Prediction: when disclosure becomes imminent, involved public figures will try to get ahead of the revelations and justify their past actions, which is what Sean Kirkpatrick just did with his OpEd.

It doesn’t make sense to me why Sean Kirkpatrick is so hot and cold about aliens. Except if the title theory is the case. He needs to defend his reputation now, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to get swept under the disclosure wave and come out on the wrong side of history. This OpEd is him ensuring that his account of AARO is set up in a way that he will survive disclosure.

Even if you hate the guy, you have to admit that his claim that no officials seem to have been briefed on it will be perfectly understandable if it turns out that this has been hidden from the government through private contractors, atomic energy act classification, and CIA law-breaking operations. If Congress has struggled to get answers, it makes perfect sense that he has too. Remember that Gillibrand and Rubio had to pass a law defunding programs and giving amnesty to whoever comes forward just to get people to come out and tell them about what’s going on. Sean can’t do that.

He’s establishing that AARO was foremost a scientific operation that doesn’t have any business repeating hearsay, and so they had a reason (you can agree or disagree) to keep quiet about the various things they might have heard (like Grusch had) but could not confirm. And he established that he was in fact investigating these claims, but had found issues with the credibility of existing whistleblowers.

This OpEd has set the record straight on a lot of Sean’s actions so that he’ll look like a boy scout if disclosure happens. If he didn’t write this, he could go down in history as a much bigger liar than he is (if he is). Some people won’t agree with that, but remember that Mellon himself has defended Sean several times. I don’t take that lightly given that it’s Mellon.

Aside: it’s entirely possible that Grusch refused to testify to AARO because he knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it, as he likely only could get statements from credible people himself, which AARO can’t really publish. If AARO received Grusch’s claims and said there was nothing that could be substantiated (which would still be correct even if Grusch had provided them credible testimony but couldn’t get past stonewalls to get evidence), then Grusch would be absolutely sunk in the public opinion.