Yankee Blue - The Hazing Ritual Responsible for Some Military Belief in UFOs?

[jarlrmai]

This is such a complicated thing.

The hazing ritual probably contains themes and ideas that were already a part of UFO mythology when it started.

People who were hazed might:

Rotate out before they were let in on it.
'Leak' the haze to others before and after (never let a good prank go to waste) they knew it was real.
The haze stuff might be just discovered independently by people looking at documents.

It's kind of like a hoax UFO video versus a misidentified plane type video, once it involves people intentionally lying all bets are off as to the details.

An I right that AARO while they might discover the prank would not be involved in investigating it further after gathering what they could?

 

[Eburacum]

This 'hazing ritual' strategy seems so unstable. Some of the people who are subjected to it might find out later that it was a trick; others would continue to believe it for the rest of their lives. But there would surely be a number of people who leak this information to the press, and go to UFO conferences and so on.

That means the 'hazing ritual' is now worthless, and the entire strategy has to be scrapped or replaced with different, but equally plausible, disinformation. Which will eventually get 'leaked'. It all seems like a lot of work for little reward.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

I've mentioned it elsewhere but I wonder if this was purely hazing, or an odd runoff of a form of Counterintelligence or OPSEC. Deception in Support of Operations Security practices can be initiated by specific program managers and directors rather than higher up like other deception activities may require. I wonder if this potentially started as that and may have just become a cultural thing that wasn't specifically held in that manner. If Kirkpatrick and co actually found out otherwise though that would seal the deal but the report lacks sourcing their materials unfortunately.

I mean, it would be a great way to suss out people who are inclined to leak information, provide them something pragmatically innocuous but juicy enough to share. You could even vary the details of the image or the code name of the program to watermark the information for individuals.

Indeed! The literal term of reference for this is "planted information". A lot of different techniques make use of it. The most known is probably "canary trap" but wasn't actually used (back then at least can find younger folks using the term sometimes). There's also "dangling" which is related to persons (who may be used to feed false information) which in fancier terms is "dangling" an individual in front of a foreign intelligence service in hopes of them getting recruited, you can also find looser references to this in regards to "dangling" specific information too. Ruse and Decoy technically cover this also in definition despite being much broader term of reference. Eyewash/Eyewashing is probably the most direct, it's a reference to planted information specifically related to human sources.

I like that idea! Though I'd be surprised if that were the reason for the claimed UFO photo thing.

There was a recent high-profile (in UK) court case involving a similar idea of revealing tailored "confidential" information, so that a "leaker" could be identified:

Wagatha Christie is a popular name given to a dispute between the British media personalities Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney, which culminated in a 2022 libel case in the English High Court, Vardy v Rooney.

Wikipedia, Wagatha Christie:

The title is a play on "Agatha Christie" and the popular use of the term WAGs, wives and girlfriends, as a label for the often glamorous partners of highly-payed professional footballers.

Coleen Rooney, wife of footballer Wayne Rooney, believed information from her private Instagram account was being leaked to The Sun newspaper.

Rooney's original sting involved posting fake information about herself on her private Instagram stories - she had both a public and private account - to see which ones would end up being reported in the press.
She then limited the number of people who could access her private Instagram stories, eventually leaving Vardy's account as the only viewer.

BBC News, Culture, Coleen Rooney reveals how she went about Wagatha sting, 18 October 2023.
(Rebekah Vardy is the wife of footballer Jamie Vardy.)

Rooney publicly accused Vardy of leaking stories about her and husband Wayne to the press, Vardy sued but lost- having to pay her own, and most of Rooney's, legal costs, estimated at £3 million (May 2022, approx. $3.7 million).

(linking yours since you were interested in it too)


I can edit and link also if there's enough interest but I've written a lot in posts elsewhere on here about related Counterintelligence and Deception practices and cases of actual or theoretical intersections with these subjects. Snowden's materials aren't really the best example if we want to use direct sources too, that's a British company and their environment around these subjects has a lot of uniqueness from our own. Happy to share direct sources if anyone has more specific questions they're interested in, too much to put in a post without becoming a bibliography.

 

[Eburacum]

I seem to remember that Eddard Stark used a similar strategy in the Game of Thrones TV series. It is the sort of trick that would only work a limited number of times before people get wise to it.

 

[jackfrostvc]

A couple of interesting things in the same vain as the fake UAP program have been posted recently.

1) D. Dean Johnson posted a clip of Lacatski saying that some sincere people have been misled by bogus UFO documents in government classified systems. "I have seen, in multiple cases, what I can only call forged documents...talking about [UFO] programs that are not legitimate documents."
Source:
Source: https://x.com/ddeanjohnson/status/1846646038314336766


2) Curt Collins has pointed out that in John Alexanders book
"UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities", it mentions the following:

He heard from retired Air Force Colonel Robert Friend, director of Project Blue Book (1958 to 1963). Col. Friend told him that there was some truth to the legends that airmen had discovered a flying saucer stored in a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base The origin of the flying saucer was entirely human, and it was a prop for testing young intelligence officers. Supposedly, they'd be ushered into the dark hangar, then briefly be exposed to the lighted saucer. Afterwards they'd be debriefed, testing their ability to focus and gather details when confronted with surprising and confusing situations.
According to the story, this mock up was supposed to remain secret in order to preserve the effectiveness of the test, but over time, rumors of it leaked out. There were no details on when the program was discontinued or on what eventually happened to the saucer.

 

[Mendel]

2) Curt Collins [..]John Alexanders book [..] Colonel Robert Friend [..] truth to the legends

This is 4th hand information. Can we at least find the book quote?

 

[FatPhil]

This is 4th hand information. Can we at least find the book quote?

