Conspiracy theories relating to UFOs or extraterrestrials From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology.[1][2][3][4] Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.[5][6] According to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry little or no evidence exists to support them despite significant research on the subject by non-governmental scientific agencies.[7][1][8][9]
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Scholars of religion have identified some new religious movements among the proponents of UFO conspiracy theories, most notably Heaven's Gate, the Nation of Islam, and Scientology.[4]
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Flying saucer conspiracy theories first began in the pages of pulp science-fiction, where they drew upon inspiration from the "lost continent" myths of Atlantis and Lemuria.[1][3]: 4 [10]: 32 In 1947, during 'the first summer of the cold war', private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported witnessing supersonic 'flying discs'; historians would later chronicle at least 800 "copycat" reports in subsequent weeks, while other sources estimate the reports may have numbered in the thousands.[11][12] Press speculated that the flying disc were top secret secret American or Soviet technology.[13]
By December 1949, author Donald Keyhoe promoted the idea that the Air Force was withholding knowledge of interplanetary spaceships, culminating in his 1955 work The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. [3]: 111–113 Gulyas argues: "Keyhoe was instrumental in popularizing one of the most lasting memes in the long flying-saucer story: the government cover-up of 'the truth' about UFOs".[2]: 3 The following year, the book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers introduced the concept of the Men in Black.[1]: 302
In the 1970s, a supposed cover-up was termed a "Cosmic Watergate".[2]: 6 In 1977, blockbuster film Close Encounters of the Third Kind dramatized a government UFOs cover-up.[2]: 44 In 1980, the book The Roswell Incident introduced the story of a UFO crash to a mass audience.[2]: 6 [14]
While earlier decades imagined a coverup of benevolent "space brothers", the 1980s saw the rise of what scholars called "ufology's dark side": theories that a government cabal was secretly involved with a race of malevolent aliens.[1]: 97 New theories linked a supposed UFO coverup to alien abductions, cattle mutilations, and even the JFK assassination.[1]: 87–99, 137–38, 147 At a 1989 Mutual UFO Network conference, author Bill Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of extraterrestrials to UFO researchers.[15] [2]: 8–9 [3]: 269
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While unusual sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history, UFOs became culturally prominent after World War II, escalating during the Space Age. Studies and investigations into UFO reports conducted by governments (such as Project Blue Book in the United States and Project Condign in the United Kingdom), as well as by organisations and individuals have occurred over the years without confirmation of the fantastical claims of small but vocal groups of ufologists who favour unconventional or pseudoscientific hypotheses, often claiming that UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, technologically advanced cryptids, demons, interdimensional contact or future time travelers. After decades of promotion of such ideas by believers and in popular media, the kind of evidence required to solidly support such claims has not been forthcoming. Scientists and skeptic organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have provided prosaic explanations for UFOs, namely that they are caused by natural phenomena, human technology, delusions, and hoaxes. Beliefs surrounding UFOs have inspired parts of new religions even as social scientists have identified the ongoing interest and storytelling surrounding UFOs as a modern example of folklore and mythology understandable with psychosocial explanations.
Benjamin Radford has pointed out how unlikely such suppression of evidence is given that "[t]he UFO coverup conspiracy would have to span decades, cross international borders, and transcend political administrations" and that "all of the world's governments, in perpetuity, regardless of which political party is in power and even among enemies, [would] have colluded to continue the coverup."[16]
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Individuals who have suggested that UFO evidence is being suppressed include Stanford University immunologist Garry Nolan,[17] United States Senator Barry Goldwater, atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald,[18] [better source needed] British Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (former NATO head and chief of the British Defence Staff), American Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (first CIA director), Israeli brigadier general Haim Eshed (former director of space programs for the Israel Ministry of Defense),[19] astronauts Gordon Cooper[20][21] and Edgar Mitchell,[22] and former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer. Beyond their testimonies and reports they have presented no evidence to substantiate their statements and claims.
