"Former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, on UFOs". Uploaded on The Black Vault Originals' Youtube channel, March 21 2021. Duration: 14:47 minutes.
SHOW NOTES-----------------------o Full FoxNews Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIe3j...o Marco Rubio on UFOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhtRY...o Former CIA Director John Brennan on UFOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEjNO...
Another former high ranking US governmental official recently made some interesting statements about the UFO/UAP issue on Fox News. I'm not a fan of Fox News. At the same time, when it comes to serious coverage of the UFO/UAP subject, the channel has (unfortunately) been one of the best these last couple of three years.
Another former high ranking US governmental official recently made some interesting statements about the UFO/UAP issue on Fox News. I'm not a fan of Fox News. At the same time, when it comes to serious coverage of the UFO/UAP subject, the channel has (unfortunately) been one of the best these last couple of three years.
In the video, John Greenewald Jr. talks about John Ratcliffe's UFO/UAP comments made during a Fox News interview. I mostly agree with Greenewald's points about the key things to consider in Ratcliffe's open and possibly sincere comments on what the US military and intelligence agencies know about UFOs/UAPs.
Or perhaps more correctly, what they do not know about UFOs/UAPs? Further below, I'll say more about Greenewald's comments and share my thoughts on some of Ratcliffe's statements.
Before I share my personal opinions and thoughts about some of Ratcliffe's statements, here is some commentary on Ratcliffe's statements from more knowledgeable sources and people than me:
A noteworthy quote in the above article by The Debrief is the following:
“Some of the best evidence acquired has come from measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), rather than from videos or still images,” a source speaking under the condition of anonymity told The Debrief in November.
The quote ties into what Chris Mellon — who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for intelligence in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations — wrote in an article from November 2019 about the different collection systems of information and databases that potentially can help us better understand the origins, capabilities, etc., of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). You can read Mellon's article here.
Keith Basterfield is another expert who has commented on Ratcliffe's recent remarks about UFOs.
Basterfield's blog post contains a full-length transcript of the Fox News interview with Ratcliffe (about the UAP-part; Ratcliffe first comments on diplomatic relations with China) and Basterfield's comments on some specific statements made by Ratcliffe about the UAP/UFO issue.
As with Greenewald's comments, I agree with Basterfield on what is most noteworthy of Ratcliffe's statements. Though, I would add to those notable statements the one Ratcliffe makes about the US Air Force. Greenewald comments on USAF-part in the video above, and below I'll say some more about it.
My comments on Ratcliffe's statements
Most times, it is essential to point out the obvious, so let me begin by pointing out some obvious but significant things that Ratcliffe confirms with some of his statements. I'll also say something about what I think we can infer from those confirmations by Ratcliffe.
So, the first obvious thing to note is that Ratcliffe in the interview confirms the validity of the UFO phenomenon. He is literally confirming that the US military and IC do not know what some military cases of UFOs/UAP are or who is piloting them (that is, UFOs are intelligently controlled).
For all the debunkers out there: Ratcliffe is obviously not referring to neither American nor foreign drones, missiles, or any other type of (human) technology or natural phenomena which the US military and IC are aware of. We are talking about the US military, which most likely has the most advanced technological and information-gathering capabilities in the world.
It's crucial to remember this when we talk about what US Navy and US Air Force pilots are seeing, what satellites and radar are detecting.
Ratcliffe is in the interview telling us what some UFOs/UAP are not (they are not drones, balloons, weather phenomena, etc.). Of course, he refers to specific military cases and sightings of UFOs/UAP, which have multiple sources of confirmation and have undergone rigorous analysis (I presume that these UAP/UFO military cases have undergone extensive study).
Marco Rubio, Mark Warner, John Brennan, and John Ratcliffe aren't talking about mysterious lights or unclear military reports of "I think I saw something strange...".
So, based on what I've said, I believe the U.S. military and intelligence agencies are very sure about what these UFOs/UAPs are not.
Do they know what UFOs are? I don't think so. They most likely speculate about the origin of UFOs. That is why we do not hear an official statement of what UFOs/UAP are.
From the latter, I think we can infer why the disclosure process looks like it does: No one in an official governmental position will come out and tell the public that "UFOs are likely extraterrestrial, but we are not yet sure".
However, Ratcliffe's statement that "...I think it'll be healthy for as much of this information to get out there as possible so that the American people can see some of the things we have been dealing with", seems to contradict the official stance of the Department of Defence to keep all data on UFOs/UAP on a classified level (as Greenewald also points out in the video above).
To me, Ratcliffe's most significant point was that the public should know as much as possible about UAP. Why?
It ties into another thing I noticed in the interview: Ratcliffe never uses "threat" concerning UFOs/UAP. That is also somewhat contradictory to statements made by, for example, Rubio and Warner. And I think the explanation goes beyond that Ratcliffe is no longer in the government, and Rubio and Warner still are. Ratcliffe's words seem to show disagreements between groups in the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community.
