Bill Moore — “UFOs and the U.S. Government” (the 1989 MUFON disinformation-confession speech), full text
- Source: William L. Moore, keynote address, MUFON International UFO Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989. Published as a multi-part article:
- Part I — MUFON UFO Journal No. 259, November 1989, pp. 8–18
- Part II — MUFON UFO Journal No. 260, December 1989, pp. 8–14
- Part 3 — Moore’s own FOCUS newsletter (1989), pp. 4–6 (further material on the DOD/DOE film, Dulce, and Area 51)
- Provenance: full-text scanned PDF (20 pp.) located via Curt Collins / Blue Blurry Lines. Re-transcribed 2026-05-30 with Google Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash, multimodal) directly from the scanned page images, after an earlier Firecrawl OCR pass dropped passages and scrambled the two-column journal layout (out-of-order Q&A, a mangled pull-quote). The unrelated MUFON sightings-”Log #” column that shares journal p.18 was skipped. Copyright 1989 W. L. Moore & The Fair-Witness Project, Inc. — captured here for research/credibility analysis.
- Why it matters: the load-bearing primary behind Moore and Doty. In it Moore confirms the AFOSI disinformation operation against Paul Bennewitz, identifies Richard Doty as the AFOSI liaison/“middle-man” (and “Falcon” as a codename he & Shandera invented in 1984 for a separate, higher figure), describes a bird-codenamed network (members “assigned the name of a bird as an identifier” — the collective term “the Aviary” comes from the wider literature, not this speech), and labels the Aquarius Document, the Weitzel letter, and the Aztec crash story as disinformation he was a conduit for.
FULL VERBATIM TEXT below (Gemini multimodal transcription, reflowed from the column line-wraps; verbatim, with OCR garbles corrected only where obvious). Section headings are Moore’s own.
UFOs and the U.S. Government: Part I By William L. Moore
UFO researcher William Moore and his investigative activities have recently been the subject of considerable controversy, both within and without the ufological community. Some of those doubts culminated in the publication of a recent article in the Journal by Robert Hastings, which hinted at government contact and involvement. Prior to publication, Moore was apprised of the article’s contents and given the opportunity to respond in writing. Moore’s response eventually appeared in the form of a lengthy speech delivered at the MUFON symposium in Las Vegas this past summer, and also as an almost complete issue of his quarterly Focus newsletter (4219 W. Olive, Suite 247, Burbank, CA, 91505). Unfortunately, this paper arrived too late to be included in the official proceedings as published. We now provide it for our readers in the interest of completeness, and also as Moore’s open reply to his critics. The response seems to have been much misunderstood at the time of delivery, as well as in the immediate aftermath. Hopefully, publication here will at least bring the public record up to date. The second part of his virtually verbatim talk will appear in the next issue of the Journal.
Ladies and gentleman, friends and enemies, associates and colleagues in short, fellow UFOlogists: I had really wanted to come here tonight and “kick ass,” but fortunately for us all wiser heads have prevailed and we are going to keep this presentation as professional as possible. Before I begin, it seems appropriate to first take a few moments to personally thank Mr. Walt Andrus of the MUFON organization, and the organizers and hosts of this sym8 posium, whose kind invitation made it possible for me to be here tonight. I am also appreciative of this excellent time spot, which must mean that those who arranged the schedule think I have something interesting to say. I shall try not to disappoint you. I might also add that my talk is primarily directed to those of you who are members of the UFO community. That is not to suggest that those of you who are here as third parties won’t find it interesting; it is just that you might not be able to follow some of the “in-house” comments that I am going to make. (As opposed to “outhouse” comments, which I shall try to avoid even though in some cases they might be appropriate.) At this point, allow me to introduce myself. I am aware that you already know my name, and I am equally certain that many of you are wondering, “Just who is Bill Moore, and what is he up to?” Added to that, I’m sure, are many other questions: “Is this man a government agent?”; “What about his rumored contact within the intelligence community?”; “Are the MJ-12 documents real or counterfeit, and if counterfeit, did he forge them?”; and “Isn’t he just really in it for the money?” The truth about Bill Moore, I’m afraid, is considerably less sensational. Those of you out there who know me can vouch for it. Those who don’t can verify it easily enough.
Career
Bill Moore graduated from college in 1965. Between that time and 1979, I spent fourteen years as a high school teacher and a concurrent ten years as a part-time labor relations expert and collective bargaining consultant within the structure of the Minnesota Education Association. In both cases, I had an excellent reputation. In 1979, after having successfully published The Philadelphia Experiment with coauthor Charles Berlitz, I resigned my teaching position and moved with my family to Arizona in order to take up writing full-time. In 1980, I coauthored a second bestseller, The Roswell Incident, which was the preliminary account of an investigation into an alleged UFO crash in New Mexico in 1947. At the time, the book was skeptically received by the UFO community and mercilessly panned by the debunkers. I stood my ground, broke with Berlitz, weathered the storm of rocks and mud that was thrown in my direction, and ultimately, with continued high quality research and a careful, skeptical, journalistic approach, managed to persuade many of the initial doubters that there was indeed something to the case. In so doing, I earned the respect of many of you in the audience, and I expect that my reputation and credibility with respect to the Roswell case is at least partly responsible for my having been invited to speak here tonight. I urge you to keep that in mind. If you are one of those who respected my work on Roswell, then I ask you to consider that I am trying to carry on the same sort of quality investigation with respect to the project I am currently working on. It’s just that the circumstances are quite different, and I have not been in a position, until now, to properly inform others about what I have been doing. This, unfortunately, has given rise to considerable controversy, with a number of falsehoods having been spread by others in the UFO community who saw fit to jump to hasty conclusions inappropriately formed without benefit of all the facts. One of the most persistent rumors about me is that I am a rich man, or that I am somehow funded by the government to spread disinformation and dissension within the UFO community. Neither could be further from the truth. The real Bill Moore is as
poor as a church mouse. I came away from a divorce in 1983 with virtually nothing but a few clothes and an old car. I went through bankruptcy shortly thereafter, and began to rebuild my life. The money I make from writing, royalties, and the sale of mostly UFOoriented books and publications is all plowed back into living expenses and continuing research. It is a constant scrape to get by, but I believe in what I am doing and in order to preserve the freedom necessary to keep my project going I have had to make sacrifices. I am definitely not in this business for the money. I live in a rented house, drive a 1977 car and a 1979 motorcycle. I have no savings accounts, no stocks, no bonds, and I recently had to let my health insurance lapse after the company doubled my premiums and I couldn’t afford to pay it any longer. I am not looking for a handout, nor do I expect any sympathy. I simply tell you this in order to have it on the record. Those who are spreading rumors that I live in wealth and comfort are invited to come and verify the situation any time they wish. My door is open. Those who allege that I have counterfeited documents and concocted a hoax on the MJ-12 matter had better taken the same facts into account. Rest assured, if I was trying to perpetrate a hoax, I would have played it for all the cash I could get a long time ago and then taken the money and run — as some in the UFO community have already done, and as some are doing even now! And as for my being on the government’s payroll, I can only say that I wish I was. The government pays well and it provides excellent benefits. So why should you believe anything Bill Moore has to say? The fact is that I have information that will add to your knowledge of the UFO phenomenon. I will report it to you in as reliable a fashion as I can, and in as objective a manner as possible. Those of you who have numbered among my friends and supporters will perhaps find it comforting in light of some of the more outrageous rumors that have been circulating throughout the UFO community recently. Others of you who have chosen to cast aspersions and throw rocks in my direction out of fear that I might uncover something which will upstage your own efforts, will undoubtedly take great pains to dissect what I have to say here in an effort to find more reasons to question my integrity. No matter. In the final analysis, I am not asking you to believe — only to listen. What you do from that point is entirely up to you. Two years ago, at the MUFON symposium in Washington, D.C., I stood before a similar audience and presented preliminary information on the so-called MJ-12 papers. I also alluded at that time to a series of ongoing contacts between myself and a number of well-placed individuals within the government and the intelligence community. American UFOlogy has been in a turmoil over the MJ-12 matter ever since, with charges and counter-charges being thrown back and forth so fast that it is almost impossible to keep up with them. Worse, the rumor mill, fueled by speculation, disinformation and increasingly gross exaggerations on the part of those who ought to know better, has emerged as a major force which, it sometimes seems from this vantage point, has all but replaced common sense and sound judgement in some circles. What ought to have been a sane and concerted effort to get at the truth, has taken on virtually all the trappings of a three ring circus; and American UFOlogy, as I see it, now stands at the edge of a severe crisis which has already shaken it, as a movement, to its very core. I have every confidence that UFOlogy will survive. Whether it will emerge from this present state of flux with as much credibility as it had going in, however, remains to be seen. I, for one, am somewhat ashamed and embarrassed by the mudslinging that I have witnessed, much of it directed at me, these past two years; and by the incessant and increasing rumormongering which has tantalized us all by its highly sensational nature and yet, in the final analysis, has offered us so very little in the way of tangible evidence. I hope what I have to say here tonight will have the positive effect of laying some of it to rest, but MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989 speaking in all candor, I certainly won’t count on it. Throughout our history mankind has witnessed many quests for things which either did not exist, or which, when found, turned out to be something quite different from what was expected. Take for example our medieval ancestors’ search for the Holy Grail; the Spanish conquistadores’ search for the fountain of youth or the fabled seven cities of gold; the search for Atlantis; or the many archaeological expeditions mounted in an effort to prove or disprove the more than 1500 year-old legend of King Arthur and his knights of the round table. In every case, it was not the goal so much as the process of the search itself which made a positive contribution to man’s knowledge of himself and the planet he lives on. There can be no question that the repeated quests for the Holy Grail played a positive role in increasing medieval Europe’s knowledge of the Near East and the ultimate reopening of trade routes which had been closed and all but forgotten about since the time of the fall of Rome more than 500 years before. Equally, although the fountain of youth never existed at all and the fabled seven cities of gold turned out to be pueblos of adobe, the early Spanish explorers’ search for these added immensely to Europe’s knowledge of New World geography. And in every case, those who study history tell us that there was the inevitable claque of narrow-minded old fools who, believing that such quests waste time and energy better spent on more useful endeavors, did everything they could to discourage the process and discredit the individuals involved.