Anyone wanna try and wrestle more from googoo?

via search for "Colonel Friend" (and not "Robert", it seems he's a "Bob")
https://books.google.ee/books?redir...nel+Friend#v=snippet&q=Colonel Friend&f=false

If not, there are cheapish copies both sides of the atlantic here: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/9780312648343/

 

[John J.]

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.

https://archive.is/7KsjM, from the OP.

"Certain new commanders", not all. Possibly a very small minority.

There is some ambiguity here: "Commander" is not a specific USAF rank like it is in some other services:

In the Navy, the Coast Guard, the NOAA Corps, and the Public Health Service Corps, commander (abbreviated "CDR") is a senior-grade officer rank, with the pay grade of O-5. Commander ranks above lieutenant commander (O-4) and below captain (O-6). Commander is equivalent to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the other uniformed services...

...In the Air Force, the term "commander" (abbreviated "CC") is officially applied to the commanding officer of an Air Force unit; hence, there are squadron commanders, group commanders, wing commanders, numbered air force commanders, major command commanders and so forth.

Commander is also a generic term for an officer commanding any armed forces unit, such as "platoon commander", "brigade commander" and "squadron commander". [Terms like "Local commander", "squad commander" or "section commander" are often used to describe an NCO in charge of a small unit which doesn't include a more senior rank; John J.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander

Unless USAF personnel who actually held commander posts in substantial units have been identified by Kirkpatrick or others, "Commander" might be journalese for "officer".

Intuitively, I think it's unlikely that someone taking up a senior command position within the USAF- someone with several years service, competent and trusted, about to take sole operational and administrative charge of a sizeable unit- would be "hazed" by their seniors or their outgoing counterpart (perhaps the latter is a little more understandable as a rather silly practical joke).
It detracts from the solemnity of the occasion, and might subvert the aims of the organisation- the commander is there for a specific purpose; worrying about the sanity of their seniors, threats of impromptu execution or UFOs might not be beneficial.

The USAF wouldn't appoint a squadron commander (the most junior example of a formal USAF "CC" post given in the Wikipedia article) if there were doubts about their reliability or loyalty.

...of the Air Force's most classified programs...

must mean some of the Air Force's most classified programs. The USAF is a large, very complex and powerful military organization which conducts and sponsors cutting-edge and some blue skies research.
It also has programs, perhaps of the highest security classification, that a reasonable person could not associate with the reverse-engineering an exotic craft, e.g. choice of targets for strategic nuclear weapons; intelligence gathering and interpretation using existing means (of domestic- or at least terrestrial- origin); contingency planning for undertaking operations (sans antigravity maneuvering vehicles) against potential enemies large and small.

The vast majority of USAF unit's day-to-day administration and operations couldn't plausibly be interpreted as being a cover for reverse-engineering of exotic (implied extraterrestrial) craft by a reasonably sensible, appropriately trained and experienced officer serving in that unit.

I guess there are a number of units conducting research/ prototype testing, and of course our old friend reverse engineering of foreign artefacts, where a commanding officer might be in post for their administrative and leadership abilities but might not share the technical/ scientific knowledge of some of their subordinates.
Similarly, some of those units investigating advanced (or foreign) technologies might have organic or attached personnel who are not hands-on with the research, but are nevertheless essential: Logistics (supplies and transport), mechanical/ electrical engineers to keep unit infrastructure running and perhaps assist with test rigs etc., possibly security (e.g., but not limited to, USAF Security Forces).
The officers in charge of those units might not be fully aware of the nature of the work they are supporting- "need to know"- and could be more susceptible to the UFO haze for that reason. In addition, this might perpetuate an in-group, out-group dynamic perhaps valued by some of those doing the "real" (core aim) work. Basically, a practical joke at the expense of the "hired help".

Re. "need to know", an officer being presented with a photo and then told never to mention it to anyone ever again- and of course, never receiving any information about the object in the photo (e.g. technical specs) that might assist them in their role- might cause that officer to think, "Then why tell me this?" A big red flag.

From the limited evidence we have so far, I think the most likely scenario for the "Yankee Blue" UFO haze is this:

(1) The reveal of the UFO photo and "Yankee Blue" is a practical joke. It was not done systematically or as part of standing orders by any unit (although a targeted misinformation or counter-espionage motive as raised by @Tezcatlipoca and @jdog cannot be ruled out). If it was standard practice in any one unit, this will become apparent.

(2) A relatively small number of personnel were involved, on both sides of the deception.

(3) The Yankee Blue Haze was repeated a number of times over a protracted period- just as much greater numbers of servicemen have been sent to get "a long weight", left-handed screwdrivers, sachets of dehydrated water, a new bubble for the spirit level, etc. etc., or told to report "Mike Hunt is now available" over the radio or PA.

(3) I think it's unlikely senior "commanders" were the marks for this deception. Despite the Wall Street Journal's use of "commander", it is not established that any officers in personal command of units whose work might be highly technical (e.g. some areas of electronics or materials research; reverse engineering) were ever targeted.
Personnel actively involved in high-tech, hands-on research or evaluation would, even if targeted, know that the systems / materials they worked with were of terrestrial origin (or soon come to that conclusion, if they were halfway sensible).

(4) Most of those told about "Yankee Blue" probably realised very quickly- if not immediately- that it was a practical joke.
Many may have just thought of it as one of those jokes that one is sometimes subjected to, and never thought of it again.
In the military, it is a difficult judgement call whether to "call out" your bosses' attempt to have fun at your expense; going along with it might be sensible much of the time; let them have their fun.
Servicemen sent for a "long weight" are often fully aware that they're being set up, but hey, that's life in the military.

