Tony
Bragalia received some interesting press with his website posting that the
Pentagon had admitted, in a response to his FOIA request, that they had
recovered alien debris. You can read the posts here (There is an earlier one as
well):
https://www.ufoexplorations.com/
We
did talk about his suggestion, talking first about FOIA and then how it works. We
then discussed the documents he received and why he believed that they proved
that the Pentagon had admitted to the debris. You can listen to the program
here:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43724887
We
did examine some of the information in the various reports he had, and I
wondered about the low level of classification. I think part of our problem is
that he was looking at this as something from a scientific and engineering
arena, and I was thinking more in terms of military secrets. He thought that
feeding the information into the private sector for study, using compartmentalization
as a protection would be the proper way to study the debris. I think that it
would be highly classified and held close to the vest by the military and by
extension, the federal government (read Deep State).
We
did get hung up on how he inferred, from the documentation he received, that
alien debris was involved. To him it related to the specifics of his request,
and to the response he received. Although the documents themselves make no
reference to UFOs or alien debris, it was in the cover letter from the DoD FOIA
officer and the use of the term UAP that was important to understanding the
context. We might have spent too much time on this with neither of us budging
on point of view.
You’ll
notice that at the very end of the show, there was a bit of a problem. I was
out of time and was attempting to wrap things up, but Tony had wanted to talk
about John Greenewald. There just wasn’t time to do it and when you have two
people talking at the same time, the listeners become annoyed. Besides that, in
the notes I send to each guest prior to the show, I mention that I’ll take the
last two or three minutes for the wrap up and we’ll sever the connection at
that point. We had just run out of time and there wasn’t anything that I could
do about it…
Ironically,
next week’s guest is John Greenewald. We’ll be discussing FOIA, Bigelow
Aerospace and the same documents that Tony and I discussed.
9 comments:
I once submitted a FOIA to the USAF (for a copy of a manual) and had to answer a number of them while I was on active duty.
The key factor is knowing which agency to send it to. While I was at the Pentagon I had to answer a FOIA from someone wanting, "All of the information on the Space Shuttle." Told them we did not have it. If they had known their own anus from a earthen excavation they would have realized that the Shuttle was a NASA design, in which the USAF had some input only in terms of requirements. The Air Force did have responsibility for the SLC-6 launch pad but that was not part of the Shuttle.
The other biggest factor is to know exactly what you are asking for. I recall one FOIA where I knew what the guy was asking for but he was not clear enough about it.
Finally, there is no such thing as FOIA! What we call FOIA is in reality a "freedom of documents act." The Federal Govt is under NO obligation to create a new document to satisfy a FOIA requester.
I was trying to remember, but wasn't it Bragalia that pushed the Roswell Slides being .... the Roswell Slides? I recall there was a lot of weird and mean stuff going on back then. But I don't recall who was being affected and criticized. I do recall Bragalia was pretty adamant about how wrong everyone was about it being a Native American. And then he finally gave in and gave some money to some Native American thing? Should this kind of disclaimer be put on anything he offers to us? It seems to me that the media ignores this past history. Even I have forgotten it. Can anyone offer us a synopsis of Bragalia's wins and losses so we can include this in our assessment of his work? I tend to think he is kind of credulous. Can anyone confirm this?
I read the link and I would opine; can we be a little less paranoid here? There ARE reasons for FOIA requests to take a while and to be heavily redacted...the biggest is called National Security. What if you, for say, were the one working on a classified weapons systems against, say, China. Then your name is accidently released as part of a hurried FOIA job. Now China knows exactly who to find to get information from OR maybe to just inflict a little vengeance. Or, what if, to meet a FOIA deadline, the locations of a top terrorist strike is accidently revealed. Years of lives, manpower, and money to obtain that information down the drain.
Normally, I tend to lean on the other side of such topics, but when it comes to some of this I really don't think there is much nefarious going on.
Just my opinion.
I agree with Adam S. I worked part of my way through law school by working as a paralegal in a U.S. Department of Justice FOIA office. It was by job to respond to FOIA requests for U.S. Justice Department documents, including classified ones, hence the need for me to have a Top Secret Security Clearance. I spent many an hour with my black magic marker redacting information from both classified and non-classified documents. My work would then be reviewed by a supervisor before being sent to the FOIA requester. It could take a considerable amount of time to 1) gather the documents, 2) initially review and redact the documents and 3) have a supervisor review the documents and redactions.
The amount of time it took generally depended on how many documents were requested and the difficulty of finding the documents. Trust me, in my office we wanted to process FOIA requests as quickly as possible just to get them off our desk!
Unfortunately Anthony Bragalia's history of shooting first and asking questions later (the Roswell Slides fiasco being the most notable episode) leads me to be VERY cautious when he makes any claim.
I'm surprised that anyone involved in The Roswell Slide debacle is still active in Ufology. In any other field of research they would have been politely asked to fade away into the sunset.
"In any other field of research they would have been politely asked to fade away into the sunset."
This, the lack of standards for research, has haunted UFology since the very beginning. I believe this lack of standards (and resulting sloppy work/thinking) has hindered any progress towards a general understanding of the UFO phenomena. At least in the public domain...
Kevin, sorry to say, Tony has no idea of what he's talking about on the engineering side. ALL matter slows light down, for example. The list goes on. Read one issue of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society journal and you'll see every "wow" word he threw out and clearly does not understand in every third article. I see his logic on the FOIA correspondence, but reject it as inferior. You are a VERY patient man.
Thanks for sharing that, Louis. I'm sure there was some pretty interesting reading. Are you ex-military or intelligence (just asking since you had a TS Clearance before you finished law school)?
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