Tap-Ten Research Group

In December 1984, in the midst of continuing contact with their own sources (Doty and a number of others) who claimed to be leaking the secret of the cover-up, Moore's associate Jaime Shandera received a roll of 35mm film containing, it turned out what purported to be a briefing paper dated November 18, 1952, and intended for president-elect Eisenhower. The   purported author, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, reported that an "Operation Majestic-12" consisting of a dozen top scientists, military officers and intelligence specialists, had been set up by presidential order on September 24, 1947, to study the Roswell remains and the four humanoid bodies that had been recovered nearby. The document report that the team directed by MJ12 member and physiologist Detlev Bronk "has suggested the term 'Extra-terrestrial Biological Entities', or 'EBEs', be adopted as the standard term of reference for these creatures until such time as a more definitive designation can be agreed upon." Brief mention is also made of a December 6, 1950, crash along the Texas-Mexico border. Nothing is said, however, about live aliens or communications with them.

In July 1985 Moore and Shandera, acting on tips from their sources, traveled to Washington and spent a few days going through recently declassified documents in Record Group 341, including Top Secret Air Force intelligence files from USAF Headquarters. In the 126th box whose contents they examined, they found a brief memo dated July 14, 1954, from Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President, to Gen. Nathan Twining. It says "The president has decided that the MJ-12/SSP [Special Studies Project] briefing should take place durin the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16 rather than following it as previously intended. More precise arrangements will be explained to you upon your arrival. Your concurrence in the above change of arrangements is assumed" (Friedman, 1987).

The Cutler/Twining memo, as it would be called in the controversies that erupted after Moore released the MJ-12 document to the world in the spring of 1987, is the only official document-not to be confused with such disputed ones as the November 17, 1980, Aquarius document-to mention MJ-12. (Several critics of the MJ-12 affair have questioned the   memo's authenticity as well, but so far without unambiguous success.) The memo does not, of course, say what the MJ12 Special Studies Project was.

MJ-12 Goes Public: Just prior to Moore's release of the MJ-12 briefing paper, another copy was leaked to British ufologist Timothy Good, who took his copy to the press. The first newspaper article on it appeared in the London Observer of May 31, 1987, and soon it was the subject of pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC-TV's Nightline. It was also denounced, not altogether persuasively, both by professional debunkers and by many ufologists. The dispute would rage without resolution well into 1989, when critics discovered that President Truman's signature on the September 24, 1947, executive order (appended to the briefing paper) was exactly like his signature on an undisputed, UFO-unrelated October 1, 1947, letter to his science adviser (and supposed MJ-12 member) Vannevar Bush. To all appearances a forger had appended a real signature to a fake letter. The   MJ-12 document began to look like another disinformation scheme.

Although acutely aware of the mass of disinformation circulating throughout the UFO community, Moore remained convinced that at least some of the information his own sources were giving him was authentic. In 1988 he provided two of his sources, "Falcon" (Sgt. Doty according to some) and "Condor" (later claimed to be former U.S. Air Force Capt. Robert Collins), to a television production company. (Moore and Shandera had given them avian names and called the sources collectively "the birds.") UFO Cover-up... Live, a two-hour program, aired in October 1988, with Falcon and Condor, their faces shaded, their voices altered, relating the same tales with which they had regaled Moore and Shandera. The show, almost universally judged a laughable embarrassment, was most remembered for the informants' statements that the aliens favored ancient Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream. Critics found the latter allegation especially hilarious.

Lear's Conspiracy Theory: Events on the UFO scene were taking a yet more bizarre turn that same year as even wilder tales began to circulate. The first to tell them was John Lear, a pilot with a background in the CIA and the estranged son of aviation legend William P. Lear. Lear had surfaced two or three years earlier, but aside from his famous father there seemed little to distinguish him from any of hundreds of other UFO buffs who subscribe to the field's publications and show up at its conferences. But then he started claiming that unnamed sources had told him of extraordinary events which made those told by Doty and the birds sound like bland and inconsequential anecdotes.

According to Lear, not just a few but dozens of flying saucers had crashed over the years. In 1962 the U.S. government started Project Redlight to find a way to fly the recovered craft, some relatively intact. A similar project exists even now and is run out of supersecret military installation; one is Area 51 (specifically at a facility called S-4) at the Nevada Test Site and the other is set up near Dulce, New Mexico. These areas, unfortunately, may no longer be under the control of the government or even of the human race. In the late 1960s an official agency so secret that not even the President may know of it had made an agreement with the aliens. In exchange for extraterrestrial technology the secret government would permit (or at least not interfere with) a limited number of abductions of human beings; the aliens, however, were to provide a list of those they planned to kidnap.