Richard Shaver, one early proponent, had been hospitalized for psychiatric problems,[1]: 115 while another, Paul Bennewitz, was hospitalized for paranoia. Several proponents later confessed responsibility for hoaxes or lies, including Gray Barker, Carl Allen, Richard Doty, Bill Moore, and Ray Santelli. Other proponents met violent ends -- Morris Jessup died by suicide, while Bill Cooper was killed by police during an attempted arrest.
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Works of popular fiction have included premises and scenes in which a government intentionally prevents disclosure to its populace of the discovery of non-human, extraterrestrial intelligence. Motion picture examples include 2001: A Space Odyssey (as well as the earlier novel by Arthur C. Clarke),[23][24] Easy Rider,[25] the Steven Spielberg films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hangar 18, Total Recall, Men in Black, and Independence Day. Television series and films including The X-Files, Dark Skies, and Stargate have also featured efforts by governments to conceal information about extraterrestrial beings. The plot of the Sidney Sheldon novel The Doomsday Conspiracy involves a UFO conspiracy.[26]
In March 2001, former astronaut and United States Senator John Glenn appeared on an episode of the TV series Frasier playing a fictional version of himself who confesses to a UFO coverup.[27]
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Editor Raymond Palmer has been called "the man who invented flying saucers".[3]: 3 [10] For years prior to the 1947 flying disc craze, Palmer had published reports of strange craft in his pulp sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories.[1]: 32 [10] During the 1947 flying disc craze, Palmer hired original saucer witness Kenneth Arnold to investigate a flying disc report near Maury Island, Washington.[3]: 13 [10] By October 1947, Palmer's magazine featured claims that the truth behind the discs was being covered up.[3]: 12 [10] Palmer would continue to promote UFO conspiracy theories for the rest of his life, eventually linking them to the JFK assassination and Watergate.[3]: 323 [10]
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On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc". The Army quickly retracted the statement and clarified that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon.[28] The Roswell incident did not surface again until the late 1970s, when it was incorporated into conspiracy literature.[citation needed]
"The truth of what the strange disc ships really are will never be disclosed to the common people. We just don't count to the people who do know about such things."
In the October 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, editor Raymond Palmer argued the flying disc flap was proof of Richard Sharpe Shaver's claims.[3]: 12 That same issue carried a letter from Shaver in which he argued the truth behind the discs would remain a secret.[5][30]
Wrote Shaver: "The discs can be a space invasion, a secret new army plane — or a scouting trip by an enemy country...OR, they can be Shaver's space ships, taking off and landing regularly on earth for centuries past, and seen today as they have always been — as a mystery. They could be leaving earth with cargos of wonder-mech that to us would mean emancipation from a great many of our worst troubles— and we'll never see those cargos...I predict that nothing more will be seen, and the truth of what the strange disc ships really are will never be disclosed to the common people. We just don't count to the people who do know about such things. It isn't necessary to tell us anything."[30][5][29]: 159 During the last decades of his life, Shaver devoted himself to "rock books"—stones that he believed had been created by the advanced ancient races and embedded with legible pictures and texts. [31] After Shaver's death in 1975, his editor Raymond Palmer admitted that "Shaver had spent eight years not in the Cavern World, but in a mental institution" being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.[32]
In 1952, Arnold and Palmer would author Coming of the Saucers.[3]: 13, 92 It detailed his 1947 investigation of Fred Crisman's claims, alleged he had been eavesdropped on during his investigation, and other strange behavior.[2]: 30
"There is a definite link between flying saucers, The Shaver Mystery, The Kennedy’s assassinations, Watergate and Fred Crisman."
