The Pentagon's UFO Coverup

Summary

The Journal.: "The Pentagon's UFO Coverup"

Hosted by: Jessica Mendoza
Guests: Joel Shechtman (WSJ national security reporter)
Date: October 17th, 2025

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Overview

This episode investigates the reality behind long-standing claims of U.S. government UFO coverups. Drawing on exclusive reporting from Joel Shechtman and discussions with officials, the episode explores the Pentagon’s actual role in fueling UFO myths—not to hide aliens, but to disguise sensitive military programs. The story blends myth, scientific investigation, military secrecy, and human psychology, revealing that the real “coverup” is stranger—and sometimes more mundane—than fiction.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Rise in Government UFO Scrutiny

[00:05-01:16]

• UFOs, or "UAPs" (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), have shifted from conspiracy theory to serious congressional and Defense Department scrutiny.
• Whistleblowers have alleged the existence of secret government alien programs, including claims about recovered alien craft and even bodies.
• Joel Shechtman: “You’ve had a number of congressional hearings where these whistleblowers have come public saying that they had become aware of secret alien programs within the government.” [00:35]

2. Pop Culture, UFOs, and Roswell Metal

[03:17-06:43]

• The line between fact and myth often blurs in UFO culture.
• The story of mysterious “Roswell metal” begins with a 1990s episode of Art Bell’s Coast to Coast radio show, which shaped the mythos around crashed alien craft.
• The metal’s journey: from Art Bell to various UFO researchers, to Tom DeLonge (lead singer of Blink-182 and founder of To The Stars), and then to military contractors and the Pentagon.
• Jessica Mendoza: “The package Art Bell received back in the 90s contained a few shards of metal. They immediately piqued his interest.” [04:37]

3. Reverse Engineering at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works

[07:10-07:46]

• Lockheed’s Skunk Works, long the subject of UFO lore, was actually asked by the Army (at To The Stars’ request) to analyze the mysterious metal.
• Joel Shechtman: “So you actually had the story kind of become true because now they actually were trying to reverse engineer this, this piece of metal like in the very laboratory where that was said to have happened.” [07:10]
• Jessica Mendoza: "Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy." [07:40]

4. The Pentagon's Modern UFO Program: AARO

[07:46-10:22]

• In 2022, the Pentagon set up the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), tasked with investigating reported sightings and allegations about secret alien technologies.
• Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist and intelligence veteran, was chosen to lead the effort—granted unprecedented access to classified files and facilities.
• Jessica Mendoza: "So just to be clear, the Pentagon was asking Kirkpatrick to look into sort of the government itself to see if there was evidence of a cover up of alien technology." [10:12]
• Joel Shechtman: “Exactly. And what was extraordinary about it was that he was given, like, full access to, like, the files of the CIA and the military, and he was given the power to go to these type of secret sites.” [10:22]

5. The Surprising Reality Behind UFO Incidents

[12:05-14:32]

• Most UFO reports had prosaic explanations (balloons, drones, birds), but some, like the 1967 glowing orb disabling nuclear missiles, were more mysterious.
• Kirkpatrick uncovered that these incidents were actually the result of secret Air Force tests with electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generators designed to test system resilience during the Cold War.
• Joel Shechtman: “They would glow, like, bright orange or red, and then they would shoot an electromagnetic pulse that would really look like...a bolt of lightning. And that surge...could easily shut down like the hardware that you would need in order to launch these missiles.” [13:57]
• The secrecy led to confusion and the spread of extraterrestrial interpretations among military witnesses.

