Mirage Men
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🎬 Book or film
Contents 8
| Type | Book, film or media |
|---|---|
| On the Timeline | 3 events, 1980 |
Mirage Men is a 2010 book by British writer Mark Pilkington and a 2013 documentary film based on it. Both argue that U.S. military and intelligence insiders deliberately fabricated much of modern UFO folklore. In their account this served to deflect attention from classified projects and to discredit UFO investigators as cranks. The central figure is Richard Doty, a former counterintelligence agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Doty admits on camera to spreading disinformation to researchers, including Paul Bennewitz and Linda Moulton Howe. The film was well reviewed. Adam Curtis later used excerpts from it, and novelist Ernest Cline cited it as an influence.[1][2][3]
The book
Pilkington's book Mirage Men was published in 2010 by Constable & Robinson. Its scope is wider than the film's. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the film is "distilled" from it but concentrates on the United States and a handful of well-known figures and events.[1][3] The Wikipedia account of Howe quotes Pilkington on Doty's dealings with her. Doty, he writes, eventually admitted the exchange "much as Linda Howe described it," and linked it to the disinformation programme against Bennewitz.[5]
The film
The film was directed by John Lundberg, written by Pilkington, and co-directed by Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou, who all also produced it through Perception Management. It is distributed by Random Media in North America and by Perception Management in the UK and Ireland.[1][2][3] It features:[1][3]
- Richard Doty. Born in 1950 and raised in Pennsylvania, Doty served in Texas, Vietnam, Washington state, West Germany and South Dakota. He was with AFOSI at Kirtland from 1979, and after retiring worked as a traffic police officer in New Mexico. He claims to have spent decades spreading disinformation about extraterrestrials, which one interviewee calls "weapons of mass deception."
- William Moore. The author of The Roswell Incident and The Philadelphia Experiment (see William Moore).
- Others. Linda Moulton Howe; Robert Emenegger, maker of the 1974 film UFOs: Past, Present, and Future; lawyer Peter Gersten; screenwriter Tracy Tormé; historians Curtis Peebles and Richard Dolan; Gabriel Valdez; and Robert Durant.
The Hollywood Reporter summarised the story the film tells. Doty and Moore both admit feeding false information to Bennewitz, an electronics expert living beside a New Mexico air base. According to Doty, the NSA targeted Bennewitz in the early 1980s, beaming fake alien messages into his house and planting bogus spaceship evidence on a nearby mountain range. Bennewitz became convinced of an alien invasion, wrote warning letters to President Reagan, developed paranoid psychosis and was briefly hospitalised. The film also touches on Apache folklore, cattle mutilations, stealth bombers and secret drones.[3]
Release and reception
The film premiered at the Sheffield Doc/Fest on 13 June 2013. It was then shown at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, on 22 September 2013, at the Canberra International Film Festival on 31 October 2013, and at the Stockholm Film Festival on 10 November 2013.[1][2] Reviews were positive:[1][3]
- The Hollywood Reporter. It called the film "never less than engaging and generally good fun," with an "admirably unsensational" tone. It added that its claims "never quite harden into solid investigative journalism," that the ending was "disappointingly flat," and that Doty came across as "as slippery and deluded as any tinfoil-hatted UFO conspiracy nut." Its verdict was "Close Encounters of the X-Files kind."
- Others. Twitch Film found it "scary [and] unsettling," Electric Sheep called it "one of the must see documentaries of the year," and Ain't It Cool News called it "a real head trip."
Influence
Adam Curtis used excerpts from the film in his 2016 BBC documentary HyperNormalisation. Novelist Ernest Cline credited it as an influence on his novel and screenplay Armada, in which the government, aware of an alien invasion for decades, funds science-fiction films and video games to prepare people for war.[1][2]
Doty's operations in the UAP timeline
The UAP timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony records the operations the film describes:
- The Weitzel letter (July 1980). Doty delivered a forged anonymous letter to the civilian group APRO about a supposed landing photographed by a Civil Air Patrol cadet. He later said it was disinformation to see whether APRO would be "useful idiots." See Weitzel letter (1980).[6]
- Bennewitz (17 November 1980). Doty gave Bennewitz a forged document. He said he had been ordered to confuse Bennewitz, who had observed an NSA laser project at Kirtland from his home near the base, by persuading him that what he saw was UFOs. See Bennewitz affair.[7]
- The document spreads (1980s). The fake document reached the public and became the subject of books and media. Doty altered it to say "NASA" had investigated Bennewitz, when it was in fact the NSA. See Spread of the Bennewitz disinformation.[8]
Notes on the earlier version of this article
- Book length and U.S. release. The earlier version said the book runs to 320 pages and that the film was released in the United States on 27 March 2014. Neither detail is covered in the sources read here. They give the film's North American premiere as Fantastic Fest in September 2013.[1][2]
- Cline. The earlier version cited a 2015 Wired interview with Cline. Its text could not be read for this revision. Cline's credit to the film follows the Wikipedia account.[1][4]
On the UAP Timeline
- Spread of the Bennewitz disinformation (1980s Undefined) — Doty's fake document spreads to the public and into books and media.
- Weitzel letter (1980) (July 1980) — Air Force counterintelligence officer Richard Doty delivers a forged letter to a civilian UAP group.
- Bennewitz affair (17 November 1980) — Doty gives physicist Paul Bennewitz a forged document to confuse him.
References
- Mirage Men — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Mirage Men — official website · miragemen.com · archived copy
- "Mirage Men: Film Review", The Hollywood Reporter · hollywoodreporter.com · archived copy
- "Geek's Guide: Ernest Cline", Wired (Jul 2015) · wired.com · archived copy
- Linda Moulton Howe — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- UAP timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony, entry for July 1980 · oversight.house.gov
- UAP timeline (Shellenberger testimony), entry for 17 November 1980 · oversight.house.gov
- UAP timeline (Shellenberger testimony), entry for 1980s (spread of the Bennewitz document) · oversight.house.gov
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Mirage Men”, “Linda Moulton Howe”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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