The Wall Street Journal’s UFO Coverage: A Case Study on Meta-Disinformation

For the past three years, I’ve been researching and writing a book on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). It's been a true adventure that has been both intellectually stimulating and increasingly disheartening with regard to the state of modern national security reporting. While attending an academic conference on the subject, The Wall Street Journal published an article that exemplified many of the issues I’ve come to recognize through my work.

The piece was filled with demonstrably false claims, presented without skepticism, and accepted uncritically as fact, despite originating from officials within institutions that have a well-documented history of misleading the public on this very topic.

It is a documented and provable fact that public-facing UFO and UAP programs have functioned less as a legitimate research initiative and more as a mechanism of perception management, purposefully designed to mislead, obscure, or deflect. Ironically, the article is on this very topic. Against that backdrop, it was alarming to see two national security reporters, and seemingly the editors at The Wall Street Journal, publish such claims without a single visible act of fact-checking or pushback.

Time and again, I’ve been struck by how mainstream national security reporters fall short of basic due diligence when covering UAP. Too often, stories are constructed to reinforce a preferred narrative—whether to validate or debunk the phenomenon—rather than to seek truth through rigorous evidence, historical grounding, or meaningful source scrutiny.

I repeatedly find myself asking: why am I, a cybersecurity researcher with no institutional media backing, doing more thorough vetting and cross-verification for a book I'm writing as essentially a hobby than reporters with access, credentials, and the explicit mandate to investigate these topics?

I’ve been continually blown away by the people I’ve managed to speak to on the topic, and I’d have to assume the Wall Street Journal has a much easier time getting high level officials to talk with them than I’ve had. So why did they not get any critical perspective?

There’s a saying that cautions against attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I don’t believe the reporters were witting participants in an information operation. Rather, I suspect they hold biases against the UAP issue. Biases that prevented them from engaging in the kind of serious research that would have revealed contradictions in their sources’ claims, and would have allowed them to push back appropriately. Had they looked more closely, they would have found that decades-old public documents already debunk several of the article’s central assertions. Proper research would have shielded them from the criticism they now face.

This pattern of uncritical amplification is not unique to UFO reporting. In an era of rising authoritarianism, driven in part by disinformation disseminated through compliant media, it is imperative that journalists, especially those on the national security beat, learn to push back on official narratives. The costs of journalistic failure are not hypothetical. Similar dynamics underpinned the cascade of misinformation that helped justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

It is in that spirit that I offer this case study of The Wall Street Journal’s recent article, an analysis of how it not only recycles discredited talking points but also introduces new disinformation under the guise of investigative reporting. This is not merely a rebuttal to a single piece of journalism; it is an examination of how ostensibly credible media can become vectors of disinformation, undermining democratic oversight while masquerading as accountability.

Introduction: Information Disorder and the Modern Media Landscape

In the age of digital virality and fragmented trust in institutions, the need for rigorous media literacy is more urgent than ever. Central to understanding today’s disinformation challenges is the framework of Information Disorder, introduced by Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan. Their typology outlines three key categories:

• Disinformation: Deliberately false content designed to deceive and cause harm.
• Misinformation: Inaccurate content shared without harmful intent.
• Malinformation: True information used out of context or in ways that cause harm.

I like Wardle and Derakhshan's framework because it is both simple, while handling the nuance of information ecosystems in which content can migrate fluidly between categories depending on intent, context, and interpretation. This model has since become foundational in analyzing not only overt propaganda but also more subtle techniques of influence and perception management.

The DISARM Framework

To further contextualize the dynamics at play in the Wall Street Journal article, I thought it was prudent to apply the DISARM framework, a structured model for identifying and countering disinformation developed by practitioners and researchers. DISARM (Detect, Identify, Signal, Assess, Respond, Mitigate) outlines the lifecycle of disinformation campaigns and offers a taxonomy for tracing how falsehoods are seeded, spread, and entrenched. If you work in cybersecurity, think of MITRE's ATT&CK Framework but for information operations.

