(José Niño, Headline USA) For decades, the Pentagon secretly fueled America’s UFO obsession, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Friday.
The Journal’s article recounted how inn the 1980s, an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, the famous secret base in Nevada. He handed the owner doctored photos of flying saucers, planting the idea that the base housed extraterrestrial technology.
As it turned out, the military was testing advanced stealth aircraft like the F-117, but officials worried that curious locals might spot something strange. At the time, defense officials reasoned that it would be better to let people believe in aliens than to risk exposing the public to classified military programs.
Similarly, in 1967, Air Force Captain Robert Salas was in a Montana bunker when a glowing orange object appeared overhead and disabled his nuclear missiles. For years, Salas and others believed they had witnessed an extraterrestrial event.
Investigations subsequently revealed the “UFO” was actually a secret electromagnetic pulse generator, part of a test to see if nuclear silos could withstand Soviet attacks. The witnesses were never told the truth, fueling decades of conspiracy theories and speculation.
The deception wasn’t limited to the public. New commanders in highly classified Air Force programs were subjected to bizarre briefings about a fake unit called “Yankee Blue”, supposedly tasked with reverse-engineering alien spacecraft.
Officers were shown fabricated photos and warned never to speak of their “mission.” Many believed the lie for years, and the practice continued for decades until it was uncovered and halted in 2023.
The Pentagon’s strategy was clear: use stories about UFOs as a smokescreen to protect real military secrets. But the myths took on a life of their own. Even senior officials began to believe in the conspiracies they had helped create. The lack of transparency only fueled public distrust, leading to congressional hearings and demands for the truth.
Salas, now 84, still believes he had participated in an otherworldly effort to avert nuclear catastrophe, one the government had sought to conceal.
The entire episode made the octogenarian profoundly mistrustful of the U.S. military and its commitment to the truth. “There is a gigantic coverup, not only by the Air Force, but every other federal agency that has cognizance of this subject,” he told the WSJ in an interview. “We were never briefed on the activities that were going on, the Air Force shut us out of any information.”
Sean Kirkpatrick, who formerly led the Pentagon’s UFO task force, has called the current “alien investigation” a hoax, as previously reported by Headline USA.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