Alien Factors
Pardon my observations, but so it is with our present quest for knowledge about UFOs. Whether UFOs are or are not extraterrestrial is really only a part of the picture. In the final analysis, the process of studying this phenomenon and the people involved with it, of assessing the claims and the counter-claims, and of dealing with the question of how we, as earthlings, will react to the discovery 9
of a race of extraterrestrial visitors and how they will react to us — all of this and more, when finally looked at in perspective, leads us to the inescapable recognition that in studying the UFO phenomenon, we are at the same time becoming more aware of ourselves as individuals and learning something about the society that we are a part of. The recognition, as noted by my friend Stanton Friedman many years ago, that any alien spending ten minutes looking at planet Earth must come away with the conclusion that we are, in the eyes of that alien, nothing more than a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare, is at once both revealing and powerful. It is through the mirror of UFOs as alien visitors that we ultimately come to look at ourselves and to recognize what and who we really are. Such a process can only prove beneficial to mankind in the long term regardless of what the true nature of the UFOs turns out to be; and those who would stand in its way by attempting to heap derision or ridicule upon the subject do us a grave disservice. Had mankind’s greatest inventors, scientists, explorers, builders, painters, musicians, composers, physicians, surgeons — the list goes on — the point is, had these people throughout our history heeded the mindless blusterings and ravings of the skeptics, the scoffers and the debunkers who were present in each and every case, there would be no progress and mankind would still be in the stone age. Moreover, in every case where a breakthrough was achieved and progress was made, it is the achiever who is remembered and honored by history, and not the debunker who said it couldn’t be done. The bottom line here is that the UFO phenomenon is a legitimate subject for study by anyone in our free society who chooses to do so. Those who have elected to participate in such a quest should not be held up to derision and ridicule because of it. Those debunkers and UFO-bashers who have nothing positive to contribute are advised to go and massage their egos somewhere else! In my opinion, such people have no right whatsoever to dictate to others what is fit for study 10 and what isn’t, or what people should believe and what they shouldn’t. Which brings me to my next point. I have been accumulating information on the UFO phenomenon for more than 24 years, the last ten of which have seen my full-time devotion to the subject. During that time, I have watched UFOlogy trying to grow up — trying to achieve respectability with the public, the news media and the scientific community. In that process, I am sorry to say, it has been my observation that we are our own worst enemy. No skeptic, no debunker, could possibly do what we have done to ourselves not once, but time and time again. We say we want respectability, yet we have made little effort to construct the foundations necessary to achieve it. Sadly, we have no uniform standards, no professional ethics, no peers, no qualifications, no uniform goals and few credible spokespersons. Nobody speaks for UFOlogy — or rather, perhaps more correctly, everybody speaks for UFOlogy … all at the same time and each with a different voice. Anybody can be a “UFOlogist.” All they need to do is tack the title to the end of their name and publish (even self-publish) a book, start a newsletter, or get themselves on television. And should their material be pure unsubstantiated claptrap or broken crockery (read: “cracked pottery”), no matter. There’s always some other self-styled UFOlogist who will come along, see it as the ultimate wisdom of the universe, and endorse it wholeheartedly, thus adding further to the confusion. Is any wonder we have degenerated into a host of political camps, each one of which throws rocks at as many of the others as possible while at the same time loudly proclaiming to all who will listen that they are the only true religion? Meanwhile, the debunkers, who are essentially united under a single banner, throw rocks at all of us; and the public, as hapless observer to the entire process, emerges more confused than ever. With that in mind, I would like to take a moment to ask each and every member of this audience (or you the reader) to reach down inside yourself MUFON JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989 and come up with a true answer to a very important and very difficult question. What you say publicly has no meaning in this process. It is what you know inside yourself to be truth that matters. I want you to ask yourself why you are involved with the UFO phenomenon. Do you truly desire answers, no matter what those answers may be and no matter how much those answers may be at variance with what you presently believe about UFOs? Or are you one of those people who thrives on a continuing mystery whose very position in the field of UFOlogy requires that the mystery of UFOs be perpetuated rather than solved so that you can continue in your self-styled role of importance and leadership? Let’s suppose you are the head of an organization devoted to the study of UFOs (and there are several such here, including myself). What happens to your organization, and ultimately to you yourself if the UFO mystery is suddenly solved? Do you truly want to see that happen; or is it more palatable and convenient to keep the pot simmering for as long as possible? Only you, and you alone know what it is that motivates you. If you who is sincerely interested in finding answers, and if you can proceed with an open mind, then I believe I can offer you some inspiration and some sense of direction with what I have to say here tonight. If, on the other hand, you are one who prefers to inflate your own image through the spreading of unsubstantiated, often alarming and increasingly sensationalistic disinformation, hearsay and rumor, then I urge you to reassess your position and channel your energies along more acceptable lines. If you haven’t thought about it, I urge you to do so because I believe we are very near to getting those answers we all claim to want. If the nature of those answers turns out to be such that they will change our world, then I need not point out that individual lives will be changed as well. It is important that we all know where we stand. As for myself, I made a decision a number of years ago as a result of having suddenly found myself faceto-face with an opportunity to learn MUFON JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989
more about what our government knows about UFOs. I believed then, and I continue to believe now, that it is possible to uncover answers by searching carefully and completely for them in the right places. Finding those answers and thus ending my so-called career as a UFOlogist poses no problems at all for me. As a writer, I am interested in a variety of subjects, many of them non-UFO related. Should I go as far as I feel I can with the UFO question, I have plenty of other fish to fry — many of which are just as interesting and every bit as challenging. The truth, fellow UFOlogists, is that I have known precisely what I was doing all along. It is just that very few other people knew what I was doing, and it was this lack of information on the part of other researchers that has given rise to so much controversy. Consequently, I harbor no grudge against others who have attacked me, sometime bitterly, because they disagreed with my methods, or because they mistook my refusal to answer their often legitimate questions as a display of arrogance and contempt. I counseled patience then, and I counsel it now. A rush to judgement is a dangerous and a divisive thing. Those who engage in such practices may sound high-minded and wellinformed at first blush, but in the long run they do nothing to enhance their own stature or credibility, and they certainly contribute nothing to our quest for answers.
Self Defense
Consider the strange case of Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones and the jury. You, the audience (or the reader) are the jury. Mr. Smith is dead. Mr. Jones is being tried for the murder. The prosecutor stands before you and gives you these facts: “When the police arrived in response to a complaint that a fight was in progress,” he says, “Mr. Smith was found lying dead on the floor of his apartment. The cause of death was strangulation, and the body was still warm. Mr. Jones was found bending over the body with his hands still around the victim’s throat. Neighbors and others who knew both men have testified that there was considerable animosity between the two of them, and that on more than one occasion Mr. Jones was heard to threaten Mr. Smith’s safety and wellbeing. Obviously Jones had gone to see Smith and a violent argument ensued during which Jones strangled Smith. Unfortunately for Jones, the police arrived before he was able to affect an escape from the scene.” You’re the jury. Is this sufficient evidence to condemn Mr. Jones for murder? I have tried this scenario out during conversations with a number of people over the past few months, and was amazed at how many people agreed that it is one — of whom was my good friend Walt Andrus, who recently saw fit to publish an outrageously lopsided piece of trash in his newsletter written by a man whom I have never met, spoken to or corresponded with and who could easily have obtained answers to his questions simply by taking the trouble to ask. A significant minority who listened to my Smith and Jones scenario, however, hesitated before passing judgement. “What is Mr. Jones’ defense?,” they wanted to know. And, of course, that’s really what it’s all about. In the case of Smith and Jones, the truth is that it was Smith who invited Jones to his apartment with the intention of quietly doing him in and disposing of the body before anyone was the wiser. Jones, however, turned the tables on Smith and accidentally killed him in the process of self-defense. And so it is in the case of Moore, the government and MJ-12. Those who have already decided that I am one of the bad guys in this controversial case have done so on the basis of only half a story. They have rushed to judgement without hearing the defense. “Hasty pudding,” as one recent tract put it quite humorously — a tract which, by the way, I did not write but which I found to be most appropriate. Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with the entire case for the defense this evening. The reason is that the defense is still in the process of completing its investigation. But I can provide you with a significant part of it — enough so that at least you can begin to understand what I have MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989 been doing and where it is all going. For some of you, it may not be what you want to hear, but it is the truth, at least insofar as I am able to tell it. And it should provide you with a good sense of perspective concerning a lot of other things that have been going on in UFOlogical circles recently. It all began more than ten years ago with a man named Paul Bennewitz. Let me preface my remarks about the Bennewitz case by offering the sincere and candid statement that what I am going to say is, to the best of my knowledge, entirely true. It is offered without malice or prejudice in any way, and is under no circumstances intended to be libelous or defamatory. I genuinely like Mr. Bennewitz, continue to regard him as a friend, and have a great deal of sympathy for the difficulties he has been through. It is not my intention to upset him with these revelations, but rather to add a few facts to a record that has been out of balance for a lot of years. I had moved from Minnesota to Arizona during the late summer of 1979, and as a result had become somewhat closer to Jim and Coral Lorenzen of the old Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (or APRO) in Tucson. Ultimately they invited me to become a member of the APRO Board of Directors, and I accepted. It was in this capacity that I first became acquainted with the work being done by Paul Bennewitz and Dr. Leo Sprinkle regarding an alleged UFO abduction involving a young woman and several others which had occurred some time earlier. The woman had been hypnotically regressed by Dr. Sprinkle and had provided a strange account of having witnessed a cattle mutilation in process and of subsequently having been taken, by her alien abductors, into some sort of craft or facility where these aliens were actively engaged in processing fluids and severed body parts obtained from these cattle. During the course of the hypnosis sessions, which began as near as I can recall, in August of 1979, Bennewitz had become convinced that the aliens had implanted some sort of communication device in the woman’s 11
head, and that they were using this device to control her actions. His theory was that they could actually “see” what she saw and “hear” what she heard by means of this device. In any case, Bennewitz, being a physicist by profession and having a certain amount of electronics equipment at his disposal and the wherewithall to purchase more as needed, set out to determine whether it might be possible to detect the electromagnetic signals he believed these aliens must be using to exercise their control over their alleged victims, and to try to devise a way to shield the victim from the control of these signals. He dubbed this effort “Project Beta” and communicated to APRO in late ‘79 that he believed he had succeeded in detecting low frequency signals from UFOs and had begun to make calculations about the sort of electronic and propulsion technology employed by the aliens. It was also at about this time that Paul began to take both moving and still pictures of strange lights maneuvering in the vicinity of the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility which is located to the east of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, and of which Bennewitz had a perfect view from his residence in the well-to-do Four Hills section of the city. Bennewitz was convinced that these lights were UFOs and that for some reason they were actively interested in both the Manzano complex and the Coyote Canyon test area located directly south of Manzano on the other side of the hills. During this time, the only awareness I had of Bennewitz and his work was what I was obtaining through APRO. I still had not met the man, and in fact was only mildly interested in the case — this based largely upon both Jim and Coral Lorenzen’s assessment of Bennewitz as a dedicated researcher, but, unfortunately, one who was, as Jim put it, “prone to make great leaps of logic on the basis of incomplete data.” Both Jim and Coral felt that Bennewitz had already decided what he was going to find before he went looking for it. Still, although I didn’t come to know about it until a few months later, there apparently was something going on in12 Bennewitz set out to determine whether it might be possible to detect the electromagnetic signals he believed the aliens must be using to control their victims. volving UFOs near Manzano, particularly during August, September and October of 1980, and several agencies of the U.S. government, including the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, seemed more than just casually interested in it.
Birds of Prey?
