And now, in the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a wild new development: The Whistleblower David Grusch. An experienced, clever, articulate and highly respected American intelligence officer, with a glittering CV, at one point seconded to a new unit ‘studying UAPs’, Grusch recently resigned so he could come out (under the protection of new UFO whistleblower legislation) and make the most extraordinary claims. Claims that he has made under oath to Congress, with the support of colleagues.

Here are just a few of them. The US military is in possession of crashed ‘alien’ craft (notably Grusch does not use the term ‘extra terrestrial’, he says ‘non human intelligence: NHI’). These NHI craft – or their ‘pilots’ – have, in the past, injured and even killed humans. At least one craft is in private possession. The bodies of pilots have also been retrieved.

And there’s more. The NHIs – the aliens – may not be from beyond the solar system, but existing in a parallel dimension to ours, right here. Their craft seem to have the ability to bend space and time: they appear bigger on the outside than inside. Investigators who go inside them have suffered bizarre ill-effects. Despite this, the US government is in a kind of agreement with some of the alien NHIs.

To top it all off, Grusch has also claimed that one UFO crashed in fascist Italy, was hoarded by Mussolini, and was handed over to the US at the end of world war two, under the supervision of the Vatican. Also, Grusch has no first-hand evidence for any of this, he just heard it from others working in Pentagon UFO-land.

It sounds like the plot of a truly terrible Dan Brown novel, written when Dan Brown was nine years old. The Pope knows about UFOs? They exist in the fifth dimension? Any talking lizards?

The obvious reaction to Grusch’s statement is that he is mad. And yet he does not seem mad. So then he must be lying. But if he is lying, why would he lie like this? If he wants to convince people that he is telling the truth, why make such foolishly outrageous claims, for example the involvement of the Vatican? Or the government truce with the Martians?

Perhaps he is doing it all for money. But what money? He risks global ridicule, his career is surely over, many have questioned his sanity, and if he is doing it for cash he has jeopardised his entire professional reputation to maybe sell a book and earn a few bucks on tiny UFO websites. The only other explanations are that he has somehow been manipulated into believing this stuff (but how? With drugs? Brainwashing?) or that he is actually telling the truth, as he sees it – whether he is right or wrong.

And this analysis, I submit, can be applied to the behaviour of the entire Washington DC establishment in the world of UFOs/UAPs in recent years.

The actual evidence for UFOs is meagre, even pathetic. The videos are so grainy. The pics so pitiful. If the whole world is carrying smartphone cameras – and we are – surely we should be seeing trillion-pixel snaps of flying saucers by now? Yet we are not; and yet the US establishment is behaving like we are: their comments are so extraordinary, their behaviour so agitated, it is clear that something is up. Ergo: whether you ‘believe in UFOs’ or not, the Outbreak of Strangeness around DC needs to be explained.

To my mind, there are five main possible explanations, in descending order of probability.

1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.

2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.

3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).

4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.

5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right.

Which is it? As I see it, they all come with major problems and caveats. Just think about any of them and you’ll understand why. Nonetheless, this entire peculiar phenomenon needs unravelling. And if the final answer turns out to be option five – and however distressingly outlandish, it cannot be entirely dismissed – well then we might need to do some praying, as well.