Or perhaps, and I am speculating, Ratcliffe's statement about making as much information public as possible indicates different opinions between the military and intelligence people involved in the UAP issue? Maybe a faction within the intelligence community is pushing for more transparency. In contrast, a faction (most likely from the US Air Force) inside the Department of Defence thinks it is too early, inappropriate or whatever? The situation is likely more complex than that.
Ratcliffe's comment about including the public in the UFO/UAP discussion suggests he thinks people can deal with whatever the truth is.
So, why did Ratcliffe make that kind of statement? What grounds or reasons does he have to think that the American public should see some data which the US military and IC have dealt with? I leave it up to the reader to ponder those questions. I'll give a tentative answer in my conclusion at the end of this post.
Greenewald's comments on Ratcliffe's statements
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I agree with most of what Greenewald is saying in the video above about Ratcliffe's statements. There is, however, one thing that Greenewald says that I disagree with. And that is when Greenewald (around the 9:00 minute mark) says that he thinks what Ratcliffe is saying in the interview will raise eyebrows in the higher echelons of the Pentagon and IC. According to Greenewald, Ratcliffe goes into specifics of the UAP issue (capabilities, flight characteristics, etc.), which likely are classified, or impending on classified information.
That is the only thing I disagree with Greenewald about. In my opinion, Ratcliffe is not revealing anything (new) about the capabilities and characteristics of UFOs/UAP that has not already been said by, for instance, Marco Rubio. The same goes for Ratcliffe's statements about the US government not having an explanation for some of those UAP cases/sightings: Rubio has also stated that in public (which for Rubio is the main reason to investigate UAP).
But, if Greenewald includes Ratcliffe's words on the tech used to spot UFOs/UAPs, I might think Ratcliffe is sharing new info that no one of his position has said before. Anyhow, my disagreement with Greenewald is minor — frankly, a quite irrelevant one in the bigger picture. Furthermore, I agree with Greenewald when he says that the interview with Ratcliffe is one of the most important ones done with government officials about the UAP issue (even if Ratcliffe, since January 2021, is a former government official).
One interesting thing that Greenewald points out around the 7:45 minute mark in his video is Ratcliffe's statement about the US Air Force (USAF). Why is that interesting and potentially significant? As Greenewald explains in the video above, the USAF has been very silent on the UAP issue since the New York Times article on December 16, 2017, compared to the US Navy. Some inside and outside the ufo-community suspect that the USS Nimitz UFO encounters in 2004 was some secret military test by the USAF. In this interview, Ratcliffe says that both the US Navy and the USAF have picked up UFOs/UAP.
Obviously, that statement does not rule out the possibility of some secret military test, but together with the rest of what Ratcliffe says in the interview, I think the probability of the secret military test scenario is much lower than before. It is not down to zero, but at the moment, the odds are not in favour of the "Tic Tac" (as described by Cmdr. Fravor and others) being a secret military test.
At this point, someone could argue that the "Tic Tac" being a secret military test is precisely why all of this information on UFOs/UAP is made public. Ratcliffe's statements are yet another way to cover up the beyond next-generation technology (totally human) in the possession of some US military branch. If someone seriously thinks that, I do not even know where to begin dismantling that argument.
But ok, let's suppose it could be true. Then, I would like to have an answer to the question of why the US government/military/intelligence community did not choose a simpler and more effective strategy of covering up this advanced technology? For instance, why not ignore and make no comments about the UAP issue (which is the current strategy preferred by the public relations office in the Pentagon)? It makes no sense to give attention to and in national television talk about something you desperately want to keep secret from the rest of the world.
Now, all the above mentioned does not mean that the specific cases of UFOs/UAP, which Ratcliffe is referring to in the interview on Fox News, are extraterrestrial or interdimensional or time travellers. At the moment, I think no one knows with certainty what those specific cases of UFOs/UAP actually are, or who/what is behind them.
However, I think a pattern has emerged since December 16, 2017 (of course, we can go way further back in UFO history). I believe the pattern shows what we can say and know about some specific military UFO/UAP cases what they are not.
Conclusions
My conclusion of Ratcliffe's reasons for saying what he says is that he, as the former Director of National Intelligence, knows that the US government needs help to handle the UFO/UAP issue. The US government needs help from its citizens to decide what the UFO phenomenon represents (threat? opportunity? both? something else?), and in the next step, what to do about it.
The crux of the matter is that not all of Ratcliffe's (former) colleagues agree that it is good idea to let the public know as much as possible about the UFO/UAP issue.
Also, keep in mind: We now have confirmation that the US government has more data on the UFO phenomenon than it has revealed so far. But that does not entail that the US government has a deeper understanding of the UFO phenomenon than the public.
Maybe Ratcliffe's appearance on national television should be seen as representing a faction in the US government that thinks it is necessary to involve the public in a conversation about the fact that UFOs are real and how we should approach them?
We can have that conversation without knowing precisely what UFOs/UAP are. In fact, what we do not know is why there should be a global conversation on the UFO phenomenon.
Take care!
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