In early September, 1980, I was approached by a well-placed individual within the intelligence community who claimed to be directly connected to a high-level government project dealing with UFOs. This individual, who subsequently came to be known as “the Falcon,” told me that he spoke for a small group of similar individuals who were uncomfortable with the government’s continuing cover-up of the truth and indicated that he and his group would like to help me with my research into the subject in the hope and expectation that I might be able to help them find a way to change the prevailing policy and get the facts to the public without breaking any laws in the process. I knew I was being recruited, but at that point I had no idea for what. In any case, I was told that if I was interested in cooperating with their group, I would be further contacted by a liaison man and that future meetings between me and “the Falcon” would be arranged by this person. The liaison person who subsequently made contact with me was AFOSI agent Richard Doty — a man who has since become quite controversial in his own right and who many people have mistakenly assumed is “the Falcon” himself. The story of my contacts with “the Falcon,” Doty, and subsequently a number of others is something I will have considerably more to say about at a later date. I am fully aware that such a course of action will undoubtedly prompt the gossip mongers to begin circulating an entirely new array of outrageous and unsubstantiated rumors, but so be it. My purpose here is to deal only with that part of the story which is directly connected to the Bennewitz affair. To those of you who want to know more after hearing what I have to say tonight, I counsel continued patience. You have my assurance that “the rest of the story” will ultimately be told as well. But before going back to Bennewitz, let me make several points which seem appropriate at this juncture. First of all, on the question of Richard Doty, and “the Falcon,” it is important to note that the name “Falcon” was invented by my partner, Jaime Shandera, and I in 1984 strictly as a way of facilitating our talking to each other about this person, particularly on the telephone, without having to use a name. Richard Doty, who continued to be liaison man, was similarly referred to by us as “the Sparrow.” Neither “Sparrow” nor “Falcon” were aware that we were using these terms in reference to them, nor was anyone else to the best of my knowledge, prior to about mid-1985. It was in the mid-1987, just after we went public with the MJ-12 papers, that at “Falcon’s” suggestion and with the concurrence of Richard Doty, we began dropping subtle hints that “Falcon” might in fact be Doty. “Falcon” felt that such a ploy would be useful to him in continuing to protect his identity, while Doty, for his part, said that if anybody asked he could simply deny it and that would be that. We quite naturally agreed, and, as many of you are painfully aware, it turned out to be an excellent diversion particularly with respect to the effect it had following the “UFO Cover-Up? … Live!” show which was broadcast nationally in October 1988. In all fairness to Mr. Doty here, I should also like to comment that, in my assessment, Rick is much better at following the orders and implementing the schemes of others than he is at coming up with ideas of his own. Those of you who have devoted
time and energy to constantly badgering this man for more information should be aware that all you are doing is making nuisances of yourself. Rick is not the man you’re after — it’s the person in the control position that’s important here. As far as I’m aware, no one outside of my project has any idea who that person might be, or what his motives are. In any case, it was “Falcon” who sought me out in September of 1980, and it was Richard Doty, then with AFOSI at Kirtland AFB, who soon came into play as the middle-man in that process. Shortly thereafter, it became apparent to me that my supplying information to the government, through Doty, on the activities of Paul Bennewitz, APRO, and, to a lesser extent, several other individuals, was to be a part of this equation. I also discovered that, whatever it was Bennewitz was involved with, he was the subject of considerable interest on the part of not one but several government agencies, and that they were actively trying to defuse him by pumping as much disinformation through him as he could possibly absorb. Being a very small part of that process gave me, I thought, something of an advantage. It became my intention to play that advantage for all the information I could get out of it. Bennewitz, for his part, continued to make what, in my opinion, seemed to be increasingly irrational claims, most of which gave every appearance of having been influenced by a heavy blanket of disinformation mixed with a small, but significant, amount of truth. The problem was always one of keeping a level head and trying to carefully sort the crap from the candy — something which Paul didn’t seem to me to be very good at. But then, Paul was by that time very emotionally involved with the affair and rather skeptical of advice from any quarter unless it supported what he had already decided was the truth. From my vantage point, being detached from the mainstream but still close enough to appreciate what was happening, it was somewhat easier to assess the process. I first met Paul in early 1981, and continued contact with him on a fairly regular basis through mid-1985. Contact since then has been sporadic. My role in the affair was largely that of a freelancer providing information on Paul’s current thinking and activities. I had nothing whatsoever to do with the counterintelligence and the disinformation, although I either knew or was aware of a number of people directly involved with that end of things. Richard Doty was one of these people; although I came to know Doty well enough to gain the impression that he was faithfully carrying out orders which he personally found distasteful. Perhaps it was for this reason that “the Falcon” had chosen him as liaison person, although I really don’t know. Frankly, I don’t believe that Doty does either. In my opinion, he was simply a pawn in a much larger game, just as I was. As for Bennewitz, by 1981, he was gathering data from a variety of sources and amalgamating it with information being fed to him by a number of government people in whom, for some reason, he seemed to have an implicit and abiding faith. The story that emerged from this melange of fact, fiction, fantasy, hearsay, hard data and government disinformation, was absolutely incredible! Yet somehow, Paul believed in it and set out on a one-man crusade to tell the world that malevolent aliens from space were in league with our government to take over the planet. What had begun in 1979 as an effort to learn whether the behavior of a woman who claimed she had been abducted by UFO aliens was being influenced by some sort of radio remote control, had, in the space of less than three years, blossomed into a tale which rivaled the wildest science fiction scenario anyone could possibly imagine. Basically, it seemed to me that Paul was his own worst enemy. Instead of withholding judgement until all the facts were in, Paul insisted on repeatedly going off half-cocked to virtually anyone who would listen. Members of the press, other UFO researchers, U.S. congressmen and senators, people in military command positions, members of the scientific establishment, even the President himself — all were subjects of Paul’s efforts to reach out and tell the world MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989 what he sincerely believed to be happening. He wrote letters and made phone calls by the hundreds. And, to those who had neither the time nor the inclination to look behind the words for a better understanding of the facts, Paul, with his professional credentials and technical vocabulary, came off as a rather credible individual which must have caused quite a rash of headaches among the people in high places who were desperately trying to defuse him. Essentially, Paul constructed his story using elements derived from four basic sources which can be summarized as follows: • Accounts of mysterious and still largely unexplained mutilations of cattle which were occurring all over the western United States. These were an on-going phenomenon in the 1979-82 time frame and many people, including a number of UFO researchers, were on record as having expressed the belief that UFO aliens were in some way responsible for them. Paul, who had spent a lot of time with a number of people involved in these investigations, readily accepted the idea that UFOs had something to do with the phenomenon. • An increasing number of UFO cases wherein the individual or individuals involved claimed to have been abducted by UFO aliens and taken aboard their craft against their will. Public exposure to this phenomenon got a big boost in 1981 with the appearance of Budd Hopkins’ bestseller Missing Time, and Paul was particularly intereseted in these cases. His hypothesis that people were being abducted, implanted with some kind of alien control device, and then being let go again, was completely consistent with the thinking of a number of other UFO researchers at the time. Paul’s hypothesis, however, had a somewhat more sinister spin than most. • His own experiments and research regarding the radio signals he was receiving and the photographs and film footage he was getting of unusual lights. Both of these phenomena seemed largely, though not entirely connected with goings-on within the Kirtland AFB/Sandia Na13
tional Labs complex just south of the city of Albuquerque. There is no question that Paul was receiving some sort of low frequency electromagnetic signal on his equipment, and it is equally certain that his photos and films do depict unusual lights, most of which were filmed while hovering or maneuvering over the Kirtland/Sandia complex. The real question here, however, is whether Paul’s evidence is sufficient to conclude that either of these phenomena was directly related to UFO activity, or whether, in fact, a prosaic explanation exists which is more directly related to some classified government research project. Admittedly strong arguments can be made in both directions, either one of which can be offered as an adequate explanation of the government’s counterintelligence activities in this case. • Government surveillance of Paul and his activities, some of which Paul was astute enough to detect and some of which I had learned about but Paul seemed unaware of. Paul took the surveillance activities, which included wire taps, and, according to Paul, even break-ins, as proof positive that he was onto something big. Unfortunately, he seemed largely unaware that the same people who would go to such lengths to spy on him also had the capabilities to mount an effective disinformation campaign.
