disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

vault backup: 2026-10-02 00:09:35

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
disinfo.zone 2026-10-02 00:09:36 -04:00
parent cfe4dc0862
commit 8b451a66c8
No known key found for this signature in database
13 changed files with 1846 additions and 36 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

115
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Paul Bennewitz.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
---
category: "UFO & Anomalous Phenomena"
tags:
- Person
- UFO
- ThunderScientific
- KirtlandAFB
- AFOSI
- Disinformation
- Dulce
- APRO
alias:
- Paul Bennewitz
- Paul F. Bennewitz
- Paul Frederick Bennewitz
- Paul Fredrick Bennewitz
- Dr. Paul Bennewitz
- Dr. Paul F. Bennewitz
summary: "Albuquerque instrument maker whose 1979 and 1980 films and radio recordings near Kirtland AFB led to AFOSI interviews, calls from two senators, and the disinformation operation Richard Doty described in 2005."
born: 1927-09-30
location: "Albuquerque, New Mexico"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Thunder Scientific]]"
role: "president of Thunder Scientific Laboratory in 1980"
fn: 2
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Air Force Office of Special Investigations]]"
start: 1980-10-24
role: "civilian who reported Manzano sightings; interviewed at home October 26, 1980"
fn: 1
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Richard Doty]]"
role: "target of the disinformation operation Doty described in 2005"
fn: 4
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
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]
### Thunder Scientific and Kirtland
The researcher [[Alejandro Rojas]] described Thunder Scientific as a humidity company with contracts with Kirtland and several other branches of the military and government contractors.[^3] [[Greg Bishop]], the author of the book [[Project Beta]], said on [[Coast to Coast AM]] in 2005 that Bennewitz was regarded as an electrical physicist whose company made humidity and temperature calibration equipment for military contractors among others, and that this gave his reports weight with the officers who heard them.[^4] An AFOSI form of November 26, 1980 lists him as "Dr. Paul F. Bennewitz, President, Thunder Scientific Laboratory, Albuquerque."[^2] The publisher [[James W. Moseley]] wrote in 2000 that Thunder Scientific stood in front of the entrance to Kirtland, supplied the base with technical instruments, and was owned by the family of Bennewitz, whom he described as a government contractor; Moseley wrote that Bennewitz's wife told him by telephone that no interview would be allowed and that Bennewitz's son ran the business.[^5]
Doty said in 2005 that the Manzano area "housed nuclear weapons, probably the largest nuclear storage area in the southwest," that Bennewitz's equipment gave him the ability to tap into sensitive communications and projects at the base, and that as the base counterintelligence officer he had to know the many classified projects at Kirtland, the [[Air Force Weapons Laboratory]], [[Sandia National Laboratories]] and [[Los Alamos]] in order to safeguard them.[^4]
### The 1980 films and the AFOSI interviews
On October 24, 1980 Bennewitz contacted Doty through Major [[Ernest E. Edwards]], commander of the 1608th Security Police Squadron, saying he had knowledge and evidence of threats against the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. The AFOSI form for file 8017D93-0/29, titled "Alleged Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Lights in Restricted Test Range" and covering August 8 to September 3, 1980, records that on October 26 Doty and [[Jerry Miller]], a GS-15 and chief scientific advisor of the [[Air Force Test and Evaluation Center]] who had been a [[Project Blue Book]] investigator assigned to [[Wright-Patterson Air Force Base|Wright-Patterson]], interviewed Bennewitz at his home. He showed photographs, more than 2,600 feet of 8mm motion picture film depicting unidentified aerial objects over and around the Manzano Weapons Storage Area and the Coyote Canyon test area, and tapes of electronic recordings, from fifteen months of independent research. He had surveillance equipment pointed at Manzano to record high frequency beam pulses.[^1]
Miller told the agents the film showed some type of unidentified aerial objects but that no conclusion could be drawn on whether they threatened Manzano or Coyote Canyon, and that the recording tapes were inconclusive and could have been gathered from conventional sources. Personnel of the [[Foreign Technology Division]] at Wright-Patterson were scheduled to inspect the data. The form asks that a DCII check be made on Bennewitz, states that it is responsive to "HQ CR 44," and states that the command was briefed but did not request an investigation at that time. It is signed by Major [[Thomas A. Cseh]], commander of the Base Investigative Detachment.[^1][^6]