• Detect refers to the initial recognition of potential disinformation signals in media content or social discourse.
• Identify involves attributing the source or intent behind the narrative, including potential actors or coordinated influence campaigns.
• Signal pertains to raising awareness within stakeholder networks, media, academia, civil society, about the existence and nature of the threat.
• Assess involves analyzing the scale, impact, and velocity of the disinformation, including its alignment with geopolitical or institutional agendas.
• Respond is the deployment of countermeasures, fact-checks, and truth-telling interventions to disrupt the narrative.
• Mitigate focuses on longer-term resilience strategies, educational, institutional, and infrastructural, to reduce vulnerability to similar campaigns.

Applied to the WSJ article, this framework clarifies how a legacy disinformation campaign, once orchestrated to minimize public concern about UFOs, has evolved into a reflexive media posture that continues to recycle government narratives under the guise of “skepticism.”

Rather than scrutinizing sources with documented histories of deception, the article amplifies their claims without interrogation, failing at every stage of the DISARM cycle. It does not Detect long-standing inconsistencies, nor Identify the actors’ vested interests; it fails to Signal to readers the contested nature of its assertions, and offers no Assessment of historical counter-evidence. In doing so, it requires an external response and underlines the urgent need to mitigate future journalistic complicity in state-sponsored perception management.

Framing the Problem: UFOs and the State-Sponsored Disinformation Legacy

The case of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) represents a unique intersection of national security secrecy, media framing, and historical perception management. For over 75 years, U.S. government agencies have orchestrated an elaborate campaign of obfuscation, misdirection, and public manipulation around this issue. In every historical case, the framing and objectives of these groups was to downplay and obfuscate the topic.

Early Projects such as Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book were more about public relations than they were about genuine inquiry. The 1953 Robertson Panel, for example, had a well documented predetermined outcome to downplay the topic. Robertson Panel member Thornton Page recounts:

H. P. Robertson told us in the first private (no outsiders) session that our job was to reduce public concern, and show that UFO reports could be explained by conventional reasoning.

There was even a recommendation that this was to be implemented with the help of mass media outlets and even figures like Walt Disney. As part of the Robertson Panel's meeting minutes:

Also, someone familiar with mass communications techniques, perhaps an advertising expert, would be helpful. Arthur Godfrey was mentioned as possibly a valuable channel of communication reaching a mass audience of certain levels. Dr. Berkner suggested the U. S. Navy (ONR) Special Devices Center, Sands Point, L. I., as a potentially valuable organization to assist in such an educational program. The teaching techniques used by this agency for aircraft identification during the past war was cited as an example of a similar educational task. The Jam Handy Co., which made World War II training films (motion-picture and slide strips) was also suggested, as well as Walt Disney, Inc. animated cartoons.

That legacy lives on. Former AARO Director Dr. Kirkpatrick himself,

"As an intelligence officer, I would expect all of you to expect me to lie to you."

The line was meant as gallows humor; it instead underscored why so many observers still distrust the Pentagon’s newest UAP shop.

That distrust however seems well founded based on what members of Congress learned behind closed doors at FBI Headquarters. In mid-May 2025, House and Senate UAP-caucus lawmakers received back-to-back SCIF briefings revealing that the Bureau has maintained a parallel and, by their telling, far more capable UAP investigative cell. Within days:

• 15 May 2025 – Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: Emerging from FBI HQ, Luna said the briefing “makes us reconsider AARO,” hinting that the Bureau looked more credible — and cheaper — than the Pentagon office.
• 15-17 May – Rep. Eric Burlison: Told reporters the FBI team “actually [has] seen objects” and bluntly added that the Bureau “wants AARO’s funding.”
• 29 May – Rep. Luna: On X: “Defund AARO. The office is a spending problem; the FBI is doing the real work.”

These are not fringe accusations; they are matters of historical record. In this context, the Wall Street Journal’s article, "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology," must be evaluated not as a neutral act of reporting, but as a case study in meta-disinformation, or disinformation about disinformation.