6. Intentional Disinformation: Project "Yankee Blue"

[14:51-16:05]

• The Pentagon’s disinformation stretched beyond confusion—sometimes it was part of hazing or indoctrination rituals.
• “Project Yankee Blue” involved showing new officers a fake flying saucer photo and telling them it was classified alien technology, binding them to secrecy under threat of severe consequences.
• Joel Shechtman: “What Kirkpatrick found was that this was a hazing ritual that went back, like, decades and really continued until, like, his investigation discovered it.” [15:48]

7. The "Coverup": Pentagon-Driven Mythmaking

[16:34-17:37]

• The AARO report concluded there was no evidence of extraterrestrial technology or contacts. However, it omitted the Pentagon’s own active participation in spreading UFO myths.
• Joel Shechtman: “In a sense, they’re trying to blame, you know, like, a few bad apples or some people that, you know, just were like, true believers. But what they left out of that report. And what we found was that it was clear that the Pentagon bared like pretty significant responsibility for the spreading of the story itself. Right.” [17:19]

8. UFO Believers' Reactions and Lingering Mysteries

[17:37-18:43]

• Many UFO enthusiasts remain deeply skeptical; some even believe reporting about the Pentagon’s disinformation is itself another layer of conspiracy.
• Joel Shechtman: “…they believed that the information … had been sort of fed to us as like just another layer of the cover up.... The truth is sometimes a lot stranger than fiction.... You could understand why people would be mistrustful of that explanation.” [17:48]

9. The Truth About the “Alien Metal”

[18:43-19:40]

• As part of Kirkpatrick’s investigation, the infamous Roswell metal was sent for extensive tests at a top government lab.
• Result: It was not extraterrestrial, nor did it possess special properties. It was likely a byproduct of WWII-era military manufacturing experiments with lightweight metal alloys.
• Jessica Mendoza: “It’s not some alien technology that has anti gravity properties. Most likely it came from some manufacturing tests during the World War II era, back when they were trying to create a new lightweight metal for military equipment.” [18:43]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On myth becoming reality:

  • “So you actually had the story kind of become true because now they actually were trying to reverse engineer this, this piece of metal like in the very laboratory where that was said to have happened.”
    — Joel Shechtman [07:10]

• On the Pentagon’s access and scope:

  • “…he was given the power to go to these type of secret sites, you know, to scour Area 51 and other kind of secret locations that we don't even know about. Right. And see, like, you know, what is it that's actually going on there.”
    — Joel Shechtman [10:22]

• On the bizarre nature of the real coverup:

  • “The truth is sometimes a lot stranger than fiction. And I think the idea that you'd have like a hazing program like that that would go on for 40 years, like trying to deceive people in your own military. You know, in a way it's even like stranger than believing in aliens, right?”
    — Joel Shechtman [17:48]

• On the government’s final finding:

  • “It is important to underscore that to date, Arrow has not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.”
    — Arrow representative, quoted by Joel Shechtman [16:34]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:05: Introduction and cultural backdrop of UFO myths
• 03:17: How Roswell metal started a decades-long trail of belief
• 07:10: The Skunk Works self-fulfilling prophecy
• 08:34: The formation and mission of AARO
• 12:05: UAP investigations and Cold War incident revelation
• 14:51: Project Yankee Blue and Pentagon hazing
• 16:34: Congressional findings and continued mythmaking
• 18:43: Final dispelling of the Roswell metal mystery

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Conclusion

The episode reveals that the real Pentagon UFO coverup wasn’t about hiding proof of aliens—but about exploiting extraterrestrial myths for national security purposes, internal secrecy, and sometimes elaborate hazing. The ongoing power of belief, uncertainty, and myth in both government and public circles means that the story of UFOs—and the government’s role in their shadows—remains as compelling as ever.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

Has the United States government ever made contact with UFOs? That question has been on Americans minds for decades. The idea that the US Government is hiding some truth about alien life has long been the stuff of entertainment, fringe groups and conspiracy theories. But more recently, that claim has gotten much more serious attention, including from the government itself. Our colleague Joel Shechtman, who covers national security, has been reporting on it for.

[Joel Shechtman]

The past three years or so. You've had a number of congressional hearings where these whistleblowers have come public saying that they had become aware of secret alien programs within the government.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?

[Joel Shechtman]

Something I can't discuss in a public setting. That they knew that, you know, the government might even have some form of alien program bodies and their possession.

[Jessica Mendoza]

If you believe we have crashed craft stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?

