Linda Moulton Howe — biographical reference
Compiled 2026-05-29 from Wikipedia, the Doty/Bennewitz disinformation literature, and her own interviews. Reference for howe-earthfiles-cattle-mutilation.
Linda Moulton Howe (b. 1942) — American documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, and paranormal-media figure; creator/host of Earthfiles.
- Real early credential. Won a regional Emmy for the 1980 documentary “A Strange Harvest,” investigating cattle mutilations — a competently-produced film that established her reputation before her later trajectory.
- The Doty disinformation episode (1983). After HBO commissioned a follow-up, “UFOs: The ET Factor,” AFOSI agent Richard Doty met her at Kirtland AFB on April 9, 1983, showed her a purported presidential “Project Aquarius” briefing (MJ-12-adjacent), and promised footage of a living alien and an interview about a crash-survivor — none of which materialized; the film collapsed. Bill Moore later described it as a counterintelligence sting tied to the Paul Bennewitz operation; Doty admitted feeding her disinformation to discredit UFO researchers. (Our doty-debrief-disinformation names her among those owed “reparations.“)
- Method/register. Original field investigation (visiting mutilation/crop sites, collecting samples) combined with reliance on W. C. Levengood’s contested “cannot be hoaxed” plant-node analysis, hypnosis-recovered abduction testimony, and a tendency to reject prosaic explanations (e.g., dismissing the Doug & Dave crop-circle confession of 1991). Over the Earthfiles decades her content moved into increasingly fringe territory (reptilians, etc.).
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Moulton_Howe; Historical Blindness, “UFO Disinfo: The Bennewitz Deception”; Greg Bishop, Project Beta.