A five-person panel reviewing Men In Black encounter reports will not confirm whether five people were in the room where the reviewing happened.

The Men In Black Encounter Review Panel, a five-person body convened by an agency whose name has been rendered as a redaction in all correspondence received by this network, issued a formal statement on Friday declining to confirm or deny whether any member of the panel attended last Thursday’s scheduled review session. Three witnesses independently place identically dressed individuals in the building’s third-floor conference room between 9 a.m. and 9 a.m. The panel has declined to comment on the time discrepancy as well. This is where we are.

The statement, which runs to four paragraphs and references itself in the third person twice, reads in part: ‘The Panel neither confirms nor denies the occurrence of Panel activities at locations associated with Panel activities.’ It was delivered by fax. The network’s fax machine has been unplugged since 2017. Intern Greg found the statement on the floor beneath it Thursday evening. He did not appear surprised. I have added this to his file under Ongoing.

Community Notice

What Three Witnesses Agree On, And What They Don’t

All three witnesses — a building maintenance employee, a woman described in initial intake as ‘definitely not with them,’ and a man who gave his name as Clive and then immediately corrected it to a different name he also appeared uncertain about — independently reported the same details. Five individuals. Dark suits. No visible identification. Third-floor conference room. The session was described as quiet, which the maintenance employee qualified as ‘the wrong kind of quiet.’ Where accounts diverge is on duration. One witness reports the figures were present for approximately forty minutes. One reports approximately four minutes. The third reports that time in the third-floor hallway felt, and this is a direct quote, ‘more like a suggestion than a measurement.’ The panel has declined to comment on any of this, which is consistent with the panel’s position on everything else.

They were there and they were not there and I am not sure those are different things. I have worked in this building for nine years and I know when a room has been used. That room was used.

— Building Maintenance Employee, name withheld at subject’s request and also at ours

This network submitted a records request on Friday morning asking for attendance logs, agenda materials, and any documentation confirming that the panel exists in a form capable of attending its own meetings. By Friday afternoon we received a phone call from a number that registered on caller ID as our own number. The caller identified themselves as being from the panel’s communications office, stated that the panel does not have a communications office, and then remained on the line for eleven seconds of silence before disconnecting. I have listened to the recording four times. The static in the background is different from the static on my radio. I do not know what to do with that yet.

I gave them my name and then I thought, why did I do that. I don’t know why I did that. They didn’t ask.

— Clive / Not Clive, Third-Floor Witness

The panel’s review mandate covers Men In Black encounter reports filed in the Pacific Northwest between 2019 and the present. There are, according to documents obtained by this network that we have been asked not to describe as obtained, forty-seven such reports currently under review. The panel has not commented on the reports, on the review, or on the number forty-seven, which one source described as ‘a lot, actually, for a thing that isn’t supposed to be happening.’ I wrote that down in my notes before I typed it into the teleprompter script. I write everything by hand first. I find it helps me know what I actually think. What I actually think is that a group of people met in a room to discuss whether people in dark suits are showing up where they shouldn’t be, and then declined to confirm that people in dark suits showed up to the meeting. I find this notable. I expect we will be returning to it.