Conspiracy

Existence of Pentagon's 'Yankee Blue' memo remains up in the air

By T.K. Randall
September 17, 2025 ·  3 comments

Image: The Pentagon
Credit: Touch Of Light / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) 'Yankee Blue' was the codename of an alleged Department of Defense (DoD) hazing and misinformation campaign that involved personnel in classified Air Force units being shown images of 'flying saucers' and then being told that they were from a top-secret program tasked with reverse-engineering captured alien technology.

Even the existence of this practice has been the subject of a great deal of controversy, though if it did exist, it was likely designed to conceal legitimate details of black projects during the Cold War.

Participants would typically be threatened with serious consequences should they reveal any details of what they'd been working on and many of them spent their whole lives believing that it was all real.

Details of this program were later uncovered by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and subsequently revealed to the public in a Wall Street Journal article.

In response, the Defense Department acknowledged what it called "pranks" and the Pentagon had allegedly ordered an immediate halt to the practice via an internal memo.

According to The Black Vault, however, a Freedom of Information Act request asking for the release of this memo has since drawn a blank, with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) denying the existence of any directives relating to Yankee Blue.This directly contradicts the Wall Street Journal's claim that "the defense secretary's office sent a memo out across the service in the spring of 2023 ordering the practice to stop immediately."

So what is the truth of the matter ?

Those with a more conspiratorial mindset might argue that the Air Force personnel really were working on reverse-engineered alien technology and that Yankee Blue was simply a cover.

This might also account for why no trace of this alleged directive now seems to exist.

On the other hand, perhaps it never actually existed to begin with.

All things considered, we may never know for sure what the truth is.

Source: The Black Vault | Comments (3)

Tags: Yankee Blue, UFO