Conspiracy

Pentagon officials reopen 'Yankee Blue' memo search after FOIA appeal

By T.K. Randall
December 21, 2025 ·  3 comments

Image: The Pentagon
Credit: Touch Of Light / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) Back in September, we reported on the strange case of Yankee Blue - the codename for 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.

At the time, a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by The Black Vault asking for the release of this memo had drawn a blank, with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) denying the existence of any directives relating to Yankee Blue. Not content with this response, the website submitted an appeal, arguing that the previous search was inadequate and not legally sufficient.

Remarkably, on December 12th, the appeal was formally granted.

"After carefully considering your appeal, and as a result of discussions between FOID personnel and this office, I am remanding your request to FOID for a search for responsive records," the reply states.

While The Black Vault has emphasized that this doesn't necessarily mean that any records will actually be found or released, it does at least add further merit to the claim itself.

It also offers a second chance to discover what might lie behind Yankee Blue.

Whether anything further will come of it, however, remains to be seen.

Source: The Black Vault | Comments (3)

Tags: Yankee Blue, UFO