The WSJ article "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology"

[Laird]

This article has caused quite a bit of discussion in my feeds:

The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology (paywalled but freely accessible via this archived copy)

By Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha in the Wall Street Journal on June 6, 2025

It turned out the witnesses had been victims of a bizarre hazing ritual.

For decades, certain new commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs, as part of their induction briefings, would be handed a piece of paper with a photo of what looked like a flying saucer. The craft was described as an antigravity maneuvering vehicle.

The officers were told that the program they were joining, dubbed Yankee Blue, was part of an effort to reverse-engineer the technology on the craft. They were told never to mention it again. Many never learned it was fake. Kirkpatrick found the practice had begun decades before, and appeared to continue still. The defense secretary’s office sent a memo out across the service in the spring of 2023 ordering the practice to stop immediately, but the damage was done.

Investigators are still trying to determine why officers had misled subordinates, whether as some type of loyalty test, a more deliberate attempt to deceive or something else.

It basically argues that, yes, officials have engaged in disinformation, but to the opposite effect than that expected: to pretend that there is evidence of UFOs when really there isn't.

Robert L. Salas has rebutted the article's representation of an incident in which he was involved in which a UFO temporarily disabled a nuclear missile launch facility. Per the article, there's "a terrestrial explanation": "scientists at the time feared the intense storm of electromagnetic waves generated by a nuclear detonation might render the hardware needed to launch a counterstrike unusable" so "the Air Force developed an exotic electromagnetic generator" to test this, "placed on a portable platform 60 feet above the facility".

Robert describes this explanation as "fantasy" and provides detailed reasons why. For example:

As stated above the EMP generator equipment would have involved a prolonged installation process in plain sight of our security team at ground level of our LCF. Those activities would have been reported to us in the underground Launch Control Center (LCC) since we were in command of the facility. Our topside personnel never reported to us any such activity.

Another response I've read to the article is:

Using the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is Gaslighting the Public on UFOs—Again

By Kevin Wright on the New Paradigm Institute website on June 7, 2025.

Kevin echoes and supplements some of Robert's points, for example:

Given that the missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base reportedly returned to full functionality shortly after the incident, it is implausible, ridiculous even, that an EMP, known for causing lasting damage, was responsible. This discrepancy suggests that the disruption was temporary and not characteristic of a genuine EMP event.

Even more implausible is the idea that the DoD would conduct such a test against live nuclear missile systems during a period of peak Cold War tension. If the DoD wanted to test EMP effects, it had vast, remote ranges for that purpose, not an operational ICBM silo network in Montana.

And there’s an even bigger problem: this wasn’t an isolated incident in Montana.

[...]

Consider also the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies’ 2023 UAP Pattern Recognition Study. Drawing from 590 rigorously documented incidents between 1945 and 1975, the study found statistically elevated UFO activity at nearly every stage of America’s nuclear weapons build-up and across the entirety of the U.S. “atomic warfare complex (radioactive materials production, weapons assembly facilities, stockpile locations, and weapons deployment bases).”

He contends:

[T]he article’s publication in a premier media outlet bears the hallmarks of Project Mockingbird, the CIA’s Cold War-era program that covertly infiltrated top-tier newsrooms to launder government narratives and suppress inconvenient truths. Through Mockingbird, intelligence operatives didn’t just influence news; they shaped reality for the public.

The Journal article, with its polished anecdotes and alignment with official narratives, functions in a similar manner. It downplays credible whistleblowers, dismisses decades of data, and omits corroborating international cases, all while presenting itself as definitive.

[Laird]

Here's another response, in depth, to the WSJ article:

AARO, UAP, Wall Street Journal: A Somewhat Personal Response

By Kevin Randle on his "A Different Perspective" blog on 9 June, 2025.