(5) A small number of personnel took "Yankee Blue" seriously. For reasons given above, I'd guess not senior ranks, or the most technologically/ scientifically gifted personnel actually working on the most cutting-edge systems or research, or those reverse engineering foreign artefacts.
More likely, officers commanding support units attached to more exotic/ high-tech units might have been misled.


If enough "Yankee Blue" veterans are willing to talk, it would be interesting to find out if they were all shown the same photo!
I suspect not- UFO enthusiasts will no doubt think this is evidence that the USAF has several alien craft under wraps.

 

[Mike F]

I don't know, but that's not really a good reason for believing something.

It has the ring of truth, but I'd like more details.

A few thoughts on this one from a former journalist, eventually working back to Mendel's question "why wouldn't it be true,"

The reporters obviously spent a lot of time on this one, and they cite the number of interviewees and pages of documents reviewed as sources of credibility. My guess is that they did not start out with this thesis, but they worked with editors to develop the idea in the headline: "Pentagon Fueled UFO Mythology, Then Tried Coverup/Military let rumors fester--and sometimes promoted them"

While I think that they are good reporters who have largely proved their argument, it is worth noting that the thesis is supported by three examples--Area 51, Yankee Blue, Salas. If they lose one of those three, they have no story, not on page 1, nowhere.

The main quote that holds up the Yankee Blue example is an anonymous official quoted in response to Avril Haines in a story verified by "people familiar with the matter," So: it is anonymous sources supporting an anonymous quote.

Then, ironically, the Sue Gough quote holds up this section of the story by confirming "fake classified program materials," but adding (perhaps reasonably) that the investigation into it wasn't completed (which ends up sounding like government official from Central Casting providing damning confirmation by obsfucation in this instance with a wink from the reporter but may not actually be that at all).

I do not think that the WSJ was in a position to run an independent standalone story on Yankee Blue, according to their own editorial standards, and I am sure that everybody involved was strongly motivated to preserve the Yankee Blue element of the story because otherwise they do not have enough evidence to support the headline (which is a fun idea). As it is, the other key examples are quite old and by any standards thin.

I sort of suspect that the whole Yankee Blue story is true, at some level, but there is no way to know how many people, how long or what exactly transpired in any one instance. The whole thing has a slightly apocryphal vibe. The one line that "we are talking about hundreds of people" from an unnamed official in a secondhand account can only be regarded with at least some suspicion as a source of objective truth about whatever Yankee Blue was.

I hope somebody one day takes a closer look. My bet is that there is something there, but that quote about hundreds of people may turn out to be exaggerated. We'll see what volume 2 says.

 

[Mendel]

The reporters obviously spent a lot of time on this one, and they cite the number of interviewees and pages of documents reviewed as sources of credibility.

You're referring to this passage:

This account is based on interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials, scientists and military contractors involved in the inquiry, as well as thousands of pages of documents, recordings, emails and text messages.

This can be read in two ways:
• the WSJ interviewed Sean Kirkpatrick in his "mountaintop retreat" (where they took his photo), and Kirkpatrick's account is based on two dozen interviews and thousands of pages
• the WSJ journalists interviewed two dozen people and studied thousands of pages
Personally, the first reading feels more likely to me.

The main quote that holds up the Yankee Blue example is an anonymous official quoted in response to Avril Haines in a story verified by "people familiar with the matter," So: it is anonymous sources supporting an anonymous quote.

You're referring to this passage:

After that 2023 discovery, Kirkpatrick's deputy briefed President Joe Biden's director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, who was stunned.

Could this be the basis for the persistent belief that the U.S. has an alien program that we've concealed from the American people? Haines wanted to know, according to people familiar with the matter. How extensive was it? she asked.

The official responded: "Ma'am, we know it went on for decades. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people. These men signed NDAs. They thought it was real."

Your "unnamed official" was Kirkpatrick's deputy. Kirkpatrick himself has been vilified by parts of the UFO community, so I can understand the motivation for keeping his deputy's name out of the story; but since Kirkpatrick himself must be among the "people familiar with the matter", the support for this is all but anonymous.

Then, ironically, the Sue Gough quote holds up this section of the story by confirming "fake classified program materials," but adding (perhaps reasonably) that the investigation into it wasn't completed (which ends up sounding like government official from Central Casting providing damning confirmation by obsfucation in this instance with a wink from the reporter but may not actually be that at all).

Susan Gough has been the Pentagon spokesperson for quite a while. As such, she's handicapped in that she can only report on what her own sources tell her, but my impression is that she's been generally reliable within that purview.
The WSJ quotes her:

In a statement, a Defense Department spokeswoman acknowledged that AARO had uncovered evidence of fake classified program materials relating to extraterrestrials, and had briefed lawmakers and intelligence officials. The spokeswoman, Sue Gough, said the department didn't include that information in its report last year because the investigation wasn't completed, but expects to provide it in another report scheduled for later this year.

"The department is committed to releasing a second volume of its Historical Record Report, to include AARO's findings on reports of potential pranks and inauthentic materials," Gough said.

Gough's statement contradicts the assertion the WSJ had made earlier:

The Pentagon omitted key facts in the public version of the 2024 report that could have helped put some UFO rumors to rest, both to protect classified secrets and to avoid embarrassment, the Journal investigation found. The Air Force in particular pushed to omit some details it believed could jeopardize secret programs and damage careers.

So we have two takes on events:
• Gough: The AARO Historical Report Volume One did not include pending investigations; these were pushed back to a volume two.
• WSJ: these facts were "omitted" to "avoid embarrassment".