[Joel Shechtman]

As I've stated publicly already in my.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

Yeah. As Joel has been digging into the government's growing interest in UFOs, he's gained access to an unprecedented Pentagon investigation. The probe looked into reported alien sightings and allegations that the government has been hiding secret alien programs. What Joel learned is that there was a cover up having to do with aliens. Just not the COVID up people expected. Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, October 17th. Coming up on the show, the Real UFO cover up inside the US government. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

The following story comes from conversations with more than 20 current and former US officials, scientists and military contractors involved in the Pentagon's investigation. Joel and other Journal reporters also reviewed Thousands of pages of documents, emails, and text messages. In digging through that Pentagon investigation, Joel fell into some serious wormholes. One of the stranger stories he encountered has to do with an old radio show that aired out of small town Nevada.

[Joel Shechtman]

So at the mid-90s, there was this show on the radio which I remember I used to listen to in high school. It was called coast to coast with Art Bell. Glad to be with you. My name is Art Bell. It was all about paranormal stuff. And people would call in and say that they had met, like, ghosts and space aliens. Where are you calling from, sir? Missoula. Missoula, Montana. All right. Have you ever considered the possibility that these creatures are not aliens, by the way? Maybe they're from the future. And one day in the mail, you know, in the 90s got this package that somebody said that they had got it from their father or their grandfather, I want to say. And it was said to be like pieces of the spaceship that had crashed outside of Roswell.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Roswell is a legendary place in the world of UFO conspiracy theories, tied to a seminal story about a crashed alien spaceship. It was the kind of thing Art Bell and his followers discussed incessantly. The package Art Bell Bell received back in the 90s contained a few shards of metal. They immediately piqued his interest.

[Joel Shechtman]

You know, these pieces of metal really looked extraordinary. They looked like they might have been a little burnt from, you know, whatever crash there was. And over the years, this metal kind of got passed between different, like, ufologists who had different theories about it. They would do these, like, different, like, kind of different tests on it. And it really was almost like it had, like, a talismatic kind of property within the UFO community.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The metal seemed to be a combination of magnesium, zinc, and bismuth, and they were mixed in a way that UFO believers said could not have come from an earthly source. Obviously, that had to mean it came from outer space. Over time, UFOlogists came up with a theory.

[Joel Shechtman]

So they believed that it couldn't have been something of this world and that it might have properties that would allow levitation, like anti gravity, or that it could have properties that would allow invisibility, that it could turn craft that was built out of it, like, invisible.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The metal got passed from one researcher to another for years, and several pieces of it eventually ended up in the possession of, believe it or not, the lead singer of the pop punk band Blink 182, Tom DeLonge. DeLonge has sung about aliens in songs like Aliens exist.

[Joel Shechtman]

I know the CIA will say what you hear is all you say we see.

[Jessica Mendoza]

He's also the co founder of a group called to the Stars, which promotes research into alien life. They also sell T shirts that say things like UFOs are real. Here's DeLonge talking about to the Stars after he founded it.

[Joel Shechtman]

We will be bringing out to you hundreds of government documents that were just declassified. And we will also be bringing out some insane videos of UFOs.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In 2019, the group paid $35,000 for those metal samples that Art Bell got in the mail. They wanted to test the metal for intergalactic properties and tothestars successfully got the US army to help them out. The government enlisted Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, to look into the metal. The metal ended up at Skunk Works, a research lab at Lockheed Martin that focuses on developing highly classified and advanced military technology.

[Joel Shechtman]

The thing that's really bizarre about it is the Lockheed Martin Skunk Work Laboratories. It's where they develop all these like really high level, like stealth aircraft. But it's also the place where it was long believed that by UFO believers that this was where like the secret alien spaceships were being reverse engineered. And so you actually had the story kind of become true because now they actually were trying to reverse engineer this, this piece of metal like in the very laboratory where that was said to have happened.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Joel Shechtman]

An actual literal self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the metal samples still had one more stop after Skunk Works. The Pentagon. This is where the story of the metal lands on Joel's radar. Because it was one of the many bizarre tales that government investigators were looking into. According to his reporting, it was in 2022 that the Pentagon had decided to start looking more closely into alleged alien encounters. Congress created the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or arrow. With just a few dozen staffers and a classified budget, Arrow began combing through countless reports of alleged sightings of UFOs, or as the government calls them, UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena. Part of Arrow's goal was to investigate these sightings, especially ones near military installations, to see if they had a more.

