The above review might suggest that the Roswell affair and attendant publicity can be chalked up to a phony cover story, dishonest writers, con artists, and general gullibility. However, the matter is not nearly so simple. The stories from government personnel did not stop in 1947; they continue, and the ambiguity only grows.
The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) is a major source for reports of government involvement with aliens. Their Special Agent, Richard C. Doty, was, and is, particularly active. The AFOSI has the task of conducting criminal investigations and counterintelligence operations. It is remarkably successful in avoiding public examination of its own activities.
Rick Doty’s saga is long and convoluted. Through the 1980s he was briefly mentioned in the UFO literature, but by 1989 the focus had intensified. That year several researchers made revelations. Particularly important were Linda Moulton Howe’s book An Alien Harvest, Robert Hastings’ exposé of William L. Moore, Moore’s subsequent confession, and a one-page report by Philip J. Klass.
Richard C. Doty and William L. Moore (coauthor of The Roswell Incident) are intimately tied to Roswell and the MJ-12 papers. Doty’s activities must be considered in conjunction with those of Moore. In June 1989, researcher Robert Hastings published an exposé of William L. Moore in the MUFON UFO Journal. It contained some devastating findings. Hastings reported that Moore had posed as a government agent during his interactions with Lee Graham, a researcher who has had a long-time interest in UFOs and in experimental aircraft. Graham is known for his openness and integrity, and he has voluntarily provided colleagues of mine with massive amounts of documents to support his statements. Graham has filed many FOIA requests and has had extensive dealings with government personnel about them. Moore visited Graham, became friendly with him, and showed him an identification card that appeared identical to those of the Defense Investigative Service (DIS), an agency quite familiar to Graham. Graham even wrote a letter to the DIS inquiring about Moore, and Hastings reproduced it in his report.
Hastings also discussed a questionable MJ-12 document that had been circulating in the UFO community. The AFOSI had declared it a forgery, and Hastings found confirmation of that conclusion. He reproduced a letter from Richard Hall who had asked Moore directly about the document, and Moore admitted that he had retyped it and done a cut-and-paste job on it. Of course there was no legitimate need for him to have done that, and it further eroded his credibility.
In short, Moore had impersonated a federal agent, and he had forged at least one government document. Yet he was one of the most prominent people in the UFO field.
Shortly following Hastings’ exposé, the annual MUFON symposium was held, and Moore made a presentation that must rate as one of the most fantastic in the history of those conventions. Moore claimed to be an informant for the government and admitted to intentionally misleading UFO researchers. His story is amazing. He alleged that in September 1980 someone in the intelligence community approached him claiming to speak for a small group dissatisfied with the government’s cover-up policy on UFOs. They wanted to help Moore. In the bargain Moore was to provide information on the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) and other UFO researchers. Moore agreed to this, expecting to learn more about the government program. Richard Doty was to serve as liaison with Moore.
Paul Bennewitz was one of the UFO researchers Moore was asked to spy on. Bennewitz was a physicist and president of Thunder Scientific Corporation, a manufacturer of humidity measuring devices in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was an enthusiastic UFO buff and prone to leap to conclusions on that topic, and he may have been a bit psychologically unstable. He had taken pictures and movie footage of UFOs over Manzano Weapons Storage Area where nuclear weapons were kept. Using his computer and electronics skills, Bennewitz also detected some unusual electromagnetic signals seemingly from that area, and he concluded that all these were due to alien technology. He was not shy in telling people about it; in fact he contacted Kirtland AFB and informed them.
Bennewitz was interviewed by Richard Doty and Jerald D. Miller, an investigator for the Air Force’s former Project Blue Book (that project was devoted to UFOs; it closed in 1969). He was subsequently invited to Kirtland AFB to make a presentation of his findings to several high-ranking officers. Further, security patrols had sighted UFOs in the general area, around the time Bennewitz took his photos, according to a document obtained by Fawcett and Greenwood through the FOIA. The document indicated that the information about the sightings came from Major Ernest Edwards, but it was signed by Richard Doty.19
Bennewitz’s activities may have alarmed someone, because Moore alleged that an intense disinformation campaign was waged against him. Moore became friendly with Bennewitz to observe the operation. He asserted that Bennewitz was fed with bogus information and was put under surveillance, including wiretaps. As he grew paranoid and more unstable, Moore reported back on the progress of Bennewitz’s psychological deterioration. Bennewitz told people that aliens were coming through walls and injecting him with chemicals, and eventually he was hospitalized for psychiatric care.
