When the news first dropped about Intelligence Community whistleblower David Grusch and his claims of a secret government program hiding extraterrestrial (okay… “non-human intelligence”) craft, people really seemed to take notice. There have been a few developments since then, but the subject has become the focus of a wide debate, with many questions being raised.

First, a couple of updates. We learned this weekend that the law firm representing Grusch in his case with the Intelligence Community Inspector General announced today that they had “successfully concluded” their representation of him. The rest of the process will take time to play out and the public may or may not learn the results when it does. Also, the full interview with Grusch that I mentioned on Tuesday will air tomorrow, Sunday, June 11 at 9 pm Eastern on NewsNation.

As to the ongoing questions, when I first covered the story last week, I asserted that I believe David Grusch believes what he is saying. But, again, all of his knowledge came to him secondhand. I suggested the possibility that the people in the other agencies who had told him about the secret alien reverse engineering program might have been feeding him misinformation. But why? What would possess them to do that when they are dealing with such a serious subject in a classified setting? Believe it or not, some suggestions have begun to emerge.

I’m hardly the first person to speculate about this, but is it possible that there are people inside the government who actually wanted this story to get out into the public after supposedly hiding it for all these decades? And if so, could it be that their reasons are less than honorable and they aren’t really trying to push UFO/alien “disclosure” out to the world? It’s not often that you see me reading or quoting the New York Times, but I couldn’t resist this article from columnist Ross Douthat. At least in part, he seems to be thinking along the same lines when he asks, “Does the U.S. Government Want You to Believe in UFOs?”

But this whistle-blower’s mere existence is evidence of a fascinating shift in public U.F.O. discourse. There may not be alien spacecraft, but there is clearly now a faction within the national security complex that wants Americans to think there might be alien spacecraft, to give these stories credence rather than dismissal.

The evidence for this shift includes the military’s newfound willingness to disclose weird atmospheric encounters. It includes the establishment of the task force that Grusch was assigned to. It includes the government’s bizarre behavior, secretive in an attention-grabbing way, around the military shootdowns of what were presumably balloons earlier this year.

It also includes other examples of credentialed figures, like the Stanford pathology professor Garry Nolan, who claim they’re being handed evidence of extraterrestrial contact. And it includes the range of strange stories being fed to writers willing to operate in the weird-science zone.

Speaking as one of the aforementioned writers who operates in the “weird science zone,” these questions are too juicy for me to pass up. The premise here is that no such program actually exists and there are no craft created by a non-human intelligence in the government’s possession. But if that’s the case, why make people think it’s all real? Douthat offers any number of possibilities. Perhaps it’s a way to generate public interest so they can argue for an even larger Pentagon budget. Maybe a cluster of U.F.O. enthusiasts has infiltrated the defense establishment. Perhaps it’s all a psy-op to discredit critics of the national security state.

These are all fascinating possibilities to be sure. But there is an alternate theory going around and it involves the flat denial of any such program or technology that was issued by Pentagon UFO spokeswoman Susan Gough. If Grusch has the goods and the program is real, why are they still denying it? And why did AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick very recently deny any knowledge of suggestions of extraterrestrial technology when testifying before Congress if he was briefed on this secret program?

It has already been suggested in separate reporting that some sources have not wished to come forward because they do not have faith in the AARO office and they do not trust that Kirkpatrick will properly handle any information they might disclose. With that in mind, what if Grusch’s story is real, but AARO has actually just been turned into the Pentagon’s latest version of Project Blue Book? What if Sean Kirkpatrick is the modern equivalent of J. Allen Hynick, the Blue Book debunking expert who examined UFO reports and then explained them away as anything from misidentified meteor showers to swamp gas? (Yes, he literally blamed one on swamp gas.) In that scenario, Kirkpatrick is actually putting on a good show for the public, making it look like they are taking the investigation into UFOs seriously, but he’s there to steer the investigation away from anything too sensitive that the Pentagon doesn’t want Congress (or the public) to see.

So, by this point you’re thinking I’ve gone completely off the deep end into conspiracy theory territory, right? Well… sure. But we’re having a serious conversation in 2023 about UFOs and aliens. Where is the line where something is “too crazy” at this point? We’ll check back with you after the interview airs tomorrow night.