July 2025
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Post contend, based on official sources, that the UFO stories and mythology have been fueled by the U.S. government itself. Critics think the newspapers have been used. The chair of the congressional task force in charge of UAP disclosure dismisses the claim as “gaslighting”.
SCREEN SHOT: The Wall Street Journal
Both The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Post claim that the U.S. Department of Defense has been actively spreading disinformation about UFO/UAP programs. According to WSJ, evidence now emerges that these government efforts to propagate UFO mythology dates back to the 1950s.
The paper says to base its claims on interviews with multiple current and former U.S. officials, scientists and military contractors as well as thousands of pages of documents. The main source is Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of AARO, Pentagon’s UAP investigating office. Kirkpatrick voiced his view that the UAP community is fueled by conspiracy theories already when he stepped down from AARO in late 2023.
WSJ contends that the entire UFO narrative around Area 51 is a deception. Military officers allegedly spread false documents to create a smokescreen for real secret-weapons programs. In other cases officials “allowed UFO myths to take root in the interest of national security”.
One of the most compelling cases of UAPs being involved in strange incidents at nuclear weapons facilities is the Malmstrom Air Force Base incident in 1967. The paper claims that the incident was in fact a secret test by the U.S. military of a new powerful device generating an electromagnetic pulse similar to that created by a nuclear detonation, to see whether the pulse itself could disable the nuclear missiles. This allegation means that the U.S. military conducted an extremely dangerous test on its own atomic bombs without informing the personnel in charge of the site beforehand.
In the light of what is being disclosed in the U.S. Congress by whistleblowers like David Grusch, Tim Gallaudet and Luís Elizondo, and of what the Pentagon itself has revealed over the last few years, this story seems to come out of nowhere. Moreover, a new bipartisan law, the 64-page UAP disclosure act, which spells out that a secret government legacy program has recovered UAPs as well as “biological evidence” of nonhuman intelligence, is now introduced.
None of this is mentioned by the two newspapers.
In a sharply critical op-ed, three of the former high ranking officials who have revealed information about UAP sightings and secret programs point out contradictions and unsubstantiated claims in the WSJ article. On the alleged “natural” explanation of the Malmstrom incident in 1967, they note that, “It strains credulity to suggest that an electromagnetic pulse, which disables and destroys sensitive electronic equipment, would be tested against an active nuclear missile facility at the height of the Cold War.”
The chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna also strongly questions the credibility of the piece. She calls it “gaslighting”, and she criticises the work of AARO in general.
Constitutional lawyer and UAP disclosure advocate Daniel Sheehan thinks the reporters involved have been misled. “It’s about how two American news outlets are apparently being used by the forces of reaction to spread misinformation”, Sheehan writes in a column, reproduced with permission on Substack. “In my view this is part of a deeply unconstitutional strategy to bury the truth concerning the reality of the UFO phenomenon by conveying totally discredited false narratives–just like the weather balloon story following the UFO Crash at Roswell.“
A debunking article by Sheehan’s New Paradigm Institute highlights, like others, the absurdity of the explanation for the Malmstrom incident: “That ridiculous claim collapses under scrutiny”.
The news cycle incident at the two New York City-based papers is a reminder that journalism, however independent it regards itself, is vulnerable to the influence of power structures and dominating narratives and paradigms.
Anders Bolling