Moore’s confession caused an uproar. At the end of his talk, he did not take questions from the audience but rather answered queries he had prepared himself. One asked if he had ever been on the payroll of the U.S. Government, and he denied it. Another asked if he had shown Lee Graham a fake ID, and he did not deny that.
Moore’s confession didn’t diminish belief in a cover-up, but rather stimulated it. His claims were further evidence of a grand government scheme that was starting to crack open. The controversies over MJ-12 and Roswell heated up.
Don Ecker of UFO magazine continued the investigation into Moore’s mysterious connections. In a 1992 article he reported that Moore admitted that he was still a “controlled informant.” Ecker’s investigation led to even more interesting links, and he identified one key player in the drama as C. B. Scott Jones, whose activities will be described below. Shortly after Ecker’s article appeared, a white paper was released by Robert J. Durant which detailed many of Jones’ connections and showed that Moore had developed contacts among government intelligence operatives dealing with UFOs, as well as in the
parapsychology area.22
Moore’s clearest, undisputed tie to the intelligence world is Richard C. Doty. Moore’s credibility is poor, but we need not depend on him for information on Doty. Linda Moulton Howe’s An Alien Harvest (1989) has a detailed description of her interaction with Doty.
In the 1970s Howe was a reporter on environmental issues in Colorado, and in 1979 she began researching animal mutilations for a documentary film. In the course of her investigation, UFO stories began trickling to her, and after her program was aired in May 1980, that turned into a flood. She has since become a prominent figure in ufology and has shown incredible energy, tenacity, and dedication in spreading her findings. Her public presentations, and her networking behind the scenes, have been major factors in publicizing the allegations of government cover-ups of the ET aliens. Her integrity is above reproach, but even her friends sometimes become exasperated at her for uncritically accepting information from government personnel.
In 1983 Howe began work on a UFO documentary for television company HBO. She heard that Doty had some information on a 1977 case at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and she flew to Albuquerque to talk with him on April 9, 1983. Due to some apparent miscommunication, he did not meet her as promised; so she contacted Jerald D. Miller, Doty’s colleague who had been with Project Blue Book. Finally Howe connected with Doty who took her to an office on Kirtland AFB for their meeting. It began by Doty telling her: “You know you upset some people in Washington with your film A Strange Harvest [on cattle mutilations]. It came too close to something we don’t want the public to know about.”
After some discussion of the Ellsworth case, Doty pulled out an envelope, opened it, and handed Howe several sheets. He told her that she could read them but not take note
s. The top page was titled “Briefing Paper for the President of the United States of America.” The documents catalogued a number of crashed disks found in the southwest part of the U.S. Bodies had been retrieved, and in one crash an alien had survived and lived in captivity until 1952. The documents went on to describe attempts to fly one of the alien craft. It was also stated that the aliens were able to manipulate human DNA.
Doty led Howe to believe that their meeting was part of a government program to slowly release information to the public and that she was to play a role in it. He promised her film footage for her documentary. Howe informed the executives at HBO, and they were excited by the prospect. But when the promised footage didn’t arrive, the entire project was cancelled, which may have been the AFOSI goal all along. The purpose of this is unclear, but this incident is not unique. In his book Revelations (1991), Jacques Vallee reported other instances where Air Force personnel dangled film and then jerked it
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away.