[Joel Shechtman]

Terrestrial explanation whether you believe in aliens or not. Right. Like the fact of having, you know, unidentified aircraft passing over, you know, U.S. military facilities and having nobody be able to like figure out what's going on with that, like that's an issue. So part of Arrow's job was, was to try to look at those accounts and try to figure out what was going on. Right? To try to do like intelligence work and figure out, okay, is this like an adversary craft? If so what country is it hobbyists? Is it illusion?

[Jessica Mendoza]

What is this?

[Joel Shechtman]

What is aliens? It's aliens, but from the perspective of, like, from that part of their job, like, it's to try to figure out, like, you know, what are some of these sightings in the sky? And, you know, is that something that's like, dangerous? Right.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The person who was hired to get Arrow off the ground was named Sean Kirkpatrick.

[Joel Shechtman]

Though Arrow is still a young office.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The spotlight on UAP in recent months.

[Joel Shechtman]

Underscores the importance of its work and the need for UAP to be taken.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Seriously as a matter of national security.

[Joel Shechtman]

So Sean Kirkpatrick had a very interesting career. He was a physicist that became involved with U.S. intelligence, like, very early in his career. He worked for the CIA. He worked for military intelligence. He was actually kind of like a laser scientist. Right towards the end of his career, when he was about to retire, you know, they came to him with this idea that he was going to lead this new investigative agency that was supposed to investigate these claims that the government might be housing secret alien technology.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So just to be clear, the Pentagon was asking Kirkpatrick to look into sort of the government itself to see if there was evidence of a cover up of alien technology.

[Joel Shechtman]

Exactly. And what was extraordinary about it was that he was given, like, full access to, like, the files of the CIA and the military, and he was given the power to go to these type of secret sites, you know, to scour Area 51 and other kind of secret locations that we don't even know about. Right. And see, like, you know, what is it that's actually going on there.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But instead of aliens, Kirkpatrick and Arrow found something else. That's after the break.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

As Kirkpatrick's investigation unfolded, his team found that many reported UAP sightings turned out to have some pretty mundane explanations. A lot of it wound up being things like balloons, birds, and drones. But there were a few stories that were harder to explain. One of them happened in 1967. The story goes like this. During the Cold War, Air Force guards were assigned to look after bunkers that housed nuclear missiles. Their job was to be on standby, ready to launch those nukes if the Soviet Union were ever to attack. At one bunker in Montana, an Air Force captain was on the night watch when he got a call from the guard station. A glowing reddish orange orb had suddenly appeared floating in the air. The guards were terrified. They'd taken their rifles out and pointed them up at the orb. And then an alarm started going off in the bunker because the nuclear missiles had just been mysteriously disabled. This is one of the stories that Kirkpatrick's office was looking into.

[Joel Shechtman]

They spoke to, like, half a dozen people who had had the experience of being at the controls and having, you know, what they described as, like, UFO sightings and what they believed to be like UFOs attacking, like, the silos and shutting down the weapons systems.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In his investigation, Kirkpatrick dug into their stories to understand what happened. And he learned that there was a scientific, if somewhat convoluted, explanation behind the glowing orbs. Kirkpatrick's team found that around that time, the Air Force had been testing if nuclear control systems could withstand the electrical magnetic pulse, or emp, that would be generated if the Soviet Union were to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. To test that resilience, the Air Force developed an exotic generator that was put on a platform 60ft above the bunker.

[Joel Shechtman]

They would set them up. They would glow, like, bright orange or red, and then they would shoot an electromagnetic pulse that would really look like it'd really be actually, like, a bolt of lightning. And that surge, called like, an electromagnetic pulse, could easily shut down like the hardware that you would need in order to launch these missiles.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the Air Force didn't want anyone to know about these tests. If the Soviet Union heard about it, it could give them an advantage over the US it could be a way to disable America's nuclear arsenal. So the Air Force staff who witnessed these incidents were kept in the dark.

[Joel Shechtman]

Well, they were told not to discuss it because they didn't want to get it out that there was this vulnerability. But then when people don't have a real explanation, they try to come up with the best explanation they can think of. And it's like, what were they supposed to believe?