All went relatively well for a few years. Then in 1973 the government discovered that thousands of persons who were not on the alien's list were being abducted. The resulting tensions led to an itercation in 1978 or 1979. The aliens held and then killed 44 top scientists as well as a number of Delta force troops who had tried to free them. Ever since, frantic efforts, of which the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is the most visible manifestation, have been made to develop a defense against the extraterrestrials, who are busy putting implants into abductees (as many as one in 10 Americans) to control their behavior. At some time in the near future these people will be used for some unknown, apparently sinister, alien purpose. Even worse than all this, though, is the aliens' interest in Human flesh. Sex and other organs are taken from both human beings and cattle and used to create androids in giant vats located in underground laboratories at Area 51 and Dulce. The extraterrestrials, from an ancient race near the end of its evolution, also use materials from human body parts as a method of biological rejuvenation. ("In order to sustain themselves," he said, "they use an enzyme or hormonal secretion obtained from the tissue that they extract from humans and animals. The secretions are then mixed with hydrogen peroxide and applied on the skin by spreading or dipping parts of their bodies in the solution. The body absorbs the solution, then excretes the waste back through the skin" [Berk and Renzi, 1988].)

One of Lear's major sources was Bennewitz, who had first heard these scary stories from "AFOSI" personnel at Kirtland in the early 1980s. By this time Bennewitz had become something of a guru to a small group of UFO enthusiasts, Linda Howe among them, who believed extraterrestrials were mutilating cattle and had no trouble believing they might do the same thing to people. Also Lear, whose political views are far to the right of center, was linking his UFO beliefs with conspiracy theories about a malevolent secret American government which was attempting to use the aliens for its own purposes, including enslavement of the world's people through drug addiction. A considerable body of rightwing conspiracy literature, some with barely-concealed anti-Semitic overtones, was making similar charges. Lear himself was not anti-Semitic, but he did share conspiracy beliefs with those who were.

Another of his claimed sources was an unnamed physicist who, Lear claimed, had actually worked at S-4. To the many ufologists who rejected Lear's stories as paranoid, lunatic or fabricated (though not by the patently-sincere Lear), there was widespread skepticism about this physicist's existence. It turned out that he did indeed exist. His name is Robert Lazar, who, according to a story broken by reporter George Knapp on KLAS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Las Vegas, on November 11 and 13, 1989, claims to have worked on alien technology projects at Area 51. Lazar, whose story is being investigated by both ufologists and mainstream journalists, has not endorsed Lear's claims about human-alien treaties, man-eating ETs or any of the rest and has distanced himself from Lear and his associates. His claims, while fantastic by most standards, are modest next to Lears.

Cooper's Conspiracy Theory: Soon Lear was joined by someone with an even bigger supply of fabulous yarns: one Milton William Cooper. Cooper surfaced on December 18, 1988, when his account of the fantastic secrets he learned while a Naval petty officer appeared on a computer network subscribed to by ufologists and others interested in anomalous phenomena. Cooper said that while working as a quartermaster with an intelligence team for Adm. Bernard Clarey, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Meet, in the early 1970s he saw two documents, Project Grudge Special Report 13 and a Majority briefing. (In conventional UFO history, Grudge was the second public Air Force UFO project, superceding the original Sign, in early 1949 and lasting until late 1951, when it was renamed Blue Book. Whereas Sign investigators at one time concluded UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin--a conclusion the Air force leadership found unacceptable--Grudge, as its name suggests coincidentally or otherwise, was known for its hostility to the idea of UFOs and for its eagerness to assign conventional explanations, warranted or otherwise, to the sighting reports that came its way.) Cooper's account of what was in these reports is much like the by-now familiar story of crashes, bodies, contacts and projects, with some elaborations. Moreover, he said the aliens were called "ALFs" (which as any television viewer knows, stands for Alien Life forms) and the "M" in MJ-12 is for Majority not Majestic. Later he would say he had seen photographs of aliens, including a type he called the "big-nosed grays"-like those that supposedly landed at Holloman in 1964 or 1971. The U.S. government was in contact with them and alien-technology projects were going on at Area 51.

