May 17th, 2022, marked the first public hearings by the U.S. Congress regarding UAP, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. In Happy Wrestling Land’s continuing efforts to bring you the most relevant coverage of certain topics outside our expertise, we go to Dum Dum Daniels and Captain Lou who just witnessed the entire hour-and-a-half hearing.
CAPTAIN LOU: 9 AM. I am frantically trying to get through as many work e-mails as possible in order to tune into this bizarre hearing. Why? Well, as a respected pro-wrestling journalist – it is my duty to get to the bottom of the UFO/UAP mystery. Are we alone out there? Are aliens capable of selling the leg? Do they even have legs? Society’s sharpest minds (Joe Rogan) have not been able to provide a lot of answers, but this hearing might. Let’s find out.
DUM DUM DANIELS: I enjoy thinking about our place in the Universe as much as the next guy, went through a Vonnegut phase in college, but was never a big UFO or even “Sci-Fi” guy — too many concepts. I guess a mixture of extra free time and prodding friends took hold at some point, and now here I was with another old interest of mine — “politics”’— colliding with UFOs in the most public of ways since Roswell. So I went to bed around Midnight excited to watch the questions then woke up at 10 AM in a panic, knowing I’d missed the first hour. In my favor, however, is that as I’ve been led to believe, time is subjective.
TODAY’s TESTIMONY PLAYAZ:
– Rep. André D. Carson (D-IN 7th since ‘08)
– Rep. Eric Alan “Rick” Crawford (R-AR 1st since ‘11)
– Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA 28th since ‘13 then ‘03, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee)
– Honorable Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security
– Mr. Scott Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence
– Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH 2nd since ‘13)
– Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT 4th since ‘09)
– Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI 8th since ‘17)
– Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL 8th since ‘17)
– Rep. Darrin LaHood (R-IL 18th since ‘15)
– Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT At Large since ‘07)
1. Opening Statement: Rep. André D. Carson (D-IN 7th)
DUM DUM: Andre Carson has represented the 7th District of Indiana since 2008 and seems as ideal a candidate for the position as any, a white meat Democrat midcarder, a Tim Horner for disclosure. I thought he did a good job of laying out the case: 50 years ago, the U.S. stopped funding Project Blue Book, a program initiated in the 1950s to categorize Unidentified Flying Objects (or UFOs) flying over U.S. airspace. In 2017, “we” learned for the “first time” that the Department of Defense had begun a similar organization (AATIP) to track similar phenomenon, now officially categorized Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (or UAP). But that lost funding too. Or focus.
CAP LOU: First thing to note here is that Carson namedropped Jeremy Corbell right in his opening, which is fucking wild. Big Corbz is a recurring UFO Twitter character/UAP influencer responsible for such cinematic wonders as Hunt for the Skinwalker and Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers. Him and GOAT paranormal reporter George Knapp have seemingly been a driving force behind the release of key UAP footage in the past few years – including the infamous BLINKING TRIANGLES shown in this very hearing.
DUM DUM: Carson, sporting a very neutral black suit, white shirt and light blue tie with polka dots, continued to establish several things: an organization called AIMSOG now did what AATIP might have been doing, and it’s’ guidelines were revised last year. UAP are a potential national security threat. The stigma associated with UAP has gotten in the way of reporting and collecting intelligence on sightings. AIMSOG was created in December, but there isn’t even a Director! This all seems like one big failure to communicate, but I’m pretty interested in the implications.
CAP LOU: I can’t get over the name AIMSOG. These soggy bastards. The funniest thing is that the first proposed acronym was ASTRO, but these guys decided to go with freakin’ AIMSOG. Acronym agencies have long been the bane of the UFO community. From AAWSAP to AATIP to AIMSOG to the UAPTF – no one can keep track of this shit and one has to wonder if all of this alphabet soup letter confusion is not COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY? Welcome to Conspiracy Wrestling Land.
RATING: ***1/2
2. Opening Statement: Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR 1st)
DUM DUM: Rep. Rick Crawford roared into the office with the Tea Party Revolution, so you know he’s problematic. His decision to begin his statement with the probability of UAP being technology from Russia, China, and even Ukraine was the bad kind of fucking astounding. This was also the bit where they revealed that there would be a closed classified hearing, which really blue-balled the already lowered expectations. Midway through his statement I realized there was a bald man with protruding ears in the background, which seemed ominous between the heavy emphasis on national security and possibility of ETs and whatnot.
