, quite simply, all of us, you, me, and that psycho next to you, security risks.

And it’s all because of some guy called Klaus Fuchs.

It was World War Two.  We had learned that the Germans had already solved the fission problem and were well on their way to having the atomic bomb.  There was a mad scramble to beat them to it, and in order to do that we had to do something inconceivable at the time: create a completely hidden, secret-above-top-secret, program that would bring together scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines to solve all the theoretical and practical problems in the development of the world’s first atomic bomb.

In other words, it is not only the infamous Manhattan Project we are talking about but also what could very well have been the dress rehearsal for a multi-disciplinary UFO research and development program.

All the moving parts were already there: we had facilities at various locations in the United States; we had the personnel; we had the budget; we had a deadline.  There were other countries working on the same problem (notably Germany and Japan, as well as the Soviet Union), so the pressure was on.  How easy it would have been to fine-tune the Manhattan Project so that we could apply the same system (and perhaps many of the same personnel, as well as the security apparatus) to deconstructing any kind of alien technology in our possession.

We know what happened with the Manhattan Project.  It stayed secret until the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan.  A project that involved thousands of people and the most advanced scientific knowledge at the time. And it worked.  The United States was the first country and for a while the only country in the world with that capability. 

There was only one problem.  Karl Fuchs.

Karl Fuchs was a German and a Communist.  He fled Germany, wound up in the UK, was interned, released, and in 1943 brought to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project.  He was a brilliant physicist who had first started working for Great Britain’s atomic bomb project, known innocently enough as “Tube Alloys”.  He became a British citizen and signed the Official Secrets Act, which forbade him from sharing his research with foreign governments. However, he almost immediately began passing England’s atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

After winding up at the Manhattan Project, Fuchs began passing secrets to the infamous Harry Gold, an agent for the Soviet KGB who later was implicated in the Rosenberg spy case as their handler and the courier for the documents they sent to Russia. 

In 1949, due to intercepts of Soviet cable traffic by the US government’s Venona Project, Karl Fuchs was identified as a Soviet spy and arrested in 1950.  He spent nine years in prison, and later defected to East Germany where he continued his research on behalf of that government.  (He died in 1988.)

It is believed that Fuchs had accelerated the Soviet Union’s atomic research program by at least 2 years. This is not counting the participation of the Rosenbergs and others who were passing secrets to the Soviets.  And then, things got even messier as the United States entered the McCarthy Era where anyone and everyone was considered to be a Communist or an agent of the Soviets.  Thus, we have the spectacle of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who performed crucial work in developing the atomic bomb for the United States, accused of being a Communist and losing his security clearance while at the same time we brought over Nazi scientists – who had been actual enemies of the State – to run our space program when that program was still a purely military affair.  We arrested rocket scientist Qian Xue Sen who had been involved in our rocket program during World War Two and who helped debrief Nazi scientists in Germany in March 1945, and accused him of being a Communist loyal to China.  He wasn’t, but we pushed him into the arms of Chairman Mao anyway so that, after years of house arrest, he was finally released and defected to Beijing where he jump-started their missile program.

And don’t get me started on Jack Parsons.

The whole point of this brief summary of Cold War US history is that the Manhattan Project, while quite successful, also gave us the template for secret government programs of which the general public knows nothing, and of which even high-ranking members of the government and the military know nothing.  A UFO program would share many of those same characteristics.  But … Karl Fuchs. 

It could be argued (and it has been) that a UFO program would be several factors more critical than the Manhattan Project.  UFO technology – that which we can actually observe and have recorded so far – is so different and potentially so much more powerful and advanced than the atomic bomb project that there is no acceptable level of risk.  We simply cannot allow anyone to have access to the raw material – or the data derived therefrom – whom we cannot trust.  We trusted Karl Fuchs, and he gave whatever he had to our ideological and existential enemy, the Soviet Union.  In fact, there were other spies at Los Alamos; Fuchs was not alone.  Can you imagine what might happen if a Karl Fuchs had penetrated the American UFO program and was sending data to the Russians, or the Chinese, or in fact to anyone outside the US military-intelligence community where it would eventually wind up in the hands of people who wish us harm?

Now we are in Joseph Heller territory.  What we need, and what I have argued in postings, on podcasts, and in the Sekret Machines books, is a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the Phenomenon, because to apply only the science we already know and understand to a deconstruction of the UFO/UAP Phenomenon is (obviously) insufficient.  We need to think outside of the box.  In fact, we need to take that box apart and stack the pieces to the side.  But … Catch-22.