If this sounded like a rehash of Moore and Lear, that was only because Cooper had yet to pull out all the stops. On May 23 1989, Cooper produced a 25-page document titled The Secret Government: The Origin, Identity And Purpose of MJ-12. He presented it as a lecture in Las Vegas a few weeks later. In Cooper's version of the evolving legend, the "secret government," an unscrupulous group of covert CIA and other intelligence operatives who keep many of their activities sealed from even the President's knowledge, runs the country. One of its first acts was to murder one-time Secretary of Defense (and alleged early MJ-12 member) James Forrestal the death was made to look like suicide-because he threatened to expose the UFO cover-up. Nonetheless, President Truman, fearing an invasion from outer space, kept other nations, including the Soviet Union, abreast of developments. But keeping all this secret was a real problem, so an international secret society known as the Bilderbergers, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, was formed. Soon it became a secret world government and "now controls everything" Cooper said.

All the while flying saucers were dropping like flies out of the heavens. In 1953 there were 10 crashes in the United States alone. Also that year, astronomers observed huge spaceships heading toward the earth and in time entering into orbit around the equator. Project Plato was established to effect communication with these new aliens. One of the ships landed and a face-to-face meeting took place, and plans for diplomatic relations were laid. Meanwhile a race of human-looking aliens warned the U.S. government that the new visitors were not to be trusted and that if the government got rid of its nuclear weapons, the human aliens would help us in our spiritual development, which would keep us from destroying ourselves through wars and environmental pollution. The government rejected these overtures.

The big-nosed grays, the ones who had been orbiting the equator, landed again, this time at Holloman AFB, in 1954 and reached an agreement with the U.S. government. These beings stated that they were from a dying planet that orbits Betelguese. At some point in the not too distant future, they said, they would have to leave there for good. A second meeting took place not long afterwards at Edwards AFB in California. This time President Eisenhower was there to sign a formal treaty and to meet the first alien ambassador, "His Omnipotent Highness Krlll" pronounced Krill. He, in common with his fellow space travelers, wore a trilateral insignia on his uniform; the same design appears on all Betelguese spacecraft.

According to Cooper's account, the treaty's provisions were these: Neither side would interfere in the affairs of the other. The aliens would abduct humans from time to time and would return them unharmed, with no memory of the event. It would provide a list of names of those it was going to take. The U.S. government would keep the aliens' presence a secret and it would receive advanced technology from them. The two sides would exchange 16 individuals each for the purpose of learning from and teaching each other. The aliens would stay on earth and the humans would go to the other planet, then return after a specified period of time. The two sides would jointly occupy huge underground bases which would be constructed at hidden locations in the Southwest.

(It should be noted that the people listed as members of MJ-12 are largely from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. These organizations play a prominent role in conspiracy theories of the far right. In a book on the subject George Johnson writes, "After the Holocaust of World War II, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories became repugnant to all but the fringe of the American right. Populist fears of the power of the rich became focused instead on organizations that   promote international capitalism, such as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergers, a group of world leaders and business people who held one of their early conferences on international relations at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands" [Johnson, 1983]. According to Cooper, the trilateral emblem is taken directly from the alien flag. He adds that under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter MJ-12 became known as the 50 Committee. Under Reagan it was renamed the PI-40 Committee.)

By 1955, during the Eisenhower years, Cooper charged, officials learned for certain what they had already begun to suspect a year earlier: that the aliens had broken the treaty before the ink on it had time to dry. They were killing and mutilating both human beings and animals, failing to supply a complete list of abductees, and not returning some of those they had taken. On top of that, they were conspiring with the Soviets, manipulating society through occultism, witchcraft, religion and secret organizations. Eisenhower prepared a secret executive memo, NSC 5411, ordering a study group of 35 top members (the "Jason Society") associated with the Council on Foreign Relations to "examine aIl the facts, evidence, lies, and deception and discover the truth of the alien question" (Cooper, 1989). Because the resulting meetings were held at Quantico Marine Base, they were called the Quantico meetings. Those participating included Edward Teller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller.

The group decided that the danger to established social, economic, religious and political institutions was so grave that no one must know about the aliens, not even Congress. That meant that alternative sources of funding would have to be found. It also concluded that the aliens were using human organs and tissue to replenish their deteriorating genetic structure.