CAP LOU: Got bad vibes from Crawford right off the bat. Dude instantly goes into this insane speed-reading bit about potential foreign tech. Bro, chill. Carson had the decency to kick this off with a babyface opening, while Crawford went straight into bureaucratic heel mode. A sign of things to come. Also: the freakin’ closed hearing. Doesn’t this defeat the whole point of this endeavor aka. transparency? What are we doing.
RATING: *1/2
3. Opening Statement: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA 28th)
DUM DUM: Adam Schiff is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and got pretty famous during the first Trump impeachment. He knows how to make a clear case if not make things actually happen, and he did it again here. I enjoyed how he re-iterated how secrecy breeds distrust and speculation, though given he is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee I’m not sure how big a dog he has in that fight.
CAP LOU: Schiff came off pretty well here, especially after Crawford’s batshit opener. The man seems genuinely curious about the topic and non-dismissive of potentially Weird Explanations.
DUM DUM: To Schiff and a lot of other guys here — all guys by the way — this is about information. Data. DATAAAAA. He closed by re-establishing that this is not the human eye misidentifying objects in the sky, that they are there, l we do not know what they are, and they do not follow normal laws of physics. He said it all with one of those wry smiles though, reading either knowledge or nerves.
RATING: ***1/4
4. Opening Statement: Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security Ronald Moultrie
DUM DUM: Ronald Moultrie has a big-ass job, though I’m not so sure he’s completely in the know. His opening statement is choc filled with the classics: ethos (the official title plus a blue suit, tie and pocket square), pathos (outs himself as a fan of sci-fi), and logos (the rest). One of two gentleman providing testimony, he of the DoD admits the existence of UAP and stresses the need for “appropriately structured data with rigorous scientific analysis … [so] every object they encounter can be categorized, identified and – if necessary – mitigated.” The man wants data and the man wants defense. What does he think about Sasha Banks though?
CAP LOU: I liked the bit about destigmatizing UAP discussion. This topic has long been associated conspiratorial nutjobs and grifters of all kinds, yet the stories have remained fairly consistent for 70+ years. What does this MEAN. Is 100% all of it all bullshit? Everyone has been lying or having a collective hallucination? Seeing balloons like freakin’ Kazuchika Okada in 2018? We should at least have the talk, right?
RATING: **1/2
5. Opening Statement: Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray
DUM DUM: Scott Bray is the other half of this terrestrial testimony tag team and he is by the books, though not without things to say. He wears glasses — I assume everyday — and for this hearing a charcoal suit, white shirt, and gray tie. Like a good old technical wrestling match however, Bray’s boring aesthetic brought forth a wealth of complexity and information: sightings of UAP are frequent and continuous. Experts on physics and metals have been consulted. The Air Force trains their Aviators to fight, and shooting a possible alien might be bad. Then he got to the videos.
CAP LOU: This opening was fine too, but I have to ask the question: why are these guys testifying? Since that game-changing New York Times article in 2017, most of the renewed UFO buzz has been fed by military testimony and radar video. Why not get some of these pilots/sailors on the stand and have them recount their encounters? Sounds more powerful than these two guys trying to sell us on their data collection process.
DUM DUM: The Government uses VLC Media Player – respect. He gives a glimpse of a video that to the naked eye looks like a small white blob, which is fine… except it’s in the middle of a bright blue sky with few clouds in sight. Bray admits they’ve been less forthcoming than people might hope (Understatement of the Year Candidate, or UOTYC), though as an excuse says they don’t want adversaries to see some of this.
RATING: **1/2
6. Question Time: Rep. André D. Carson (D-IN 7th)
DUM DUM: Carson is calm. Comforting, almost. After his initial question got Under Secretary Moultrie to reveal AIMSOG hired a Director in the last week and on another tangent about standardized methodologies for analyzing and reporting data, his next question was asking Moultrie if he was a science fiction fan. It was the first of many questions that made it feel like they were all in a room together beforehand, laughing, though also clenching their jaws at the seriousness of the topic at hand. Anyways: Moultrie has gone to sci-fi conventions, but he stresses that this isn’t that.
