Investigating the Investigators: A Chemical Imbalance
Investigating the Investigators: A Chemical Imbalance
It is an arrogance that any real skeptic should be embarrassed to be associated with.
I've long held the belief that the current discourse on UFO disclosure would be best left to my Twitter account when it comes to calling out disingenuous arguments and blatant character assassination. Advantages to that strategy include the ability to counter inaccurate claims made by agenda-driven debunkers in real-time, along with the reach of my platform.
I felt as if writing something long-form would be somewhat pointless considering the rapid-fire pace of developments in the UFO sphere and the limited attention span of most in our current era of social media. Recent events have led me to change my mind.
In every debate, a baseline of credibility and motives must be established for those following along to make an educated decision for themselves on the subject matter. Likes and follower counts are not indicative of credibility, and often the opposite tends to be true. Individuals dependent on their own loud voices can be taken even less seriously, with edgy comments and unrelenting streams of irrelevant information masking the lack of substance underneath.
Perhaps the most obnoxious and harmful are those who masquerade as unbiased researchers to obfuscate their agenda, and the number of their followers who refuse to acknowledge what's staring them in the face. Signs of networking behind the scenes with others who parrot similar talking points are common but mostly missed by the casual observer.
First impressions matter, and those turning people off of the UFO subject by purposely intercepting the general public's initial forays into the field have been winning for decades. This series is one small attempt at turning that dynamic on its head.
The individuals featured in this series will no doubt have issues with my findings and label many of them ad hominem attacks or false narratives. I will do everything in my power to present the facts as they are and in the context of the current UFO debate on social media and elsewhere. Many of these individuals justify their near-daily attacks on disclosure advocates with the caveat, "I'm just asking questions."
Hopefully, they can understand that I am only doing the same.
Covert Clownshow
I was inspired to document my findings comprehensively by the recent revelations regarding the "skeptic activist" group known as Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW). This covert, coordinated effort to delegitimize less-dogmatic scientific theories — along with the academics and journalists genuinely researching these phenomena — has been quietly manipulating information on one of the world's most popular websites for years.
These revelations are largely due to the work of researcher Rob Heatherly, who has spent months gathering evidence of the most abhorrent aspects of this organization. He presented his work recently on The Good Trouble Show with Matt Ford.
One might expect GSoW founder Susan Gerbic, the leader of a group that describes themselves as dedicated to fighting pseudo-science, to be a scientist herself. Instead, according to her own Wikipedia page, "Gerbic worked at Lifetouch, a portrait studio in JC Penney in the Northridge Mall in Salinas, from 1982 for 34 years, including as manager." It would come as no surprise to any seasoned ufologist that a person of such a prestigious background would be the recipient of the "2022 National Capital Area Skeptics Philip J. Klass Award for outstanding contributions to critical thinking and scientific understanding."
If the name of that award made your eye twitch, you're definitely not alone.
According to the GSoW website, applicants are required to complete a training course on editing Wikipedia pages, promoting skeptic viewpoints, and improving the entries of individuals within the skeptic community itself. Only then can you join their private Facebook group dubbed the "Secret Cabal," a name that is truly one of the lamest attempts at skeptical humor I've ever heard in my life.
Non-English speakers are also recruited for the "cause" because the indoctrination of skeptical viewpoints must be global, according to Gerbic. The result is hundreds of people around the world tweaking minuscule details in a decentralized attempt to avoid any one person being accused of defamation. Surely Philip Klass would be proud.
Not satisfied with just their Wikipedia shenanigans, GSoW is also in the business of setting people up to be humiliated. Her "Secret Cabal" has conducted "sting operations" on psychics by creating fake Facebook profiles, setting up viewing appointments, and then recording the session unbeknownst to the mediums. They would then post the session online so other skeptics in their "community" could belittle and ostracize the victim.
There are definitely charlatans in the psychic business, but I believe these operations are very telling when it comes to their motives in other arenas. Their sole purpose of existing is to ridicule and these acts display malice as a basis for the activities they conduct both on and off the internet.
It is an arrogance that any real skeptic should be embarrassed to be associated with. It is within this context that we shall briefly review a few of their Wikipedia antics.
Oblivious Bias
Susan Gerbic herself created the Wikipedia entry for Luis Elizondo. This means she has been watching every edit that has ever been made to his page and is fully aware of the attempts that have been made to correct the record.
The first thing to note is that Elizondo's page states he was born in Miami. According to Elizondo, this is incorrect. Even after providing evidence, including pictures of his passport that clearly states Texas as his place of birth, any attempt to correct this very basic fact has been reverted.
The fact that the man himself is unable to have such an uncontroversial data point about his life corrected shows just how abusive this group can be. To be frank, it's fucking ridiculous.
The introduction to Elizondo's page is indicative of Gerbic's training. Her indoctrination curriculum states that the first two sentences of each entry are by far the most important. He is first labeled as a "media personality," followed by his actual profession, despite being out of the public eye for a year as of the time of this writing.
The second sentence is even more blatant: "Elizondo has claimed to be a director" of AATIP, which is "a claim supported by former senator Harry Reid but contested by both reporters and Pentagon officials."
The linked source detailing Harry Reid's support of Elizondo is a letter written by the Senator himself. The two sources linked in an attempt to counter that claim signal the tip of an iceberg that has yet to be adequately addressed.
The two sources cited to push back against Lue's work at AATIP are from two "journalists" who have been nothing but hostile to all of the individuals involved in the current push for UAP transparency. The cited articles are propaganda products concocted by Keith Kloor and Art Levine.