In 1968, Crisman would be subpoenaed by a New Orleans grand jury in the prosecution of a local man for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—a prosecution that would later be dramatized in the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK.[2]: 30–31 In the late 1970s, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations considered the possibility that Crisman may have been one of the "tramps" detained and photographed in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. Later authors like Bill Cooper would allege that Kennedy was assassinated because he intended to disclose the reality of UFOs.[2]: 30–31
On December 26, 1949, True magazine published an article by Donald Keyhoe titled "The Flying Saucers Are Real".[3]: 40–41 [34] Keyhoe, a former Major in the US Marines, claimed that elements within the Air Force knew that saucers existed and had concluded they were likely 'inter-planetary'.[34]
The article examined the Mantell UFO incident and quoted an unnamed pilot who opined that the Air Force's explanation "looks like a cover up to me". The Gorman Dogfight and the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter were also described. The article cited a supposed report from Air Material Command and claimed a "rocket authority at Wright field" had concluded saucers were interplanetary. Concern over a public panic, of the kind that supposedly occurred after the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, is cited in the article as a possible motive for the cover up. Citing historic sources, Keyhoe speculated that similar sightings have likely occurred for at least several centuries.
The True article caused a sensation.[3] Though such figures are always difficult to verify, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book, reported that "It is rumored among magazine publishers that Don Keyhoe's article in True was one of the most widely read and widely discussed magazine articles in history." When Keyhoe expanded the article into a book, The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950), it sold over half a million copies in paperback.
In March 1950, the Air Force denied "flying saucers" exist and further denied that they were US technology being covered-up.[3][35][36]
The first "alien bodies" conspiracy theory emerged in October and November 1949, when Journalist Frank Scully published two columns in Variety.[3]: 47–48 Scully claimed that dead extraterrestrial beings were recovered from a flying saucer crash, based on what he said was reported to him by a scientist involved.[37][38][39] His 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers expanded on the theme, adding that there had been two such incidents in Arizona and one in New Mexico, a 1948 incident that involved a saucer that was nearly 100 feet (30 m) in diameter.[note 1][40] In January 1950, Time Magazine skeptically repeated stories of crashed saucers with humanoid occupants.[41]
It was later revealed that Scully had been the victim of "two veteran confidence artists".[42] In 1952 and 1956, True magazine published articles by San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Philip Cahn[43][44] that exposed Newton and "Dr. Gee" (identified as Leo A. GeBauer) as oil con artists who had hoaxed Scully.[45]
In a 1997 Roswell report, Air Force investigator James McAndrew wrote that "even with the exposure of this obvious fraud, the Aztec story is still revered by UFO theorists. Elements of this story occasionally reemerge and are thought to be the catalyst for other crashed flying saucer stories, including the Roswell Incident."[46]
The 1950s saw an increase in both governmental and civilian investigative efforts and reports of public disinformation and suppression of evidence.
In 1954, before the first human-launched satellite, Keyhoe told press that non-human satellites had been detected in orbit. In 1955, Donald Keyhoe authored a new book that pointedly accused elements of the United States government of engaging in a conspiracy to cover up knowledge of flying saucers. [3]: 111–113 [47] Keyhoe claims the existence of a "silence group" orchestrating this conspiracy.[3]: 110–113 Historian of Folklore Curtis Peebles argues: "The Flying Saucer Conspiracy marked a shift in Keyhoe's belief system. No longer were flying saucers the central theme; that now belonged to the silence group and its coverup. For the next two decades Keyhoe's beliefs about this would dominate the flying saucer myth."[3]: 110–113