CAP LOU: The science fiction bit seemed like a fair attempt to babyface Moultrie for UFO Twitter nerds that are automatically suspicious of any government official. He is just like you! BUT IS HE REALLY? Look. Ahead of these hearings, Politico put out a bonkers article that hinted at a secret cabal within the government withholding all the Best UFO Shit. If you follow this insane line of thinking to its logical conclusion, perhaps both Moultrie and Bray were chosen to testify because they are NOT part of this Skull and Bones bullshit – thus will not reveal anything too explosive here? Thoughts? Anyone?
RATING: ***1/4
7. Question Time: Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR 1st)
DUM DUM: This guy again. I understand the desire to frame every question as if the Presidency of the other party is just the worst, but there’s a tact to it: this bearded weirdo just comes off as belligerent. He gets right into the national security angle, using the word “dominance” at least two times then getting to an actually good question: what is the reporting protocol for when a Navy pilot encounters a UAP? Deputy Director Bray lays it out, and uses the occasion to head back to VLC Media Player where some poor aide spends an uncomfortable amount of time scrolling and pausing frames of a sighting. It was disappointing, a series of botched spot redos that resulted in nothing.
CAP LOU: This was the start of one of the most infuriating bits of the entire hearing. If you’re like me and have wasted many years of your life on Reddit, then you’ve likely heard the rumors about the existence of high-fidelity UAP footage. Considering military aircraft are now equipped with various camera equipment – this doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Yet they still chose to go with grainy cellphone bullshit. Is it because these dudes simply don’t have access to the good shit, or was it a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the MYTH (!) that no good footage exists?
RATING: *3/4
8. Question Time: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA 28th)
CAP LOU: Schiff essentially brings up the 5 Observables: Anti-Gravity (Lack of Apparent Propulsion), Instantaneous Acceleration, Hypersonic Velocity, Low Observability and Trans-Medium Travel. If you’re seeing all five of these things in action, you may be seeing a god damn UFO. He asks if this type of insanity could be linked to adversarial technology and Bray leans towards NO. According to him and last year’s UAPTF report, some of this shit remains completely unexplainable.
DUM DUM: Adam Schiff
CAP LOU: They go over the blinking triangles video again, Bray debunking it by arguing it’s merely infrared light reflecting over basic-ass drones. Fair enough, but why are there a bunch of drones randomly flying over navy ships? Is this normal? The lack of follow up questions here was a bit annoying. Damnit, Schiff.
RATING: **
9. Question Time: Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH 2nd)
DUM DUM: Brad Wenstrup — Dr. Brad Wenstrup — seems stressed. The answer to his first question had Bray reveal China has a UAP Task Force similar to ours, then he asked the remaining questions with the energy of a clueless sales executive asking their operations guy something.
CAP LOU: The lamest questions of the entire hearing so far. Just the most basic bullshit. Gaseous vs. Solid state. Stationary vs. In motion. Bro. He almost scolded the UAPTF over potentially over-sharing data with other countries.
RATING: *1/2
10. Question Time: Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT 4th)
DUM DUM: Jim Himes beat a Republican out of office when Obama became President, and he’s managed to keep hold of the seat ever since. This was a pretty quick one, a question on how the UAP might look to the naked eye (boring!) and an answer from Bray that they possess no material that is non-terrestrial (liar!).
CAP LOU: More unhelpful filler. They go over the definition of ‘unexplained’ and emphasize that certain UAP sightings are unexplained due to insufficient data rather than some sort of unexplainable ALIEN SORCERY. That’s right!
RATING: *3/4
11. Question Time: Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI 8th)
DUM DUM: Gallagher is a Republican from Wisconsin, which immediately makes it possible he’s full of two sorts of shit. One big issue in the middle of this Disclosure business is how, in the name of transparency, a few members of the Republican Party and media establishment have clawed onto this as if it was any of their usual grifts: complain, do nothing, move on. 38-year-old Mikey Gallagher, though… he might be different.
CAP LOU: BANGER. This hearing peaked right there and then. Gallagher clearly took a trip down the rabbit hole and came back armed with some tremendous questions. The Malmstrom Airbase nukes deactivation story. The Wilson/Davis Memo. This guy went straight for the kill – deep UFO lore. Both Bray and Moultrie seemed legit perplexed by his line of questioning, which was not a good look. The UFO/nuclear facility stories are numerous and you’d think that this kind of hearing would be the prime opportunity to explore the topic. I wonder if Gallagher spent any time with Lue Elizondo (aka. CAPTAIN LUE) before this.
