vault backup: 2026-10-03 00:29:49

10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Paul Bennewitz.md

@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ relations:
     role: "target of the disinformation operation Doty described in 2005"
     fn: 4
 created: 2026-10-01
-updated: 2026-10-01
+updated: 2026-10-03
 ---
 
 Paul Fredrick Bennewitz, recorded by the [[Air Force Office of Special Investigations]] (AFOSI) in October 1980 as a civilian born on September 30, 1927 in [[Kansas]], was the president of [[Thunder Scientific]], an [[Albuquerque]] maker of humidity equipment with contracts at [[Kirtland Air Force Base]], and lived in the Four Hills section of Albuquerque, adjacent to the northern boundary of the base's Manzano area.[^1][^2][^3] By his own account to AFOSI he had spent fifteen months by October 1980 photographing lights and recording electronic signals over Manzano and Coyote Canyon; he took the material to AFOSI and was interviewed by [[Richard Doty]]. In 2005 Doty said that AFOSI had convinced Bennewitz the signals were alien in order to protect what was happening at Kirtland, and that the effort included planted objects and helicopters near [[Dulce, New Mexico]].[^4]
@@ -81,15 +81,31 @@ On December 5, 1983 the Air Force Intelligence Service told [[KOB-TV]] that AFOS
 
 Moore wrote in FOCUS in 1989 that in September 1982 there were, as far as he knew, only three copies of the Aquarius document: one that he had passed to Bennewitz for safekeeping, one in safekeeping elsewhere, and one in his briefcase on a trip to [[San Francisco]]. There he had a morning meeting with a man who turned out to be an associate of the New York researcher [[Peter Gersten]]; that afternoon his car was broken into and his briefcase stolen. Four months later a copy of the same document, with annotations Moore had pencilled on it, turned up in Gersten's hands, and Moore wrote that he had never received a satisfactory explanation of how Gersten obtained it. The 1990 report adds that the break-in occurred on September 13, 1982 and was reported to the San Francisco police, and states that the government had motives of its own in wanting to discredit Gersten, who at the time was pursuing [[Freedom of Information Act]] suits and planned to make a federal case of the [[Cash-Landrum incident]]. According to the authors Gersten began circulating the document to a few members of the UFO community in early 1983 without endorsing it as authentic; they wrote that whether the break-in was engineered remains unknown.[^15] Klass wrote that the researcher [[Robert Todd]] established in early 1983 that the teletype Doty had provided to Moore was bogus.[^16]
 
+### The Albuquerque Tribune, April 8, 1983
+
+The Albuquerque Tribune of Friday, April 8, 1983 printed on page 6, as a jump from page A-1 under the headline "U.S. reports tell of sightings," an account of Air Force reports on Kirtland. It described Bennewitz as "president of a local electronics firm" living adjacent to the northern boundary of the Manzano base, and reported that he said he saw four "saucer or hat-shaped objects lined up behind the outside fence" of the Manzano area on February 2, 1980, and filmed them from about 2,500 yards. It quoted an Air Force report written months later as saying he produced still photographs and 2,600 feet of 8mm film "depicting unidentified aerial objects flying over and around Manzano Weapons Storage Area and Coyote Canyon Test Area," and reported that the investigator, Miller, a former Project Blue Book investigator, concluded only that "no conclusions could be made whether these objects pose a threat to Manzano-Coyote Canyon areas." It reported that on November 19 (1980) Bennewitz was told the Air Force would not investigate and "was not in a position to evaluate the information and photographs he has collected," and that former Senator [[Harrison Schmitt]] had inquired why the Air Force declined; the AFOSI forms above date the corresponding statement to Doty and November 17, 1980.[^17]
+
+The Tribune quoted George Pearce, the Kirtland public affairs officer, as saying Bennewitz "said he was in contact with alien beings through his computer and wanted us to investigate," and that he told Bennewitz Project Blue Book had ended in 1969, and quoted Colonel John Aday, Kirtland chief of public affairs, as saying UFOs are no threat to national defense and that he had "no idea" what the 1980 sightings were. It reported that Bennewitz had briefed UFO enthusiasts in Albuquerque earlier that week, saying there was an alien base inside a mesa near [[Dulce, New Mexico|Dulce]], that the aliens intended to enslave the earth, that he had seen aliens on a video screen, "green and about 4 feet tall," and that cattle mutilations supplied the aliens' needs through gene splicing; the paper said he planned a book. It also reported that the Kirtland sightings were described in Air Force reports sent to the [[Mutual UFO Network]] in December 1982, and quoted MUFON international director Walter Andrus, by telephone from [[Seguin, Texas]], as saying MUFON had filed Freedom of Information Act requests and that the reports had been held confidential until MUFON received the documents; the paper gave MUFON as having more than 1,000 members, about a dozen in New Mexico.[^17] A search of the newspaper archive also lists an [[Albuquerque Journal]] item of April 9, 1983, page 5, and an [[Alamogordo Daily News]] item of April 11, 1983, page 12, which were not read.
+
 ### Moore's account
 