Further, according to Cooper, overtures were made to the Soviet Union and other nations so that all the earth could join together to deal with the alien menace. Research into sophisticated new weapons systems commenced. Intelligence sources penetrated the Vatican hoping to learn the Fatima prophecy which had been kept secret ever since 1917. It was suspected that the Fatima, Portugal, "miracle" was an episode of alien manipulation. As it turned out, the prophecy stated that in 1992 a child would unite the world under the banner of a false religion. By 1995 people would figure out that he was the Anti-Christ. That same year World War III would begin when an alliance of Arab nations invaded Israel. This would lead to nuclear war in 1999. The next four years would see horrible death and suffering all over the planet. Christ would return in 2011.

When confronted about this, claimed Cooper, the aliens candidly acknowledged it was true. They knew it because they had traveled into the future via time machine and observed it with their own eyes. They   added that they created us through genetic manipulation. Later the Americans and the Soviets also developed time travel and confirmed the Fatima/ET vision of the future.

In 1957 the Jason group met again, by order of Eisenhower, to decide what to do. It came up with three alternatives:
(1) Use nuclear bombs to blow holes in the stratosphere so that pollution could escape into space.
(2) Build a huge network of tunnels under the earth and save enough human beings of varying cultures, occupations and talents so that the race could re-emerge after the nuclear and environmental catastrophes to come. Everybody else- i.e., the rest of humanity--would be left on the surface presumably to die.
(3) Employ alien and terrestrial technology to leave earth and colonize the moon (code name "Adam") and Mars ("Eve"). The first alternative was deemed impractical, so the Americans and the Soviets started working on the other two.

Meanwhile they decided that the population would have to be controlled, which could be done most easily by killing off as many "undesirables" as possible. Thus AIDS and other deadly diseases were introduced into the population. Another idea to raise needed funds was quickly acted on: sell drugs on a massive scale. An ambitious young member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Texas oil-company president named George Bush, was put in charge of the project, with the aid of the CIA. "The plan worked better than anyone had thought " Cooper said. "The CIA now controls all the worlds [sic] illegal drug markets" (Cooper, 1989).

Unknown to just about everybody, a secret American/Soviet/alien space base existed on the dark side of the moon. By the early 1960s human colonies were thriving on the surface of Mars. All the while the naive people of the earth were led to believe the Soviets and the Americans were something other than the closest allies. But Cooper's story got even more bizarre and byzantine.

He claimed that in 1963, when President Kennedy found out some of what was going on, he gave an ultimatum to MJ-12: get out of the drug business. He also declared that in 1964 he would tell the American people about the alien visitation. Agents of MJ-12 orderedhis assassination. Kennedy was murdered in full view of many hundreds of onlookers, none of whom apparently noticed, by the Secret Service agent driving the President's car in the motorcade.

In 1969, reported Cooper, a confrontation between   human scientists and aliens at the Dulce laboratory resulted in the former's being taken hostage by the latter. Soldiers who tried to free the scientists were killed, unable to overcome the superior alien weapons. The incident led to a two-year rupture in relations. The alliance was resumed in 1971 and continues to this day, even as a vast invisible financial empire run by the CIA, the NSA and the Council on Foreign Relations runs drugs, launders money and encourages massive street crime so that Americans will be susceptible to gun-control legislation. The CIA has gone so far as to employ drugs and hypnosis to cause mentally-unstable individuals to commit mass murder of schoolchildren and other innocents, the point being to encourage anti-gun hysteria. All of this is part of the plot, aided and abetted by the mass media (also under the secret government's control), to so scare Americans that they will soon accept the declaration of martial law when that happens, people will be rounded up and put in concentration camps already in place. From there they will be flown to the moon and Mars to work as slave labor in the space colonies.

The conspirators already run the world. As Cooper put it, "Even a cursory investigation by the most inexperienced researcher will show that the members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral commission control the major foundations, all of the major media and publishing interests, the largest banks, all the major corporations, the - upper echelons of the government, and many other vital interests."

Reaction to Lear and Cooper: Whereas Lear had felt some obligation to name a source or two, or at least to mutter something about "unnamed sources," Cooper told his lurid and outlandish tale as if it were so self-evidently true that sources or supporting data were irrelevant. And to the enthusiastic audiences flocking to Cooper's lectures, no evidence was necessary. By the fall of the year Cooper was telling his stories--whose sources were, in fact, flying-saucer folklore, AFOSI disinformation unleashed during the Bennewitz episode, conspiracy literature, and outright fiction--to large crowds of Californians willing to pay $l0 or $15 apiece for the thrill of being scared silly.