The Flying Saucer Conspiracy also incorporated legends of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances.[3]: 110–113 Keyhoe sensationalized claims, ultimately stemming from optical illusions, of unusual structures on the Moon.[48]
In 1955, Morris K. Jessup achieved some notoriety with his book The Case for the UFO, in which he argued that UFOs represented a mysterious subject worthy of further study. Jessup speculated that UFOs were "exploratory craft of 'solid' and 'nebulous' character."[3]: 112, 114 [49] Jessup also "linked ancient monuments with prehistoric superscience". [better source needed]
In January 1956, Jessup began receiving a series of letters from "Carlos Miguel Allende", later identified as Carl Meredith Allen.[50][51][52] "Allende" warned Jessup not to investigate the levitation of UFOs and spun a tale of a dangerous experiment in which Navy Ship was successfully made invisible, only to inexplicably teleport from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, before reappearing back in Philadelphia.[better source needed] The ship's crew was supposed to have suffered various side effects, including insanity, intangibility, and being "frozen" in place.[51][better source needed]
In 1957, Jessup was invited to the Office of Naval Research where he was shown an annotated copy of his book that was filled with handwritten notes in its margins, written with three different shades of blue ink, appearing to detail a debate among three individuals. They discussed ideas about the propulsion for flying saucers, alien races, and express concern that Jessup was too close to discovering their technology.[53]: 27–29, 35, 65, 80, 102, 115, 163–165 Jessup noticed the handwriting of the annotations resembled the letters he received from Allen.[54]: 9 (Twelve years later, Allen would say that he authored all of the annotations in order "to scare the hell out of Jessup.")[55]
The Jessup book with Allen's scribbled commentaries gained a life of its own when the Varo Manufacturing Corporation of Garland, Texas, who did contract work for ONR, began producing mimeographed copies of the book with Allen's annotations and Allen's letters to Jessup.[54]: 9 [better source needed] These copies came to be known as the "Varo edition."[56]: 6 This became the heart of many "Philadelphia Experiment" books, documentaries, and movies to come. Over the years various writers and researchers who tried to get more information from Carl Allen found his responses elusive, or could not find him at all.[57][better source needed]
By 1975, the Philadelphia Experiment was being promoted by paranormal author Charles Berlitz[58] and in 1984, the legend was adapted into a fictional film. In 1980, Berlitz co-authored The Roswell Incident.
Ruppelt was a captain in the US Air Force who served as director of official investigations into UFOs: Project Grudge and Project Bluebook.[3]: 110–113 [59] Al Chop, a civilian, had served as the Press Chief for Air Materiel Command in Dayton, Ohio until 1951 when he transferred to the Pentagon to serve as the press spokesman for Project Bluebook.[59]
In 1956, a film titled Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers dramatized the events of the early 1950s from the point of view of "Al Chop", an Air Force press officer played by reporter Tom Towers.[60] The film incorporates interviews with actual eyewitnesses and historic footage of unidentified objects, concluding with a dramatization of the 1952 UFO flap that featured repeated sightings over Washington D.C.[59]
In 1956, Ruppelt authored The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, a book that has been called the "most significant" of its era.[3]: 113 The book discussed the Twining memo which initiated UFO investigation and the rejected 1948 "Estimate of the Situation". Ruppelt criticized the Air Force's handling of UFOs investigations. Historian Curtis Peebles concludes that the book "should have ended the speculation about an Air Force cover-up. In fact, Ruppelt's statements were converted into support for the cover-up idea."[3]: 110–113
1956 saw the publication of Gray Barker's They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, the book which publicized the idea of Men in Black who appear to UFO witnesses and warn them to keep quiet.[1]: 82 There has been continued speculation that the men in black are government agents who harass and threaten UFO witnesses.
