Reality Check: David Burkett on Lies Above and whistleblowers who 'fear being murdered'

Ross Coulthart interviews David Burkett, a cloud security researcher and former skeptic, about his book Lies Above: How the Pentagon Misled Congress and Cost America Its Skies, whose QR-code citations resolve through liesabove.app. Burkett says one of his sources had their home entered and their modem's power cable cut while they were drafting an op-ed that was then never written, and that the whistleblowers he helps with cyber-security work 'really fear being murdered'. He relays AARO's Tim Phillips on the Nimitz data going to Dahlgren and then DARPA, Robert Salas on the Malmstrom base historian, and Mike Gallagher on the Air Force giving virtually nothing to the 2021 ODNI report.

Leads to follow

• The cut-modem photo printed in Lies Above, and whether the source who abandoned the op-ed can be identified (Burkett says it was not Grusch's op-ed).
• Where Mike Gallagher said the Air Force contributed virtually nothing to the 2021 ODNI report; the primary statement is not yet in the db.
• The DARPA program that received the Nimitz data, and the Clapper program from The Age of Disclosure, neither of which appears in AARO's annual report (Burkett).

Notes

• A regular Reality Check episode, not a Rewind. Checked against the library captions.
• The captions garble the surname ('Burret', 'Burrett'); liesabove.com bylines him David Burkett, and its store links name the author David Alan Burkett.
• His employer is garbled in the captions ('Corite Labs') and is not confirmed; left out.
• Also covered, as commentary: the Condon committee (its appendix treats the McMinnville photographs as genuine, and Malmstrom happened while it sat), the New Jersey and Langley incursions and the false FAA explanation (Cory Booker, Coulthart), Dylan Borland on the CIA flashing images at him, the 2024 CIA sexual-assault reporting case as an analogy for oath-based silencing, and Burkett's lean to Vallée's deception thesis. Not carried as claims.