Pentagon officials have spent years spreading disinformation about UFOs as part of attempts to hide secret weapon programmes at Area 51, a report has claimed.

The efforts included fabricating and planting “evidence” about alien research, helping to unleash persisting myths about extraterrestrial activity in the US, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

In one case in the 1980s, a US Air Force colonel visited a bar near the highly classified military base, deep in the Nevada desert, and gave the owner images of what looked like flying saucers.

The photographs were then pinned to the walls – and the idea was planted that Area 51 was being used to secretly test recovered alien technology.

However, the images were doctored, the now-retired colonel reportedly confessed to Pentagon investigators in 2023.