Primary Disinformation Tactics Aligned to Frameworks

Disinformation: Provably False Narrative on Partisan Focus

The Wall Street Journal frames the contemporary UAP discourse as a predominantly MAGA-aligned conspiracy. However, this framing is demonstrably false. The bipartisan nature of recent UAP legislation is clear: the landmark UAP Disclosure Act, also nicknamed the "Schumer Amendment," was introduced with support from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has been among the most vocal champions of AARO's formation and oversight. Far from being a partisan issue, UAP inquiry has become a rare area of cross-party unity. This is immediately obvious to anyone that actually watched any of the recent hearings on UAP and contrast them with all other House Oversight Committee hearings.

This is not a matter of interpretation but of public record. Quotes from Democratic leaders reinforce this reality:

• "There's been some bipartisan efforts around greater disclosure that are starting to kick in. Additionally, another reason why this is happening right now is that this is a story of organizing. I don't know what to tell you. People may want to be cynical about that, but truly, there are a lot of people in this country who are very interested in this topic, and there has been increasing pressure and organizing that transcends party lines. And that has resulted in the inclusion of several UAP disclosure requirements that Congress included in past defense authorizations. And so there have actually been task forces that were mandated by Congress in recent years, and there's more legislation this year. And there have also been mandated disclosure that has really been the first of its kind in a long time. So anyways, what do I think? Do I think UAPs are real? Are UAPs real? UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous or Aerial Phenomena. But people say anomalous because now it's water or air. Do I believe that there are phenomena that have been identified by pilots, both either commercial, military, et cetera, that have gone unidentified? Sure. Yeah. I think so. I think that's fair to say. We heard from some pretty credible witnesses. One is a commander who has verified video that is unidentified. So by definition, there are phenomena that have gone unidentified. There are plenty of UAP incidents which have been identified, but there are some that have been unidentified."—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC)
• “Today we know better. UAPs are unexplained, it is true, but they are real. They need to be investigated, and any threats they pose need to be mitigated.” —Rep. André Carson
• “That is, instruments report there is something there... measurable by multiple instruments... inconsistent with what we know of physics or science more broadly.” —Rep. Adam Schiff
• “Any stigma that prevents our military from reporting this data... is a national security threat.” —Rep. Jim Himes
• “There is footage and records of objects in the skies... We can't explain how they moved... They did not have an easily explainable pattern.” —President Barack Obama

After leaving meetings with Oversight bodies such as the Intelligence Community Inspectors General (IC IG), there was bipartisan consensus that there was something to the claims. The WSJ's selective portrayal exemplifies disinformation by false context and scapegoating as described in the DISARM framework. It is my personal opinion that this is likely done purposefully to try and drive a partisan wedge into the issue in an effort to get it to "go away."

Disinformation & Malinformation: The Malmstrom Air Force Base Incident as a Secret E.M.P. Test

The Wall Street Journal’s suggestion that the 1967 missile shutdown at Malmstrom Air Force Base was caused by a portable electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device is technically absurd. This narrative, echoed from statements by former AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, relies on an oversimplified description of the Transportable Electromagnetic Pulse Simulator (TEMPS) that omits critical engineering and operational constraints.

The TEMPS system, developed under contract with the Defense Nuclear Agency and detailed in a 1973 final report, was a massive industrial simulator designed to replicate the effects of high-altitude nuclear EMPs. Far from “portable” in the colloquial sense, the TEMPS required:

• Dielectric support towers elevating its antenna centerline 20 meters (≈ 65.6 feet) above the ground.
• A 1,000-foot-long, 30-foot-diameter cylindrical cage antenna suspended between towers.
• At least ten massive concrete footings, each measuring 5 ft × 4 ft × 20 in and weighing over 3,200 pounds, totaling more than 32,000 pounds of anchoring infrastructure.
• Heavy-duty crane operations to erect the A-frame towers and tension guy-lines anchored by 7,200-pound blocks—described explicitly in the report as requiring on-site rigging over multiple days .
• A central pulser unit over 8.5 feet long, housed in a biconical transmission cage, requiring precise synchronization of bilateral Marx generators to produce its ≥6 MV pulses.
• Field output of ≥50 kV/m at 50 meters, with an 8-nanosecond rise time and a 300-nanosecond decay constant—highly localized and devastating to unshielded electronics .

