Many UFO reports were deliberate attempts to mislead the public, report claims
of ConsumerAffairsJune 9, 2025
- Air Force colonel admitted planting fake UFO photos near Area 51 to hide stealth aircraft project
- Pentagons own disinformation helped fuel decades of alien conspiracy theories, review shows
- Investigators uncover hazing rituals and deliberate secrecy around Cold War-era weapons testing
Some of Americas most enduring alien conspiracy theoriesincluding rumors of extraterrestrials being housed at Area 51were seeded by the U.S. military to protect secret weapons development, according to a 2024 Department of Defense review first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
One of the most explosive findings stems from a Cold War-era disinformation mission. In the 1980s, a U.S. Air Force colonel visited a bar near the top-secret Area 51 base in Nevada and provided the owner with fabricated photos of flying saucers, stoking the now-infamous rumors of alien activity.
The colonel later admitted he had been acting under orders to distract attention from the testing of the F-117 Nighthawk, the worlds first stealth fighter jet.
The military saw the cloud of conspiracy as useful camouflage, said a Pentagon official familiar with the report.
The revelations were part of a broader investigation by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), created in 2022 to sift through decades of government documents on UFOs and other unexplained aerial phenomena. The review found multiple examples where the Department of Defense actively used UFO disinformation to obscure top-secret programs from both the public and foreign adversaries.
Fake briefings
One particularly strange finding: Air Force officers were subjected to fake briefings about a fictional alien-research unit called Yankee Bluea long-running hazing ritual that continued until 2023, when the Pentagon ordered an end to it.
In another case, former Air Force Captain Robert Salas reported witnessing a UFO disable 10 nuclear missiles at a Montana silo in 1967. Pentagon investigators determined the event was actually a classified electromagnetic pulse testkept secret even from Salas to hide a Cold War vulnerability. Left in the dark, Salas and others drew their own extraterrestrial conclusions.
These episodes reveal how secrecy and misinformation, even when well-intentioned, can spiral into myth, said Sean Kirkpatrick, the first director of AARO.
Kirkpatricks team has confirmed that several cases still remain classified, and not all findings were disclosed in last years public transparency report. However, the Pentagon has promised a follow-up report later in 2025 to offer more insight into the historical origins of UFO lore.
Despite decades of denial, the militarys role in propagating alien myths is now clear: UFO legends werent always misidentification or hoaxesthey were sometimes policy.
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