-At the 1989 MUFON symposium Moore, quoted by [[Curt Collins]], said: "I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough [while trying] to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why." He said Bennewitz was convinced he was receiving alien radio transmissions and had written a home computer program to translate them into English, that the program could as easily assign "alien" translations to ordinary Morse code, and that [[J. Allen Hynek]] had also examined it.[^17] In a 2000 letter to the newsletter [[Saucer Smear]], Moore wrote that Hynek's role was providing Bennewitz a carefully crafted means of decoding the supposed alien transmissions; on a radio program in 1994 he said that Hynek "was under contract to the Air Force and I have a copy of that contract in case anybody wants to contest this."[^17] The researcher Janet Smith wrote to Saucer Smear in 2000 that Moore had told her in the early 1980s that he had "squirreled Bennewitz away in Canada for his own protection."[^18]
+At the 1989 MUFON symposium Moore, quoted by [[Curt Collins]], said: "I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough [while trying] to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why." He said Bennewitz was convinced he was receiving alien radio transmissions and had written a home computer program to translate them into English, that the program could as easily assign "alien" translations to ordinary Morse code, and that [[J. Allen Hynek]] had also examined it.[^18] In a 2000 letter to the newsletter [[Saucer Smear]], Moore wrote that Hynek's role was providing Bennewitz a carefully crafted means of decoding the supposed alien transmissions; on a radio program in 1994 he said that Hynek "was under contract to the Air Force and I have a copy of that contract in case anybody wants to contest this."[^18] The researcher Janet Smith wrote to Saucer Smear in 2000 that Moore had told her in the early 1980s that he had "squirreled Bennewitz away in Canada for his own protection."[^19]
+
+William L. Moore said that he first became aware of Bennewitz through the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization board after moving to [[Arizona]] in 1979, in connection with the hypnotic regression by Dr. [[R. Leo Sprinkle|Leo Sprinkle]] of a woman who reported watching a cattle mutilation and being taken aboard a craft, and Bennewitz's belief, as a physicist with electronics equipment, that the aliens had implanted a communication device in her; that Bennewitz called his effort "Project Beta" and told APRO in late 1979 that he had detected signals from UFOs; that [[James Lorenzen]] described Bennewitz as "prone to make great leaps of logic on the basis of incomplete data"; that he first met Bennewitz in early 1981 and kept in fairly regular contact until mid-1985; and that "the prime objective of the counter intelligence people who swarmed around Bennewitz between 1980 and 84 seemed to be the maintenance of a high-level security net around the radio signals he was intercepting," which he was "unable to determine why" was a priority.[^20]
+
+Moore said "there is no question that Paul was receiving some sort of electromagnetic signal on his equipment, and it is equally certain that his photos and films do depict unusual lights," most filmed over the Kirtland-Sandia complex, and that "the real question" was whether they were UFO related or related to "some classified government project." He said that by mid-1982 Bennewitz's account contained two groups of aliens, a secret treaty with the government broken by the "grays," an underground base under Archuleta Peak near Dulce, and an atomic powered ship that crashed there; that he and others who examined Bennewitz's photographs and independently obtained pictures of the same area could not see what Bennewitz saw; that Bennewitz's home computer program assigned words and sentence fragments to individual pulses and could as easily be applied to Morse code, and that shuffling the components of the printouts produced messages saying "virtually the same thing"; and that J. Allen Hynek had independently examined the program.