On November 10, 1980 Bennewitz presented film and photographs to a meeting in the 1606th Air Base Wing conference room that included Brigadier General [[William Brooksher]] (AFOSP/CC), Colonels [[Jack W. Sheppard]] (1606th Air Base Wing commander), [[Thomas Simmons]], [[Cres Baca]] (1606th Security Police Group commander) and [[Frank M. Huey]] (AFOSI District 17 commander), Lieutenant Colonel [[Joe R. Lamport]], Cseh, Dr. Lehman, director of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, and Ed Breen of that laboratory. He told them he had documented proof that he was in contact with the aliens flying the objects and asked about Air Force financial assistance. Lehman advised him to request a grant and said he would help with the paperwork. On November 17 Doty told Bennewitz that AFOSI would not become involved in the investigation of the objects and was not in a position to evaluate his information and photographs.[^2] Bishop said in 2005 that a [[NSA|National Security Agency]] employee, relaying an account from someone present, had told him that of about twenty people at such a presentation only two or three remained at the end, and that they, including an AFOSI commander he believed to be Cseh and an unidentified NSA man, thought Bennewitz had seen something he was not supposed to see; Bishop placed the presentation in the first half of 1980, earlier than the date on the AFOSI form.[^4]
### Senators Schmitt and Domenici
On November 26, 1980 Doty received a telephone call from a person who identified himself as Senator "Schmidt" of [[New Mexico]] (the form's spelling; the senator was [[Harrison Schmitt]]) asking about AFOSI's role in investigating the phenomena Bennewitz had reported. Doty said AFOSI was not investigating and referred the caller to AFOSI District 17; the caller said he would ask the Secretary of the Air Force which agency should investigate. The AFOSI form adds that Bennewitz had held a number of conversations with the senator during the preceding months about his private research and that the senator had telephoned Brooksher, because the Security Police were responsible for the security of the Manzano Storage Area.[^2] On July 30, 1981 Senator [[Pete Domenici]] was in the office of the 1606th Air Base Wing inspector general and asked to speak with Doty after Colonel Harvell, acting AFOSI commander, agreed that Doty and District 17 would meet him; Domenici left immediately to meet Bennewitz, and his aide, a Mr. Tijeros, was told that AFOSI had conducted no formal investigation of Bennewitz. Colonel Huey signed the communication.[^7]
Rojas wrote that Doty has said he lied to the two senators.[^3] Schmitt's earlier involvement in a related subject appears in the files of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]: on April 20, 1979 Schmitt and U.S. Attorney [[R. E. Thompson]] directed a conference in Albuquerque on cattle mutilations, held at the Albuquerque Public Library and attended by about 180 people, at which Schmitt said he had conferred with Attorney General [[Griffin Bell]] and that the FBI had been designated to investigate. A [[Department of Justice]] Criminal Division memorandum in the same file forwards part of Schmitt's correspondence on fifteen mutilations in Indian country and asks the FBI to investigate. The Albuquerque office reported that in May 1979 the district attorney's office for the Santa Fe area received about $50,000 in federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funds to coordinate investigation of mutilations, and that its own inquiry into the fifteen mutilations in Indian country had been negative.[^8]
### Cattle mutilations and Dulce
At the April 1979 conference the New Mexico State Police officer [[Gabe Valdez]] of Dulce reported on the deaths of ninety cattle and six horses over three years, which he said were not the work of predators, and a Los Alamos veterinarian, Dr. [[Richard Prine]], attributed six carcasses he examined to predators.[^8] Bishop said Bennewitz met Valdez at the mutilation conference that the senator had convened and learned through him of the case of a woman called [[Myrna Hansen]] and her son, who reported two large craft over a field and a cow drawn up into one of them.[^4]
Rojas wrote that Valdez told him he was present when Doty flew Bennewitz over Dulce.[^3] Doty said that Bennewitz, who was a pilot, flew to [[Archuleta Peak]] near Dulce, photographed things there and became convinced they were an alien base; AFOSI then "fortified his thought" with a fence, Army helicopters from [[Fort Carson]], Colorado, "a couple of black helicopters" and "some things planted onto the ground," on land that he said was already a classified training area for special operations.[^4]