Alien Rumors
In any case, by mid-1982, Paul’s story contained virtually all of the elements found in the current crop of rumors being circulated around the UFO community. There were two groups of aliens, one malevolent, one more friendly. The malevolent one, which Paul referred to as the “greys,” were really in control, and they were the ones responsible for the cattle mutilations, for human abductions and the implanting of sinister control devices in humans, for having first made and then broken a secret treaty with the U.S. government, for maintaining a secret underground base under Archuleta Peak near Dulce in northwestern New Mexico, and for having supplied the U.S. government with alien space hard14 ware and weapons which ultimately proved defective or which were caused to crash, thus leaving human civilization virtually defenseless against invasion. According to Paul, an atomic powered alien ship which they had given to the U.S. government had been caused to crash on Archuleta Peak near the entrance to the alien underground base, and had sprayed the entire area with radioactivity and wreckage. To prove it, he provided drawings, which he said he had made from photographs. I, and others who examined Paul’s photographs as well as independently obtained pictures of the same area, were unable to see what Paul claimed was there. Where he saw a crashed ship, burned wreckage, entrances to the alien base, and weapons pointing skyward, others could see only rocks, trees and shadows. I have no doubt that Paul believed that he saw what he claimed, and for this I offer no explanation. I only know that what he claimed to see wasn’t what others saw. There is no question that some of Bennewitz’ pictures are interesting, but I must say that even though I viewed a large number of them, I never saw one that I could get particularly excited about; and I certainly never saw anything that I felt could be pointed to as proof positive, or even compelling evidence that he was photographing alien spacecraft. Much of his film was Super 8 (mm.), which is too small a format for good quality enlargement. There is also no question that Paul was intercepting some kind of low frequency electromagnetic emission or signal. The question was and remains, where was it coming from, what was its purpose, and indeed most importantly, was it UFO-related at all? Paul, at least, was convinced that he was receiving alien radio transmissions, and had even gone so far as to develop a home computer program capable of translating them into English. The problem, as I saw it, was that his program, which he claimed had been developed with the assistance of the aliens themselves, assigned entire words, sentence fragments, or sometimes even entire sentences themselves to the various individual pulses of energy within these transmissions. The technique involved was such that it could just as easily have been adapted to assign similar “alien” translations to the various energy pulses found in ordinary Morse code! I have a number of Paul’s computer print-outs which contain translations of these allegedly alien messages. If one breaks these apart into their component words, sentence fragments and sentences, and then shuffles the components, the result is such that the “new” message says virtually the same thing as the old one. The messages look fascinating until one examines the method by which they were derived. After that, they were not nearly so interesting. Unfortunately, lots of people saw the messages. Very few had the opportunity to examine the computer program which generated them. Along these same lines, at least some of the things Paul was seeing and identifying as alien spacecraft were definitely not UFOs at all. One evening while visiting him, we went out on his sundeck just at twilight and he pointed out a series of lights slowly maneuvering far out over the West Mesa, perhaps 25-30 miles away. These, he said, were alien craft involved in abducting people and implanting them. There certainly were lights maneuvering out there, but even through good binoculars they were not readily identifiable. Paul insisted they were UFOs, and showed us how to conduct a little test with our binoculars which, he said, would prove it. Interested, but unconvinced, I drove directly to West Mesa immediately after leaving Paul’s home and parked my car at a spot where I felt I would be able to get a look at anything flying around that area. Sure enough, helicopters carrying large searchlights began to maneuver slowly over my vantage point only moments after I arrived. One went directly over me at an altitude of perhaps 300’, and there is no doubt it was a helicopter. The next day, I called Kirtland AFB and they confirmed to me that there had indeed been a search-and-rescue training mission in that area the night before. Such operations, they informed me,
were conducted over that area quite frequently. That was in 1982. Two years later, in 1984, Paul was still making the same claims about these maneuvering lights to other UFO researchers. As far as I am aware, I was the only one who took the trouble to check. Paul is a convincing and compelling individual in person. He talks an excellent story and it is easy to see why so many people have been so intrigued by it over the years. Unfortunately, too many of the people who have interviewed Paul have chosen to draw their conclusions about him based solely or largely upon what he says, and not upon the entire body of evidence presented by the larger picture of the case itself. I, too, have spent considerable time with Paul over a period of years and came to know him quite well in that process. As already stated, I viewed a large number of Paul’s films and photographs; I carefully examined satellite and aerial survey photographs of both Archuleta Peak and Mesa, as well as aerial photos of the area taken by Paul himself; I examined the computer program Paul was using to “decode” the alleged alien radio transmissions and communications, and I had a lengthy discussion about this matter with the late Dr. Allen Hynek who had also independently examined Paul’s program; I spent considerable time discussing the affair with both Jim and Coral Lorenzen, both of whom were quite skeptical of it (Jim by the way also had a solid professional background in electronics); and I have copies of many of the reports and letters Paul submitted to APRO beginning as far back as September of 1979. Moreover, as I have already stated, I was personally aware of the intelligence community’s concerted efforts to systematically confuse, discourage and discredit Paul be providing him with a large body of disinformation on the subject of UFOs, the malevolent aliens who allegedly pilot them, the technology they employ and the underground bases they supposedly possess and occupy. The entire story of a secret treaty between the U.S. government and the aliens, of exchanges of technology between us and the aliens, of battles between aliens and American armed forces, and of aliens allegedly having implanted hundreds of thousands, even millions, of human beings for the purpose of taking over the world and using us as cattle or slaves, came about as a result of this process. I know, because I was in a position to observe much of this process as it unfolded, and I was providing regular reports on its effectiveness to some of the very people who were “doing it” to Paul. And I can tell you that it was effective, because I watched Paul become systematically more paranoid and more emotionally unstable as he tried to assimilate what was happening to him. He had guns and knives all over his house, had installed extra locks on his doors, and he swore that “they” (meaning the aliens), were coming through his walls at night and injecting him with hideous chemicals which would knock him out for long periods of time. He told me he had no idea what “they” were doing with him while he was knocked out. He began to suffer increasing bouts of insomnia. Others took over the day-to-day operation of his business as he went through this. One day I watched him eat not a bite of his lunch while he chain-smoked some 28 cigarettes in 45 minutes. I knew at that time that he was not far from inevitable nervous collapse. His health had deteriorated, he had lost considerable weight, his hands shook as if from palsy, and he looked terrible. I tried to counsel him to drop the entire UFO thing before his health was completely destroyed. He said he knew things were getting bad and he was trying to cope with it. Not long afterward I heard he had been hospitalized and was under psychiatric care. Whether UFOs were actually ever involved with all of this and to what extent, I never really knew. Perhaps Paul had merely stumbled upon signals generated from some sophisticated, high-level government project whose security people hit upon UFO-related disinformation as the ultimate cover. Or perhaps he had discovered a real, although somewhat less sensational (if, in fact that’s possible), government UFO project which MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 259 November 1989 elected to disinform him to protect what they were really doing. I do know from first-hand experience that there was a tremendous amount of government disinformation involved, and that a large proportion of what we are hearing today about malevolent aliens, underground bases and secret treaties with the U.S. government has its roots firmly planted in the Bennewitz affair. Stories of an alleged UFO crash at Aztec, New Mexico, are also a part of this picture, but I’ll save comment on that until later. In any case, from what I knew of all of this, it’s purpose was strictly to discredit Bennewtiz, nothing more. What amazes me is that, nearly a decade later, these same stories continue to circulate! Recently, one of the most prominent figures in the current disinformation wave which has been sweeping the UFO and New Age communities was quoted as having stated that he has found Paul Bennewitz’s information to be “100% true.” This person spent a couple of days talking to Paul back in the summer of 1987, and has spent considerable time since spreading elaborate and increasingly sensationalistic stories based, he claims, on information gathered from a variety of unnamed sources. Strip away the fluff, and what you have left is essentially the Bennewitz story all over again. There is no question in my mind that it’s mostly disinformation, pure and simple. And, since connections can be shown to exist between those who are spreading it now and those who were spreading it then, both from the Bennewitz angle and from within the intelligence community, it seems reasonable to assume that those responsible for it are not satisfied that their task has been completed, even after all this time. Knowing what is going on, however, is simply not enough. The real question is “Why?”
Disinformation
It was just that question I asked myself when I first ran into the disinformation operation that was being run on Bennewitz. It seemed to me at that time that I was in a rather unique position. There I was with my 15
foot literally in the door of a secret counterintelligence game that gave every appearance of being somehow directly connected to a high-level government UFO project, and, judging by the positions of the people I knew to be directly involved with it, definitely had something to do with national security! There was no way I was going to allow the opportunity to pass me by without learning at least something about what was going on. Many UFOlogists have run up against disinformation over the years. Virtually all of them viewed it as a negative process and backed away from it either in anger or disgust as soon as they discovered what they were dealing with. Even today, the UFO community unanimously considers anyone known or suspected of dealing in disinformation as one of the “bad guys” — to be shunned or avoided at all costs, and certainly never ever to be believed. I determined to take quite a different tack. I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough to lead those directing the process into believing that I was doing exactly what they wanted me to do, and all the while continue to burrow my way into the matrix so as to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why. It would be a classic case of turning the tables on the very ones who were most confident they had the situation well in hand. There was just one thing I needed to do this — Secrecy! I couldn’t tell anyone about what I was doing; for if I did and word got back to those in control, I would be immediately cut off and cast adrift before I could learn anything. It was a formidable problem. Some of the contacts I had made during the Bennewitz affair seemed friendly and professed a desire to end the UFO cover-up and assist in getting government information on UFOs out to the public in a slow and methodical manner so as not to create a panic. Others seemed more interested in obtaining information from me, often on what other members of the UFO community were doing and sometimes on other completely unrelated subjects. Whatever information I managed to get from these individuals in return usually came as a result of asking 16 just the right questions in just the right ways. Sometimes it took months, or even years of establishing a relationship with someone before anything useful came out of it. The most difficult part of it all was trying to determine what was real and what was processed bull fodder. One of the key factors in any successful disinformation scheme is that it must contain some elements of truth in order to be credible. Knowing that, however, is one thing. Doing something with it is quite another. When you’re dealing with what you know to be a classified program and you’re determined to get information without breaking any laws and running afoul of national security, you’re walking a very fine line. That’s why it took so long to come up with any results. In June of 1982, I approached my friend Jaime Shandera and brought him into the project. At that time, I also began briefing Stanton Friedman as to what was going on. Both of them knew that I was in contact with a number of people within the intelligence community on the subject of UFOs, and both were aware that at least some of the information coming through was disinformation, but both had only minimal knowledge of the private goals and conclusions I had established some months earlier. As the project progressed, this actually turned out to me more of an asset than a drawback. Indeed, the three of us were an excellent team in that we each approached the problem from a different angle. From my point of view, the process was one of slowly and methodically burrowing into a beehive from the outside with a goal of ultimately reaching the queen bee and the royal jelly at the center. Since I never knew whether the other bees I was certain to meet along the way would be friendly or not, I had to proceed cautiously both in order to avoid getting stung and to learn as much as possible about what might lie ahead. The control factor, as I saw it, rested largely with me and the way I proceeded. Jaime, on the other hand, saw it as a somewhat different process. He too felt we were burrowing into a beehive, but in his view of things, our burrowing was at the express invitation of the queen bee herself who clandestinely oversaw and encouraged the process from a distance as part of her private plan to get free of the politics that surrounds and restrains her. As long as we followed the signposts along the way, Jaime felt, the learning process would continue and we could never get stung. Stanton, as the scientist of the group, was the one best qualified to assess the nature of the information we were getting and to conduct a careful and organized search for corroborating witnesses and evidence in places outside of the loop Jaime and I were part of. By the way, just as a matter of personal privilege here, I would like to react to a nasty comment about Stanton which appeared in a recent issue of Jim Moseley’s Saucer Smear newsletter. In this comment, the writer, after first characterizing Stanton as a “gullible” individual, went on to wonder whether he could be trusted to expose the MJ-12 documents as phoney if his research turned up conclusive evidence to that effect. It’s a legitimate question and I would like to answer it by stating that not only Stanton, but all of us were firmly committed to releasing a full and complete report on this matter. If evidence should come to light suggesting that the documents are phoney, you have my firm assurance that it will most certainly be included in our report. “Gullibility” is not an issue here. The matter is far larger than that. In any case, Stanton, Jaime and I are all working towards the same goal — that of trying to discover what is truth and what isn’t with respect to the U.S. government and UFOs. It’s not a new thing with us, it’s a project that’s been underway for quite a few years. My role in the Bennewitz affair had at least secured me a seat in the right theater. From there it was only a question of whether I could use my balcony ticket to discover who owned the place and was making the major operational decisions. Both Jamie and I felt that in order to have any hope of success at all, we absolutely had to play the game according to Continued on page 18
MOORE, Continued “their” rules. That meant doing everything possible to give the appearance that we were essentially “useful idiots” who would cause no trouble, while at the same time playing the double game of keeping our eyes and ears open in order to learn as much as we could about what was going on. In so doing, we were gradually able to expand our base of friendly contact with people, while working our way further and further into the truly bizarre intelligence labyrinth that surrounds the subject of UFOs. I have no problem in telling you that it has been a tedious, time and resource consuming task which has been made all the more difficult by the constant barrage of rock and bottles thrown in our direction from a segment of the UFO community which, out of ignorance, chose to take up unfriendly and unsympathetic positions toward us. Were it not for the fact that we were constantly challenged by the twists and turns of our project and by the hope that we could ultimately come away from it with a smoking gun in hand, I am convinced we would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. Indeed, I must admit that there were several occasions when we tried to do just that, only to be encouraged to continue by some of our “friends” from the inside who had come to believe in what we were doing and respected us for it. Part II will appear next month. © 1989 by WLM & FWP, Inc.
