Paging Fox Mulder: In a scene right out of “The X-Files,” the Department of Defense has uncovered evidence that the Pentagon was behind one of the most notorious conspiracy theories about little green men.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, a tiny DOD crew tasked with investigating UFO sightings, found that the Pentagon itself planted the rumor that Area 51 was swarming with aliens.
In the 1980s, an Air Force colonel (no word if he was perpetually shrouded in cigarette smoke) gave fake photos of flying saucers near the base to a local bar owner: The idea was to cover for the development of the F-117 Nighthawk; any locals who caught a glimpse of the stealth fighter on a test flight would be predisposed to think it was extraterrestrial tech — and so get laughed off.
In another episode of disinfo-spreading linked to the DOD, in 1996 a radio host received a piece of metal with a note claiming it came off an alien spaceship.
This wasn’t wartime deception aimed at America’s enemies, but peacetime disinformation fed to US citizens: Not what your taxes are supposed to pay for.
Nor were civilians the only victims of out-of-this-world military tall tales.
The AARO also discovered a longstanding Air Force practice in which hundreds of new commanders of highly classified programs were reportedly given photos of a “flying saucer,” told that they would be working on reverse-engineering the tech and sworn to secrecy.
Many of these men were never clued into the ruse, and so lived their lives with the belief that aliens were real, the government knew about it, and they could never tell anyone — not even their spouses.
That practice continued all the way up until 2023, and AARO investigators still don’t know why the Air Force was psychologically tormenting its own officers. (One theory is that it was some idiot’s idea of loyalty test.)
And these lies were far from harmless: As the Journal notes, 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.”
As well as the likes of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who forced the Defense Department to burn millions on ghost hunters and psychics seeking to contact the little green men.
And the Pentagon was still being shady last year, when it reported that the AARO‘s exhaustive search of the records had never found a shred of evidence of space aliens visiting earth . . . but omitted any mention of the military’s own role in pushing disinformation.
Even now, the Defense Department owes the public a lot more: Come clean on every lie told in these deceptions, with the names of who made the calls to give Americans sham “information.”
Was this the work of a few rogue officers? Or a strategy approved by top brass over the decades?
However this got started, the Pentagon’s duty now is to ensure that the full truth gets . . . out there.