Lear and Cooper soon were joined by two other tellers of tales of UFO horrors and Trilateral conspiracies, William English and John Grace (who goes under the pseudonym "Val Valarian" and heads the Nevada Aerial Research Group in Las Vegas).

Few if any mainstream ufologists took these stories seriously and at first treated them as something of a bad joke. But when it became clear that Lear, Cooper and company were commanding significant media attention and finding a following among the larger public interested in ufology's fringes, where a claim's inherent improbability had never been seen as an obstacle to believe in it, the leaders of the UFO community grew ever more alarmed.

One leader who was not immediately alarmed was Walter H. Andrus, Jr., director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), one of the two largest UFO organizations in the United States (the other being the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies [CUFOS]). In 1987, before Lear had proposed what some wags would call the Dark Side Hypothesis, he had offered to host the 1989 MUFON conference in Las Vegas. Andrus agreed. But as Lear's true beliefs became known, leading figures within MUFON expressed concern about Lear's role in the conference. When Andrus failed to respond quickly, MUFON officials were infuriated. Facing a possible palace revolt, Andrus informed Lear that Cooper, whom Lear had invited to speak at the conference, was not an acceptable choice. But to the critics on the MUFON board and elsewhere in the organization, this was hardly enough. One of them, longtime ufologist Richard Hall, said this was "like putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage" (Hall, 1989). In a heated telephone exchange Andrus called Hall's objections to Lear "just one man's opinion" and claimed support, which turned out not to exist, from other MUFON notables. In a widely-distributed open letter to Andrus, Hall wrote, "Having Lear run the symposium and be a major speaker at it is comparable to NICAP in the 1960's having George Adamski run a NICAP conference! "(NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, of which Hall was executive secretary in the late 1950s and much of the 1960s, was a conservative UFO-research organization which attacked as fraudulent the claims of Adamski, who wrote books about his meetings with Venusians and distributed photographs of what he said were their spaceships.) Hall went on, "You seem to be going for the colorful and the spectacular rather than for the critical-minded approach of science; you even expressed the view-in effect-that having a panel to question Lear critically would be good show biz and the 'highlight' of the symposium. Maybe so, but it obviously would dominate the entire program, grab off all major news media attention, and put UFO research in the worst possible light." Hall declared, "I am hereby resigning from the MUFON Board and I request that my name be removed from all MUFON publications or papers that indicate me to be a Board Member."

Fearing more resignations, Andrus moved to make Lear barely more than a guest at his own conference. He was not to lecture there, as previously planned, and hosting duties would be handled, for the most part, by others. Lear ended up arranging an "alternative conference" at which he, Cooper, English and Don Ecker presented the latest elaborations on the Dark Side Hypothesis. Meanwhile another storm was brewing. On March 1, 1989, an Albuquerque ufologist, Robert Hastings, issued a 13-page statement, with 37 pages of appended documents, and mailed it to many of ufology's most prominent individuals. Hastings opened with these remarks:

"First, it has been established that 'Falcon,' one of the principle [sic] sources of the MJ-12 material, is Richard C. Doty, formerly attached to District 17 Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) at Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sgt. Doty retired from the U.S. Air Force on October 1, 1988.

"How do I know that Doty is 'Falcon?' During a recent telephone conversation, Linda Moulton Howe told me that when Sgt. Doty invited her to his office at Kirtland AFB in early April 1983, and showed her a purportedly authentic U.S. government document on UFOs, he identified himself as code-name 'Falcon' and stated that it was Bill Moore who had given him that name.

"Also, in early December 1988, a ranking member of the production team responsible for the 'UFO Cover Up?-Live' television documentary confirmed that Doty is 'Falcon.' This same individual also identified the second MJ-12 source who appeared on the program, 'Condor' as Robert Collins who was, until recently, a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. Like Doty, he was stationed at KAFB when he left the service late last year." (Collins, a scientist, was assigned to the plasma physics group at Sandia National Laboratories on the Kirtland Air Force Base. Following his retirement he moved to Indiana and remains actively interested in UFOs.)