I don't really understand what you mean by "providing damning confirmation by obsfucation [..] with a wink from the reporter", but I have two takes on this:
• AARO always planned to include this in volume 2, and the WSJ portrays this as a cover-up to have a headline;
• the Air Force actually did pressure AARO, and last year's compromise was to push this information back to volume 2 even though it could've been included in volume 1

In this case, we can have two different takes on why the WSJ was given the opportunity to speak with Kirkpatrick and report on this:
• like last year, Kirkpatrick shaped public anticipation of the AARO report by covering it in advance in the press; or
• the Air Force is still applying pressure to remove these investigations from volume 2, but after breaking this news, it now must be included.
The fact that Kirkpatrick talked about it at all indicates to me that the information has already cleared DOPSR review, presumably as part of a volume two draft version; otherwise, he'd be prohibited from talking about it.

In either case, the information would be fundamentally true.

My bet is that there is something there, but that quote about hundreds of people may turn out to be exaggerated. We'll see what volume 2 says.

I agree with that 100%.

If AARO found "two dozen" first-hand witnesses, they may have concluded this was a tradition, and would then have been able to estimate how many people were affected in total. But rather than speculate what AARO did or didn't do, I'd rather wait to read their report first hand.

---

P.S.: A few days ago, I looked for Gough's statement, but couldn't find it. It may have been a private response to a WSJ inquiry, and not been published; or maybe by now it is public.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

A few thoughts on this one from a former journalist, eventually working back to Mendel's question "why wouldn't it be true,"

The reporters obviously spent a lot of time on this one, and they cite the number of interviewees and pages of documents reviewed as sources of credibility. My guess is that they did not start out with this thesis, but they worked with editors to develop the idea in the headline: "Pentagon Fueled UFO Mythology, Then Tried Coverup/Military let rumors fester--and sometimes promoted them"

While I think that they are good reporters who have largely proved their argument, it is worth noting that the thesis is supported by three examples--Area 51, Yankee Blue, Salas. If they lose one of those three, they have no story, not on page 1, nowhere.

The main quote that holds up the Yankee Blue example is an anonymous official quoted in response to Avril Haines in a story verified by "people familiar with the matter," So: it is anonymous sources supporting an anonymous quote.

Then, ironically, the Sue Gough quote holds up this section of the story by confirming "fake classified program materials," but adding (perhaps reasonably) that the investigation into it wasn't completed (which ends up sounding like government official from Central Casting providing damning confirmation by obsfucation in this instance with a wink from the reporter but may not actually be that at all).

I do not think that the WSJ was in a position to run an independent standalone story on Yankee Blue, according to their own editorial standards, and I am sure that everybody involved was strongly motivated to preserve the Yankee Blue element of the story because otherwise they do not have enough evidence to support the headline (which is a fun idea). As it is, the other key examples are quite old and by any standards thin.

I sort of suspect that the whole Yankee Blue story is true, at some level, but there is no way to know how many people, how long or what exactly transpired in any one instance. The whole thing has a slightly apocryphal vibe. The one line that "we are talking about hundreds of people" from an unnamed official in a secondhand account can only be regarded with at least some suspicion as a source of objective truth about whatever Yankee Blue was.

I hope somebody one day takes a closer look. My bet is that there is something there, but that quote about hundreds of people may turn out to be exaggerated. We'll see what volume 2 says.

One thing I would offer here, I mentioned it above but I think we really need to be careful with saying "The Pentagon" here and framing them as advancing "UFO mythology". I believe it'd be pretty fair to declare both parts of their thesis, specifically as framed, as entirely false per their own materials. This is a glaring issue for one major reason, for us, this has largely just added more interesting materials, it does not actually further any information we do not already know. Secondly, the same malign actors have used this false framing to feed the same vulnerable audiences, which both a) continues to reinforce the idea "its the government" doing all this and b) obfuscate the fact these very same malign private networks make up a majority of the concerted efforts as claimed.

As for why I believe their thesis itself is not accurate -
Excluding the hazing potential around Yankee Blue, we have two events related to, more directly, what could be classed as disinformation - although in professional parlace this would be called "planted information". In both of those cases, as the article identifies, the planted information was put in place to protect program materials from those without clearance or authority to access the materials. This isn't in the article, but, the reason this is done, isn't solely to protect program information, but also to "degrade" the information itself so that if it reaches an adversarial threat network (why this stuff is done, this isn't oriented to the public) they are collecting false information.

In these debates, we tend to wholly focus on the element of it reaching the public, and then misperceiving the rest to retroactively 'confirm' what the others were trying to do. In contrast though, technically both of those cases would be successes, as it prevented "critical information" from being leaked. It being public is incidental and a result of someone leaking the materials. This itself is the issue and tends to become second order because of our interest, someone leaked program materials they shouldn't of had anyways.

The idea someone having "real" information vs information they believe is real in this context is irrelevant, as, in context, they'd believe both are real. There is no real weight here that would alter their decision to leak the information. If you decided to give them real materials instead, you intentionally set yourself up for failure by enabling the very risks and vulnerabilities you're trying to counter. Not telling them anything at all presents the same issue, as gaps in information are where conspiracies come from, so leaving the gap will increase the potential they conspiracies it (regardless of leak potential, but, in the same hand, would increase the chances they leak faulty material to the public if it does occur, which rotates back to the same problem we're speaking of).

Second, and the case with 'Yankee Blue' as per the article (or my side theory), both at the time of reporting would explicitly represent a case which, as far as we have, has never been referenced to the public, nor has attributed to "UFO mythology" to the public.
In none of these cases did the Pentagon seek to message or engage with the public, and one case is entirely what appears to be private and did not reach the public anyways.
Second, the A51 incident similar to Yankee Blue I do not believe we actually have a public element of this, at least from the article details.
And lastly, with Salas, while this one does have public story, it is very far from anything foundational or major to "UFO Mythology".