[^20] He described driving to West Mesa after Bennewitz pointed out maneuvering lights as alien craft, finding helicopters with searchlights, one passing about 300 feet overhead, and being told by Kirtland the next day that a search and rescue training mission had been flown there; Bennewitz was still making the same claims in 1984.[^20]
+
+Moore said that "the entire story of a secret treaty between the US government and the aliens, of exchanges of technology... of aliens allegedly having implanted hundreds of thousands if not millions of human beings" came about "as a result of the disinformation process," that he provided "regular reports on its effectiveness to some of the very people who were doing it to Paul," and that "I watched Paul become systematically more paranoid and more emotionally unstable": Bennewitz kept guns and knives around his house, installed extra locks, said the aliens came through his walls at night and injected him, suffered insomnia, and on one visit ate none of his lunch while smoking 28 cigarettes in 45 minutes. Moore said he urged him to drop the subject, that Bennewitz said things were getting bad, and that "not long afterward, I heard he had been hospitalized and was under psychiatric care." He added that "perhaps Paul had merely stumbled upon signals generated from some sophisticated high-level government project whose security people had hit upon UFO related disinformation as their ultimate cover," or had found "a real although somewhat less sensational government UFO project, which elected to disinform him," and that "from what I knew of all of this, its purpose was strictly to discredit Bennewitz and nothing more."[^20]
+
+[[Mark Pilkington]], writing from the videotape of the speech and from Greg Bishop's *Project Beta* (2005), gave a narrative in which Moore met "Falcon" at a restaurant in Albuquerque after a call on or about September 8, 1980, and at a second meeting on September 30 Falcon came with Richard Doty and said he worked for the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]]; none of these details appear in the caption transcript of the speech, which says only that Moore was approached in early September 1980 by a well-placed individual in the intelligence community and that Doty was the liaison. Moore denied ever being paid.[^21][^20] Moore wrote in the 1990 report that "Falcon" designated Doty as middle man in October 1980 and that the anonymous Weitzel letter sent to APRO in July 1980 was "bait" written by Doty, which Moore, then the APRO board member in charge of Special Investigations, received for action.[^10]
+
+Pilkington reported Moore's account that Hynek brought a computer to Bennewitz in mid-1981 which Moore said Hynek told him the Air Force had instructed him to deliver, without saying where it came from, and that the printed "decodes" of pulses it produced included lines such as "VICTORY OUR BASES OBTAIN SUPPLIES FROM THE STARSHIP."[^21] Pilkington wrote that after Bennewitz's presentation at Kirtland on November 10, 1980 the only people remaining were AFOSI and [[National Security Agency]] representatives, that the NSA decided to let him continue intercepting, and that an NSA intercept of a Soviet communication mentioned Bennewitz as a possible source; the last two points are Pilkington's statements without a cited document, and differ from the account Bishop gave on *Coast to Coast AM* in 2005, already on this page.[^21] Pilkington wrote that when Moore last visited Bennewitz in 1987 Bennewitz was barely sleeping or eating.[^21]
 
