Claim that airline admits chemtrails was originally satirical

The claim: Company admitted to having a contract with the Air Force to spray chemtrails

A Facebook post from June 22 (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of an alleged 2013 Global Elite News article. The headline reads: “Evergreen Aviation Admits Chemtrail Contracts with USAF.”

“Evergreen Aviation, one of the world’s largest private aviation companies, admits to offering a weather modification service,” the article begins. “On their own website, in the markets section for their new supertanker, they list weather modification as another interesting service.”

The post was shared over 1,000 times within a week.

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Our rating: False

The claim is a stolen piece of satire originating from a humor website. The company mentioned in the post did indeed have a supertanker aircraft and cited “weather modification” as a potential future market, but never claimed to have a contract to spray chemtrails, which do not exist.

Airplanes were real, but chemtrails were not

The Evergreen Supertanker entered service in 2004 and provided firefighting assistance around the world. The converted Boeing 747 was also expensive to maintain and was retired before Evergreen Aviation effectively shut down in 2013.

The company had a large fleet of aircraft and several government contracts, but none of them involved “chemtrails.” The screenshot of the “article” in the post comes from iFunny, a Russian humor website. The alleged publication, Global Elite News, appears to have never existed.

The Facebook post is an example of “stolen satire,” where content originally posted and presented as satire is taken and reposted in a way that makes it appear as legitimate news, thereby misleading readers of subsequent posts.

Fact check: False claim that chemtrails and HAARP are used to manipulate the weather

Evergreen Aviation had close ties to the CIA, although founder Del Smith never publicly acknowledged any connection to the agency before his death in 2014. The company had former CIA employees in senior positions, and in a profile of the company, officials said that up to 60 percent of some of its subsidiaries’ revenue came from government contracts. Clients included the Forest Service, Air Force and Postal Service.

A website with information about Evergreen Aviation is still up and running, and lists a London address as the contact address, rather than the company’s decades-long headquarters in Oregon. That website has a page about the Supertanker that mentions weather modification as a possible future application for the aircraft. It does not define weather modification, nor does it say that the aircraft performed such functions or sprayed chemtrails.

Of course, the company couldn’t spray anything that doesn’t exist. USA TODAY has repeatedly debunked the existence of chemtrails. False conspiracy theories claim that the white streaks of water vapor in the sky created by airplanes are actually chemicals that are deliberately sprayed on the population or used to alter the weather.

USA TODAY was unable to reach the social media user who shared the claim for comment.

Our fact-checking sources:

• iFunny, accessed June 26. What is the iFunny app?

• iFunny, February 23, 2013, Evergreen Aviation admits chemtrail contracts with USAF

• USA TODAY, April 13, 2023, Fact Check: No, airplane contrails are not being used to combat climate change

• USA TODAY, August 16, 2016, Scientists refute the theory of “chemtrails” on airplanes

• Aviation International News, December 7, 2014, Evergreen’s Del Smith dies at age 84

• News-Register (archived), December 21, 1999, Airline with Attitude: A Special Report on Evergreen Aviation

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Plane fought fires but didn’t spray chemtrails | Fact check