In rotation outside the specific obfuscation by those same malign actors, it also disrupts history of the mythology itself and objective assessment of it. For example, even accounting for all 3 of these - absolutely none of them has anywhere remotely near the same gravity as Richard Doty, of which most current UFO/ET narratives contain foundational artifacts from his (private) disinformation projects. Even in regards to Bennewitz, which was "formal" - Doty got in trouble for it because he went overboard, shunted to a desk job, then eventually fired for making up details in CI reports.
We also know that for example, even when it explicitly comes to faulty program information about UFOs and ETs internally to the DoD and IC - we have far more cases of none other than people like Davis, Doty, Green and etc intentionally putting this stuff in documents so it can later be found and then, well, used in narratives exactly like this. Case in point with Kona Blue.

 

[Mendel]

One thing I would offer here, I mentioned it above but I think we really need to be careful with saying "The Pentagon" here and framing them as advancing "UFO mythology". I believe it'd be pretty fair to declare both parts of their thesis, specifically as framed, as entirely false per their own materials.

Explicitly, the WSJ headline "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology" is unsupported.
• Yankee Blue wasn't public
• Salas came forth only 30 years later (and he was deceptive all on his own!)
• the photos in the pub targetted "local lore"

The A-12 Oxcart flights did much more to fuel UFO lore in the 60s (reportedly causing the majority of UFO sightings at the time), and they were not deceptive at all, just secret and therefore unexplained to the public.

James Carlson laid out very convincingly that Salas tried his best to convince the public that his tale of UFOs disabling a nuclear missile site was true, and that the Pentagon had no hand in it whatsoever. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/malmstrom-eagle-flight-was-this-an-emp-test.14272/ and https://www.metabunk.org/threads/uf...mstrom-eagle-flight-skeptical-resources.3284/ .

The "photos in the pub" item is the least fleshed out in the whole article, though on the surface it seems to most fit the headline:

The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert. He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers. The photos went up on the walls, and into the local lore went the idea that the U.S. military was secretly testing recovered alien technology.

We don't know which photos are involved. They're public, so why not? Were they existing hoaxed UFO photos already part of the UFO lore? We don't know what the colonel represented them to be, either.

Area 51 rose to prominence because of the very real U-2, A12 Oxcart and F-117 "have blue" flights; and because of the "Majestic 12" hoax and Bob Lazar, neither of which the Pentagon is responsible for—ufology did that to itself.

Article:

On October 14, 1988, the syndicated television broadcast UFO Coverup? Live introduced Americans to the Majestic 12 hoax. It featured the first public mention of Nevada's Area 51 as a site associated with aliens.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#UFO_and_other_conspiracy_theories

The imagination of the UFO believers has always been the real fuel.

 

[Eburacum]

reportedly causing the majority of UFO sightings at the time

I know this is the mythology, but I think this is just another over-simplified story propagated by a few ex-CIA insiders. It is quite possible that the majority of unexplained UFO sightings were caused by OXCART and similar programs, but the most likely situation is that the vast majority of sightings of all sorts were caused by misidentifications of other natural and man-made phenomena.

Today, for instance, a very large fraction of sightings is caused by Starlink; but it would be inaccurate to say that a majority of all sightings are caused by Musk's little satellites, any more than it was correct to say that a majority of all sightings in the early 60s were caused by secret programs. People were just as bad at observing back in those days as they are today - they didn't need secret aircraft flying overhead to trigger UFO reports.

 

[jackfrostvc]

In 2019 Steven Greer posted on his YT channel the interview he did with Richard Doty supposedly in 2016 according to the description.

Within the first 3 minutes, Doty talks about being part of a Airforce UFO investigation Program. He goes onto to say at about the 2:06 mark in the video: "Yankee Black was the access<code?> that you would have to have to get into this program"

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3xK5O7Iqo0

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

In 2019 Steven Greer posted on his YT channel the interview he did with Richard Doty supposedly in 2016 according to the description.

Within the first 3 minutes, Doty talks about being part of a Airforce UFO investigation Program. He goes onto to say at about the 2:06 mark in the video: "Yankee Black was the access<code?> that you would have to have to get into this program"

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3xK5O7Iqo0

So this is a relevant source bit but I would offer we really have to take Doty's claims with major red flags. His entire existence in the community has been disinformation. He also presents world of inaccuracies about his actual time at AFOSI. For example, pre-Serpo campaign (the whole Serpo thing was ran by Doty and a few others) he never really claimed he had worked all these spooky UFO programs, this is a new inject he's added post-2000s and acts in counter to the fact he spent very little time at AFOSI, and the Bennewitz saga got him shunted to a desk in Europe where he got fired shortly after for lying in source reporting. His actual career record leaves no/little room for these claims, then further add on the fact Doty has continually developed these bits of his personal story to fit in broader interest with the community.

If he didn't outright just make that up (very likely) and it is connected to this, I think two likelihoods exist. Either A) Doty is actually behind/part of the group who spread the "Yankee Blue" stuff (which would actually indicate its more of our favored UFO clubs disinformation projects rather than some hazing ritual by program staff), or B) Doty did hear about "Yankee Blue" but has no/little actual relation to interaction to it, but then as evidenced here in the video he uses it to deceive the public by adjusting details (eg "Yankee Black").

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

The "photos in the pub" item is the least fleshed out in the whole article, though on the surface it seems to most fit the headline:

The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert. He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers. The photos went up on the walls, and into the local lore went the idea that the U.S. military was secretly testing recovered alien technology.

We don't know which photos are involved. They're public, so why not? Were they existing hoaxed UFO photos already part of the UFO lore? We don't know what the colonel represented them to be, either.

Sorry for the double post accidentally posted the one above while trying to quote this one.

