Often, a UFO case can be explained as being a hoax or a misidentification of natural phenomena or a human-made object. During the early history of American UFO research, these were foremost among the possible prosaic explanations that investigators explored. Then, as the Cold War developed and the American public’s trust in in its governing bodies began to erode in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and the revelation of a secret CIA experimental mind-control program known as MKULTRA, some researchers began to explore another idea. Researchers such as Jacques Vallée and Nick Redfern have offered the suggestion that some UFO reports could be due to a military or intelligence agency conducting psychological warfare experiments, sometimes on it own citizens.
The idea that UFOs could be used for the purpose of psychological warfare or “PSYOPs” goes all the way back to the days of flying saucers. After the December 27, 1949 announcement that Project Grudge, the second incarnation of the Air Force’s UFO investigation after Project Sign, would be ended (the investigation continued in a limited capacity until its revival and eventual renaming as Project Blue Book in 1952) a “final” report was released. Among the conclusions (pages vi and vii) is this: “Planned release of aerial objects coupled with the release of psychological propaganda could case mass hysteria.” There is the recommendation that “the agencies interested in psychological warfare be informed of the results of this study.”
A paper dated April 14, 1950, was prepared for the U.S. Air Force by the Rand Corporation titled, The Exploitation of Superstitions for the Purposes of Psychological Warfare. Written by Jean Hungerford, it explores superstitious beliefs during WWII in Germany and other countries, post-war superstitions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and how superstitious beliefs of adversaries might be advantageously manipulated. On page 16 of the document (page 20 of the pdf), there is a description of a device created by the British Army to scare peasants in the Italian Mountains. Described as a “gigantic scarecrow about 12 feet high and able to stagger forward under its own power and emit frightful flashes and bangs,” it was deployed in “several Italian Sicilian villages.”
The description of the “scarecrow” might remind some readers of the Flatwoods Monster, which was reportedly seen in Flatwoods, West Virginia by six boys and the mother of two of them in 1952. As this was only two years after the Rand paper was delivered to the Air Force, which did take an interest in the case, one might wonder to what extent the Air Force might have been involved, and indeed, Nick Redfern has.
On Thursday, September 23, 2010, Redfern posted “Is This the Flatwoods Monster?” on his blog site, monsterusa.blogspot.com. In his posting, Redfern references the account of the “scarecrow “ in the Rand paper and speculates that the U.S. Air force, following the British Army’s lead, conducted a test with their own “scarecrow” in West Virginia. Redfern makes note of the similarity between the remote villages in Italy and rural Flatwoods.
There is a 1954 CIA document in the form of a telegram from PBSUCESS HQ in Florida to CIA stations in Guatemala suggesting the use of a UFO story as an operational tool. PBSUCCESS was the code name for an operation that resulted in a coup that ousted Guatemalan President Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. As a means to draw attention away from a “white paper” released by the Guatemalan government alleging an international conspiracy with plans to overthrow the existing government, there is this suggestion: “If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.”
An example of the CIA using UFOs as a cover story was revealed in a study written by Gerald K. Haines titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90” and published in Studies in Intelligence Vol. 1, No. 1, 1997. In 1955, the CIA began flying the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance plane and later the SR-71. In the section of the study where Haines discusses this he states “According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States.”
Another West Virginia location has been suggested as an area where a PSYOP might have been conducted. From November 15, 1966 to December 15, 1967, many people reported seeing a winged, red-eyed humanoid that became known as the Mothman, UFOs, and Men in Black throughout the area of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Many of the Mothman sightings were reported to have been in the area of an abandoned munitions production facility run by the U.S. Army during WWII. This link with the military and the Men in Black reports led William Grabowski to speculate in a four-part article, “Mothman Redux” published on the UFO Digest website on August 13, 2012, that a PSYOP might have been behind the reports. To support this, he quotes John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies, from the September 2007 issue of Fate magazine:
I returned to Point Pleasant several times in 1967, learning more about the phenomenon with each trip. Several contactees (people who thought they had met the flying saucer occupants) had emerged and I was hypnotizing them and studying them carefully. I found these people had two levels of memory. The first level, the surface level, recalled under hypnosis a fascinating adventure, usually of being taken aboard a wonderful flying saucer. But the hidden level, which was difficult to get at and usually took several hypnotic sessions before it could be reached, rejected the false memory (confabulation) and painted a different picture. Most of these contactees had been transported to a van or house where they were subjected to brain-washing techniques and injected with an unknown substance. They were given a confabulation to remember and were released.
Government involvement in alien abductions has been fertile ground for speculation. Jacques Vallée, in his 2019 book Forbidden Science: Volume Four, stated “I have secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.” Jack Brewer, whose 2016 book, The Greys Have Been Framed inspired this blog, describes on his site, The UFO Trail, emailing Vallée asking him if he could provide a copy of the document explaining “I hope you can empathize with the potential weight of the statement and why researchers would be quite interested in establishing facts surrounding its circumstances.” Vallée didn’t produce the document and Brewer sent a follow-up email. According to Brewer, Vallée replied:
Most of the documents I have referred to, or used in the compilation of my diaries, have been donated to a University with a 10-year embargo on access — specifically to avoid the kind of spurious quarrels that erupt in ufology on a regular basis. So I expect that historical details like these will see the light of day in due course.