Coulthart's sources go quiet (2021)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Speaker | Ross Coulthart, Australian investigative journalist |
|---|---|
| Date | December 2021 |
| Claim | Sources who helped with In Plain Sight had gone quiet; a clandestine group controlled the UAP issue through intense security |
| Names given | None |
| Related law | UAP whistleblower protections in the FY2023 defense bill (signed December 2022) |
| Status | Cannot be checked |
| People | Ross Coulthart |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 204 |
| Year | 2021 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2021 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
In December 2021 the Australian journalist Ross Coulthart said that sources who had helped with his book In Plain Sight had gone quiet. He described a clandestine group that controlled the UAP issue and was running an intense security effort.[1][2] He did not name the sources or the group, so the claim cannot be checked. According to the testimony this article draws on, concerns of this kind, that insiders were afraid to speak, were part of the reason Congress later wrote protections for UAP whistleblowers into law.[3][4]
The claim
According to the testimony this article draws on, Coulthart made two related points in December 2021:[1]
- Several sources who had helped him with In Plain Sight, published that August, had stopped talking to him.
- He attributed this to a clandestine group that controlled the UAP issue and had stepped up its security effort.
He did not say who the sources were, what positions they held, or how he knew the cause of their silence.[1] Sources often retreat after early contact in UFO journalism, and the reasons usually cannot be determined from outside.
Background
In Plain Sight: An Investigation into UFOs and Impossible Science was first published in August 2021.[2] According to its publisher's description, Coulthart spoke to "witnesses, researchers, scientists, spies and defence and intelligence officials and insiders". A later edition looked forward to new U.S. laws forcing disclosure of alleged crash retrievals and reverse-engineering programs.[5] The book made Coulthart something of a cult hero in American UFO circles, though reviewers questioned how critical it was.[1]
The remarks came as Congress was building new UAP machinery. On 15 December 2021 the Senate passed the FY2022 defense bill, and President Biden signed it on 27 December.[3] Its provisions included:[3]
- Annual UAP reports to Congress.
- Coverage of UAP near nuclear sites and attempts to capture or exploit UAP.
- A new office to replace the Navy-led UAP Task Force.
Whistleblower protections
The testimony this article draws on says Congress passed protections for UAP whistleblowers in 2023.[1] In fact the main protections came a year earlier. Section 1673 of the FY2023 defense bill, passed by the Senate on 15 December 2022 and signed on 22 December 2022, set up a secure way to report UAP events and related government or contractor programs to the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. It protected those reporting from reprisal and from non-disclosure agreements.[3] The former intelligence officer David Grusch said he helped draft these provisions.[4] In 2023 Congress went further: the UAP Disclosure Act, an amendment led by Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds, was added to the FY2024 defense bill and directed the National Archives to collect UAP records.[4]
Grusch went public in June 2023, and Coulthart interviewed him for NewsNation that month.[1][4] Grusch said people had been threatened to keep UFO programs secret. [4] This resembles Coulthart's 2021 account of sources going silent, though neither claim has been verified. The Pentagon denied Grusch's claims, and no supporting evidence has been made public.[4]
Assessment
Coulthart's statement is an account of his own reporting experience, with no names or documents behind it.[1] His UFO work has been criticized for its lack of evidence: the ABC's Media Watch questioned it in 2023, and Australian Skeptics gave him its Bent Spoon Award that year.[1] Whether his sources fell silent because of security pressure, second thoughts or other reasons is not known.
People and topics
- Ross Coulthart — Australian journalist who reported David Grusch's claims.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Coulthart on divested UAP technology (30 November 2021) — Coulthart says UAP technology was moved into private aerospace companies.
- Energy Department custody claim (2022) (13 January 2022) — Coulthart says non-human material was held by the Energy Department before moving to industry.
See every 2021 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Ross Coulthart — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- In Plain Sight (Ross Coulthart, 2021) · goodreads.com
- Justin Snead, "Timeline of U.S. congressional action on UFOs (2007 to present)" · justinsnead.substack.com
- David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims · en.wikipedia.org
- In Plain Sight — Leigh Bureau · leighbureau.com
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Ross Coulthart”, “David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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