I think this bit, it would help with their headline, although still think it'd be poor to frame with this as the only case. You pretty much covered some of the major questions I'd like to know before we snap it to that framing though. Even at the public bit, someone can probably correct me if I'm wrong but may be lost to time due to how old that incident was, but I don't recall any major additions to UFOlogy based on photos in a bar at all, nor have I heard this incident brought up before in any of the "US govt disinformed" coverage including stuff from that time period. Further, did that colonel do it as part of their job (eg it was an official act), or was it something they did personally? Or was it more like Doty-Bennewitz where there may have been some underlying official activity going on, but the exact decision of this event was personal?

 

[NorCal Dave]

The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert. He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers. The photos went up on the walls, and into the local lore went the idea that the U.S. military was secretly testing recovered alien technology.

We don't know which photos are involved. They're public, so why not? Were they existing hoaxed UFO photos already part of the UFO lore? We don't know what the colonel represented them to be, either.

I guess it would depend on the definition of "near Area 51". Was this a reference to Rachel Nevada, the now traditional jumping off point for Area 51 buffs. Doesn't seem like there was much there in 1980. The "community was founded as Tempiute Village in 1973, then became Sand Springs and finally Rachel in 1978, the same year they got electricity.

Electricity arrived in Rachel on March 22, 1978, supplied to the Penoyer Valley by the Penoyer Valley Electric Cooperative.[9]​

In 1980, the Rachel Baptist Mission, Rachel's only church, began service in a donated mobile home. Since then, a part-time pastor has come to Rachel for religious services every Sunday morning

.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel,_Nevada

The somewhat famous Rachel Bar & Grill, nowadays known as The Little A'Le'Inn became a UFO destination not long after the Travis' took it over in the late '80s:

Whether or not you believe in UFOs, one thing is certain: The UFO watchers are real and are sighted here with great frequency. Most of them go directly to the Little A'Le'Inn, the best place in town to discuss the latest sightings. The wave of UFO buffs took the town by surprise beginning in late 1989, and "ufotourists" have come here in growing numbers ever since.

https://www.rachel-nevada.com/

Some sort of Bar at the same location goes back to 1976 and it may have been known as Club 111 in 1980:

If there's any truth to the story, the bar in question was more likely in Alamo NV. It was the bigger town, especially when the Union Carbide tungsten mine was operating in the '70s-'80s.

Honestly, the whole Yankee-Blue thing sounds like the UFOlogist's giant games of telephone. Bit of truth, bits of lore, some tall tales and exaggeration all stirred up in a pot. Instead of creating a mythos of real alien crash retrieval programs, it creates a mythos of fake alien crash retrieval programs .

I know this is the mythology, but I think this is just another over-simplified story propagated by a few ex-CIA insiders

That's exactly what it is. When I chased this claim down through some CIA magazine articles, it all goes back to 2 guys. James Cunningham and John Parongoski worked on the U2 and Oxcart/A12 respectively. They made this claim in phone interviews in the '90s. No numbers were ever giving, although using Blue Book numbers and flight records for the aircraft, it's conceivable. More here:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...o-reports-in-the-50s-and-60s-in-the-us.13063/

 

[Mendel]

became a UFO destination not long after the Travis' took it over in the late '80s:

1988, the year they took over the bar, was the year of Majestic 12 on TV, and the Air Force acknowledging the F-117, which had moved from area 51 to Tonopah by 1983.

Thanks for the link to the CIA thread!

I think this bit, it would help with their headline, although still think it'd be poor to frame with this as the only case.

Yes, exactly. Why didn't they beef that case up more? It makes me suspect that if they had answered these obvious questions, it wouldn't fit their headline any more. But we don't have the answers, so we don't know.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

1988, the year they took over the bar, was the year of Majestic 12 on TV, and the Air Force acknowledging the F-117, which had moved from area 51 to Tonopah by 1983.

Thanks for the link to the CIA thread!


Yes, exactly. Why didn't they beef that case up more? It makes me suspect that if they had answered these obvious questions, it wouldn't fit their headline any more. But we don't have the answers, so we don't know.

I won't go into this much since it can get character attack-y and I do think Joel had good intent and don't mean to attack his character at all, not in bad faith at least.
Entirely outside these subjects, Joel has a rooted interest in Government & Military Communications. Specifically the ones the public considers more maligned like "PSYOP" and "Deception" (in proper branching reference, Deception Activities). As far as I know he hasn't covered any other UFO/ET stuff nor has rooted interest in it, so, I think he may have actually written this with the deception part being his actual primary interest.

While Joel has legitimate interest here and does have good intent in mind by all means, from my understanding and interactions with him, he does not have any actual knowledge of these activities outside pop-culture references. He represents an unfortunate case on why I chime in on those topics, as this and much of his other reporting explicitly grandly frames these things in ways that are ardently incorrect based off him not understanding it unfortunately.
We can see unfortunate results in this as for example, the usual suspects have just taken this reporting and used it to reinforce the false claims that the government is "controlling the narrative" and etc and it's worked swimmingly well with the vulnerable audiences. As great as they are, our ingroup discussions also do not help counteract this with the vulnerable audiences, they act as a reinforcer of our own beliefs, and further, as a resilience builder for people who aren't part of those vulnerable audiences already. Instead, when it comes to the overall impact between all our audiences, all it's done is attribute to divisiveness - which is something explicitly sought by the malign networks (you fracture audiences to make them more refined and better target the vulnerable audiences).
He also does not have a network of sources he asks about these practices, nor from my understanding does he actually try very hard to get them. That itself IMO is a very, very severe issue with his reporting style that I hope he is able to more properly account for in the future.

