Sorry, there are no UFOs, just a vast US deep state conspiracy
Report exposes how the Pentagon propagated alien myths to distract the public from secret weapons programmes during the Cold War
So, The X-Files, the hit American science fiction TV series from the 1990s, turned out to be a docudrama. Going by a new investigative report by The Wall Street Journal, there really was a vast government conspiracy over the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and their associated myths such as alien sightings.
However, it wasn’t so much that the US government suppressed – as per the show – the truth about little green men in flying saucers visiting the Earth with superior alien technology. Rather, the Pentagon helped seed and spread stories and myths to distract public attention from its advanced weapons development, such as spy planes and stealth fighters during the Cold War and even after.
“[The] US military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumours to fester to cover up real secret weapons programmes,” the report said.
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“Now, evidence is emerging that government efforts to propagate UFO mythology date back all the way to the 1950s.”
The whole exercise was a ruse to protect what was really going on in Area 51.
“The air force was using the site to develop top-secret stealth fighters viewed as a critical edge against the Soviet Union,” the report said. “Military leaders were worried that the programmes might get exposed if locals somehow glimpsed a test flight of, say, the F-117 stealth fighter, an aircraft that truly did look out of this world. Better that they believe it came from Andromeda.”
Area 51 in the Nevada Desert is ground zero for many UFO fans – the mecca of true believers – but is actually a highly restricted military zone, which no doubt added to the place’s mystique.
According to the Journal, a now-retired air force colonel was once part of a military ruse when he showed doctored photos of what looked like flying saucers to the owner of a bar near Area 51. The photos were put on the walls. The rest was history.
Those photos, incidentally, featured prominently throughout The X-Files over many seasons. In 2023, the colonel admitted to a Pentagon-congressional probe that he was tasked to spread disinformation.
In 2015, a video clip made by a US fighter pilot in mid-air, and subsequently released by the military, showed a spherical object flying past at extraordinary speed. Researchers have debunked it, concluding the flying angle and speed of the object, whatever it was, were the results of the speed and flight direction of the fighter jet. It’s what scientists call the frame of reference of the observer, in this case, the pilot and his in-flight camera.
The viral clip is still available on YouTube. Not only did the Pentagon not try to debunk such stories, but apparently encouraged them.
The disinformation programme extended to some military personnel themselves. In 2023, then defence secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an end to a long-running bizarre ritual in which new officers to the air force’s most classified programmes were made to sign non-disclosure agreements and then showed photos of a flying saucer identified as “an antigravity manoeuvring vehicle”. They were told the alien technology was being reverse-engineered by the air force under a programme called Yankee Blue and that they must never discuss it with anyone.
Some officers went through an entire career without knowing it was all a joke.
Sadly, the Journal report is silent on such burning paranormal phenomena as alien abductions and experimentation, cow mutilation, and alien crop marks on agricultural fields. I would love to know.
Perhaps the truth is still out there, and the report in the Journal, an outlet not averse to using clandestine government sources, is just the latest ruse from the deep state afraid of how people would react if they knew there really were ETs among us.
Be that as it may, I am starting to wonder, did Apollo 11 really land on the moon, or was it all a Stanley Kubrick sideshow shot with stage props after the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey?
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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