Interviews and articles display a clear bias on the part of these individuals. There are vastly more credible sources stating that Elizondo was indeed the director of AATIP, and these skeptics' choice to omit those articles and opt for agenda-driven opinion pieces should erase any veneer of impartiality.
Monsanto Man
Keith Kloor has long been a PR agent for Monsanto (now Bayer) disguised as a journalist. At the same time Kloor was supposedly covering an investigation into academia's ties to the pesticide industry for science publications such as Nature, emails show he was coaching and editing sources to give the appearance of broad support for GMOs.
This was covered extensively by U.S. Right to Know, a public health advocacy organization that was also conducting the initial investigation Kloor was reporting on.
From 2015 to 2017, Kloor reported for Nature , Science Insider , Discover , Issues in Science and Technology, and Slate on a public records investigation by U.S. Right to Know to uncover hidden ties between the pesticide industry and publicly funded academics, including University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta, who promote GMOs and pesticides and argue to keep these products unregulated. In each of these published pieces, Kloor framed the public records requests as an undue burden on academics.
The emails obtained via state records requests reveal that Kloor himself was part of the story he was reporting on; emails reveal Kloor had attended pesticide industry-funded message-training conferences with Folta and assisted Folta with messaging. The correspondence also shows that Folta reached out to Kloor to suggest a “preemptive” release of his emails “but selectively” to help mitigate the damage of the documents – which Kloor did, in the journal Nature.
At the same time as Kloor was covering the story for top science publications, the documents show he participated in discussions with industry insiders about the challenges posed by the public records requests.
Interestingly, Kloor was tasked with convincing Bill Nye (the Science Guy) to support GMOs. Coincidentally, Bill Nye is a fellow of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry along with GSoW founder Susan Gerbic.
U.S. Right to Know elaborates on the email coaching, which you can read in full on their website.
In November 2014, Kloor used his Discover blog to challenge critiques about GMOs that Bill Nye, a science educator known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” had written in a book. Kloor published an “Open Letter to Bill Nye from a Plant Scientist” signed by Folta— but Kloor did not disclose that he had asked Folta to challenge Nye, had concocted the idea of the open letter and had coached Folta on how to write it. Kloor also edited Dr. Folta’s biography to avoid mentioning industry funding, according to the emails.
The emails show that Kloor had drafted a bio for Folta that included the line, “No research is sponsored by Monsanto.” Folta asked him to adjust that sentence, noting that Monsanto indirectly sponsored some of his biotech outreach efforts and that he had received research money from a small biotech firm. Kloor decided on a bio that avoided mentioning Dr. Folta’s industry funding entirely: “his research is sponsored by federal and state agencies.”
Now, you may ask yourself, why in the world would an operative on the payroll of the Monsanto chemical company want to discredit a UFO disclosure advocate like Luis Elizondo?
To be fair, the answer isn't that obvious at first glance.
Transclassified Information
First, let us revisit an interview that UFO whistleblower David Grusch gave a few months back. Grusch has been thrust into the national spotlight after his interview on NewsNation with Ross Coulthart. Unsurprisingly, both of these men are also top targets for GSoW and their struggles with character assassination will be explored in a later edition of this series.
Grusch stated the following when asked about private industry's involvement in UFO reverse engineering programs by Paolo Gizzardi and Roberto Pinotti.
There's certainly been private corporations involved, both federally-funded research and development centers and for-profit companies that have contracted with the US government over the years. Like I mentioned in earlier interviews, the US government overlaid the Manhattan Project secrecy, personnel…generally what elements were involved corporately and governmentally in that, too. The Atomic Energy Commission, which eventually morphed into the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later.
And that is why what you see in what we call the Schumer Amendment in the United States that will hopefully be signed here very shortly -- and maybe it'll be signed by the time the conference happens -- they cite the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and other provisions within the unclassified Schumer Amendment. That's because they understand that the secrecy justification ran along the lines of US nuclear secrets…
But yes, certainly private companies were involved. The specific ones I did provide to the Congressional Committees and the Inspector General down to specific facilities that I am aware of, down to the address where they exist. I also had the individuals that, first-hand, worked on the program provide that disclosure and interview with the Inspector General as well so it wasn't just coming from me.
In the context of Grusch's claims that the US government overlaid corporate elements of the Manhattan Project's secrecy onto the reverse engineering programs, it becomes clear once you understand who those private interests are.
Monsanto was one of the biggest.
In a declassified document from 1948 titled "Organizational Chart U.S. Atomic Energy Commission," Monsanto is designated as the manager of two facilities for the AEC. The first is Clinton Laboratories where they would conduct "general nuclear research." The second facility was under construction at the time and titled "Dayton Engineer Works" in Miamisburg Ohio. It is also known as Mound Laboratory due to its proximity to the local Indian mounds and was to be utilized primarily for research and development purposes.
The fact that Keith Kloor, a pawn of Monsanto, holds an equal amount of credibility as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the eyes of GSoW tells you everything you need to know. Seen in this light, at least some of the motivation behind his attacks on UFO disclosure advocates should be questioned.
I have conducted a plethora of research on those facilities that I now need to review, and there is much more to the story of Kloor, Gerbic, GSoW, Levine, and even Bill Nye the Science Guy.
This is the first in a line of articles that will attempt to level the playing field by exposing the true motivations of certain individuals who insist on disingenuousness and bad-faith arguments.
After all, we're just asking questions.
Excellent article. I had no idea Monsanto would be involved.
Appreciate you bro. Fight the Power ✊