Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell argued that the UFO subject had not been successfully kept secret.

Instead, he said the information had remained visible for decades but had been surrounded by disinformation designed to redirect attention, create confusion and prevent the public from determining what was true.

Mitchell stated:

“It hasn’t been kept secret. It’s been there all along.”

He continued:

“It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so that the truth doesn’t come out.”

Mitchell described disinformation as another form of stonewalling and said it had been used consistently for approximately 50 years.

His argument was that public sightings, witness reports and allegations had never disappeared completely.

Rather than eliminating the information, he believed officials and other interested parties had weakened it by mixing credible accounts with false explanations, contradictory claims and misleading narratives.

Mitchell then pointed to Roswell as a specific example.

He contrasted the official weather balloon explanation with the claim that a crashed craft had been recovered and called the balloon narrative disinformation.

He said:

“Weather balloons over Roswell, as opposed to a crashed craft of some sort, that’s disinformation.”

Mitchell was expressing his personal conclusion.

He did not present newly authenticated Roswell documents or physical evidence in this segment, and his statement should not be treated as independent proof that the 1947 incident involved an extraterrestrial vehicle.

The historical record shows that the U.S. military initially announced the recovery of a “flying disc” before changing its explanation to a weather balloon.

Later official investigations identified the debris as part of Project Mogul, a classified balloon program designed to monitor possible Soviet nuclear testing.

Mitchell rejected the balloon explanation and placed it within what he believed was a broader and long running campaign of UFO disinformation.

The most significant part of his argument is the distinction between secrecy and confusion.

According to Mitchell, the strategy was not to make every report disappear.

It was to make the subject so contaminated by conflicting information, ridicule and uncertainty that the public could no longer distinguish credible evidence from falsehoods.

This raises a broader question that remains relevant to the UAP debate today.

Is the subject difficult to understand because reliable evidence is genuinely limited, or because decades of secrecy, misinformation and contradictory official statements have made meaningful evaluation nearly impossible?

  
*Click below to access the sources and related material:*

1. [*Watch the full Edgar Mitchell testimony:*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOHv1twCOqQ)
2. [*Atlas of Mystery post on X:*](https://x.com/atlasofmystery/status/2073747946705662330?s=20)

Edgar Mitchell Called the Roswell Weather Balloon Explanation Part of a 50 Year Disinformation Campaign