A full report of the TEMPS requirements can be found here: https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/temps-transportable-electromagnetic-pulse-simulator-final-reports-1973/

This system, while technically “transportable” in the military engineering sense, would dominate the landscape of any missile facility. Suggesting it could be secretly deployed and operated near an active nuclear missile control center without notice—especially by alert security personnel who explicitly reported witnessing a glowing aerial object—is unfounded.

The implausibility compounds when considering operational behavior: if this was a scheduled test, why did Strategic Air Command issue a telex expressing grave concern that ten missiles failed with “no apparent reason”? The document read:

“THE FACT THAT NO APPARENT REASON FOR THE LOSS OF TEN MISSILES CAN BE READILY IDENTIFIED IS CAUSE FOR GRAVE CONCERN TO THIS HEADQUARTERS.”

It should be noted this information has been out in public for quite some time, is not in dispute, and is from the time of the incident.

The WSJ article also fails to question why the U.S. would conduct such a test on live ICBMs, something that would risk both mission capability and international treaty compliance, when dummy warheads or decommissioned systems could serve the same test purpose without catastrophic downside. It seems like a missed opportunity to find out if this sort of thing is still being done today.

Furthermore, the physics of EMP further discredit the explanation. A high-voltage pulse of the kind TEMPS delivers causes irreversible damage to unshielded systems. Yet Malmstrom’s affected missiles were returned to operational readiness within hours. That temporal mismatch alone invalidates the EMP hypothesis. Again, it should be noted that documentation from Boeing has been in the public domain for quite some time on this that was conveniently left out.

There were about five persons in all that were sent out. After a week in the field, the team returned and pooled their data. At the outset, the team quickly noticed a lack of anything that would come close to explaining why the event occurred. There were no significant failures, engineering data, or findings that would explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert. This indeed turned out to be a rare event and not encountered before.

Critically, under the AEC–DoD Agreement of March 21, 1953, any testing involving atomic weapons (including systems connected to them) required mutual written authorization. No such documentation was cited or presented—only an unverified image of a technical manual. Did the WSJ ask for these documents? And if so what was the response?

This entire framing by the Wall Street Journal represents a textbook case of what Lewandowsky et al. describe as strategic misinformation, a selectively coherent story that retrofits convenient narratives onto unresolved events, effectively crowding out more plausible or documented explanations. As their research in Psychological Science in the Public Interest notes, such “coherence gaps” are often filled by misinformation precisely because they’re easier to process than nuanced truths.

In addition, the article demonstrates what Wardle and Derakhshan would classify as malinformation: selectively true technical details (i.e., TEMPS can be disassembled and relocated) presented without context in a way that distorts reality. By ignoring the literal tonnage, physical footprint, manpower, and logistical complexity, the piece recasts a multi-day construction site into a phantom pop-up device.

In short, the Malmstrom EMP test theory isn’t just unsupported, it is structurally and physically untenable. Its inclusion without skepticism or caveat exemplifies media complicity in spreading misinformation through a veneer of technical specificity.

This contradiction exemplifies strategic misinformation and the continued influence effect identified by Lewandowsky et al. Misleading but coherent narratives endure because they offer explanatory closure. When trusted outlets propagate these narratives, the effect is compounded by source amnesia: the audience forgets the historic unreliability of Pentagon claims.

The WSJ's lack of skepticism amplifies the problem.

