Luis Elizondo
=============

Asked by a viewer whether the field's most visible public figure was a grifter, John Kiriakou answered carefully, declining the label, then explaining why he had nonetheless kept the man off his own programme.

The careful position

"I've tried to walk a fine line on this issue," Kiriakou said. The reason he gives is personal rather than diplomatic: "I saw what I saw when I was 16, 17 years old. I've told that story." Having made a claim about his own experience, he will not dismiss anyone else's, "I can't deny anybody else the account of their own personal experience."

That is the ground on which he declines to answer the grifter question directly. It does not extend to the question of expertise.

The research

When he had his show on RT, Kiriakou said, "people used to tell me all the time, 'You have to have Luis Elizondo on. He's an expert. He's an expert. He's an expert.'"

So he looked. "I did some research, and what I found was him saying repeatedly that he's an expert." The finding is stated as a symmetry: the case for the booking consisted of the subject's own assertion, restated.

Kiriakou's conclusion was blunt on the substance and mild on the man: "I don't know what the heck he's an expert on, but he sure likes to get out there and be the UFO guy." The booking was never made: "it just wasn't a fit for me."

Rall's rule

Ted Rall generalised the observation into a rule he said he applies broadly: that anyone who volunteers a positive attribute about himself not only lacks it but possesses its opposite, and that genuine experts never announce their expertise, people simply consult them about the topic. Kiriakou's account of Elizondo is the case that prompted it.

The wider complaint

Kiriakou's scepticism about the messenger does not extend to the underlying question, on which his position is that the government should stop withholding. He had said, moments before, that he does not understand why the Pentagon will not release what it holds, why the material must leak, and why serving officers have to appear before Congress as whistleblowers at risk of prosecution merely to report what they saw.

See also

- Kiriakou's UFO sighting
- CIA and the UFO question
- The Australian Pilot
- Area 58
- Ted Rall
