Dead Drop: May 20

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!  Given the popularity of UFOs and extraterrestrials, you wouldn’t think Congress would have waited more than half a century between public hearings on this – but the wait was over this week when the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence held a public grilling of Pentagon officials over what they know about UFOs.  Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, told the committee that usually investigations into mysterious sightings have resulted in findings of “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, or unexplained sightings that merit further investigation.” In other words: we don’t know if we have been visited by space guests.  We noticed that still photographers at the hearing seemed to go out of their way to make the participants and the hearing room look spooky. According to DOD officials, some military members may have been reluctant to report unexplained sightings – fearing stigma or being called alarmists. Apparently, there are factions within DOD who do take the subject very seriously, however, but an unnamed official told Politico “They fetishize their secret society,” saying, “It’s kind of a Skull and Bones-type vibe. They take it seriously, but they have no accountability. Zero. There is a whole group of us that know in great detail this subject, a lot of which has not been reported to Congress because of security issues.” Maybe someone should hold a hearing – oh, wait.

WELL, WE KNOW WHO THE JOKER IS: Lifting an idea from the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Ukrainian government has reportedly issued decks of playing cards with the images of suspected Russian war criminals on them. The BBC quoted the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who says the cards were produced with the help of volunteers.