[Jessica Mendoza]

To this day, the men who witnessed these incidents still think they had an extraterrestrial encounter. Kirkpatrick also found cases where the disinformation was intentional and happened over and over. One of them was a secret Air Force program called Yankee Blue, a version of which went back decades. It was so secret that when Kirkpatrick's team questioned one former Air Force officer about it, the officer was visibly terrified. As part of Yankee Blue, new Air Force commanders were shown a photo of what looked like a flying saucer. And they were told by their superiors that it was, quote, an anti gravity maneuvering vehicle that the government was secretly studying. These new officers were told to guard this information with their lives, never to repeat it to anybody, even their families. Otherwise, they could go to jail or even be executed.

[Joel Shechtman]

And decades later, they still believed it. What Kirkpatrick found was that this was a hazing ritual that went back, like, decades and really continued until, like, his investigation discovered it.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The story ended up being left out of Arrow's final report. According to Joel's reporting, Air Force officials pressured the office to omit details that it believed could jeopardize secret programs and damage careers. In a statement, a Defense Department spokeswoman said the department didn't include the fake extraterrestrial program in the report because the investigation wasn't completed, but expects to make it public in another report later this year. Last year, an ARRW representative delivered an update to a congressional subcommittee.

[Joel Shechtman]

It is important to underscore that to date, Arrow has not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Ultimately, the report found that there is no evidence of UFOs visiting Earth or of the military reverse engineering alien technology. But what Joel found is that, based on Kirkpatrick's undisclosed findings, military officers have engaged in a campaign of disinformation about UFOs for decades. It's a tool that's been used to distract from actual military secrets. The Arrow report made no mention of the Pentagon's own role in spreading that disinformation. Instead, it said the myth spread because of a small group of true believers in the military telling and retelling the same stories.

[Joel Shechtman]

In a sense, they're trying to blame, you know, like, a few bad apples or some people that, you know, just were like, true believers. But what they left out of that report. And what we found was that it was clear that the Pentagon bared like pretty significant responsibility for the spreading of the story itself. Right.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Since his stories have come out, Joel says that he's gotten some pushback from UFO believers. Some of those same that have been demanding answers about the government's alleged UFO programs.

[Joel Shechtman]

I had thought, because we were revealing a Pentagon cover up of a sort that they would, you know, that it would have like a little bit of credence in that sense. But I think that they were very skeptical and believed that the information that had been, you know, the information that we had found had been sort of fed to us as like just another layer of the COVID up. And they came up with like quite a few like sort of like byzantine conspiracy theories about me and my co writer. But you know, the truth is sometimes a lot stranger than fiction. And I think the idea that you'd have like a hazing program like that that would go on for 40 years, like trying to deceive people in your own military. You know, in a way it's even like stranger than believing in aliens, right? Like, it's a very odd thing for them to have done. And you know, you could understand why people would be mistrustful of that explanation.

[Jessica Mendoza]

One last thing. Those strange pieces of metal, the ones that you heard about at the beginning of this episode, when the metal samples went to the Pentagon, it was Kirkpatrick who had a piece of it examined as part of his investigation. He went and got a second opinion from a top government research facility. And it turned out that it wasn't from outer space. It's not some alien technology that has anti gravity properties. Most likely it came from some manufacturing tests during the World War II era, back when they were trying to create a new lightweight metal for military equipment. At least that's what the U.S. government says. That's all for today. Friday, October 17th. Additional reporting in this episode from Aruna Viswanatha. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Kathryn Brewer, Pia Ghidkari, Rachel Humphries, Sophie Kodner, Ryan Knudsen, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Allen Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pier Singh, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whelan, Tatiana Zemis and me, Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by so Wiley, Remixed for today's episode by Peter Leonard. Additional music this week from Alconis Negros Katherine Anderson, Marcus Bagala, Johan Glossner, Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, Emma Munger, Ratchetan Nathan, Singapok, Griffin Tanner and Blue Dot sessions. Fact checking this week by Kate Gallagher, Mary Mathis and Nicole Pasulka. Thanks for listening. See you on Monday.