Disinformation
TopicConceptDisinformation
TopicConceptDeliberately false information spread to mislead. In UFO history it ranges from AFOSI's 1980s Bennewitz operation to 2025 reporting that Air Force personnel were told a fictitious alien-technology story.
Deliberately false information spread to mislead. In UFO history it ranges from AFOSI's 1980s Bennewitz operation to 2025 reporting that Air Force personnel were told a fictitious alien-technology story.
Disinformation is false or misleading information spread deliberately to deceive, as distinct from misinformation, which is shared without that intent. In the UFO field the word covers two different things: documented cases in which government personnel planted invented stories, often to protect classified aircraft or counterintelligence work, and a much larger body of allegations that officials, contractors or researchers are seeding false material to discredit or steer public inquiry.
The best-documented case centers on Paul Bennewitz, an Albuquerque businessman who from 1979 filmed lights and recorded radio signals near Kirtland Air Force Base and came to believe he was intercepting alien communications. Richard Doty, then a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, later said he was tasked with hoaxing documents and feeding false information to UFO researchers, and researcher William Moore said in 1989 that he had helped pass false material to Bennewitz. A document circulated in that operation contains an early reference to "MJ Twelve," a thread later woven into the Majestic-12 controversy. Bennewitz's health declined, and he spent about a month in a psychiatric unit in 1988.
In June 2025 The Wall Street Journal reported that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office had found that, for decades, some Air Force personnel were shown flying-saucer images and told, falsely, that they were joining a program to reverse-engineer alien technology, a practice the paper likened to a hazing ritual and associated with the name "Yankee Blue." The paper also reported that officers had spread UFO stories to shield stealth-aircraft testing. A Pentagon spokesperson said the material had been left out of AARO's 2024 historical report because the inquiry was unfinished. The reporting is disputed: in September 2026 the Disclosure Foundation, chaired by Christopher Mellon, asked the Journal to correct what it called errors, including its account of the 1967 Malmstrom missile incident, and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet wrote that the paper had been "badly played" by disinformation agents.
Disinformation is therefore both part of the documented record and a ready charge in current disputes. In August 2026 Doty revisited the Bennewitz operation on Chris Ramsay's Area52 podcast, where Ramsay repeatedly pressed him on what he had personally witnessed and why his later stories of crash recoveries and captive beings should be believed. The admitted cases established that official deception shaped parts of UFO lore, which is why accusations of disinformation now attach to whistleblowers, journalists and skeptics alike.
Probed ingest of: Concrete Next Steps for UAP Disclosure
Disclosure Foundation's Policy Brief No. 5 by Chris Mellon, Adm. Tim Gallaudet, and Kirk McConnell lays out near-term actions for UAP disclosure: release analyzable sensor data, open space and undersea records, inventory UAP Task Force files, publish intelligence assessments, and protect witnesses tied to alleged crash-retrieval or reverse-engineering programs. The brief treats raw file dumps as incomplete without scientific access, public analysis, and congressional channels for testimony.
🚨JAY STRATTON SAYS 21 GOVERNMENT AGENCIES REVIEWED HIS UFO BOOK BEFORE IT WAS PUBLISHED During a recent interview, Jay Stratton was asked a question that I think a lot of us have been wondering about. Given his background in intelligence, how do we know that he isn't working with the government to spread disinformation about UFOs? Stratton responded by explaining that his book had gone through a government security review involving no less than 21 different agencies. According to Stratton, t...
[Retweeted] Jay Stratton, in Out of the Shadows: “Members of Congress had access to classified intelligence proving that the Director of AARO was compromised and controlled by the Legacy Program, but the public didn’t know that and would fall victim to the disinformation campaign if we didn’t find a way to win the battle publicly.” Ponder that, especially as the November mid terms loom on the horizon. There’s only one way out of this. And it involves “sunlight.”
Jay Stratton, in Out of the Shadows: “Members of Congress had access to classified intelligence proving that the Director of AARO was compromised and controlled by the Legacy Program, but the public didn’t know that and would fall victim to the disinformation campaign if we didn’t find a way to win the battle publicly.” Ponder that, especially as the November mid terms loom on the horizon. There’s only one way out of this. And it involves “sunlight.”
Full excerpt from the book: “A new layer of the disinformation campaign is manufactured by so called whistleblowers, stepping into the spotlight of the social media and podcast arena, often urged on by bad actors doing the legacy programs bidding. They spin tales that grab headlines, not because they are credible, but because they are sensational. And because a hungry online community, desperate for any breadcrumb, eats them up without question and elevates these individuals as authoritative...
What if the most frightening stories about aliens aren’t warnings, but deliberate disinformation? And what if the real threat isn’t extraterrestrial at all? https://t.co/1YXuCJ2S9S
I just finished watching the new Greer doco Beyond Top Secret The Era of Disclosure. It strikes me how many things in the doco that came from Greer have been said by Coulthart. For example, the tic tac being a Lockheed craft and Elizondo being a disinformation agent part of the legacy program. I think this doco just outed Greer as Coulthart’s main source, which, in my opinion, is problematic as a good journalist has multiple sources and reports multiple perspectives.
[Retweeted] 🚨 JUST NOW: Rep. Tim Burchett warns the DEEP STATE is trying to CLOUD President Trump's UFO file release "It's time for them to pull the curtain back and let us see what's going on!" "It's classic deep state and that's why I would warn people about some of these videos. They're pretty apparent that they're not a UFO or a UAP and they're putting those out there to kind of cloud things and they're putting out disinformation. It's departments." "I told the president, it's like peeli...
Good question… And why hasn’t Jay Testified? https://t.co/JhZh6h3zGD [Quoted] "A new layer of the disinformation campaign is manufactured by so-called whistleblowers/ some of this fiction has found its way into testimony before Congress" -Jay Stratton Who are these fake whistleblowers and how are they getting access to Congress ? #ufotwitter
Ask yourself this: why has 'someone'/some agency started flooding Reddit with scores of 'scary' alien reports out of the blue? THIS is a signature of a disinformation campaign designed to make the subject of UFOs and ETs scary, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. Who benefits for discouraging Redditors from getting honest information here. U NO WHO. After all your taxes are paying their salaries. Hint: has three initials. https://preview.redd.it/y0ldvak3mwth1.png?width=278&format=png&auto=webp&s=7...