Linda Howe was not the only one to receive this kind of information from Doty. Peter Gersten heard similar stories from him. Gersten was a New York attorney, the legal adviser for CAUS, and he had brought lawsuits against various federal agencies to force them to comply with the FOIA. He had met with Doty in January 1983, a few months before Linda Howe’s visit, and heard his disturbing reports. Among other things, Doty told Gersten that the National Security Agency was in communication with the aliens. The Gersten-Doty meeting was summarized by Linda Howe, who reports: “Doty claimed the government and ETs have made an agreement. The aliens could conduct animal mutilations and human abductions in exchange for teaching U.S. experts about alien advanced technologies.”25
Doty’s 1983 activity with Howe and Gersten was not a one-time project by a lone practical joker. Indeed, his UFO involvement went back some years, even before he met William Moore. He told Gersten that his interest started at Ellsworth AFB in 1977. Various allegations about what Doty did and said about that case have been published, but it is universally agreed that he played some role, and probably a central one. In any event, the case appears to be a hoax, at least in part, and it wasted the time of a number of investigators. In 1984 Robert Pratt published an exposé of the case.
Linda Howe’s April 1983 meeting with Doty was not the last time she was shown documents by Air Force personnel. She reported that in the Fall of 1986 she met with Captain Robert Collins, who was also stationed at Kirtland AFB, and he also showed her documents about an ET alien held captive by the government. At that time Collins admitted that he had worked with Moore for years behind the scenes. Thus Doty was not working alone; others in the Air Force were involved. Additionally, persons who were aware of his UFO investigations had to include Major Ernest E. Edwards, Captain Robert Collins, Jerald D. Miller, and the high ranking officers who met with Bennewitz: Brigadier General William Brooksher, Colonel Jack W. Sheppard, Colonel Thomas Simmons, Colonel Frank M. Huey, Lt. Colonel Joe R. Lamport, and Major Thomas A. Cseh. Civilians at the meeting included Dr. Lehman and Ed Breen.
Doty’s efforts had a substantial effect on the popular fascination with UFOs. Linda Howe was tireless in bringing his message to a wider public. She is one of the most energetic people I’ve ever known, and through her talks, writings, and behind the scenes efforts, many ufologists were persuaded that a breach in the cover-up had occurred. Material was leaking out. The staggering implications could not be over-estimated. Many abductees also learned of her work and became convinced that the government was in league with the aliens in the abductions. Linda Howe was a bona fide journalist with many awards for her work. She appeared on innumerable television shows with literally millions of viewers. Still the Air Force did nothing to counteract Doty’s claims, and that confirmed the worst fears of many.
All this intensified the focus on the Roswell incident, and the publicity reached a crescendo in the 1990s. New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff asked the Defense Department about it. He was given the brush-off and was not pleased with that. He then turned to the General Accounting Office (GAO) and requested them to investigate. The Defense Department could not ignore the GAO.
In 1995 the Air Force issued a 975-page report on the Roswell incident in response to the GAO inquiry. The focus of that report was the search for documents regarding Roswell. Considerable effort was expended, and the Air Force’s final report contained long lists of boxes that were examined in various archives. To facilitate the hunt, the Air Force investigators reviewed the published literature on Roswell for clues. In fact, the section in their report entitled “Search Strategy and Methodology” discussed various popular accounts and specifically mentioned two of William Moore’s works.
There was one glaring omission: Richard C. Doty. Doty was one publicly-identified, living government employee who claimed to have knowledge of, and documents pertinent to, the alleged Roswell crash. He had shown Linda Howe pages discussing Roswell, and Howe had published a sworn statement attesting to that. The whole furor over Roswell, and its emergence into the wider popular culture, had its genesis in the efforts of Moore and Doty. Moore could be discounted. But Doty said he was acting in an official capacity. In the final analysis, his activities played a major role in the instigation of the GAO inquiry.
The Air Force response to the GAO was overseen by one Colonel Richard L. Weaver, who signed the report. It seems highly unlikely that he and his colleagues would have been unaware of Doty’s activities and their repercussions for the Roswell affair. Weaver had known Doty while they were stationed in Germany. Doty was even identified as a key player in the myth of ET aliens in Curtis Peebles’ book Watch the Skies! (1994), published by the Smithsonian Institution Press.