This isn't the place for it, but as a tiny example, the whole "COVID disinformation" targeting China reporting, that is from him, and it has worlds of issues with it. For example, he references it as a "campaign" constantly, but that was actually a Program, not a Campaign (actual distinction in Communication fields, esp Govt/Mil comms). This is reflected in the very sources he presents, where the distinct countries materials were instead specific series and not one shared campaign.
Further, despite the grand framing about disinformation, he only sources 1 actual case of disinformation - with the rest being ambiguous posts left to the reader to conclude (fairly still issued in context but framed in reporting incorrectly). I can cover that bit more in DMs if you want but doesn't really service the core point here much.

 

[Mendel]

This isn't the place for it, but as a tiny example, the whole "COVID disinformation" targeting China reporting, that is from him, and it has worlds of issues with it.

You're referencing https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/ : "The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China's Sinovac inoculation."
It is a lot more detailed than what we're looking at here.
(I agree that if anyone wants to discuss that issue, we should do it in a new thread.)

 

[Ben Harris]

The hazing proposition would explain why WHISTLE-BLOWERS have failed to provide any evidence of alien craft, just heresay.

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

I mean, it would be a great way to suss out people who are inclined to leak information, provide them something pragmatically innocuous but juicy enough to share. You could even vary the details of the image or the code name of the program to watermark the information for individuals.

I did a number of software/computer security courses in college and one of the units was on digital image steganography, where you can modify a set of pixel values within a much larger image, in a human-imperceptible way, to encode information. If you know the baseline image and its pixel values, and potentially what ordered sequence of pixels to compare, you can check the pixel values in the version of the file that has secret info encoded, and the differences in those pixels relative to the baseline image give you back the hidden information. It really is human-imperceptible if the information being encoded is small relative to the size of the image. e.g. you can embed identifiers into images in a way where the images look identical to humans but which contain an in-image fingerprint identifying which user downloaded it, which cannot be easily detected or removed by simply stripping metadata, since the fingerprint is in the pixel data. I do often wonder how much this has been utilized by entities who want to monitor where image/video content is coming from. One way to evade this is to make a copy of the content in a lossy/noisy way so the pixel array cannot be precisely mapped back to the original values.

 

[Fin]

One way to evade this is to make a copy of the content in a lossy/noisy way so the pixel array cannot be precisely mapped back to the original values.

Or just upload it to YouTube I always laugh when I see "raw video" titles on Youtube. No its not raw. YouTube's compression destroys everything it touches!

 

[FatPhil]

One way to evade this is to make a copy of the content in a lossy/noisy way so the pixel array cannot be precisely mapped back to the original values.

Proper steganography is resilient to most noise. The bandwidth is low, the information is spread spectrum, and it'll be encoded in an error correcting code, you have to ruin a lot of the image, and a lot about the image, to properly remove well-done steganography. The most robust techniques are used in digital watermarking because that's the specific adversary they're designed to protect against.

 

[PublicStranger]

After watching Steven Greenstreet's interview with Tim Phillips it now seems clearer that there may have been fake SAPs created to fuel the hazing ritual with special efforts going into faking photos and the like. I still don't see the motivation of why they would go to such lengths to do this though. Also considering fake documents and photographs did exist, how did any of these supposed fake SAP documents and programs not leak? Doesn't really add up.

 

[Mendel]

After watching Steven Greenstreet's interview with Tim Phillips

Where did you find that?

 

[PublicStranger]

Where did you find that?

Source: https://youtu.be/LcwkyRLpz4Q?si=SxscTV-qTWS5FBiZ

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://youtu.be/LcwkyRLpz4Q?si=SxscTV-qTWS5FBiZ

Thank you!
Readers of this thread can skip the first 6 minutes.

It looks like my guess here was close to the truth:

• the Air Force actually did pressure AARO, and last year's compromise was to push this information back to volume 2 even though it could've been included in volume 1

Tim Phillips says in the interview that the Air Force asked AARO not to include the fictional SAP thing in its first report.

 

[TheCholla]

Let's assume this is true, the US gvt has scammed its own personnel (people under NDAs) to believe in fake alien tech.

Hasn't someone like David Grusch suffered irremediable damage from this?
He's gone public in front of millions, testified under oath during a House hearing, had his personal life and struggles made public, people attacking him... Not mentioning the damage done with spreading fake information to millions who go into their own rabbit hole. His name will be attached to this forever.

And you have Phillips, former head of AARO, revealing this as just a little joke, being amused about it, like if we should all just laugh about that funny little prank.

Shouldn't there be massive lawsuits against the USAF for reparations to people like Grusch and co? This is quite the scandal imo.
If true, which with AARO precedent for confusing statements is a big if.

 

[PublicStranger]

Shouldn't there be massive lawsuits against the USAF for reparations to people like Grusch and co? This is quite the scandal imo.

I'm not sure there's any case to be heard in regards to the disinformation. It's common practice. But I find it absolutely absurd that threats of death were made against certain individuals over a hazing ritual.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

Let's assume this is true, the US gvt has scammed its own personnel (people under NDAs) to believe in fake alien tech.

Hasn't someone like David Grusch suffered irremediable damage from this?
He's gone public in front of millions, testified under oath during a House hearing, had his personal life and struggles made public, people attacking him... Not mentioning the damage done with spreading fake information to millions who go into their own rabbit hole. His name will be attached to this forever.

And you have Phillips, former head of AARO, revealing this as just a little joke, being amused about it, like if we should all just laugh about that funny little prank.

Shouldn't there be massive lawsuits against the USAF for reparations to people like Grusch and co? This is quite the scandal imo.
If true, which with AARO precedent for confusing statements is a big if.

I'm not sure there's any case to be heard in regards to the disinformation. It's common practice. But I find it absolutely absurd that threats of death were made against certain individuals over a hazing ritual.