SUPPORT UFO RESEARCH
UFOs and the U.S. Government: Part II By William L. Moore
The first part of William Moore’s lengthy paper, delivered as the keynote speech at the MUFON Las Vegas symposium this summer, appeared in the November Journal. Moore is already at work on a sequel, which will be published in his Focus newsletter, dealing with Lee Graham and other individuals. For more information, write Moore at 4219 W. Olive, Suite 247, Burbank, CA 91505. The anonymous arrival of the socalled MJ-12 documents in December of 1984 was another factor we had to contend with in this increasingly confusing web. The problem of their origin and authenticity was and remains a major issue, and on this point, our position of neutrality has constantly been misinterpreted. Therefore, for the record, it is important to point out here again that at no time have either I or any of my associates ever stated that these documents are authentic. Our position has consistently been that we do not know whether they are authentic, but that we, as investigators, remain unaware of any convincing evidence which would suggest that they are not. That position remains essentially unchanged today, and I will have more to say about it when I get to the end of this paper. The bottom line, however, is that, authentic or not, the story of the documents is a major one which, as I have already assured you, will ultimately be told when I and my associates have completed our investigation and are ready to tell it. That process has already taken considerably longer than I thought it would. I cannot predict when it will be complete, but I can say that progress has been made and it shouldn’t be too much longer. For the many of you who have roundly criticised our methodology 8 throughout the MJ-12 controversy, it seems important to note here that what you were witnessing was the operation of a plan to put out just enough of this bizarre information to attract attention, and then carefully monitor who showed up with questions to ask or information to offer. Once again, I was careful to state that I remained unconvinced of the authenticity of the information involved. In the case of the “Falcon” and “Condor” interviews broadcast last October on “UFO Cover-Up? Live!,” I am convinced that at least some, quite possibly a substantial portion, of that information falls under the category of disinformation. I am equally convinced that some of it is true. The important point here is that, regardless of whether it is disinformation or truth, it DOES have to do with UFOs, and the sources who provided it felt that doing so was important enough to risk going before national television in order to accomplish that purpose. Remember also that those sources knew that “Falcon” and “Condor” would be identified on the show as confidential government informants. The risk was all theirs, not ours; and still they went ahead, just as they are currently going ahead with the process of arranging a meeting to enable them to tell their stories before one or more members of Congress. I submit to you that such a process is extraordinary regardless of whether it involved truth or deception, and I think it’s high time the UFO community stopped throwing rocks at it and began to consider the implications. One thing I can assure you of is that, rocks or not, our project will continue. You can either become involved, as others in the UFO community have done, or you can sit back and wait for the results. Whatever those results, good or bad, positive or negative, you will hear about them. Our “trolling of the bait” by means of progressive release of information, and ultimately by arranging for “Falcon” and “Condor” to appear on the “UFO Cover-Up? … Live!” show, produced a variety of interesting results. Shortly after the show, the FBI showed up and began asking questions about it. They even arranged for a private showing in the office of producer Michael Seligman. Agents on both east and west coasts interviewed a number of UFOlogists and other people, including Jaime Shandera, but, although I let it be known that I would be more than happy to talk to them, they avoided me. This I found to be particularly interesting in light of the FBI’s admission to me, in response to a FOIA request, that they were maintaining nearly sixty pages of material on me that were all classified for reasons of national security. That was in July of 1988. I still have no idea what those pages contain. Another thing that occurred as we had hoped it would was that a rather small number of people came out of the woodwork claiming to have inside knowledge of one type or another about MJ-12 or similar government UFO projects. After weeding out the obvious cranks and several others whose claimed positions or associations did not check out, or whose stories seemed to change every time they told them, we were left with a few leads which seemed promising. It is premature to offer you a report on any of these at this time except to say that we are still checking. Also, seemingly in direct relationship to our partial release of MJ-12 material two years ago, the flow of UFO-related disinformation has escalated from a point of near insignificance to what has become almost a flood tide. Indeed, many of you in the audience came here tonight looking for answers to ques
tions related directly to that problem. As I have taken great pains to point out, the current crop of disinformation is really nothing new; it’s just that a different crop of people are spreading it this time around. I expect that those responsible (not the rumor mongers themselves, but the ones who are feeding them) thought it would work just as well this time as it did last. The one thing I’m sure they didn’t count on is that I would tell my story and thus become the fly in the ointment.
Aztec Crash
And speaking of flies in ointments, I think it is high time that I tell what I know about another situation that has found its way into the current crop of UFO disinformation. I offer this not to embarrass the person involved, but rather to shed light on an incident which, by the accounts of it which have appeared recently in a variety of UFO newsletters and at least one new book, is badly in need of clarification. It has to do with the rumored crash of a UFO near Aztec, New Mexico in the late 1940s. As many of you know, I researched this case and wrote an in-depth report about it which appears in the 1985 MUFON Symposium Proceedings under the title “Crashed UFOs: Evidence in the Search for Proof.” Although my 1985 paper presented a mountain of incontrovertible evidence to the effect that the case was a hoax perpetrated by two swindlers named Newton and GeBauer, the investigation that led to that conclusion was still far from complete three years earlier in 1982. It was in late ‘82, during one of the many friendly discussions I had with Richard Doty, that I happened to mention that I was researching the Aztec rumor, Rick indicated that he knew nothing about that matter, and wanted me to tell him everything I could about it. I did so, and, as I recall, he took some notes. Some months later, in early 1983, I became aware that Doty was involved with a team of several others, including one fellow from Denver that I knew of and at least one who was working out of Washington, D.C., in playing an elaborate disinformation game against a prominent UFO researcher who, at the time, had close connections with a major television film company interested in doing a UFO documentary. Although I was not in a position to know a whole lot about what was going on, I was able to put enough pieces of it together to conclude that the government seemed hell bent on severing the ties that existed between the researcher and the film company. My understanding was that because the researcher was known to have close ties to Bennewitz and had exhibited a strong interest in his work, certain elements within the intelligence community were concerned that the story of his having intercepted low frequency electromagnetic emissions from the Coyote Canyon area of the Kirtland/Sandia complex would end up as part of the script of a feature film. Since this in turn might influence others (possibly even the Russians) to attempt similar experiments, someone in a control position apparently felt it had to be stopped before it got out of hand. In any case, the prime objective of the counterintelligence people who swarmed around Bennewitz between 1980 and 1984 seemed to be the maintenance of a high-level security net around the radio signals he was intercepting. I was unable to determine why this was a priority at the time and I still do not know today. What I do know, however, is that since they couldn’t physically stop Paul from intercepting these signals, and since they hadn’t been successful in enlisting his voluntary silence, they fell back on a wall of disinformation as the best way to confuse the issue, and, ultimately, to call his credibility into question. When the film maker appeared on the scene and it looked as if Paul’s story might become part of the script, the counterintelligence people simply extended their disinformation activities accordingly. Part of this game involved a meeting between the UFO researcher in question, agent Richard Doty, and others at the AFOSI office at Kirtland AFB, wherein the researcher subsequently claimed to have been allowed to view certain MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 260 December 1989 purportedly sensitive documentation about the government’s real involvement with UFOs. Included in this material was information about an alleged UFO crash/retrieval at Aztec. Richard Doty, who is bound by a security oath, cannot, and I am told will not discuss this matter except to say that he broke no laws and gave away no secrets that day. That, insofar as I am aware, is entirely correct. I, on the other hand, was never required to sign a security oath and am therefore breaking no laws when I tell you that the information which changed hands that day was directly descended from the discussion Doty and I had had on that very topic only a few months earlier! I can also tell you that it was a very effective deception because the researcher involved continued to believe this information and actively continues to try to convince others of its truth even now — more than six years after the fact. Unfortunately, there was no UFO crash at Aztec. Nor was there much truth to any of the other material supplied to this particular researcher. The much touted alien harvest is really a dismal crop failure. To the best of my knowledge, it was all disinformation; and I was the one who had unwittingly supplied the fuel to those who were spreading the fire.
Disinformation
Disinformation is a strange and bizarre game. Those who play it are completely aware that an operation’s success is dependent upon dropping information upon a target, or “mark,” in such a way that the person will accept it as truth and will repeat, and even defend it to others as if it were true. Once this has been accomplished, the work of the counterintelligence specialists is complete. They can simply withdraw in the confidence that the dirty work of spreading their poisonous seeds will be done by others. Those who want proof of how well the process works need only look at the Bennewitz case, or the Aztec case. Every time one of you repeats an unverified or unsubstantiated bit of information without qualifying it as such, you are contributing to that process; and every time you do it, 9
somebody in a need-to-know position sits back and has a horse laugh at your expense. One final comment on the Aztec hoax is that two other researchers who self-published a voluminous book (UFO Crash at Aztec) on the affair in 1987 chose to completely omit any mention of my extensive and definitive research on the case, which had been published two years earlier, and which both researchers had copies of. It’s a classic case of the book’s principal author, Steinman, having decided what his conclusion would be before even beginning the process of “investigation,” and then totally ignoring everything which didn’t fit. One of the problems the UFOlogy movement has with its image is that there is a significant number of people involved with it who support this sort of half-assed journalism.
