What the Heck Is Going on With These U.F.O. Stories?
About this episode
The central question is what is really happening with the recent wave of UFO — now UAP — stories, and how seriously to take whistle-blower David Grusch's claims. Journalist Leslie Kean traces the arc: her 2017 Times report on the Pentagon's tiny Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and its Navy pilot videos, subsequent congressional interest, whistle-blower protections in the 2023 defense bill, and the 2021 intelligence report finding most sightings unexplained. She then defends her June 2023 Debrief story in which Grusch, a former intelligence officer, alleged that secret "legacy programs" hold craft of nonhuman origin — based entirely on secondhand testimony from people he will not name publicly. Klein presses her on the story's weak points: the pseudonymous source, the Pentagon's puzzling prepublication clearance, and why no firsthand witness has come forward, leaving curiosity and skepticism in tension.