Weitzel letter (1980)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | July 1980 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| People | Richard Doty, Craig Weitzel, William Moore |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 89 |
| Year | 1980 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1980 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 14 |
The Weitzel letter was an anonymous letter sent to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) describing a UFO landing seen by a visiting Civil Air Patrol cadet, Craig Weitzel, near Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico in July 1980, and claiming wider Air Force secrets. It was later traced to Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) agent Richard Doty and is regarded as an early piece of the disinformation campaign around researcher Paul Bennewitz.[1][2]
The sighting
Weitzel, a Civil Air Patrol cadet from Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia who was visiting Kirtland, reported seeing a silver object near Pecos, New Mexico, on 16 July 1980. He reported it to the base security police, who passed it to AFOSI, where Special Agent Doty took his report.[1]
The letter
The letter, which claimed to come from a U.S. Air Force airman in the 1550th Aircrew Training and Testing Wing at Kirtland, embellished the story. It said Weitzel had photographed the object, seen it land about 250 yards from a secret training area and watched a figure in a metallic suit get out; that Doty had taken the photographs; and that a man calling himself "Mr. Huck" from Sandia Laboratories had visited Weitzel that evening, demanded the photos and warned him to keep quiet. It also claimed that the Air Force stored a crashed UFO at the Manzano weapons storage area, that Sandia scientists had examined UFOs, including one from near Roswell, and that a secret AFOSI unit investigated sightings and cattle mutilations.[1]
Exposure
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When investigator Benton Jamison found Weitzel in 1985, Weitzel confirmed that he had seen a silver object high in the sky that accelerated extraordinarily fast and had reported it to Doty, but said he knew nothing of "Mr. Huck". Researcher Brad Sparks compared the letter with two AFOSI documents of August and September 1980 concerning Kirtland sightings and concluded in 1987 that Doty had written all three. At the 1989 MUFON symposium, researcher William Moore said that Doty had written the letter anonymously to APRO as "bait": AFOSI knew that Bennewitz had close ties to APRO and wanted someone inside the group to report on him. As APRO's board member in charge of special investigations, Moore was handed the letter and soon began passing information about Bennewitz to Doty.[1][2]
Significance
Accounts differ on when APRO received the letter: Moore dated it to July 1980, while other accounts say the group's founders, Jim and Coral Lorenzen, received it in 1981. Doty has said he was ordered to spread disinformation to protect classified programs near Kirtland and the Manzano weapons storage area. His own statements are notoriously unreliable, but the pattern of official deception is well documented in Greg Bishop's Project Beta and Mark Pilkington's Mirage Men.[1][2][3][4]
People and topics
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Richard Doty — Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent who fed disinformation to UFO researchers in the 1980s.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Air Force Office of Special Investigations — The Air Force's criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency.
- Kirtland Air Force Base — The Albuquerque air base at the center of the Bennewitz affair.
- Craig Weitzel — Civil Air Patrol member whose 1980 UFO photos led to the forged Weitzel letter.
- APRO — A civilian UFO research group founded by Coral and Jim Lorenzen in 1952.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- William Moore — Researcher who admitted in 1989 that he cooperated with intelligence agents in the Bennewitz affair.
- MUFON — The largest civilian UFO organization in the United States.
- Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
- Mirage Men — A 2010 book and 2013 film about the Bennewitz affair.
On the Timeline
- NORAD's $294,157 search fee (September 1979) — NORAD says a search for UAP tracking data would cost $294,157.
- Bennewitz affair (17 November 1980) — Doty gives physicist Paul Bennewitz a forged document to confuse him.
See every 1980 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "The Kirtland AFB documents and the Weitzel letter", U.F.O. BBS file 1025 (text archive) · mirror.cyberbits.eu · archived copy
- William Moore, "UFOs and the U.S. Government" (1989 MUFON speech), full text via UFOpedia · ufopedia.pages.dev · archived copy
- Paul Bennewitz — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Greg Bishop, Project Beta (2005), Goodreads · goodreads.com · archived copy
- Paul Bennewitz — Wikipedia · wikipedia.com · archived copy
- Mirage Men (2013 documentary) — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
- The Bennewitz affair · lennyflatley.substack.com · archived copy
- Mirage Men and the architecture of UAP disinformation · newspaceeconomy.ca · archived copy
- Project Beta — Anomaly Archives · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- The Paul Bennewitz affair — Michael Heiser · drmsh.com · archived copy
- openminds.tv · openminds.tv · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
Further reading
- Richard Doty — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Sandia National Laboratories — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
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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