Q & A
The next section of this presentation will deal with questions and answers. The format, however, will be a bit different in that I will not take questions from the audience, but rather have elected to incorporate a number of questions and their answers directly into the body of this paper. Following the questions and answers I will present some conclusions. Question #1: Am I currently involved with providing information to any government agency about UFOs or about people involved with the UFO phenomenon? Answer: No. I have not had any such involvement since 1984. The extent and scope of that involvement was essentially as I have already outlined. Question #2: Am I presently involved in knowingly spreading any sort of disinformation about UFOs? Answer: No. The only conscious involvement I have ever had with a disinformation operation was that which I have already outlined in connection with the Bennewitz case. Question #3: Am I presently, or have I ever been on the payroll of any agency of the U.S. government? Answer: No. 10 Question #4: It is true that I showed UFO researcher Lee Graham an official identification card linking me with a government intelligence agency? Answer: Earlier in this paper I told you how I was recruited to supply information on Mr. Bennewitz. The exact wording of my statement was “Bennewitz … and to a lesser extent, several other individuals.” One of those “other individuals” was Lee Graham. This began in 1983, if memory serves. It is important to note here that, in addition to being a UFO researcher, Lee is also an avid military aircraft buff. As far as I am aware, the counterintelligence people were primarily interested in him because, at the time, Lee was making a lot of inquiries and collecting a great deal of information on the then very highly classified stealth aircraft program. Apparently there was some question as to why he was so interested in obtaining information on so sensitive a subject — in other words, was he using it solely to satisfy a personal curiosity, or was he passing it on to others who, perhaps, had foreign intelligence connections? There seemed to be only minimal interest in his UFO activities. Lee is a completely above-board individual who is a loyal U.S. citizen. In the process of keeping in touch with him, we became good friends. His knowledge of the fact that I had friends in the intelligence community gradually evolved into the firm belief on his part that I was much more than I really was. The I.D. card thing stems from nothing more than a practical joke on my part that has simply gotten way out of hand. Since the story surrounding it is somewhat longer than time here will allow, I will commit to publishing it in our FOCUS newsletter so that it will be on record for anyone still interested. The fact is, I do not hold a government I.D. card. But think about it for just a moment — If I did, does it make sense that I would pull it out of my wallet and show it to Lee Graham — or any other UFO researcher, for that matter? Question #5: Is it true that several hours of interviews with the source code-named “Falcon” were video taped, some in the presence of bona fide members of the news media; and is it true, as some had alleged, that those tapes were confiscated by the U.S. government? Answer: Yes, it is true that those tapes were made. No, it is not true that they were confiscated. They are still in our possession. Question #6: Is it true that I have characterized the cattle mutilation phenomenon as a hoax? Answer: No. Question #7: Do I know anything about the so-called “Ellsworth AFB Humanoid” case of 1977? Answer: Yes, some people have characterized this case as a hoax while others have attributed it to official disinformation. It is my position that this was a special counterintelligence training exercise in the creation and dissemination of disinformation. And, yes Richard Doty, who was stationed at Ellsworth at the time, was almost certainly a part of it; but not in a capacity where he would have been responsible for creating the documents involved. Question #8: Do I know anything about the so-called “Weitzel letter”? Answer: Yes. The letter, which is loosely based upon an actual UFO case, was written anonymously to APRO in July, 1980 by Richard Doty and is directly related to the Bennewitz affair. Essentially it was “bait.” AFOSI knew that Bennewitz had close ties with APRO at the time, and they were interested in recruiting someone within the APRO organization who would be in a position to provide them with feedback on Bennewitz’s activities and communications. Since I was the APRO Board member in charge of Special Investigations in 1980, the Weitzel letter was passed to me for action shortly after it had been received. It was not long thereafter that I came to know Richard Doty and began providing him with information about the Bennewitz case. Question #9: What do I know about the so-called “Aquarius Document” which purports to be a facsimile of an AFOSI teletype message dated 17 NOV. 1980? Answer: This is an actual example of some of the disinformation produced in connection with the Ben
newitz case. The document is a retyped version of a real AFOSI message with a few spurious additions. It was apparently created by AFOSI, or at least I always assumed it was, and it was handed to me in February, 1981 with the intention that I would pass it to Bennewitz. My understanding, although I never knew for sure, was that Bennewitz was expected to wave it to the press and others as proof of what he was saying about an alien invasion, at which point the document would be denounced as a counterfeit and Bennewitz would be further discredited. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending upon one’s point of view) it didn’t turn out that way. (A highlighted version of this document, showing the real information and the added disinformation appears in the current issue of our newsletter FOCUS, which is available at our display table out in the lobby. I might also add that the entire text of this speech is also printed therein, for those of you who might want copies.) One additional bit of information about this document is the way in which it initially came to be known to the UFO community. In September of 1982, insofar as I was aware, there were only three copies of this document in existence. One of these I had passed to Bennewitz, a second was in safekeeping, and a third was in my briefcase during a trip I had made to San Francisco. While there, I had a morning meeting with a man who turned out later to be an associate of UFOlogist Peter Gersten of New York. That same afternoon, my car was broken into and my briefcase was stolen. Four months later, a copy of that same document complete with annotations I had penciled on it, turned up in the hands of none other than Gersten himself. To this day, I have never received a satisfactory explanation of how he obtained that document. Question #10: What about the AFOSI documents which speak of a 1980 UFO landing near a nuclear storage facility within the Kirtland AFB complex? Are these documents more disinformation, or are they authentic? Answer: To the best of my knowledge they are authentic. Question #11: What about other documents which I have either alluded to having or have published portions of without providing further details? Answers: Yes, there are a number of these and they came to us in several different ways. None of them, however, seem to have any direct connection to the Bennewitz case, nor, as far as I can tell, was Richard Doty directly involved in supplying them to us. Whether they are legitimate, or disinformation, or (more likely) a combination of both is still a matter of question. Once we have completed our study of these materials, we will make them available as well. Question #12: UFO-basher Phil Klass has been the topic of a number of rumors lately to the effect that he is an active government disinformation agent. What do I think about that? Answer: Mr. Klass is a very astute individual who has long been a close follower of my activities. Indeed, I believe he was the only one out of the entire UFO community who managed to figure out what I and my associates were up to, and it horrified him! In my opinion, the very idea that someone might actually be capable of getting far enough into the UFO problem to discover the truth constituted a personal threat to him that had to be dealt with. He has been obsessed with doing everything possible to try to either stop or discredit us ever since. As to his motives — I think it is best left to Mr. Klass to explain why he has acted as he has. Perhaps Phil bashes UFOs and the people who see them for the same reason that other people tear the wings off of flies. Or perhaps he gets well paid to do what he does. If there’s nothing to UFOs, as he has consistently claimed, then I can’t imagine why he gets so emotional about them — unless, of course, it’s all part of the script. Phil’s been bashing UFOs for over twenty years now. In that process, he’s always been very quick to ascribe ulterior motives to the people who report them or investigate them. There are a lot of people in this audience who would be very interested in hearing what his ulterior motives MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 260 December 1989 are. Why does Mr. Klass bash UFOs? I, for one, would welcome some rational explanation of just why a man would devote twenty years of his life to an essentially one-man crusade against something which he claims doesn’t exist. If he’s not spreading disinformation; if he’s not on some government or private payroll, then just what is he up to and precisely what does he hope to accomplish by it? How about it, folks. How many of you would like to hear what makes Mr. Klass tick? I think he owes us all an explanation of what, in my opinion and I’m sure in that of many others here, has been twenty long years of unprofessional attitude and reprehensible behavior. As a matter of fact, I think he owes a lot of people an apology, myself included. The pages of my newsletter FOCUS are open to you, Phil. Whenever, you’re ready to accept this challenge, we’ll be more than happy to print your reply. Now, having gotten that out of the way, this seems to be an appropriate place to tell you the story of man’s first contact with the Martians. During a world-wide telecast of the Martian ambassador’s press conference, the following dialog transpired: Reporter: Tell me, Mr. Martian, what sort of social structure do you have on Mars? Martian: We are all devout communists. There are no cares or worries in our society, and we are all extremely happy! Reporter: Well, ah… What is the one thing about living on Mars that makes you people the happiest? Martian: That’s a very easy question. You see, unlike the people of Earth, we on Mars enjoy the distinct advantage of living in a completely Klass-less society. So, moving from the humorous back to the serious, here’s Question #13: What do I think of Whitley Strieber and his claims of being a UFO abductee? Answer: At first, I was highly skeptical and admittedly somewhat jealous of Whitley. As a result, I undertook to get to know the man in order to assess things for myself. In that process, he has earned my respect, my admiration and my friendship! Whitley 11
has come very close to the truth in a number of ways, and although still somewhat baffled by his experiences, has found a very acceptable way of accommodating them into his life. If one makes a conscious effort to remove Whitley’s emotional reactions and then takes a good hard look at the remaining core of information, the result is an insightful look into what gives every appearance of being a real situation. In any event, I certainly wouldn’t dismiss this man too lightly. We’re going to hear from him before it’s all over. Question #14: Jerome Clark reported in FATE magazine that I and Jamie Shandera made a trip to Washington, D.C. in anticipation of meeting a live alien, and were “stood up” in the process. Doesn’t this imply that we were highly gullible individuals and that the experience was probably just a practical joke on the part of the disinformation crowd? Answer: Not at all. If you stop to think about it, considering what you now know about our project and its goals, we had a story no matter what happened. We made the trip because we simply couldn’t lose. But then, there’s a lot more to that experience than you know about, and this isn’t the place where it’s going to be told. Once again, let me caution you not to jump to conclusions until all the facts are in. Question #15: What are my plans for the future? Answer: I and my associates will continue our work and will continue to keep the public informed of our results as circumstances warrant. What you have heard today is only a small part of a very large body of information. Question #16: Assuming that they’re interested, what can fellow UFOlogists do to support our continuing efforts? Answer: First of all, what we are doing takes a lot of time and a lot of money. We have the time; it’s the money which is not always available. The easiest thing you can do is to make a donation to the effort. Should you wish to offer time, or research services, or should you feel you have information we might be interested in, please feel free to contact us at any 12 time. Two years ago in Washington, D.C., I stated that we were looking for help. The response was damn few offers and a lot of rocks thrown in our direction. I can say to you now in all candor that at last inventory we had plenty of rocks and we were still short of help. To those of you that still have rocks to throw, allow me to suggest that they might be better put to use by tossing them at the rumor mongers, the disinformers, the incompetents and the broken crockery presently running rampant in the UFO community. Those are the people who are really giving us a bad image. Which brings me, at last, to the final section of this lengthy paper. It seems to me that it’s high time I made my position clear about a few things. A lot of people seem to be very interested in knowing where Bill Moore stands on a number of issues, so here goes. Let me begin by stating that the positions presented here are entirely my own. All are based upon evidence obtained by me and my associates during the course of our project. Some of that evidence has already been made available, some is provided for the first time in this paper, and some remains to be released at a later, more appropriate time. As to the existence and depth of the unreleased material… well, you’ll just have to take my word for it for the time being. To the best of my knowledge, everything here is true. Indeed, although I confess to having practiced an occasional deception now and again over the years in order to protect the integrity of our project, our goal from the very beginning was to keep things as above board as possible. After all, ours has been a search for answers, not an effort to create more mysteries.
Positions
Position #1: A highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization is visiting planet Earth and is actively manipulating our awareness of their presence here. Position #2: At least two of the U.S. government’s intelligence agencies are aware of this, and both are presently conducting highly classified, on-going, UFO-related projects. I can tell you without reservation that at least one of these efforts (and probably both) has access to electromagnetic, optical and infrared signature data which, if released to the public, would provide proof positive that some UFOs represent someone else’s highly advanced technology. Unfortunately, professional ethics make it impossible for me to tell you any more at this time, so you’ll just have to take my word that it is so. Those of you who find me competent and credible will take this as a major revelation which is as it should be. Those who hold other opinions will continue to throw rocks while loudly demanding at the same time that I deliver proof positive into their hands on a silver platter so they can call it their own and claim credit for it. Patience, my friends. Patience. Position #3: U.S. government counterintelligence people have conducted an on-again, off-again campaign of deception and disinformation against the American public about the UFO phenomenon for more than 40 years. Those who have been responsible for such operations are highly placed individuals within at least two separate agencies, and there does seem to be a degree of cooperation between them. These operations involve a large number of people and are well-organized. They also include the use of phoney documents and the recruiting of informants who are able to provide information on the activities of people conducting UFO research or who have had UFO experiences. Several possible reasons are offered to explain this situation: • The disinformation is a security cover for a real UFO project which exists at a very high level and is known to only an elite few. • It is a security process designed to divert attention away from real, but non-UFO related, high-tech research and development projects. • It is a manipulation by a group of highly placed and well-to-do individuals (like the tri-lateralists) who espouse a one-world philosophy and who are using the UFO phenomena in a effort to bring about world unity in the face of an unknown threat from space.