To answer this question, in cases of actual fake programs, this is a legitimate, completely legal practice. In fact, these individuals themselves are at legal risk for leaking classified information. Just because it's planted information doesn't mean they didn't leak, that, is why the information is planted, to prevent real leakage and degrade intelligence collection capabilities. These cases are not "scamming".

This is entirely different from the hazing. The people participating in hazing could face civil suits at the least yes. Criminal cases a bit more up in the air (not sure about UCMJ end).

 

[TheCholla]

I get the concept of disinformation being used to cover SAPs, but here we're talking about a story that started going public years ago, maybe even 2017 in we consider the NYT article as a start to this story.

The USAF had plenty of time to take people like Grusch (Elizondo?) apart, and tell them not too go too far with their public involvement with this. If they cared about personal repercussions on their present or past employees. It's gone really really far and wasted a lot of people's time (including elected officials). For what benefit?
IF TRUE

 

[Mendel]

Shouldn't there be massive lawsuits against the USAF for reparations to people like Grusch and co?

The people who told Grusch violated their NDAs, and they'd be liable for the damage that caused.
if Grusch misrepresented to them what he was cleared to know, it'd be his own fault.

I'm going to guess he employed the same method that Elizondo admitted to himself and Stratton using, which was phoning people up without regard to the chain of command, representing themselves as something they were not, and receiving information they may not have been cleared to receive.

If Grusch had ever gone up the chain of command on this, I expect someone would've told him the truth.

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://youtu.be/LcwkyRLpz4Q?si=SxscTV-qTWS5FBiZ

At 5:45, Greenstreet says this:

Phillips recently left AARO and spoke to me on the record. He says in the classified version of the AARO report is the discovery that the US government was sometimes the source creator and promoter of false UFO stories. For example, some of the UFO whistleblowers who claim the government has a secret alien UFO program had actually been exposed to a fake program that was a prank to Hayes new Air Force personnel.

So when vol.1 came out last year, certain members of Congress with access to that version already knew. It explains why Grusch's testimony didn't have a lot of repercussions, except with those who weren't on the appropriate committees.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

The people who told Grusch violated their NDAs, and they'd be liable for the damage that caused.
if Grusch misrepresented to them what he was cleared to know, it'd be his own fault.

I'm going to guess he employed the same method that Elizondo admitted to himself and Stratton using, which was phoning people up without regard to the chain of command, representing themselves as something they were not, and receiving information they may not have been cleared to receive.

If Grusch had ever gone up the chain of command on this, I expect someone would've told him the truth.

This is a part that could destroy civil cases too. What Grusch did there is equally as issued and depending on some details we don't know, could even be construed as actual espionage.

We don't see criminal cases related to this stuff usually because it'd require the government to release the very same materials they're trying to protect in court. The "embarrassing" point gets brought up a lot but that kind of just ropes back into the critical information. Not necessarily that they're embarrassed by those types, but it is embarrassing to get cornered into leaking critical information in court based off conspiracy theories.

It's the same reason we see a lot of counterintelligence cases handled outside courts, not helpful to publicize the documents you arrested someone to prevent them handing to adversaries. Then the adversary can just read court documents and not have to run a multi million dollar espionage effort.

 

[jarlrmai]

Okay maybe Elizondo bought into the fake story, but that didn't convince him he had ESP powers to torture prisoners or put orbs in his house. Or maybe it fuelled those delusions.

Some of these people were maybe more prone to this and maybe even didn't believe it when they were told it was a prank, it maybe they were never a primary prank target and therefore were never let in on it.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The USAF had plenty of time to take people like Grusch (Elizondo?) apart, and tell them not too go too far with their public involvement with this.

I think the problem is, that assumes Grusch was hazed. That is, he was shown photos, read into the fake retrieval programs and told to keep quite about it. He has said repeatedly that he had NO first hand knowledge of any particular program. We know that Eric Davis has claimed he was one of Grusch's sources and we know Davis never would have been in position to be hazed. Nor would the likes of Puthoff and others from the Skinwalker Ranch crowd. We know these same people have maintained and talked about a secret retrieval programs going back 20 years or more.

Maybe Grusch heard some whispers from some hazed people, but it's likely many of his sources are just the same people that have obsessed over this for years. His insistence about the supposedly recovered Italian UFO, shows he's just repeating a publicly available story, thinking it's semi-secret. Probably heard from Davis.

 

[FatPhil]

The people who told Grusch violated their NDAs, and they'd be liable for the damage that caused.
if Grusch misrepresented to them what he was cleared to know, it'd be his own fault.

I'm going to guess he employed the same method that Elizondo admitted to himself and Stratton using, which was phoning people up without regard to the chain of command, representing themselves as something they were not, and receiving information they may not have been cleared to receive.

If Grusch had ever gone up the chain of command on this, I expect someone would've told him the truth.

What if his chain of command had lead up to someone like major general Albert Stubblebine, head of Army Intelligence?
(And if you don't get the reference, this URL says it all:
Source: https://www.npr.org/2009/11/08/120227954/walking-through-walls-and-staring-at-goats
, but if you desperately need a quote, this works: "he tried to walk through his wall in Arlington, Virginia, and just kept bumping his nose, tried to levitate, had spoon-bending parties")

Rank is not necessarily correlated with competance.

 

[jackfrostvc]

If true, What's more worrying is that people would have been in the know about this fake UFO program pics etc. I wonder who.
Imagine what people who knew this info could do once they left their DoD job, what they might be able to call upon to spin a story for profit if so inclined

 

[jarlrmai]

A rather long (1hr) audio session with S. Greenstreet.


Source: https://x.com/MiddleOfMayhem/status/1932913264905891993


Which covers some more of his interview with Phillips and his thoughts on how it fits into the context of other things.

There's a lot to cover in there, people might find it interesting.

##edit to clarify, this is only Greenstreet and some guests talking not Phillips.