Disinformation: Conflicting Statements and Evidence

Following the release of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)’s first historical report in March 2024, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of AARO, addressed claims regarding secret U.S. government programs related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). He emphasized that many of these allegations stem from a small, interconnected group of individuals engaged in circular reporting. It would see counterproductive to do this if you knew it would be contradicted in the second report.

Following AARO’s release of its Historical Record Report in March 2024, Kirkpatrick embarked on a high-profile media tour—including an op-ed in Scientific American—in which he repeatedly downplayed the scale and credibility of whistleblower claims. Rather than suggesting a decades-long institutional deception, he asserted that the UAP crash retrieval narrative arose from a small cluster of “interconnected believers” recycling each other’s unverified stories. As he put it:

“In many respects, the narrative is a textbook example of circular reporting, with each person relaying what they heard, but the information often ultimately being sourced to the same small group of individuals.”

Kirkpatrick went further, characterizing these individuals as promoting “a whirlwind of tall tales, fabrication and secondhand or thirdhand retellings,” and suggested that many allegations stemmed from inadvertent disclosures of conventional R&D efforts, misinterpreted by those predisposed to belief. This was central to his media messaging after the release of AARO’s first historical report. To push this framing prior to releasing a counter narrative only serves to muddy the water at best.

Further complicating the narrative is the institutional narrowing of the hazing explanation to the Air Force. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon noted in a 2022 Debrief article, “Why is the Air Force AWOL on the UAP Issue?”, the Air Force has remained conspicuously absent from recent UAP transparency efforts. Most credible whistleblower claims and sightings have come from the Navy, intelligence services, or civilian contractors—not from the Air Force. To suggest now that a culture-bound Air Force prank explains decades of cross-agency testimony risks functioning less as a clarifying account than as a diversionary myth. It should also be noted that the UAP Task Force was ran out of the Navy and created by Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist.

This tension suggests a strategic communications recalibration rather than a genuine correction of the record. The sudden appearance of a retroactive explanation—delivered anonymously, unsupported by documentation, and only after critical coverage—bears the hallmarks of what DISARM classifies as narrative laundering: a shift from outright denial to alternative mythmaking, designed to reabsorb disruptive evidence into an acceptable institutional frame.

While it is entirely possible that “Yankee Blue” hazing occurred, and that its delayed publication reflects bureaucratic caution rather than deliberate obfuscation, the sequencing and inconsistency remain troubling. If this story was known at the time of AARO’s first report, and is now being presented as a primary explanatory mechanism, it should have been disclosed transparently and with evidentiary support—not dangled post hoc as a convenient narrative patch.

Applying the DISARM Framework

The DISARM framework (Detect, Identify, Signal, Assess, Respond, Mitigate) offers a practical structure for dissecting influence operations. Applied here, it reveals how the WSJ article recycles Pentagon talking points while masquerading as a critical exposé. Each phase of DISARM can be mapped onto elements of the article, showing not only the tactical use of information disorder techniques but also their likely consequences.

DETECT: Recognizing Historical and Contemporary Patterns

Historical records indicate that military programs routinely engaged in perception management. For example, Project Blue Book was described by Dr. J. Allen Hynek as more concerned with deflection than investigation. The WSJ article omits this well-documented context, instead portraying the Pentagon as a reluctant confessor rather than an active disinformation participant.

IDENTIFY: Tactics of False Context and Scapegoating

The article’s alignment with a false partisan narrative is a clear example of false context and scapegoating. Misrepresenting bipartisan legislative action as a MAGA-driven conspiracy not only distorts the issue but discredits credible national security concerns.

SIGNAL: Strategic Narrative Injection

The EMP and "Yankee Blue" explanations act as narrative signals intended to overwrite existing public perceptions with new, unverified accounts that conveniently defuse controversy while affirming Pentagon denials.

ASSESS: Evaluating Evidence and Technical Claims

As shown in the Malmstrom example, the article fails basic evidentiary standards. The claim of a portable EMP device is contradicted by both physics and logistics. No corroborating data is presented, and the supposed technical explanations are uncritically accepted.