• It is a convenient way of training counterintelligence agents in the techniques of deception and disinformation. • It is a manipulation by UFO aliens themselves as part of a long-term plan to gradually make human society aware of their presence here. My position is that the truth is best described in terms of a combination of all of the above. In addition, the same group of people responsible for directing the spread of disinformation in the Bennewitz affair have made contact with and are currently spreading essentially the same information through different individuals today. Whether those people are witting or unwitting tools of this process, I do not know; but to the best of my information and belief at least some of them know exactly what they are doing. The last thing they expected, however, is that someone involved with the Bennewitz affair would pop up after so many years to burst their balloon. Position #4: There are three distinct aspects or levels to the UFO Phenomenon. These are: • Apparently ridiculous, often laughable claims by individuals which are often passed off as hoaxes, mental aberrations, or psychological derangements, but some of which would appear to merit further study. These include contactees, trancechannellers, religious apparitions, accounts of alien “walk-ins,” men in black, and a variety of New Age and metaphysical phenomena. • Typical counterintelligence deception and disinformation activities which center around the UFO phenomenon. • Truly paranormal events or activities which do not seem to lend themselves to prosaic explanations and which suggest the presence of a superior technology at work or the existence of a higher consciousness. These include all of the best UFO cases as well as UFO-abduction events and at least some parapsychological phenomena. All of these represent legitimate areas of study within the UFO phenomenon, and none should be rejected as too outrageous, ridiculous, implausible or impossible until it can be determined whether or not they are a part of the larger picture. Position #5: We have been able to confirm that there is in fact a group known as MJ-12 which operates at the White House/National Security Council level. To the best of my knowledge, this group still uses the MJ-12 designator. The level of security around this group is such that we have not yet succeeded in establishing whether or not its functions are UFO related or precisely how long it has been in existence. Along these same lines, none of our sources has indicated any knowledge whatsoever of terms such as “Maji,” “Majesty,” “PI-40,” “Plato,” “Garnet,” or a number of other terms currently circulating within the UFO grapevine. Position #6: There is, in fact, a Project Aquarius — possibly two of them. We have succeeded in obtaining considerable information about one such project in the 1971-73 time frame, and sketchy information about another (which may be a later extension of the first one) in the 1976-85 time frame. This information includes contract and report numbers as well as the names of several individuals who worked on the project. More details will be forthcoming at a later date. Meanwhile, it ill behooves UFO researchers to deluge the government with Freedom of Information requests for information on sensitive, high-level projects. This simply alerts the powers-that-be that you are onto them, and thus makes it all more difficult for those of us who are trying to obtain information through other channels. In the rush for “me first” in the UFO community, we are often our own worst enemies. Remember: “Discretion is the better part of valor.” Position #7: With respect to the controversial MJ-12 papers; these have now been examined by a number of questioned-documents experts and other research on them is continuing as well, as you’ve just heard from my good friend Stanton. In the case of the Cutler-Twining memo found in the National Archives, I can state with reasonable certainty that it is an authentic document, and that best evidence indicates that someone planted it amidst the papers MUFON UFO JOURNAL No. 260 December 1989 in Record Group 341 knowing that there was a strong chance we would find it there. With respect to the so-called Eisenhower Briefing Document, there is still no compelling reason to believe it is anything but authentic. On the other hand, its authenticity remains far from proved, so in the final analysis the scale remains balanced by the weight of arguments on both sides. If it’s the real thing, it’s going to take extraordinary evidence to convince even some of the more liberal skeptics. If it’s a hoax, it’s extraordinarily well done. In either case, there’s a major story here and the controversy is far from over. As for the so-called Truman Executive Order of Sept. 24, 1947, which is actually the final page of the portion of the Eisenhower document which we have, the analysts have come up with mixed results. Though not yet disproved, this document presents the weakest case of the three. We are not yet prepared to release a final report on this matter. Before leaving it, however, I would like to at least comment on what has emerged as the most controversial aspect of the MJ-12 document affair — that of the date format. There are a couple of points I would like to make: • If similarities between stylistic characteristics of the documents and my own writings are important, then are not dissimilarities equally important? There are some, you know — even in the way the dates are written. Why do those who go to such pains to point out similarities not go to equal pains to point out dissimilarities? Could it, I wonder, be prejudice? Or does the word “incompetence” better describe it? • We are by no means convinced that the date-format is as critical an issue as others would make it out to be. While the style is admittedly unusual, it is not without precedent. • To those of you who still harbor suspicions that I created the documents and am perpetrating a hoax, I say “Thank you for the compliment!” To those of you who think it more likely that I am the innocent victim of an elaborate hoax, I concede that this remains a possibility which has not yet been entirely ruled out. 13
Position #8: The matter of alien abduction of humans is regarded as serious by those within the government who are aware of the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs. This is evidenced by the fact that the government has gone so far as to disinform its own counterintelligence people on the subject. Once again, you’ll have to trust me on this until I’m able to provide you with more solid information. Position #9: The “secret” behind the government UFO cover-up is essentially an awareness of what UFOs are by a few people in high places who have connections with the National Security Council and the White House. Widespread publicity about the abduction phenomenon is an unwelcome complication in what is already a difficult situation. Within the “in group” there are strong differences of opinion as to whether information should be released to the public and how fast. There also seems to be some consternation about exactly who is in control of the situation. Position #10: UFOlogy has been stumbling around for thirty years looking for answers. Unless something is done to reduce the petty bickering, the rumor mongering, the name calling, the ego massaging, the power politics and the personal vendettas which have been taking up our time, sapping our strength and disgracing our image lately, I expect mainstream UFOlogy will go right on stumbling for a long time to come. What is needed, I submit, is a Society of Professional UFOlogists which adheres to established research procedures and techniques, which maintains a rigorous set of ethics and standards, and which limits its membership to an elite few whose competence has been appropriately demonstrated. No matter what happens, however, I am committed to completing the process I have begun. I am presently working with a network of more than a dozen individuals, some of whom hold very impressive credentials. We have been actively exploring the labyrinth of government UFO involvement, and we will continue to do so until we feel that task is complete or that we can go no furuther. Our group is euphemistically called “the aviary” 14 “Every time one of you repeats an unverified or unsubstantiated piece of information, without qualifying it as such, you are contributing to the disinformation process. And every time you do that, somebody in a need-to-know position sits back and has a good horse laugh at your expense.” and each individual involved has been assigned the name of a bird as an identifier. We will continue to provide the UFO community with data from time to time as circumstances warrant, and we will continue to proceed in the way which we feel best suits our purposes. A number of people have suggested to me recently that I should “defend” myself against various allegations and rumors which have been circulating around the UFO community lately. Well, folks — you’ve just heard the case for the defense. Now, reach down inside of yourselves again and wrench forth a judgement! I and my group of associates are going to find answers, no matter what it takes and no matter how long it takes! We are out there in the field, we are digging, and we are going to continue to dig — either with the support of the UFO community, or without it. Armchair researchers and “hasty pudding” potshot plaguerist UFOlogists whose only goal is to make themselves look important at others’ expense, take note! Those of you who think we’re doing a good job and want to be part of that process, please know that we welcome any support you feel you can offer us. Those who feel it’s all a con game can continue to throw all the rocks you want. We’re going to go right on without you, just as we always have. This paper marks a radical change of position for me. In the past, I have always been very careful to qualify my statements about the possible extraterrestrial nature of UFOs so as to leave room for other explanations. I am now convinced beyond reasonable doubt that there is an extraterrestrial presence here on planet Earth. I am also convinced that a small number of individuals within our government know this but remains undecided as to what to do about it. Of this much I am certain, even though I am not yet free to release all of the evidence I have. The next stop is to uncover just how much of the rest of the UFO situation is for real and how much is horse manure. So either climb aboard and hang on, or get off the tracks. In closing, I wish to state that the text you have just heard me read has been copyrighted by William L. Moore and the Fair-Witness Project, Inc. under Title 17 of the United States Code, also known as PL 94-553 of 1978, as amended. Any use of printed, video or audio reproductions of this material without the express written permission of the copyright holders is specifically prohibited. I apologize for going overtime. I had a lot to say and it needed to be said. Thank you, Good Night and Fairwell! “Direct examination of psychologically healthy people shows pretty clearly that they are positively attracted to the mysterious, to the unknown, to the puzzling and the unexplained. This is noteworthy because it contrasts sharply with the psychologically sick person’s tendency to be threatened by the unfamiliar, the ambiguous, the unknown.” Maslow “The Need to Know and the Fear of Knowing” Journal of General Psychology 68:111-25 Submitted by Jerrold “Ron” Johnson
MUFON
UFOS AND THE GOVERNMENT PART 3 By William L. Moore
Many of you reading this have been in UFOlogy long enough to remember a persistent rumor which began circulating during the spring of 1983 to the effect that the Department of Defense had produced a documentary film on UFOs which was about to be released and which was to run (according to the most commonly repeated version of the story) on Public Television. The film, supposedly a narrated collection of classified footage put together from files stored at Los Alamos, N.M., was to be an admission of the Defense Department’s knowledge of the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs. Again according to the most common version of the rumor, the film would admit to our government’s knowledge of extraterrestrial visitation during the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but would conclude with the statement that there had been no verified visitations of “IAC” (identified alien craft) since the early ’70s and that apparently the aliens had lost interest in us and gone away. During March and April of 1983, I became aware that both Paul Bennewitz and Linda Howe had been “informed” of the supposed existence of this film, and that both had been told that the film’s release date had been temporarily delayed because someone in the DOD had been unhappy with the quality of the narration and had sent the film back to be “renarrated.” Shortly thereafter, rumors about its allegedly upcoming “release” began circulating throughout the UFO community, either as a result of Paul and/or Linda having repeated the information to others, or because others in the UFO community had also been provided with this information by those who had originally given it to Paul and Linda. In any case, the rumors ran hot and heavy for a while, with many expressing the belief that there might be something to them. For my part, I knew that AFOSI was behind the spreading of the story, but at the time I could only speculate that it had something to do with defusing Linda Howe’s efforts to make a film with HBO. In an effort to learn more, I had 4 FOCUS, 1989 conversations with several of my contacts (including Rick Doty) on the subject, but was unable to glean much more than the fact that the story had originated somewhere within the Washington DOD establishment. The fact that both Bennewitz and Howe had been targeted recipients of it, and that AFOSI people were clearly involved with its dissemination, strongly suggested that it was just another ploy in the disinformation game against these two. Dropping the same rumor on selected others within the UFO community who could be expressly relied upon to spread it far and wide was known to me as a previously tried-and-true technique of providing “outside corroboration” for rumors being circulated by “inside sources.” I had quietly observed such activity before and had carefully taken note of the methodology without letting on I had noticed. In this instance however, I was unable to determine whether the roots of this particular grapevine were limited to both Howe and Bennewitz, neither of whom seemed able to keep their mouths shut (no offense intended, folks, I’m just calling it like I saw it), or whether the government had prompted the growth of the vine by spreading a little fertilizer of its own. In any case, I remember the subject of an impending DOD film on UFOs coming up during the course of a dozen or more calls from other researchers at the time, so it was clear to me that the rumor was certainly making the rounds. What was behind it, however, was another question entirely. As it turned out, it was indeed disinformation; and like all good (?) disinformation it contained a certain element of truth. It seems that during 1982 and early 1983, not DOD but rather DOE (the Department of Energy) was in fact involved with the making of a number of classified films, the production of which were coordinated by Charles Barnett, head of the video and film production facility at Los Alamos Labs. Upon completion of one such film in January 1983 (note the date), Barnett received a complaint from a project scientist concerning the “awful” quality of the narration. Annoyed, Barnett shot back, “Who in the hell
