Clearance Jobs, an organization that defines itself as “the largest career network for professionals with federal government security clearance,” has issued an apparent letter of guidance that also serves as a chilling warning to any industry or government insiders who are considering coming forward as UAP whistleblowers with evidence of their work with non-human craft and their pilots.
The letter, titled “How to Blow the Whistle if You Work With Flying Saucers and Their Alien Pilots,” was issued to all subscribers via email on July 13th and is peppered with well-worn buzzwords seemingly meant to belittle the topic before laying out the dire consequences that likely await anyone who breaks their security oaths to talk about their classified work.
Whistleblowing Something Good?
After outlining the claims involving the U.S. government’s alleged possession of non-human craft made by former intelligence officer David Grusch, claims which first appeared in a story by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal and published by The Debrief (a story that was later expanded upon to include potential alien pilots of these crafts in an interview with Grusch by Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart that aired on cable news network News Nation), the letter is broken into five segments.
The first, titled “Whistleblowing Something Good,” opens with more loaded phrasing and language, including the second use of the term “space aliens,” which seems to have replaced the classic “little green men” when trying to downplay and stigmatize the topic, before positing a scenario where Grusch’s claims are actually found to be true.
“If it were all true, it would be the most extraordinary event in millennia, with seismic implications for science, philosophy, religion, sociology, psychology, technology—everything!” writes author David W. Brown, who is described as a regular contributor to Clearance Jobs. “Nothing would ever be the same again. It would be a unifying force unlike anything since Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire.”
Brown then goes on to note that he cannot think of a single drawback to the government “revealing the existence of space aliens (feudalistic dominance notwithstanding)” before commenting that “If Grusch is sane,” this would mean that he has done a good thing by blowing the whistle.”
“Hiding flying saucers isn’t government wrongdoing, exactly, or fraud, waste, or abuse,” Brown adds with one metaphorical eyebrow raised. “At most, it’s just a little weird. Blowing the whistle on aliens, in other words, is a complete and total positive for all involved.”
Interestingly, this sentence seems in direct contrast to the claims by Grusch that the efforts to conceal and reverse engineer these crafts have been kept from the U.S. Congressional oversight, a clear violation of a number of laws designed specifically to prevent rogue elements of the security state (or any part of government) from spending taxpayer funds on programs not authorized by congress.
In fact, it is specifically this allegation of those crimes (an allegation found “credible and urgent” enough by the Inspector General (IG) of the intelligence community to open an investigation and also refer Grusch and his claims to the congress members who oversee budget appropriations for secret programs. These moves have spurred members of Congress from both sides of the aisle (not an insignificant accomplishment in today’s political environment) to enact legislation designed to reveal any such misappropriation of funds and associated malfeasance.
So Sayeth the Law
The second section of Brown’s letter, titled “What The Law Has To Say,” strikes a significantly more serious tone, which is in direct contrast to his introduction, opening with a quote from Sean Bigley, credited as “an attorney and ClearanceJobs legal correspondent.”
“The statutes that pertain to whistleblowing all speak to things like violation of the law, gross mismanagement, gross waste of public funds, threats to life or public health—those types of things,” explains Bigley, a comment that seems to perfectly outline the more serious claims of the illegal circumvention of congressional oversight outlined by Grusch in both his legal complaint to the IG and his direct testimony to congressional staffers.
The letter’s author then goes on to outline the legal steps, as told to him by Bigley, that one must undertake if they are planning to blow the whistle on activities inside the government before making a somewhat startling and seemingly ill-informed statement of his own.
“Grusch claims he did all those things,” Brown writes. “The catch is that he has not really exposed any government wrongdoing, which means whistleblowing statutes might not protect him if the government wanted to prosecute.”
“This would fall under what I would call a ‘public good category.’ But under current law, there isn’t one,” Bigley adds.
Fundamentally, the messages from both men seem to overlook or misunderstand the very specific crimes Grusch has alleged–which includes the information about alleged UAP-related programs being illegally withheld from Congress–while also pointing out how any such claims could be trouble for those making them “if the government wants to prosecute,” though without addressing specific protections for such whistleblowers defined last year in language passed into law within the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.
