I'm finding it very same-old, same-old.
Because most of us (a) don't measure our professional credentials that way, and (b) don't look too deeply into what sorts of credentials are typical for that kind of work. It's meant to sound uncommonly impressive. His credentials are about right for the job he says he was doing, and not very uncommon. He will have many, many peers.
It's not clear to what extent the colonel's endorsement covers the claims being made. It's very easy to call up someone's current or former superior and ask general questions.
Take, for example, my buddy Trent. I haven't spoken to him in several years. But we worked together at Dept. of Energy on some sensitive subjects. He has Q clearance and a bunch of other clearances. He has military combat experience. In short, his resume is comparable to Grusch's. If someone called me up and asked me generally things like, "Is Trent a trustworthy individual?" I would give him a glowing recommendation. It would be honest and earned. However, if some author juxtaposes those accurate quotes alongside some wacky thing Trent may have said in some context I'm not aware of, it might end up sounding like I'm endorsing the wackiness.
That's how this sort of pseudo-journalism works. Nothing is piecewise false, but the narrative being put together as a whole out of those individual parts just isn't true.
Which is the easiest lie to tell.
If I tell you my work with Trent at Dept. of Energy concerned reverse engineering alien technology, and that only a few high-level people worked on it, and that it was strictly a need-to-know project, how would you be able to prove I was lying? Critical people see this as an untestable claim. Uncritical people see this as, "Ooooh! Scary!"
The whole shenanigan is meant to sound plausible while at the same time being impossible to refute. That's what's suspicious. Other people with high clearances can say, "I've never heard of anything like this," and Grusch can double-down and say that it was compartmentalized. But compartmentalized information is even more restrictive than those available as part of general classification levels or codeword clearance. They can't make it irrefutable without making it even less plausible to people who actually know how this stuff works. But that's not the intended audience. They're trying to dupe ordinary lay people.
It's the same old tap dance they've performed for decades. Since this is allegedly so sensitive and compartmentalized, so they say, actual testable evidence is almost impossible to come by.
No, no one gets "vanished." You simply get arrested, charged, and (if convicted) imprisoned. It's extremely important to the deterrent effect that the consequences of violating secrecy oaths are highly visible to those who might contemplate it.
Because it's obviously bogus. There are no actual secrets at stake and no secrecy oaths being actually violated. Therefore there's no legal cause of action. There's no law against making something up and claiming it is a highly classified truth, especially when it's the same claims as others have made. And legally speaking, all Grusch can claim to have is hearsay. The First Amendment lets him make up quite a bit of fiction.
Because there's an industry that caters to UFO nuts who eat this stuff up. Nothing that Grusch claims will ever be substantiated, but Grusch and any number of promoters will make a mint on the convention circuit fleecing the gullible rubes.
