In my time as an investigator and intelligence officer the one person you always needed to keep two steps ahead of was yourself – because of that thing called confirmation bias. When I commenced my research for this article, I fully expected it to be a damning report on Representative Mike Turner, highlighting how his own greed and thirst for power lead to his unfortunate intervention on the proposed 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) draft legislation, which if passed would have been a huge win for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) transparency.
A popular narrative in the ‘UAP Community’ is that Rep Mike Turner intervened at the behest of certain defence contractors and they paid him a pretty penny (cent) to do so. The logic being, those defence contractors do not want their recovered UAP materials being shared and developed by rival companies. To examine this narrative I decided to delve into the finances moving between certain defence companies and some political names, those names well recognised in the push for and against UAP transparency.
The first place I looked is the Federal Election Committee (FEC) and as a British citizen with minimal understanding of U.S. politics I found this exercise rather challenging. After collating what I thought was an accurate picture of organisational linked funding to U.S. politicians, using the FEC search filters, I then learnt that it was not quite that straight forward. You see the politicians can have more than one fund and it doesn’t have to be related to their name, for example the late Harry Reid called his fund the ‘Searchlight Leadership Fund’. You also have the problem of individuals affiliated with companies making donations and while technically the FEC filters allow you to search individuals by employers name, that function was not working for me.
The reason I highlight this is so you the reader understand that the FEC data I reference is likely incomplete, inaccurate or both and I have needed to use data from a third party (opensecrets.org) to build a more complete picture.
When I commenced this exercise my objective was to see if there was any notable, meaningful correlation between political donations and UAP decision making within U.S. government. The data I have prepared in the spreadsheets below was taken solely from the FEC and relates only to Political Action Committee (PAC) funding to the specific named accounts referenced on the far left column. You can see for example Mitch McConnell has two funds I have looked at and it may well be the other politicians listed have additional funds not included in my research.
2023 Political Action Committee (PAC) Donations
If we start with the year to date, on the surface it looks quite damning for both Mike Turner and Mike Rogers, whilst Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader who tried to get this UAP legislation passed looks squeaky clean. If we are to be objective, then considering the current roles in government it should not come as a surprise both the Mike’s have strong financial support from the Defence and Aerospace sectors. Surely all of these companies don’t have recovered UAP material held and the donation amounts are relatively equal across the board which suggests to me the funding is more likely just standard industry political support without any relevance to the UAP transparency push.
2022 Political Action Committee (PAC) Donations
When we roll back to 2022, the picture changes slightly and you can see some funding going to Chuck Schumer from General Dynamics and SpaceX. What did come as a surprise to me though was when I cross referenced my data with the OpenSecrets website and found that for the 2024 election cycle (campaign committee & leadership PAC combined), the funding for Schumer from Lockheed Martin, totaled $125,499, consisting of $105,499 individual donations and $20’000 in PAC’s (note this did not show up on my searches through the FEC). To compare this to Mike Turner over the same election cycle, that was significantly greater, as Turner received $13’000 from Lockheed Martin with only $1000 of that coming from individual donations (again not found on my search of FEC databases).
For many, Lockheed Martin are one of the top suspects as a contractor withholding recovered UAP technology, so why would they fund Schumer so heavily when he is pushing for legislation that would have allowed competitors in? Just raising this question raises doubts over whether Lockheed Martin are one of the private defence companies holding this technology. Another possibility, which sounds more conspiracy theory is that the entire NDAA process was a show, funded by Lockheed Martin to help make it appear the government are doing their best for UAP transparency whilst actually they’re just kicking the ball into the long grass.
2015-2021 Political Action Committee (PAC) Donations
Going a little further back looking over a wider period between 2015 and 2021, you can see all the sampled politicians with the exception of Representative Luna have at one point or another been funded by the sampled Defence and Aerospace companies.
Senator Gillibrand, someone who overtly seems pro UAP disclosure appears to have stopped receiving donations but whether that is relevant to her stance on UAP is something only she or the donors could answer. It was a similar picture for Marco Rubio but I think his position on the Intelligence Committee would naturally encourage backing from the defence sector, regardless of his stance on UAP.
As a final exercise I decided to take a look at the donations received by the late Harry Reid, someone who had an overlapping career with Chuck Schumer and who appeared to be politically aligned with him.
Searchlight Leadership Fund (Harry Reid)
As you can see Lockheed Martin were a consistent backer of Harry Reid over the years and I did wonder to myself how they must have felt when Reid facilitated the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) funding to Bigelow Aerospace.
Who is the ‘Private Defence Contractor’?
The reason I bothered to spend time researching funding in the first place was because David Grusch, has confirmed the involvement of at least one private defence contractor. Grusch has been quoted as saying:
“I don’t want to name the specific companies and government elements,”
Grusch also confirmed:
“the government has been the custodian of [UFO evidence] and they’ll hand-receipt it out to a cleared defense contractor to do some analysis.”
We know Harry Reid had a similar level of intelligence oversight to Grusch, so would he really have been happily taking money from Lockheed Martin if he knew they were concealing UAP technology from the public?
All of this leaves me wondering if Lockheed Martin do have UAP technology or whether it is another defence contractor(s) holding the material, with Lockheed Martin trying to flush them out and gain a share of the future market.
While Lockheed Martin appear to have no qualms donating to politicians in both UAP transparency camps, Raytheon are, either by coincidence or design notably different. Raytheon do not appear to favor funding any of the prominent ‘pro UAP’ candidates and the latest PAC receipts recorded by the FEC show they are backing the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Samuel Graves and Ken Calvert. It will be interesting to see how these names interact with the UAP topic over the coming months and years. Also note Raytheon did not appear to invest much in Harry Reid either whilst their competitor Lockheed Martin backed him heavily.
Follow the Money
I recall during one TV interview, Representative Tim Burchett encouraged journalists to follow the money and see who is funding the recognised political opponents of UAP transparency. Having completed some admittedly, superficial research, I am left with more questions than answers and in isolation I don’t think that either individual or organisational donations to U.S. politicians, can on their own, provide even a remotely reliable indicator to the motives politicians have around this issue.
You also have to consider the defence and intelligence agencies in all of this, because there is every chance the defence contractors have zero influence in UAP transparency (it would be the tail wagging the dog after all). The actions of people like Mike Turner and Mike Rogers may be wholly as a result of protecting something they think would severely damage National Security if it leaked, It could be something either only they know or something they see differently to others inside and outside of government (i.e. Dave Grusch, Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon etc.)
At the end of all this I am left with the opinion that it is all very convenient having someone with the profile of Mike Turner becoming the bogeyman of UAP transparency but really I think that is just a distraction to divert people away and drag this out until the next pantomime season (NDAA 2025). My advice to people in the pro UAP transparency camp is this: keep the money trail in the back of your mind but don’t read too much into it as the path to disclosure will, in the short term at least only come from witness testimony under oath or a verifiable leak from a government employee and/or a defence contractor. Everything else going on in-between is just fluff and serves only as a distraction.
Ontological Reality 