How was it that Doty was so neglected? Was his credibility so low that he could be disregarded? Could he be ignored without fear of raising embarrassing questions from the establishment media? Apparently so. Doty’s integrity is seriously challenged by the testimony of Linda Howe and Peter Gersten, and there are other reasons to distrust him. Philip J. Klass reported that while Doty was stationed at Lindsey Air Station in West Germany he “was charged with falsifying official documents and telling falsehoods to his commanding officer. A formal investigation confirmed these charges and Doty was ‘decertified’ as a Special Agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”29 Klass did not give his source for this information, but he is a respected journalist who has many contacts in the military and defense industry. I was able to locate a well-placed source who confirmed the information.
Given Doty’s outlandish claims to Linda Howe and his general unreliability, it is tempting to dismiss his hoaxings as products of a lone individual. But that is too easy. There are many reasons to be suspicious. As NASA scientist and CSICOP skeptic James Oberg noted, various agencies have undoubtedly used stories of UFOs to conceal projects and activities. It is reasonable to suspect that the AFOSI was one of those agencies, and I will review some of the reasons to think that to be the case.
Doty was apparently involved with the dubious Ellsworth UFO case before he entered AFOSI. Why then was he made a Special Agent? Given the sensitive nature of that agency’s work, an extensive background check must have been done, and his caper at Ellsworth must have come to light. It is plausible that Doty was recruited by AFOSI precisely because of that. His personal interest in UFOs may have been useful to AFOSI, and his unreliability could have been an asset because he could be easily discredited if he was caught in something that might embarrass the agency.
The plausibility of this scenario is strengthened by the case of Simone Mendez. Her story appeared in Just Cause in 1991, after documentation supporting her report became available via the FOIA.30 It leaves many questions unanswered, but it implicates the AFOSI.
At age 21, Airman Mendez was a telecommunications specialist stationed at Nellis AFB. She held a Top Secret security clearance and worked in a message center that handled sensitive, classified materials. She sometimes spoke to her co-workers
about her interest in UFOs, and one morning in October 1981, one of them brought a copy of a Top Secret message about UFOs to her home. Mendez kept the copy for several months—an obvious and serious violation of regulations. She eventually concluded that it was a likely hoax and was not too concerned about it. When she returned it to the message center, the AFOSI and FBI began an intense, long-term investigation.
That was traumatic for her, and she was briefly hospitalized because of the stress. Mendez lost her security clearance and was given clerical jobs. But in 1987 she was approached by the AFOSI who wanted her to work for them. They told her that they knew about the earlier investigation of her. She accepted the offer but had mixed feelings about working for them. In the summer of that year she attended the MUFON annual symposium, but before she went, the head of counterintelligence for the base told her that she should prepare a briefing on it after her return. She did so and presented a report.
The Mendez case further demonstrates the AFOSI interest in UFO matters, and it raises questions. Despite her poor judgement in the past, the AFOSI actively sought her out. Why was she recruited? I have no answer. However, it parallels the Doty case. In both the AFOSI recruited UFO buffs with questionable activities in their past.
There are other reasons to be suspicious of AFOSI. As mentioned above, Doty offered film footage to Linda Howe, but it was never delivered. This was not unique. In 1973, film producers Alan Sandler and Robert Emenegger discussed potential television documentaries with the Air Force. While at Norton Air Force Base in a meeting with the head of AFOSI, they were told about footage of a UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base. The details were murky, and it was unclear whether it was of a simulation or of an actual event. They fully expected to see the footage, but the offer was abruptly withdrawn. Emenegger went to Wright-Patterson AFB to speak with Colonel George Weinbrenner about it. Weinbrenner’s response was bizarre. He started talking in a loud voice about a Soviet MIG, and then walked over to a bookshelf, took down a book on UFOs, and handed it to Emenegger, but he continued to talk about the MIG. Linda Howe quotes Emenegger describing the experience as “like a scene from a Kafka play.” Weinbrenner never did answer the question about the status of the film.
The Trickster and the Paranormal Page 27