Hastings reviewed evidence of Doty's involvement in the concoction of various questionable documents and stories, including the Ellsworth tale and the Weitzel affair. He also noted important discrepancies between the paper Howe saw and the MJ-12 briefing document. For example, while the first mentioned the alleged Aztec crash, the second said nothing about it at all. Hastings wondered, "If the briefing paper that Sgt. Doty showed to Linda Howe was genuine, what does that say about the accuracy (and authenticity) of the Eisenhower document? If, on the other hand, the former was bogus and was meant to mislead Howe for some reason, what does that say about Richard 'Falcon' Doty's reliability as a source for MJ-12 material as a whole?" (Hastings, 1989). Hastings also had much critical to say about Moore, especially about an incident in which Moore had flashed a badge in front of ufologist/cover-up investigator Lee Graham and indicated he was working with the government on a project to release UFO information. (Moore would characterize this as a misguided practical joke.)

Both Moore and Doty denied that the latter was Falcon. They claimed Doty had been given that pseudonym long after the 1983 meeting with Howe. Howe, however, stuck by her account. Moore and Doty said the real Falcon, an older man than Doty had been in the studio audience as the video of his interview was being broadcast on UFO Cover-up... Live. Doty himself was in New Mexico training with the state police.

Moore's Confession: By mid-1989 the two most controversial figures in ufology were Moore and Lear. Moore's MUFON lecture on July 1st did nothing to quiet his legion of critics. On his arrival in Las Vegas, Moore checked into a different hotel from the one at which the conference was being held. He already had refused to submit his paper for publication in the symposium proceedings, so no one knew what he would say. He had also stipulated that he would accept no questions from the floor.

Moore's speech stunned and angered much of the audience. At one point the shouts and jeers of Lear's partisans brought proceedings to a halt until order was restored. Moore finished and exited immediately. He left Las Vegas not long afterwards.

In his lecture Moore spoke candidly, for the first time, of his part in the counterintelligence operation against Bennewitz. "My role in the affair," he said, "was largely that of a freelancer providing information on Paul's current thinking and activities." Doty, "faithfully carrying out orders which he personally found distasteful," was one of those involved in the effort to confuse and discredit Bennewitz. Because of his success at this effort, Moore suggested, Doty was chosen by the real "Falcon" 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."

From disinformation passed on by AFOSI sources, and his own observations and guesses, according to Moore, "by mid-1982" Bennewitz had put together a story that "contained virtually all of the elements found in the current crop of rumors being circulated around the UFO community." Moore was referring to the outlandish tales Lear and Cooper were telling. Moore said that "when I first ran into the disinformation operation ... being run on Bennewitz ... it seemed to me ... I was in a rather unique position. There I was with my foot ... 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... 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." Some of the same people who were passing alleged UFO secrets on to Moore were also involved in the operation against Bennewitz. Moore knew that some of the material he was getting--essentially a mild version of the Bennewitz scenario, without the horror, paranoia and conspiracy--was false, but he (along with Jaime Shandera and Stanton Friedman, to whom he confided the cover-up story in June 1982; Friedman, however, would not learn of Moore's role in the Bennewitz episode until seven years later) felt that some of it was probably true, since an invariable characteristic of disinformation is that it contains some facts. Moore also said that Linda Howe had been the victim of one of Doty's disinformation operations.

Before he stopped cooperating with such schemes in 1984, Moore said, he had given "routine information" to AFOSI about certain other individuals in the UFO community. Subsequently he claimed that during this period this emphasis) "three other members of the UFO community... were actively doing the same thing. I have since learned of a fourth.... All four are prominent individuals whose identities, if disclosed, would cause considerable controversy in the UFO community and bring serious embarrassment to two of its major organizations. To the best of my knowledge, at least two of these people are still actively involved" (Moore, 1989b).

Although he would not reveal the identities of the government informants within ufology, Moore gave the names of several persons "who were the subject of intelligence community interest between 1980 and 1984.

" They were:
(1) Len Stringfield, a ufologist known for his interest in crashed-disc stories; in 1980 he had been set up by a counterintelligence operative who gave him phony pictures of what purported to be humanoids in cold storage.

(2) The late Pete Mazzola, whose knowledge of film footage from a never-publicized Florida UFO case was of great interest to counterintelligence types. Moore was directed to urge Mazzola to send the footage to ufologist Kal Korff (who knew nothing of the scheme) for analysis; then Moore would make a copy and pass it on to Doty. But Mazzola never got the film, despite promises, and the incident came to nothing. "I was left with the impression," Moore wrote, "that the file had been intercepted and the witnesses somehow persuaded to cease communication with Mazzola."