Like Kevin Wright in the article above, Kevin Randle focusses on the ballistic missile shutdown incident at Malmstrom AFB, making similar points, and going into a lot of detail:

While the WSJ article focuses mainly on the report made by former Air Force missileer Robert Salas and his testimony about the evident, they conveniently omit the series of UFO sightings in the area at that time. There were multiple witnesses to an object hovering near one of the missile control centers. The official story now is that Salas was telling the truth about disabling the missiles, but it was part of that radical and dangerous experiment I mentioned earlier. According to documents in the Project Blue Book files, “Between the hours of 2100 and 0400 MST numerous reports were received by Malmstrom AFB agencies of UFO sightings in the Great Falls, Montana area.”

There were reports of a landing near Belt, Montana that were made by several witnesses including Cascade County sheriff’s deputies. The Project Blue Book files contain lists of a few of the witness statements but all reference to radar reports are missing.

The Great Falls Leader carried a series of articles about the UFO sightings in the area at the time. Interestingly, some of what was printed in the newspaper was not found in the Blue Book files. Those who conducted the military investigation should have been aware of these other sightings, but there is no mention of them. It seems that, to the Air Force anyway, those sightings never happened.

Ron Rice, a staff writer on the newspaper said that there had been UFO sightings all over the state that day. He wrote, “Before midnight it was the Belt area; after 3 this morning, Malmstrom Air Force Base where one was picked up on the bottom of a Federal Aviation Agency radar scope which tracked it for a time before it disappeared in the direction of the Belt Mountains.”

There were visual sightings as well. Airman Second Class (A2C) Richard Moore, a communicator-plotter said that he had seen something about five or ten miles from the base at 3:30 a.m. Airman Third Class (A3C) said that he had seen an object that he said was a bright light with orange lights on the bottom. This, according to Moore, was close to the ground and it was what the FAA radar had detected.

The comments below his post are also very interesting and informative, especially re the case of Paul Bennewitz and Richard Doty. A commenter contends that while Bennewitz was indeed fed disinformation as Doty claimed, it wasn't to cover up secret government technology that Bennewitz had observed, but Bennewitz's sighting of genuine UFOs: by feeding him increasingly fantastic stories which he believed and repeated, his credibility was destroyed, such that his genuine sightings weren't believed.

[Laird]

This, it seems to me, is the definitive response to the WSJ article:

Did the Pentagon spread false UFO stories? We’re skeptical.

By Tim Gallaudet, Christopher Mellon and Marik von Rennenkampff for The Hill on July 3, 2025.

Its critique starts with the suggestion that as much as for what it claims, "the Journal’s reporting must also be scrutinized for what it omits". In this respect: while the WSJ article contends that Congressional investigation of UFOs is partisan - Republicans motivated by MAGA deep-state skepticism - it leaves out mention of "Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds’s (R-S.D.) bipartisan 64-page UAP Disclosure Act".

Too, the WSJ article omits 'eyebrow-raising comments from lawmakers and officials describing individuals alleging “firsthand” knowledge of unreported UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs', which 'does not square easily with a “bizarre hazing ritual” involving bogus “alien projects.”'

On that supposed hazing ritual, the critique asserts firstly that "no evidence of such systemic, widespread hazing about extraterrestrials has yet emerged", and secondly that it is inconsistent with another, year-later, claim from its source Sean Kirkpatrick and his former office, 'that longstanding allegations of secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs are the product of “circular reporting” from a “small group” of alien believers. Yet now, supposedly, “thousands” of personnel were led to believe that such programs exist. Which one is it?'

The critics also point out that "an Air Force colonel disseminating UFO pictures at a Nevada bar in the 1980s, ostensibly as a cover for the then-nascent Lockheed F-117A stealth fighter program, appears to violate prohibitions on domestic influence operations by the military." (This appears to be a call on the critics' part for and investigation and disciplinary action if, indeed, such an implausible dissemination did occur).

Finally, re the WSJ's claimed explanation of the nuclear facility shutdown incident, this critique repeats several of the rebuttals from the articles I shared above, as well as this new one (I haven't checked the links so this is sharing not endorsement):

the government documents Schectman and Viswanatha cite in support of this supposed explanation in fact debunk it. The documents state that the “proposal for the design, development, fabrication, and testing” of the system supposedly responsible for the Malmstrom UFO incident was not submitted until 1971, four years after the event. How could this system, which was not developed and tested until 1973, cause an incident that had occurred six years earlier?