In order to do that, we have to bring people in.  And people are notoriously unreliable from a national security standpoint.  They brag.  They lie.  They steal.  They have other allegiances and loyalties.  They feel guilty.  They feel obligated.  Overwhelmed. Grandiose.  They get drunk or stoned.  Have sex outside the lines. Get blackmailed.  Need cash in a hurry.  Want cash in a hurry. 

I ran this by Jim Semivan, a board member of To The Stars and a retired career CIA officer, and he presented a similar scenario, from the perspective of a military-intelligence weltanschauung developed over decades of hot and cold wars:

“I would only add that while we all want disclosure I can't think of a way to do it without spilling all the beans all over the floor.  If the USG says we are being visited, then they also have to say how they know this, when they knew this, etc.  Thousands of questions will be asked, and answers will be demanded.  So how much can they say w/o causing chaos?  How do you hide the fact that we have alien craft and we're working on them secretly if you say we have proof aliens are here?  What if we also know that aliens are not our friends, that they can control us whenever they want to do so, that we are indeed property and that we have absolutely no defenses against this?  That is, I think, the ultimate dilemma for the USG and other nations. You can't disclose just part of the story ... the spin of it all would be unrelenting ... journalists would be digging into everything to find out more answers.  We want disclosure but we don't want chaos, too.  How would you do a partial disclosure?  What would it look like? Would science jump on the UFO bandwagon with universities, devoting schools for its study?  Where would it all end?  Chris and I talked about the potential dangers of opening up Pandora's Box.  Yet, the Phenomenon is here and smacking us in the head all the time so how can we continue to deny it?  I am quite frustrated with it all.  As I said before, 14 Presidents and many other senior officials knew/know about this, but all have refused to let the secret out.  What do they know?  Are they scared or do they just realize that there may not be any upside to disclosure?”

So … like … Is it any wonder that there are religious fanatics in the US Air Force, indoctrinated at Colorado Springs in the dangers of spiritual pollution? What better way to keep mere humans in line than the threat of eternal damnation?  It’s worked before.

There are people right now with knowledge of the UAP situation who are congratulating themselves, slapping each other on the back, knowing they dodged a bullet: because if a former President of the United States could not be trusted with national security intelligence, then no one can. 

And that means us.  And not just us:  Russian citizens, Chinese citizens, Brazilians, the French, the Brits.  All of us.  There is political upheaval all over the world at this very moment. There is a growing tendency towards authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and even fascism.  The forces of democracy just barely defeated an authoritarian government’s attempt to build the first atomic bomb in 1945; can we be sure the same will happen again with the technology salvaged from a crashed – or intact – UFO?

No, we can’t.  To paraphrase Robert Owen: “I don’t trust anyone except me and thee, and I’m not too sure about thee.”

Does this mean we give up on UFO secrecy?  Of course, not.  We keep pressing, we keep agitating, and eventually something will give. We have to challenge – intelligently – the position that chaos will ensue if the USG ever acknowledges the whole truth. That’s up to us, those of us who do not work in government.  The Powers-That-Be will recognize that this has gone on far too long. That there is nothing to gain.  That if another government, another nation, decides to spill the beans then we will look not only stupid but borderline criminal.  That there is another Karl Fuchs out there, and another Harry Gold. 

Me, personally, I think Disclosure/Confirmation is happening now (if we are paying attention) and that the “ship” has already sailed (or, at least, is out of drydock) but I have to acknowledge the possibilities provided by Jim Semivan and others like him who may not be so optimistic.

People in the UFO “community” complain about a “limited hangout” or “slow drip disclosure” and the like.  Give me a slow drip rather than none at all.  If the government wants to gauge our reaction to whatever they slow drip, that’s fine with me.  We’ve all handled it pretty well so far, I think. We haven’t had the vapors, or fainted, or rioted in the streets over UFO disclosures.  We’re taking it in stride.  The social engineering aspect of all of this is going smoothly.  Now it’s time for a little exposure on the scientific end.  We’ve actually had some of that, it’s just that few people are paying attention.  We’ve been made aware of genetic testing, of exotic materials testing, and the reactions of scientists and military observers to the aerodynamics of the UAPs.

It’s up to us now to take that slow drip, that scattered dispersal of mind-bending data across several disciplines, and do something with it.  Let’s work with what we have so far.  We just may, as regular citizens, jump-start disclosure ourselves.  What we lack in scientific training and exposure to an actual craft we make up for in creative analysis of the available data.  Ninety-nine percent of that will be useless word salad and psychotic ravings, of course, but we’re okay with that. We have been for decades.  It’s entertainment.  It’s UFO conferences and podcasts. 

But that one percent … that one percent will change the world.