(3) Peter Gersten, legal counsel for Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), who had spearheaded a (largely unsuccessful) legal suit against the NSA seeking UFO information.

(4) Larry Fawcett, an official of CAUS and coauthor of a book on the cover-up, Clear Intent (1984).

(5) James and Coral Lorenzen, the directors of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) periodically "subjects of on-again, off again interest... mostly passive monitoring rather than active meddling," according to Moore. Between 1980 and 1982 APRO employed a "cooperative" secretary who passed on confidential material to counterintelligence personnel.

(6) Larry W. Bryant, who was battling without success in the courts to have UFO secrets revealed. Moore said, "His name came up often in discussions but I never had any direct involvement in whatever activities revolved around him."
These revelations sent shock waves through the UFO community. In September CAUS devoted virtually all of an issue of its magazine Just Cause to a harshly critical review of Moore's activities. Barry Greenwood declared that the "outrageousness" of Moore's conduct "cannot be described. Moore, one of the major critics of government secrecy on UFOs, had covertly informed on people who thought he was their friend and colleague. Knowing full well that the government people with whom he was dealing were active disinformants, Moore pursued a relationship with them and observed the deterioration of Paul Bennewitz's physical and mental health.... Moore reported the effects of the false information regularly to some of the very same people who were 'doing it' to Paul. And Moore boasted in his speech as to how effective it was" (Greenwood, 1989). Greenwood complained further about Moore's admission that on the disastrous Cover-up ... Live show Falcon and Condor had said things that they knew were untrue. "In the rare situation where two hours of prime time television are given over to a favorable presentation of UFOs, here we have a fair portion of the last hour wasted in presenting what Moore admits to be false data.... Yet he saw fit to go ahead and carry on a charade, making UFO research look ridiculous in the process. Remarks by Falcon and Condor about the aliens' lifestyle and preference for Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream were laughable." So far as Greenwood and CAUS, skeptical of the MJ-12 briefing document from the first, were concerned, "July 1, 1989, may well be remembered in the history of UFO research as the day when the 'Majestic 12' story came crashing to Earth in a heap of rubble. Cause of death: Suicide!"

Nonetheless it seemed unlikely that MJ-12, EBEs, and other cover-up matters would pass away soon. The Dark Siders appeared well on their way to starting a new occult movement in America and   elsewhere. Amongmovie conservative ufologists many legitimate questions about conceivably more substantive matters remained to be answered. A re-investigation of the Roswell incident by Don Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle of CUFOS produced what appeared to be solid new evidence of a UFO crash and cover up. The emergence of Robert Lazar, who even a mainstream journalist such as television reporter George Knapp concluded is telling the truth as he knows it possibly suggested a degree of substance to recurrent rumors about developments in Area 51 and S-4. Even Moore's critics were puzzled by the extraordinary interest of intelligence operatives in ufologists and the UFO phenomenon, going back in time long before Bennewitz's interception of low-frequency signals at Kirtland and ahead to the present. Why go to all this trouble and expense, with so many persons over such a period of time, if there are no real UFO secrets to protect?