DUM DUM: Gallagher was prepared. After some initial pleasantries he called out the fact that, while this testimony was revealing quite a bit of things to a public for the first time, there was more going on. He asked about the existence of any technology or engineering resources being observed outside of AIMSOG, as well as the Wilson Memo — Adm. Wilson was a Navy man frustrated with lack of access to information regarding All This — which Gallagher pretty shrewdly got on Congressional record, even if the officials denied the Wilson Memo had been officially brought to their attention. Rather than grasping at every possible conspiracy, he focused on a couple tangible things and got things on the record: “I don’t claim to be an expert, but it’s out there in the ether… you guys are investigating it. How would I officially bring [this] to your attention… I’m pretty official.” Incredible. Best questioning of it all.
RATING: ****1/2
12. Question Time: Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL 8th)
DUM DUM: Raja Krishnamoorthi has been trying to get elected to something for years, and in 2016 the man finally did it. I actually knocked on some doors for him around 2010, though didn’t get too committed. It seems he drew the nerd straw and asks questions about signals and communication, either in air or underwater. The underwater mention prompted Moultrie to deflect to the closed session, which can really make you think. Avatar 2: Way of the Water… coming this December.
CAP LOU: Solid, reasonable performance from this dude. I initially thought he was going full Close Encounters with his question about UAP interaction, but he actually brought it home in a sensible way, asking about potential radio communication. GOOD POINT about the need to start tracking UAP outside of military context. Let me get right on that, sir.
RATING: ***1/4
13. Question Time: Rep. Darrin LaHood (R-IL 18th)
DUM DUM: Darrin LaHood is the son of Ray LaHood, who was one of those Republican guys Obama gave a Cabinet position to in the interest of bipartisanship — lmao. He grills Moultrie and Bray on what the consequences and legal liability (!) should be for “amateur interest groups” involved in this UAP business, and clearly sucks. For as fine as Mr. Krishnamoorthi did, Mr. LaHood brought great shame to my home state of Illinois.
CAP LOU: There we have it. This guy is the top heel in the territory. Made an immediate jump from ‘UFO interest’ to ‘disinformation’ and wants LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS! Darrin LaHood, I will fight you bro.
RATING: DUD
14. Question Time: Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT At Large)
DUM DUM: Loved the aesthetic of this bald spectacled man in his long-sleeve shirt, the suit jacket long dropped behind him over his chair. I had no idea Vermont only had one House district.
CAP LOU: Good vibes from this old bat. Looked like a semi-retired history teacher who just wants to have a chill conversation about the potential for extraterrestrial life. Right there with you, buddy. He asked for clarification regarding the need for a closed hearing, ie: what are we trying to protect here? The answer: sources and methods, baby. Freakin’ sources and methods. Moultrie hints that they might have certain surveillance capabilities that need to remain under wraps. Considering all the wackiness with NSA and Snowden a few years back, this doesn’t seem too hard to believe.
RATING: ***1/4
15. Closing Questions and Statements
DUM DUM: Headed towards the finish, Crawford asked for an example of something they’d seen that was not human-made. Bray went with the very public (now) 2004 Nimitz case, though that’s also like… so basic, bro. Carson summarized talking about the need for a clear and repeatable process to be established, though in the case of ALL THIS that feels like something they should’ve handled fifty years ago.
CAP LOU: They made the right call to end it with the Nimitz case. Still one of the better-documented sightings out there. Multiple witnesses. Radar data. All sorts of corroborating bullshit. Bray reiterated that they still consider the matter ‘unresolved’. Did these pilots run into the most advanced drones known to man or was it SOMETHING ELSE. Not sure if these hearings will provide any answers but you might want to keep an eye on HAPPY WRESTLING LAND in case they do.
RATING: ***1/2
Happy Thoughts: Good start for the uninitiated, though without Mike Gallagher’s revealing catnip this would’ve been even less exciting. Regardless: disclosure has begun. And that’s something. The aggregate rating of all segments ended up at something like 2.75 / 5.0