 ### Doty's account and the hospitalization
 
 Doty described what he called a two-tier approach. AFOSI first showed intense interest in everything Bennewitz had; the National Security Agency later became involved because it was extremely interested in his equipment, which Doty said was tapping a type of communication he should not have been able to receive. AFOSI then became friends with him, which Doty called what one does in counterintelligence, began vetting him and began feeding him information. According to Doty, AFOSI did not have to say much because Bennewitz already had the idea; Bennewitz had told the agents that if he tapped into something he wanted to be told, which AFOSI would not do because it did not know who his friends were. Doty said the agents told him instead that he had tapped into something unknown and proposed to work on it together, and turned everything he gathered around so that it appeared alien in origin. He said that disinformation was a primary tactic of United States intelligence in the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s, that the most effective version gives the target enough credible information to lead him along, and that "this is an art that is taught. I didn't come up with all of this by myself, I was trained," at a counterintelligence and counterespionage school.[^4]
 
-Doty said on Coast to Coast AM that AFOSI chose to convince Bennewitz rather than obtain a search warrant and seize his property, which "would cause a lot of publicity." Asked whether Bennewitz had needed psychiatric care, Doty said, "Yes, and I visited Paul a number of times," and that he tried, through Bennewitz's son, to tell him the earlier information was untrue, against his commander's orders.[^4] In a letter to Saucer Smear in 2000 Doty wrote that he never believed Bennewitz was in contact with extraterrestrials, and Moseley wrote that Doty told him the National Security Agency independently worked to steer Bennewitz deeper into his belief system and tapped his telephone; Klass replied that the agency does not tap the lines of resident citizens.[^5][^18] Bishop said on the same broadcast that Bennewitz spent about three months in a mental hospital around 1988, that intelligence officers wanted to learn what he knew and with whom he was speaking, and that the [[Soviet Union]] was their concern. Bishop also said the base was then tracking Soviet satellites, a point he said he drew from the testimony of a few people who worked at Kirtland.[^4]
+Doty said on Coast to Coast AM that AFOSI chose to convince Bennewitz rather than obtain a search warrant and seize his property, which "would cause a lot of publicity." Asked whether Bennewitz had needed psychiatric care, Doty said, "Yes, and I visited Paul a number of times," and that he tried, through Bennewitz's son, to tell him the earlier information was untrue, against his commander's orders.[^4] In a letter to Saucer Smear in 2000 Doty wrote that he never believed Bennewitz was in contact with extraterrestrials, and Moseley wrote that Doty told him the National Security Agency independently worked to steer Bennewitz deeper into his belief system and tapped his telephone; Klass replied that the agency does not tap the lines of resident citizens.[^5][^19] Bishop said on the same broadcast that Bennewitz spent about three months in a mental hospital around 1988, that intelligence officers wanted to learn what he knew and with whom he was speaking, and that the [[Soviet Union]] was their concern. Bishop also said the base was then tracking Soviet satellites, a point he said he drew from the testimony of a few people who worked at Kirtland.[^4]
 
 Doty said there were four operations pertaining to UFOs; he named those against Bennewitz and [[Linda Moulton Howe]] and said there were two others against groups of people.[^4] Bishop said Bennewitz died about a week before Bishop first travelled to Albuquerque to begin interviews for his book.[^4]
 
@@ -111,5 +127,8 @@ Doty said there were four operations pertaining to UFOs; he named those against
 [^14]: Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, "The Aquarius Document (Feb. 1981)" and "The Aquarius Teletype," pp. 7 to 9, quoting Moore in FOCUS, June 30, 1989, p. 13, and September 30, 1989, p. 8.
 [^15]: Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, "The Aquarius Teletype," pp. 8 to 9, quoting Moore in FOCUS, June 30, 1989, p. 13.
 [^16]: Philip J. Klass, Skeptics UFO Newsletter no. 44, March 1997, pp. 1 to 3, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/docs/SUN/SUN44.pdf
-[^17]: Curt Collins, "Bill Moore and UFO Disinformation Accusations," Blue Blurry Lines, April 29, 2022, https://www.blueblurrylines.com/2019/12/bill-moore-on-hynek-and-vallee.html , quoting Moore's speech at the MUFON Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989 (published in the MUFON UFO Journal, November and December 1989), Moore's letter in Saucer Smear, August 10, 2000, and Moore on Don Ecker's UFOs Tonite, June 11, 1994. The speech text itself was not obtained.
-[^18]: James W. Moseley, ed., Saucer Smear, vol. 47, July 15, 2000, "Missives from the Masses" (letters of Richard Doty, Philip J. Klass and Janet Smith), http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss000715.htm (printout of June 14, 2013), pp. 6 to 8.
+[^17]: "U.S. reports tell of sightings," Albuquerque Tribune (Albuquerque), April 8, 1983, p. 6 (jump from p. A-1; no byline visible), https://www.newspapers.com/image/784735876/
+[^18]: Curt Collins, "Bill Moore and UFO Disinformation Accusations," Blue Blurry Lines, April 29, 2022, https://www.blueblurrylines.com/2019/12/bill-moore-on-hynek-and-vallee.html , quoting Moore's speech at the MUFON Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989 (published in the MUFON UFO Journal, November and December 1989), Moore's letter in Saucer Smear, August 10, 2000, and Moore on Don Ecker's UFOs Tonite, June 11, 1994. The speech text itself was not obtained.
+[^19]: James W. Moseley, ed., Saucer Smear, vol. 47, July 15, 2000, "Missives from the Masses" (letters of Richard Doty, Philip J. Klass and Janet Smith), http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss000715.htm (printout of June 14, 2013), pp. 6 to 8.
+[^20]: William L. Moore, "UFOs and the U.S. Government, Part I," address to the MUFON International UFO Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989, video recorded by Ron Regehr (Internet Archive item bill-moore-1989-mufon), read in the caption transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfimKiS-po; captions mis-render names ("Benowitz," "Dodie") and quotations follow the caption wording.
+[^21]: Mark Pilkington, *Mirage Men* (2010), chapters "Aviary," "The ET Factor" and "The Bennewitz affair" sections, https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Mark%20Pilkington%20-%20Mirage%20Men%20-%20A%20Journey%20into%20Disinformation,%20Paranoia%20and%20UFOs.pdf