### The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
In January 1953 the [[Robertson Panel]] convened for the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] recommended, according to the agency historian [[Gerald K. Haines]], that private groups including the [[Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators]] in [[Los Angeles]] and the [[Aerial Phenomena Research Organization]] in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities.[^9] [[William L. Moore]], who was the APRO board member in charge of special investigations in 1980, said in his paper read at the 1989 MUFON symposium that AFOSI knew Bennewitz had close ties with APRO and wanted to recruit someone in the organization to provide feedback on Bennewitz's activities and communications. According to Moore, an anonymous letter that reached APRO in July 1980 was written by Doty as "bait," and he began providing Doty with information about the Bennewitz case soon after the letter was passed to him.[^10]
The letter, reproduced in Moore and Shandera's report, tells of a Civil Air Patrol cadet's sighting near Pecos, a man from Sandia who demanded his photographs, and an OSI agent "Dody" who took them; it adds that a crashed UFO from the late 1950s was stored in the Manzano area, that Colonel Bruce Purvine had told the writer OSI took over UFO investigations when Project Blue Book closed, and that AFOSI District 17 had a special secret detachment investigating sightings and cattle mutilations.[^11]
### The Aquarius message
The text that Moore and [[Jaime Shandera]] printed as the Aquarius document is a message marked secret and dated November 17, 1980, the day Doty told Bennewitz AFOSI would not become involved, addressed from AFOSI headquarters at [[Bolling Air Force Base]] to the Kirtland district. It refers to a Kirtland request for photo imagery interpretation of October 29, 1980, cites "HQ CR 44," analyzes five items of negative and film, describes two as a "legitimate negative of unidentified aerial object" and the others as inconclusive or not classifiable, and states that the [[United States]] no longer publicly engages in UFO research but retains an interest in sightings over its installations and test ranges, that several other agencies led by [[NASA]] investigate sightings "through covert cover," one such cover being a UFO reporting center of the Coast and Geodetic Survey at Rockville, Maryland, that the policy and results of "Project Aquarius" remained classified top secret with restricted access to "MJ Twelve," and that the Bennewitz case was being monitored by "NASA/INS." It instructs the district to continue receiving assistance from named individuals including Miller and to debrief them regularly.[^12]
On December 5, 1983 the Air Force Intelligence Service told [[KOB-TV]] that AFOSI had reviewed the message and confirmed it was a hoax.[^13] Moore wrote in 1989 that the Aquarius document was a retyped version of a real AFOSI message with spurious additions, handed to him in 1981 so that he would pass it to Bennewitz, and that he understood Bennewitz was expected to wave it to the press as proof of an alien invasion, after which the document would be denounced as a counterfeit and Bennewitz discredited. The 1990 report of Moore and Shandera says Moore marked a copy so that it could be identified, gave it to Bennewitz in June 1981 with the warning that it might be a set-up, and that Bennewitz put it in his safe and never publicized it. The report describes the printed text as a reconstruction made in late 1988 by Moore from the retyped copy and his 1981 notes, with a few changes supplied by Doty.[^14]
### The Gersten copy, 1982 and 1983
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]
### 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]
### 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 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]
### Footnotes
[^1]: AFOSI Form 96, Multipurpose Internal OSI Form, file 8017D93-0/29, "Kirtland AFB, NM, 8 Aug - 3 Sep 80, Alleged Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Lights in Restricted Test Range," transmittal date October 28, 1980, signed Thomas A. Cseh, Appendix E, p. 93, of William L. Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Fund for UFO Research, 1990), http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S1-Bennewitz-AFOSI-Visit-Oct-80.pdf
[^2]: AFOSI Form 96, file 8017D93-0/29, transmittal date November 26, 1980, Appendix E, pp. 95 to 96, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S3-Bennewitz-Kirtland-Bennewitz-Meeting-Nov-80.pdf
[^3]: Alejandro Rojas, "Open letter to the U.S. Air Force regarding allegations of UFO disinformation," Open Minds, May 6, 2014, https://openminds.tv/open-letter-u-s-air-force-allegations-ufo-disinformation/ ; Rojas, HuffPost, May 13, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exair-force-law-enforceme_b_5312650
[^4]: "Greg Bishop and Richard Doty, Coast to Coast AM with host Art Bell," transcript of the broadcast of February 27, 2005, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S5-Greg-Bishop-and-Richard-Doty-Coast-to-Coast-AM-with-host-Art-Bell-Interview-Transcript.pdf (transcript; audio not reviewed).
