Spread of the Bennewitz disinformation

Spread of the Bennewitz disinformation

Date	1980s Undefined
Topics	Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
People	Richard Doty, Paul Bennewitz, William Moore, Linda Moulton Howe, John Lear, Bill Cooper, Brad Sparks
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 91
Year	1980 in UFO history
Timeline	1980 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	12

The spread of the Bennewitz disinformation describes how stories fed by U.S. Air Force counterintelligence to the Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz in the early 1980s spread through the UFO community. They became foundations of modern conspiracy lore about underground alien bases, secret treaties between the government and aliens, and government-sanctioned abductions.^[1][2][5] Agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), notably Richard Doty, encouraged Bennewitz's belief that he was detecting aliens near Kirtland Air Force Base, aided by the UFO researcher William Moore.^[1][2][9] Doty later said he was ordered to do so, to steer Bennewitz away from classified projects he had observed.^[10] Bennewitz suffered a breakdown in 1988.^[1] By then the stories had taken on a life of their own, carried by researchers such as John Lear and Bill Cooper and by a 1988 television special.^[1][2][3] See Bennewitz affair.

Origins

• Bennewitz. Paul Bennewitz (1927–2003) was a physicist and businessman who founded Thunder Scientific, a maker of humidity-measurement instruments, with contracts from the Air Force and NASA.^[1][2] His house, which doubled as the company's headquarters, stood next to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, with a view of sensitive areas.^[2][5]
• Lights and signals. From July 1979 Bennewitz began what he called a "personally funded study" of UFOs. He filmed lights over the base and the nearby Manzano weapons storage area and recorded unusual radio signals.^[1][5] He came to believe he was intercepting communications from alien craft.^[1]
• The Hansen sessions. In May 1980 a woman calling herself "Myrna Hansen" reported a close encounter near Eagle Nest, New Mexico. She was referred, via the Dulce police officer Gabe Valdez, to Bennewitz.^[1]
  • Under hypnosis by the psychologist Leo Sprinkle, conducted in Bennewitz's foil-lined car, she described a cow sucked into a spaceship. She also described being taken to an underground base with body parts in vats.^[1][2]
  • Her recollections later grew into the legend of Dulce Base.^[1][3]
  • Valdez's son later suggested the Hansen story might itself have been part of the disinformation, since the government was listening to his father's phone calls with Bennewitz.^[1]
• Contact with Kirtland. Bennewitz reported his findings to Kirtland on 24 October 1980 and briefed staff there on 10 November.^[1] According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 timeline for Congress, Doty delivered a forged document to him on 17 November 1980.^[10]

The disinformation

• Doty's account. Doty later said he was ordered by his superiors to confuse Bennewitz, who had seen a National Security Agency laser project at Kirtland from his property. Doty convinced him that what he saw was alien.^[10] Other accounts say AFOSI feared Bennewitz was picking up sensitive NSA signal tests or classified programs. Shutting him down legally might have drawn attention to them.^[5]
• Methods. Doty and others cultivated Bennewitz's trust and encouraged his theories.^[2]
  • According to Greg Bishop's book Project Beta, the Air Force gave Bennewitz a computer in 1981 with software that turned the signals he recorded into "alien messages". The story comes from Moore and is unconfirmed.^[2][5]
  • Agents also reportedly planted props and staged events.^[5]
  • Moore, recruited by AFOSI in exchange for promised access to UFO material, kept tabs on Bennewitz and other researchers and passed on Doty's material.^[2][8][9]
• The NSA and "NASA". Shellenberger says Doty changed a forged document to say "NASA" had investigated Bennewitz, when the NSA actually had. He says Doty did this to divert attention from AFOSI's surveillance of citizens interested in UFOs.^[12]
• Who gave the orders. Doty has said he acted on orders. Shellenberger notes an unconfirmed claim, from Jacques Vallée's journals, that Brigadier General Peter J. Hennessy was "the top guy" above Doty.^[10]
• Domenici. Senator Pete Domenici met AFOSI about Bennewitz's claims. Shellenberger suggests AFOSI may have misled him too, since it apparently did not tell him about the disinformation campaign.^[10]