According to the Skeptical Inquirer article "Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker", there may have been "a grain of truth" to Barker's writings on the Men in Black, in that government agencies did attempt to discourage public interest in UFOs during the 1950s. However, Barker is thought to have greatly embellished the facts of the situation. In the same Skeptical Inquirer article, Sherwood revealed that, in the late 1960s, he and Barker collaborated on a brief fictional notice alluding to the Men in Black, which was published as fact first in Raymond A. Palmer's Flying Saucers magazine and some of Barker's own publications. In the story, Sherwood (writing as "Dr. Richard H. Pratt") claimed he was ordered to silence by the "blackmen" after learning that UFOs were time-travelling vehicles. Barker later wrote to Sherwood, "Evidently the fans swallowed this one with a gulp."[61]
In the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, American discovery of a non-human artifact prompts a cover up and disinformation campaign with fatal consequence for astronauts sent to investigate.[62]: ch. 12 [63] The film was prominent in Moon landing conspiracy theories, which variously argue that humans never went to the Moon, went there with the assistance of aliens, or even that that NASA covered up lunar evidence of aliens.[64][65]
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Watergate scandal, trust in the US government declined and acceptance of conspiracy theories became widespread.[2]: 6 [3]: 166, 205, 245
J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who served as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force. Hynek had drawn ridicule for his most famous debunking, in which he suggested a mass-sighting over Michigan may have been caused by "swamp gas".[66] By 1974, the former skeptic was publicly charging that Bluebook was "a Cosmic Watergate".[2]: 6 Hynek claimed 20% of Bluebook cases were unexplained. Fellow Ufologist like Stanton Friedman echoed Hynek's "Cosmic Watergate" accusations.[67] In 1976, pulp publisher Ray Palmer argued "there is a definite link between flying saucers, The Shaver Mystery, The Kennedy’s assassinations, Watergate and Fred Crisman."[68][3]: 323
"Hangar 18" is a non-existent location that many later conspiracy theories allege housed extraterrestrial craft or bodies recovered from Roswell.[69] The idea of alien corpses from a crashed ship being stored in an Air Force morgue at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was mentioned in Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers,[70] expanded in the 1966 book Incident at Exeter, and became the basis for a 1968 science-fiction novel The Fortec Conspiracy.[71][72] Fortec was about a fictional cover-up by the Air Force unit charged with reverse-engineering other nations' technical advancements.[72]
In 1974, science-fiction author and conspiracy theorist Robert Spencer Carr alleged that alien bodies recovered from the Aztec crash were stored in "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson.[3]: 242, 321 Carr claimed that his sources had witnessed the alien autopsy,[3]: 244 another idea later incorporated into the Roswell narrative.[73][74] The Air Force explained that no "Hangar 18" existed at the base, noting a similarity between Carr's story and the fictional Fortec Conspiracy.[75] The 1980 film Hangar 18, which dramatized Carr's claims, was described as "a modern-day dramatization" of Roswell by the film's director James L. Conway,[76] and as "nascent Roswell mythology" by folklorist Thomas Bullard.[77] Decades later, Carr's son recalled that he had often "mortified my mother and me by spinning preposterous stories in front of strangers... [tales of] befriending a giant alligator in the Florida swamps, and sharing complex philosophical ideas with porpoises in the Gulf of Mexico."[78]
Many UFO conspiracy theory tales "can be traced to a mock documentary Alternative 3, broadcast on British television on June 20, 1977 (but intended for April Fools' Day), and subsequently turned into a paperback book." Barkun similarly notes that elements of the film were later incorporated into UFO conspiracy theories.[1]: 86–87
On December 14, 1977, the Spielberg blockbuster film Close Encounters of the Third Kind premiered and brought UFO conspiracy theories to a global market.[1]: 30 [2]: 44 [3]: 234 The film opens with a United Nations recovery of Flight 19, lost in the Bermuda Triangle some 32 years prior, in Mexico's Sonora desert; Since Keyhoe's 1955 book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, theorists had linked Flight 19's disappearance to flying saucers.[79] The film's subplot of an "exchange program" of humans visiting aliens would later resurface in conspiracy theory as Project Serpo.[5]: x