Leave the Lizard People Out
In the next section, “If Lizard People are not Involved,” Brown lays out a theoretical scenario that could be faced by a potential whistleblower.
“Let’s leave the aliens out of it for a moment,” he writes. “Suppose you are a scientist for the Department of Energy helping to develop some revolutionary carbon capture technology. It uses minimal energy, works in seconds, and turns carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere into a stable, harmless solid.”
“You document your concerns and go through the chain trying desperately to get someone to listen, but no one does. The classification remains,” Brown laments. “So you leak it to the journal Nature (though are careful to protect the parts that can be reverse-engineered by bad guys). The revelation causes an uproar for obvious reasons.”
Brown then goes on to point out the legal Pandora’s Box his seemingly good-intentioned Paul Revere has opened, specifically the legal consequences for them personally.
“Legally, you are on the hook for this,” he writes, “even if you just saved the planet Earth.”
Brown presents a series of possible consequences the suddenly doomed hero may incur, including “being charged for violating the Espionage Act (and) for leaking classified information that could benefit a foreign nation,” to being sued by the government, losing your security clearance, losing your job, and being barred from other government or contractor jobs.
In the following section titled “What Defense Do You Have,” the same attorney is quoted as telling Brown that even such a “positive” whistleblower would have a very hard time in court.
“It is all subjective,” Bigley explains. “Who is to say what is and isn’t for the public good? The government might have a compelling reason to keep such a secret, so the ‘public good’ defense wouldn’t really fly from a legal standpoint—at least not under existing law.”
To this, Brown posits that a strong, positive reaction from the court of public opinion may be enough to save our misguided good Samaritan from the direst of legal consequences before once again quoting Bigley, who says, “But I would not advise anyone to be the test case for that.”
Like the previous sections, the subtext of these comments by both author and attorney is a hypothetical claim of secrecy against the public good, which is agreeably not a crime, instead of the financial and oversight dodging efforts alleged by Grusch that are anything but legal.
In a last-ditch effort to offer his hypothetical whistleblower a lifeline, Brown proposes the idea of jury nullification, the legal concept that even if you have committed a crime, the jury might just let you get away with it anyway. But just like before, Brown quickly dashes his hero’s hopes by reporting that Bigley says he would advise anyone against trying to “roll the dice” on such an outcome.
Good Deeds or Punishable Offenses?
“Whether you work in the UFO warehouse at Area 52, are the surgeon who handles the alien autopsies, or are the designer of the amazing climate cleaning machine, if your work is classified, you can’t blow the whistle on it for the public good and expect the law to work in your favor,” Brown states in the fifth and final section, aptly titled “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”
“It’s just not a category of protection,” he quotes Bigley as saying, “but it’s one of those things that, arguably, a case could be made that there should be. There just isn’t right now, and I’m not sure how you could create a standard that somebody could even follow.”
Similar to the bulk of the arguments against blowing the whistle layered within the letter, this pair of comments seem to assume once again that one is blowing the whistle for some sense of public good and not for the specifically illegal activities alleged by Grusch, activities which, again, have spurred congress members from both sides of the aisle to investigate them together and motivate the former Inspector General to take up the filing of Grusch’s IG case.
The letter ends with a comment that not only fits perfectly with the title of this particular section but also serves as a strongly-worded warning by Brown that any would-be whistleblower looking to follow in Grusch’s footsteps, even if their testimony were true, the people on whom they are blowing the whistle are not likely not give up without a fight.
“Though your career is over and you are sitting in a jail cell, you are still, ethically, at least, on solid footing,” Brown offers. “Strictly from a utilitarian perspective, your act did the maximum amount of good for the maximum amount of people. As a matter of deontology, you had a duty to do something so intrinsically good and right. And ultimately, good government should be as transparent as possible and accountable to its citizens. And you can reflect on all this as you decay in a federal penitentiary. Don’t worry, though. You’ve got a heck of a book deal waiting for you on the other side.”
You can read the original letter on Clearance Jobs here.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on Twitter, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.