Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha have written an eye-opening article in The Wall Street Journal, titled, The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology, alleging that for the past several decades, the U.S. military has systematically “fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs.” What’s more surprising is that in order to cover up these programs and prevent the Russians from finding out about them, the military deceived (and continues to deceive) its own members, many of whom swore oaths of secrecy not to disclose details of what they believed were alien encounters, but which were in fact secret weapons tests. This campaign of disinformation has had a truly unfortunate result: “The paranoid mythology the U.S. military helped spread now has a hold over a growing number of its own senior officials who count themselves as believers.” Schectman and Viswanatha’s carefully researched account is based on “interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials, scientists and military contractors involved in the inquiry, as well as thousands of pages of documents, recordings, emails and text messages.” Read all about it here or here.
What do readers think?
I’ve never believed UFOs were aliens, so that leaves misidentification, hoax, and experimental devices, including radar spoofing technology.
In the age of drones, hoaxing has become a hobby.
It is also rather easy to project images using lasers. Such images are not bound by limits on speed or maneuverability.
I can believe that they might have done this. But as the WSJ stories note, Flying Saucers were well established in the public consciousness by the 1950s, and already making their way into tacky sci-fi films. That is 30 years before the Air Force program. There were suspicions of a coverup even in the 1950s.
My understanding is that Area 51, and the American Southwest are where experimental aircraft are tested.
What seems new is the spate of quasi military sources claiming that UFOs are alien technology.
What’s new is actual inside information about spreading of fake news to obscure what was actually going on there. The idea that UFOs are alien technology goes way back, before this misinformation program.
I really don’t expect to get the truth of any of this. Inside information is just as suspect as official information.
I base my skepticism of alien visitation on the difficulty of FTL, and the absence of detection of gravitational anomalies by sensitive instruments.
There is always the claim that advanced technology could be indistinguishable from magic. But think Douglas Adams nailed it when he noted the behavior of UFOs as best as best explained as alien teenagers joyriding.
Are there any real vaccines against the UFO?
The “world of naive people “ needs to live in constant fear of they come up with ideas that they are another gender or UFO… or something else… People who know that make decisions that get other people killed like they create fake pandemics…
Are those fake pandemics justified if you were the one running the world?