do you want, Charlton Heston?”; to which his critic replied “Could you?” As it turned out, Barnett could, and did. Heston was granted a “Q” clearance in February, 1983, and began providing quality narration for Los Alamos/ DOE films shortly thereafter. All of this, of course, is the true element of the DOD-UFO film rumor planted on Howe and Bennewitz. It was disinformation stirred in with the truth that identified the project with DOD rather than DOE, and changed the subject from nuclear weapons to UFOs. Since the films were highly classified in any case, it is unlikely that any outsider attempting to check the story with Los Alamos officials would have gotten very far. (There is no evidence, however, that anyone actually did try to check it.) Another, but very similar, matter involves the many rumors which began circulating in the early ’80s and continue to this day concerning the alleged presence of underground alien bases in the vicinity of Dulce, New Mexico, and “Area 51” of the Nellis Air Force Test Range in Nevada. Although I have already written a considerable amount on the origin of these rumors (see FOCUS, June 30, 1989), there are a number other aspects of this situation which I have avoided discussing until now. The first is that, according to my own investigations, both the Dulce and Area 51 sites are red herrings designed to divert attention away from the real areas of interest. Once again, as in all disinformation, there is a certain element of truth to rumors about each site; and once again these rumors were carefully planted so as to assure their perpetuation within the UFO community and ultimately, through certain credulous wags therein, to the public at-large without further government involvement. (The underlying philosophy here is that it is better, easier, and far less risky to disinform the UFO community and allow them to feed misinformation to the American public than it is for the government to try to disinform the public directly. That way, if something goes awry, the “UFO kooks” can be easily debunked and the government’s people get off scott free. From a counterintelligence point of view, Philip Klass is regarded as just another pawn in this same game. As long as he remains useful, he is no different from the rest of the “UFO kooks” as far as they are concerned.) In the case of Dulce, where rumors put an underground UFO base beneath nearby Archuleta Peak, there are several factors to be considered. The first is that the area has had a high incidence of UFO reports and cattle mutilation activity over the years which has continually fueled the imaginations of the clannish and very superstitious Jicarilla Apaches who live there. It is no secret in Dulce that the town, and thus the tribe, has benefited from the dollars spent by the stream of UFO researchers and just plain curious who have been attracted to the area by the many rumors about it. Indeed, certain tribal officials assume an almost conspiratorial air when approached by outsiders, speaking darkly and mysteriously of the latest reputed goings-on in a manner virtually certain to whet the appetites of the curious who have often travelled far in their search for answers. Often the information is innocently distorted in the telling — as was, for example, the tale I was once told of two CIA agents who had come to town two weeks earlier with a car full of cameras and video equipment and who sought tribal permission to go UFO hunting. The story sounded good in the telling, but it took only a little investigation to turn up the fact that the two “CIA agents” were none other than Allen Benz and Ed Biebel of the Tucsonbased Foundation for UFO Research who had come to the area to check out the Dulce rumors to their own satisfaction. The point here is that the area has indeed been the center of a large number of UFO and cattle mutilation reports AND the locals have learned to take advantage of this situation for their own benefit. It’s a combination which constitutes fertile ground for the planting and self-perpetuation of UFO disinformation — and careful investigation reveals that the government’s counterintelligence people have taken full advantage of it. What are the government’s reasons for planting rumors which center around UFO activity and an alleged underground alien base in the Dulce area? Actually, there are two reasons — both very good ones! The first is that the government really does maintain a highly classified underground area code-named “Dulce Complex”, but it’s NOT in Dulce, New Mexico. (Whether the wreckage of a crashed UFO, or a real-live alien ambassador are kept there, I do
not know; but there are rumors, and they come from much better sources than the ones who are spreading the Dulce disinformation stories.) The second is that (according to information which has been provided to me by several different sources over the years) the government has had under development for some time now a disc-shaped, unmanned, reconnaissance drone, and has been conducting test flights of this object over the northwestern New Mexico, southern Colorado area (of which Dulce is a part). What better way to protect the security of such a project than to promote the belief that those who have sighted this object in flight have really seen a UFO? (Just for the record, I do not believe that this explanation is responsible for all the UFO reports in the area, nor do I pretend that there is anything here which would explain the many cattle mutilations. What I am saying is that someone in the counterintelligence community has been very astutely and very carefully manipulating an existing situation so that it works to their advantage, and certain members of the UFO community have been convenient, howbeit unwitting, pawns in this process. The many rumors centering around “Area 51” in Nevada are a similar red-herring situation, although somewhat more complex. Once again, there is a plethora of UFO sightings and similar unusual occurrences connected with the area; and once again rumors of underground alien bases and government operated captured UFOs have abounded for years — many of these mentioning the government’s highly secure Groom Lake research and development facility (“the ranch”), which is virtually inaccessible to outsiders. With respect to these Nevada rumors, there are also two things to be noted. The first is that the government is hardly going to go out of its way to spread UFO rumors designed to attract people to the the very area it wants them to stay away from. Hence, while I am prepared to concede that there MAY BE something alien going on in the middle of Nevada (indeed, I once had a UFO sighting there myself), the least likely place for it to be happening is in “Area 51.” Just as in Dulce, however, there are certain things about the “Area 51” location which conveniently play into the hands of those wanting to spread UFO disinformation. The area’s remote and inaccessible location, the existence of a highly secure, Top Secret research and development facility at Groom Lake, 6 FOCUS, 1989 the presence of F-117a “Stealth” fighters and other high performance and experimental aircraft (including the highly classified “Aurora” and “Omega” projects), and the honeycomb of tunnels under the Nevada nuclear test site — all are sufficient to convince those who go looking that the government really does have something to hide there; and all are convenient red herrings just waiting to be fried by the government’s disinformation experts. The second thing to be taken into consideration about the “Area 51” rumors is that the headquarters for many of the activities which go on there are not at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas as many believe, but rather are located at none other than Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque — the central point of the government’s disinformation activities in the Bennewitz-Howe affair. Once again, the bottom line here is that the government is not going to spread disinformation designed to attract people to the very area they want people to stay away from. Those who try to go there looking for UFOs are doing just what the disinformation people want them to do — they are going to the wrong place! So where’s the “right” place? I don’t know for sure. It’s something I’m still working on and thus comments are reserved until that work is complete. Finally, is a Congressional hearing the best way to get the truth about all of this out to the public? I used to think so, but several recent developments in the work I am doing have left me less certain about this. Although I continue to support efforts aimed at securing a Congressional inquiry, the group that I am working with and I have recently agreed that we are going to pursue a rather different strategy which we believe stands a reasonably good chance of accomplishing the same thing. Since providing details of the plan would virtually assure its failure, it does not seem appropriate to say anything further about it at this time.
MJ-12 NOTICE Due to a heavy workload, the Moore/Shandera report on the analysis of the MJ-12 documents has been delayed. As reported in the Septem-
ber 30th, 1989 FOCUS, this work is currently in progress and will be available to interested parties as soon as it can be completed. Subscribers will be advised as to how to obtain a copy as soon as it is ready for release which, at this point, is probably not going to be before mid-February. Meanwhile, UFO-basher Philip Klass has recently published the results of his own research into the authenticity of the so-called Truman Memorandum in the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer. Predictably, Klass concludes that the document is a forgery; and, equally predictably, his article is limited to presenting only those facts which support his pre-conceived position. Nonetheless, those who have been actively following the MJ-12 controversy should obtain and read the piece — and then keep an open mind until “the rest of the story” can be laid on the table.
Continued from page 3 behind the clouds, but reappeared about 45 minutes later with a light burning (it was then 6:30 PM), and following a course directly opposed to the former one.” New York Tribune; March 31, 1892: “St. Petersburg, March 30— The presence of balloons over the forts and encampments in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire, ed.) is becoming more and more frequent… A few nights ago the people of Warsaw were startled by an intensely bright light in the sky. All eyes were turned upward, but nothing could be seen save a path of light that ended in a small focus. Suddenly the ray of light swept in another direction, and when their eyes became accustomed to the darkness that followed, the people could see, far up in the sky, a balloon… The balloon remained over the city until one o’clock in the morning when the light was extinguished and the balloon, heading westward toward the frontier of Prussia, disappeared.” 1896-97 flap! It is also interesting to note that these balloons, when described, were cigarshaped, made no sound, and showed no visible sign of propeller or steering device.
MORE ON THE “AZTEC CRASH”
Readers who have either perused the 1987 Steinman-Stevens book UFO Crash at Aztec, or have been around the UFO field since the early 1970s (or both) will remember the 1974 publicity flap created by one Robert Spencer Carr who made headlines with his claim that the U.S. Air Force had the wreckage of a crashed saucer and dead alien bodies stored in Hanger 18 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Although Carr never offered much in the way of supporting evidence for his story, and the Air Force has (predictably) continued to deny it, rumors about the mysterious (and elusive) Hanger 18 and its allegedly alien contents have continued to circulate in one form or another right up to the present day. They were even the subject of a B-grade Sci-fi movie in the early ’80s. While the claims of Robert S. Carr are often cited in these stories (and figure prominently in the Steinman-Stevens book as well as some of Len Stringfield’s writings), apparently those who repeat them are either unaware of or have chosen to overlook the equally important claims of Mrs. Robert S. Carr. Interviewed by staff writer Jay Maeder for an article which appeared on page one of the October 12, 1974 Miami (Fla.) Herald, Mrs. Carr put the one piece of evidence on the record that was mysteriously missing from her husband’s account. Said Mrs. Carr, her husband had simply repeated a story “that he’d read in a book by Frank Scully in the early 1950s. That’s where he got his information. It told all about the little bodies.”
Except for the hovering for long periods of time (several hours in some cases) and its being described as a “balloon”, these reports could have originated anywhere in the US during the So now you know “the rest of the story.”