The film culminates with a summoned landing, like the one UFO conspiracy theorists allege had occurred at Holloman. Legendary French filmmaker François Truffaut played a character inspired by French UFO investigator Jacques Vallee, an advisor to the film. Real life debunker-turned-believer J. Allen Hynek made a cameo in the film. In coming years, conspiracy figure John Lear and others would allege that powerful insiders had "subtly promoted" Close Encounters and other films to 'educate' the public.[1]: 30
In February 1978, UFO researcher Stanton Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the Roswell debris from where it was recovered to Fort Worth where reporters saw material that was claimed to be part of the recovered object. Marcel's statements contradicted those he made to the press in 1947.[80]
In November 1979, Marcel's first filmed interview was featured in a documentary titled "UFO's Are Real", co-written by Friedman.[81] The film had a limited release but was later syndicated for broadcasting. On February 28, 1980, sensationalist tabloid the National Enquirer brought large-scale attention to the Marcel story.[82] On September 20, 1980, the TV series In Search of... aired an interview where Marcel described his participation in the 1947 press conference:
In all his statements, Marcel consistently denied the presence of bodies.[84][85]
In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature of the crashed aircraft: a surveillance balloon from Project Mogul. Nevertheless, the Roswell incident continues to be of interest to the media, and conspiracy theories surrounding the event persist. Roswell has been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".[86]
In the 1980s and 90s, UFO conspiracy theories began to incorporate politics, alleging that the US Government was in league with an evil alien race. By way of contrast with prior UFO conspiracy theories about benevolent 'space brothers', author Jerome Clark named this new strain of thinking "ufology's dark side". [1]: 97
One source during this era was John Lear, son of Learjet founder William Powell Lear. Pilkington argues that in the second half of the 1980s, Lear was "probably the most influential source" of UFO research.[5]
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The late 1970s also saw the beginning of controversy centered on Paul Bennewitz of Albuquerque, New Mexico.[1]: 111 [5]
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Linda Moulton Howe is an advocate of conspiracy theories that cattle mutilations are of extraterrestrial origin and speculations that the U.S. government is involved with aliens.[1]: 86 [3]: 218 [5]
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| Bill Moore addresses MUFON, July 1 1989[2]: 8–9 [3]: 269 |
Majestic 12 was the purported organization behind faked government documents delivered anonymously to multiple ufologists in the 1980s.[87][a] All individuals who received the fake documents were connected to Bill Moore.[91] After the publication of The Roswell Incident, Richard C. Doty and other individuals presenting themselves as Air Force Intelligence Officers approached Moore.[92] They used the unfulfilled promise of hard evidence of extraterrestrial retrievals to recruit Moore, who kept notes on other ufologists and intentionally spread misinformation within the UFO community.[92] The earliest known reference to "MJ Twelve" comes from a 1981 document used in disinformation targeting Paul Bennewitz.[3]: 258–259 In 1982, Bob Pratt worked with Doty and Moore on The Aquarius Project, an unpublished science fiction manuscript about the purported organization.[93][3]: 259 Moore had initially planned to do a nonfiction book but lacked evidence.[3]: 259 During a phone call about the manuscript, Moore explained to Pratt that his goal was to "get as much of the story out with as little fiction as possible."[94] That same year, Moore, Friedman, and Jaime Shandera began work on a KPIX-TV UFO documentary, and Moore shared the original "MJ Twelve" memo mentioning Bennewitz. KPIX-TV contacted the Air Force, who noted many style and formatting errors; Moore admitted that he had typed and stamped the document as a facsimile.[3]: 259 On December 11, 1984, Shandera received the first anonymous package containing photographs of Majestic-12 documents just after a phone call from Moore.[95][96] The anonymously-delivered documents detailed the creation of a likely fictitious Majestic 12 group formed to handle Roswell debris.[97]
At a 1989 Mutual UFO Network conference, Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of extraterrestrials to UFO researchers, including Bennewitz.[15] Doty later said that he gave fabricated information to UFO researchers while working at Kirtland Air Force Base in the 1980s.[98] Roswell conspiracy proponents turned on Moore, but not the broader conspiracy theory.[99]