How the stories spread

• The "Dulce War". In a letter to Domenici dated 2 December 1981, Bennewitz said he knew the location of "the Alien bases in Northern New Mexico" on the Jicarilla Apache reservation, 4.5 miles northwest of Dulce.^[1]
  • He claimed the military had traded land and cattle to the aliens for technology.^[1]
  • He said that in late 1979 or early 1980 "an argument insued [sic] over weapons and the military abandoned" the base.^[1]
  • This "Dulce War" was later taken up by Lear, Cooper and Phil Schneider.^[1]
• Press and books. A UPI wire story on 8 April 1983 covered Bennewitz's supposed 1980 films of UFOs over the Manzano storage area and his claimed computer contact with aliens.^[1] The 1984 book Clear Intent detailed his dealings with the government.^[1]
• Linda Moulton Howe. In 1983 Doty also approached the journalist Linda Moulton Howe, who was making an HBO documentary.^[2]
  • He showed her documents at Kirtland, including a supposed presidential briefing paper on crashed spacecraft.^[2]
  • He promised her footage and interviews that never materialised, and HBO dropped the project.^[2]
• MJ-12. In 1984 the producer Jaime Shandera received a roll of film with photographs of "Majestic-12" briefing papers like those Doty had shown Howe. The MJ-12 documents became part of the same expanding narrative.^[2][5] See MJ-12.
• Lear and others. By 1987 John Lear claimed independent confirmation of the Dulce base.^[1][3] George Andrews discussed it in his 1986 book Extra-Terrestrials Among Us.^[3] Thomas Allen LeVesque, writing as "Jason Bishop III", later admitted fabricating Dulce stories under Lear's influence.^[3]
• Tabloids. On 20 September 1988 the Weekly World News ran "UFO base found in New Mexico", claiming invaders had built a base to "shanghai human guinea pigs for bizarre genetic experiments". It attributed quotes to Leonard Stringfield, who protested: "I never read such a distortion of facts in my life".^[1][3]
• Television. On 14 October 1988 the live special UFO Cover-Up? Live, hosted by Mike Farrell, featured shadowed insiders called "Falcon" and "Condor".^[1][2] They spoke of crashed craft, a treaty allowing abductions in exchange for technology, and aliens fond of strawberry ice cream. The show introduced MJ-12 and Area 51 to a mass audience.^[1][2]
• Project Beta. In 1988 Bennewitz wrote a paper, "Project Beta", on how the Dulce base might be attacked.^[1]

Exposure

• Breakdown. By August 1988 Bennewitz was accusing his wife of being controlled by aliens and barricaded himself in his home with sandbags. His family had him admitted to a psychiatric unit, where he stayed under observation for a month.^[1][2]
• Moore's confession. On 1 July 1989, at a MUFON conference, Moore admitted that he had worked with AFOSI, monitored other researchers and helped feed false information to Bennewitz.^[1][2] The backlash drove him out of the UFO field.^[2]
• Later confirmation. A 1992 Monroe Institute article held in the CIA's library said Moore and Doty were responsible for a disinformation campaign against Bennewitz.^[1] Howard Blum's 1990 book Out There reported that undercover agents had misled Bennewitz with counterfeit documents.^[1] Doty himself later said he had been tasked with hoaxing documents and feeding false information to researchers, including Bennewitz.^[1]
• Histories. Greg Bishop's Project Beta (2005) and Mark Pilkington's Mirage Men (2010), adapted as a 2013 documentary, told the full story.^[1][4][8] See Mirage Men.
• Death. Bennewitz died on 23 June 2003.^[1]

Significance

• Lasting myths. The writer Joseph L. Flatley concludes that by 1988 the stories of underground bases, treaties and secret programmes had spread "beyond AFOSI's ability to control it".^[2] One summary calls the affair "the most documented and disturbing example of active UAP disinformation", which "created the 'Dulce Base' myth which persists in UAP lore today".^[5]
• Trust in government. Shellenberger argues that AFOSI's actions against U.S. citizens reduced public trust in government and fed anti-government conspiracy theories. He says they also caused "great confusion over who and what controlled access to UAP information after Project Blue Book".^[12]
• Modern parallels. Flatley compares the affair with the post-2017 disclosures by former intelligence official Luis Elizondo. He warns that "sometimes the most dangerous deception is the one that tells you exactly what you want to hear".^[2] The writer Michael Heiser cited the affair as evidence that agencies are "not above using UFO believers as tools".^[9]
• Other explanations. The author Greg Valdez has proposed that Bennewitz was targeted because he was investigating cattle mutilations, which Valdez links to radiation testing after the 1967 Project Gasbuggy underground nuclear blast near Dulce.^[1]

People and topics

• Richard Doty — Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent who fed disinformation to UFO researchers in the 1980s.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
• Paul Bennewitz — Albuquerque physicist targeted by Air Force disinformation in the Bennewitz affair.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Dulce — A New Mexico town linked to legends of an underground alien base.
• Alien abduction — The claimed taking of people by non-human beings.
• William Moore — Researcher who admitted in 1989 that he cooperated with intelligence agents in the Bennewitz affair.
• Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
• John Lear — Pilot and son of Bill Lear who spread claims of alien treaties in the late 1980s.
• Bill Cooper — Author of Behold a Pale Horse.
• MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
• Brad Sparks — UFO analyst known for his catalogue of Blue Book unknowns and work on the CIA lawsuit.
• Mirage Men — A 2010 book and 2013 film about the Bennewitz affair.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.

On the Timeline

• Larry W. and the 1968 capture claim (14 December 1980) — A source says a former soldier witnessed a UAP capture in 1968.
• Doty's psychological operations claim (1980s) — Doty says an Air Force unit ran psychological operations on people who saw secret aircraft.

See every 1980 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Paul Bennewitz”, “Dulce Base”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.