Moore says he is still working with the "birds," who are as active as ever. The birds tell him, he says, that disinformation is used not only against ufologists but even against those insiders like themselves who are privy to the cover-up. Those in charge are "going to great lengths to mislead their own people." At one point the birds were told that there is no substance to abduction reports, only to learn later, by accident, that a major high-level study had been done. "Even people with a need to know didn't know about it," he says. "The abduction mess caused a lot of trouble. There may have been an official admission of the cover-up by now if the abductions had not come into prominence in the 1980s." As for the stories of ongoing contact between the   U.S. government and extraterrestrial biological entities, he says there is, in his observation, a "pretty good possibility, better than three to one," that such a thing is happening. "But I don't think we can communicate with them. Perhaps we only intercept their communications. Or maybe they communicate with us." He thinks he has found MJ-12. "It's not in a place anybody looked," he says. "Not an agency one would have expected. But when you think about it, it fits there" (Moore, 1990). Doty, now a New Mexico State Police officer, was decertified as an AFOSI agent on July 15, 1986, for "misconduct" related to an incident (not concerned with UFOs) that occurred while he was stationed in West Germany. In August Doty requested a discharge from the Air Force and was sent to New Jersey to be separated from the service. But then, Doty says, the Senior Enlisted Advisor for AFOSI made a trip to the Military Personnel Center at Randolph AFB, Texas, and asked that Doty be reassigned to Kirtland, where his son lived. In September Col. Richard Law, Commander of AFOSI District 70, rescinded Doty's decertification and assigned him to Kirtland as a services career specialist (i.e., an Air Force recruiter). When he left the Air Force in October 1988, he was superintendent of the 1606   Services Squadron. Doty remains close to Moore and uncommunicative with nearly everyone else. All he will say is that one day a book will tell his side of the story and back it up with "Official Government Documents" (Doty, 1989). Sources: Berk, Lynn, and David Renzi. "Former CIA Pilot, Others Say Aliens Are Among Us." Las Vegas Sun (May 22, 1988). Cannon, Martin. "Earth Versus the Flying Saucers: THe Amazing Story of John Lear." UFO Universe 9 (MarcH 1990): 8-12. Clark, Jerome. "Editorial: Flying Saucer Fascism." International UFO Reporter 14, 4 (July/August 1989): 3, 22-23. Cooper, Milton William. The Secret Government: The Origin, Identity, and Purpose of MJ-12. Fullerton, CA: The Author, May 23, 1989. Doty, RicHard. Letter to Philip J. Klass (May 24, 1989). Emenegger, Robert. UFO's Past, Present and Future. New York: Ballantine Books, 1974. Friedman, Stanton T. "MJ-12: THe Evidence So Far." International UFO Reporter 12, 5 (September/October 1987): 13-20. Govt. -Alien Liaison? Top-Secret Documents. New Brunswick, NJ: UFO Investigators League, D.d. Greenwood,   Barry. "A Majestic Deception." Just Cause   20 (September 1989): 1-14. Greenwood, Barry. "Notes on Peter Gersten's Meeting witH SA RicHard Doty, 1/83." Just Cause 16 (June 1988): 7. Hall, RicHard H. Letter to Walter H. Andrus, Jr. (MarcH 18, 1989). Hastings, Robert. The MJ-12 Affair: Facts, Questions, Comments. Albuquerque: THe Author, March 1, 1989. Howe, Linda Moulton. An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms. Littleton, CO: Linda Moulton Howe Productions, 1989. Information Originally Intended for Those in the Intelligence Community Who Have a "Need to Know" Clearance Status. Canadian U.F.O. Research Network: Toronto, n.d. Johnson, George. Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1983. Maccabee, Bruce, ed. Documents and Supporting   Information Related to Crashed Flying Saucers and Operation Majestic Twelve. Mount Rainer, MD: Fund for UFO Research, 1987. Moore, William L. "Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of Proof." In Walter H. Andrus, Jr., and Richard H. Hall, eds. MUFON 1985 UFO Symposium Proceedings, 130-79. Seguin, TX: Mutual UfO Network, Inc., 1985. Rept.: Burbank: The Author, 1985. Moore, William L. Interview with Jerome Clark (January 5, 1990). Moore,   William L. The Roswell Investigation: Update   and Conclusions 1981. Prescott, AZ: The Author, 1981. Rev. ed.: The Roswell Investigation: New Evidence in the Search for a crashed UFO. Prescott, AZ: The Author, 1982. Moore, William L. "UfOs and the U S Government, Part 1." Focus 4, 4-5-6 (June 30 1989a): 1-18. ' Moore, William L. "UfOs and the U S Government, part 11." Focus 4, 7-8-9 (September 30, 1989b): 1-3. Pratt, Bob. "The Truth About the 'Ellsworth Case.'" MUFON UFO Journal 191 (January 1984) 6-9. ' Scully, Frank. Behind the Flying Saucers. New York: Henry Holt, 1950, Scully, Frank. "What I've Learned Since Writing 'Behind the Flying Saucers.'" Pageant 6 (February 1951): 76-81. Steinman, William S., with Wendelle C. Stevens. UFO Crash at Aztec: A Well Kept Secret. Tucson, AZ: UFO Photo Archives, 1986. Stringfield, Leonard H. "Status Report on Alleged Alien Cadaver Photos." MUFON UFO Journal 154 (December 1980): 11-16. Todd, Robert G. "MJ-12 Rebuttal." MUFON UFO Journal 261 (January 1990): 17-20.