The Majestic-12 materials have been heavily scrutinized and discredited.[15] The various purported memos existed only as copies of photographs of documents.[100] Carl Sagan criticized the complete lack of provenance of documents "miraculously dropped on a doorstep like something out of a fairy story, perhaps 'The Elves and the Shoemaker'."[101] Researchers noted the idiosyncratic date format not found in government documents from the time they were purported to originate, but widely used in Moore's personal notes.[3]: 266 Some signatures appear to be photocopied from other documents.[102] For example, a signature from President Harry Truman is identical to one from an October 1, 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush.[103] The so-called Majestic 12 documents surfaced in 1982, suggesting that there was secret, high-level U.S. government interest in UFOs dating to the 1940s. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax.[104][105]
In 1986, conspiracy theorist George C. Andrews authored Extra-Terrestrials Among Us, accusing the CIA of the Kennedy assassination.[1]: 87–99, 137–38, 147 Scholar of extremism Michael Barkun notes that "Andrew's political views are almost indistinguishable from those associated with militias, only his placement of extraterrestrials at the pinnacle of conspiracies identifies him as a ufologist." [1] According to Barkun, "the publication of Extra-Terrestrials Among Us marked the beginning of a feverish period of UFO conspiracism, from 1986 to 1989.[1]: 32
Citing Andrews as a source, in 1991 the UFO conspiracy author Bill Cooper published the influential conspiracy work Behold a Pale Horse which claimed that Kennedy was killed after he "informed Majestic 12 that he intended to reveal the presence of aliens to the American people".[106][62] Behold a Pale Horse became 'wildly popular' with conspiracy theorists and went on to be one of the most-read books in the US prison system.[107][62]
On October 14, 1988, actor Mike Farrell hosted UFO Cover Up? Live, a two-hour television special "focusing on the government's handling of information regarding UFOs" and "whether there has been any suppression of evidence supporting the existence of UFOs".[2]: 20 [3]: 268 Drawing upon the work of ufologists Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera, the program interviewed shadow-clad informants Falcon (Richard Doty) and Condor about the Majestic 12 documents.[5]
Lear introduced journalist George Knapp to UFO whistle-blower Bob Lazar and his tales of Area 51.[108] In November 1989, Bob Lazar appeared in a special interview with Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss his alleged employment at S-4.[3]: 274 [109]
Lazar's claims were widely discredited. Lazar never obtained the degrees he claims to hold from MIT and Caltech.[110][111] By 1991, Nevada press reported tourists traveling to the Groom Lake region in hopes of glimpsing UFOs.[112]
Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is a 1995 pseudo-documentary containing grainy black and white footage of a hoaxed alien autopsy.[2]: 93 [113][114] In 1995, film purporting to show an alien autopsy conducted shortly after the Roswell incident was released by British entrepreneur Ray Santilli.[115] The footage aired on television networks around the world.[116]The program was an overnight sensation,[117] with Time magazine declaring that the film had sparked a debate "with an intensity not lavished on any home movie since the Zapruder film".[118]
The program was thoroughly debunked. The autopsy footage was filmed on an inexpensive set constructed in a London living room. Its alien bodies were hollow plaster casts filled with offal, sheep brains, and raspberry jam.[119] Multiple participants in Alien Autopsy stated that misleading editing had removed their opinions that the footage was a hoax.[118][117] Santilli admitted in 2006 that the film was a fake.[117]
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The Branton Files are a series of documents espousing various conspiracy theories circulated on the internet since at least the mid-1990s. They are most often attributed to Bruce Alan Walton who claims to have been a victim of alien abduction and had contact through "altered states of consciousness" with humans "living in the inner earth". The files have been characterized as "high fantasy" filled with "complex and convoluted conspiracism".[1]: 123 [15] The content influenced David Icke.[1]: 123–124
In the 1990s, author David Icke proposed that world elites are actually "reptilian" aliens.[1]: 68 Scholars note that the science-fiction franchise V had told a similar story from 1983 to 1984.[2]: 30
On December 16, 2017, The New York Times broke the story of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a Defense Intelligence Agency program to study "unidentified aerial phenomenon"[120] The program's director, Luis Elizondo, has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of non-human origin.[121][122][123] From 2019 to 2021, Dave Grusch was the representative of the National Reconnaissance Office to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force; Beginning in 2023, Grusch publicly claimed elements of the US government and its contractors were covering up evidence of UFOs and their reverse-engineering.[124][125][126]
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