Simon’s Reviews > Mirage Men: A Journey into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. > Status Update

This book presents a significantly more nuanced view of Richard Doty, a former USAF officer tasked with feeding deliberate misinformation about alien invasions to ufologists in order to distract from secret test flights of experimental aircraft, than I remembered. For example here Doty makes it clear which information about UFOs he gave ufologists he actually believes in, and which was intended as misinformation.

Decided to give this a re-read after having read "Project Beta" by Greg Bishop which goes into more detail about the Paul Bennewitz case in which the USAF deliberately fed an ufologist with misinformation about alien invasions to conceal tests of then-secret high tech equipment.

This goes into way further detail about ideological schisms within the ufological community than I remembered from 1st read, for starters.

there are some very amusing anecdotes like how the Air Force erected makeshift shacks and parked jeeps and trucks around a place where UFOlogists suspected there to be a secret underground base in order to play along with their conspiracy theories, but also a lot of confirmation of quite a few suspicions like UFO disinformation kicking into overdrive when they test flew the stealth fighters

Magonia Magazine weren't lying when they called this book an alternative history of the UFO phenomenon

the information about how much hard evidence there is for CIA spreading disinformation about key political issues second-hand through front media companies and whatnot is news to me, as are the existence of radar jamming technology that causes enemy radars to catch targets that aren't actually there

I really liked the documentary based on this book, confirmed a lot of suspicions I already had. The book itself is a very different reading experience, more autobiography about Pilkington's personal experience in the UFO investigation subculture.