RESPOND: Challenging Inconsistencies and Omissions

The contradiction between AARO’s public report and the anonymous revelations in the WSJ piece is glaring. This discrepancy demands explanation. Journalism that fails to interrogate such contradictions fails the public.

MITIGATE: Recommendations for Responsible Journalism

Rather than mitigate information disorder, the WSJ article amplifies it. Responsible reporting would include:

• Corroborating extraordinary claims with documentary evidence.
• Consulting independent experts on technical topics.
• Cross-referencing historical records, like the SAC telex from Malmstrom.
• Acknowledging the bipartisan nature of recent UAP investigations.
• Recognizing the Pentagon’s historical role in strategic deception.

Recommendations for Journalists Covering this Topic in the Future

One of the biggest challenges in this field is the deliberate mountain of noise—low-quality, easily debunked claims amplified to deter serious academics and journalists. Still, when you interview an official, a few core questions and techniques can cut through the static:

Trust No One

As Fox Mulder famously warned, kindness doesn’t preclude ulterior motives. Treat every source,no matter how friendly, as potentially self-interested.

Learn From History

Begin with basic due diligence and refuse to repeat past mistakes. History shows that prior UFO programs focused on perception management. Identify the stock explanations, weather, missing data, classified sources, and ask direct questions that challenge them.

Learn the Basics of Existing Public Sensor Capabilities

When an official claims “there’s no data” or a sighting can’t be verified, follow up: Which sensor systems should have detected something? Were those systems off, or is the data classified? If data is withheld, why? If it truly doesn’t exist, why not?

We live in an era of pervasive surveillance—so ask how unknown drones or craft can loiter over nuclear sites or carrier groups without leaving a multi-spectrum trail. The United States can, according to the President, pinpoint where a drone launched even if it lifted off from someone’s garage; why was this missed?

Understand the Logical Implications of each Claim

If officials hint these UAP are adversary technology (AARO’s acting director has said some cases look like “advanced adversarial technology”), then we have witnessed breakthrough craft in our airspace for decades without comprehension. That would rival the greatest intelligence failures in modern history. Ask when they realized when the U.S. had been technologically leapfrogged, and how they reconcile it with our multi-trillion-dollar defense apparatus. Keep in mind, the most well documented incident was now 21 years ago.

If, on the other hand, the craft are our own black projects, then a potentially illegal secret program has evaded oversight while Congress still lacks answers about UAP origins. Either way, the implications deserve airtime and actual investigation, not a shrug.

Verify technical or scientific claims offline

If an official cites, for example, a weather phenomenon to explain an incident, consult independent experts and open-source data. Many such explanations dissolve under scrutiny.

A perfect historical example of this is the Air Force’s “Roswell Case Closed” report which asserted that a Project Mogul balloon hovered over the ranch for days.

PBS NOVA’s primer on the jet stream reminds us that upper-tropospheric winds average about 92 mph and can exceed 300 mph in summer. A balloon at that altitude would cover 1,000–2,000 miles a day. The claim it “hovered” over the same cattle pasture for two weeks, let alone a month, clashes with basic atmospheric physics. Likewise, the suggestion that recovered bodies were from Operation High Dive anthropomorphic dummies ignores that those tests began nearly a decade after Roswell.

Does any of this prove aliens? No. But being able to ask informed questions is more likely to get you the truth.

Push back in real-time when possible, but absolutely do follow-ups

If you find evidence contradicting what a source told you, go back to them before publishing. Put the conflicting facts in front of them and allow them to respond or clarify. If they can’t, that tells you something. Include those contradictions in your piece rather than smoothing them over.

Conclusion: Journalism at a Crossroads

The Wall Street Journal article in question is a perfect example of how modern Journalists and its Editors are failing us. It is a textbook example of how legacy media can become a conduit for official narratives that only add more confusion. By failing to critically interrogate its sources and framing, the article recycles old tactics under the guise of transparency. The media, and outlets like the The Wall Street Journal must do better.