[^5]: James W. Moseley, "The Paul Bennewitz Case Revisited," Saucer Smear, vol. 47, June 15, 2000, http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss000615.htm (printout of June 7, 2013), pp. 1 to 3.
[^6]: Same form, continuation, Appendix E, p. 94, paragraphs 2 to 7, same file.
[^7]: AFOSI Form 158, AFOSI Communication, "Dr. Paul Fredrick Bennewitz, Congressional Inquiry," July 30, 1981, AFOSI District 17/CC, signed Frank M. Huey, Appendix E, p. 97, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S4-Bennewitz-AFOSI-Domenici-July-81.pdf
[^8]: FBI Albuquerque, airtel to Director and letterhead memorandum "Cattle Mutilations," April 25, 1979, on the conference of April 20, 1979, and related Department of Justice Criminal Division memorandum and later Albuquerque report, FBI Vault, Animal Mutilation, Parts 04 and 05, https://vault.fbi.gov/Animal%20Mutilation/Animal%20Mutilation%20Part%2004/view
[^9]: Gerald K. Haines, "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90: A Die-Hard Issue," Studies in Intelligence (1997), section "The Robertson Panel, 1952-53," note 33, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/cia-role-study-UFOs.pdf
[^10]: Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, "The Weitzel Letter (July, 1980)," p. 6, quoting Moore, "UFOs and the U.S. Government, Part I," read at the MUFON Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/The-MJ-12-Documents-An-Analytical-Report-Excerpts.pdf
[^11]: Anonymous letter to APRO, Appendix B, pp. 81 to 82, of Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S17-Weitzel-Letter.pdf
[^12]: Message R 171130Z NOV 80, FM HQ AFOSI Bolling AFB DC/IVOE to AFOSI Dist 17 Kirtland AFB NM/BID, info 7602 AINTELG Ft Belvoir, Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, Appendix C, p. 83, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S18-Aquarius-Document.pdf
[^13]: Susan Cooksey, Freedom of Information Manager, Air Force Intelligence Service, letter to Peter L. Clarke, KOB Television, December 5, 1983, printout of a reproduction at http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/KOB-TV-Bennewitz-FOIA.pdf
[^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.

137
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Richard Doty.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
---
category: "UFO & Anomalous Phenomena"
tags:
- Person
- UFO
- AFOSI
- Counterintelligence
- Disinformation
- KirtlandAFB
- MJ12
- NewMexicoStatePolice
alias:
- Richard Doty
- Richard C. Doty
- Richard Charles Doty
- Rick Doty
- Sgt. Richard Doty
- Doty
summary: "Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent at Kirtland AFB from 1979 who interviewed Paul Bennewitz in 1980 and in 2005 said he had run disinformation operations against UFO researchers on orders."
location: "Albuquerque, New Mexico"
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[U.S. Air Force]]"
start: 1968-09-17
end: 1988-09-30
role: "security police, law enforcement and special investigations; retired master sergeant"
fn: 1
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Air Force Office of Special Investigations]]"
start: 1979-05-29
role: "special agent and counterintelligence technician, Kirtland AFB detachments"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[New Mexico State Police]]"
start: 1988-12-01
role: "officer, later sergeant and explosive ordnance disposal team member; retired by February 2015"
fn: 2
- type: investigated
with: "[[Paul Bennewitz]]"
start: 1980-10-24
role: "interviewed Bennewitz at home on October 26, 1980; later described a disinformation operation against him"
fn: 4
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]"
role: "said in 2005 that the FBI investigated him in 1988 or 1989 over the MJ-12 documents"
fn: 5
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
Richard Charles Doty served in the [[U.S. Air Force]] from September 17, 1968 to September 30, 1988, retiring as a master sergeant at [[Kirtland Air Force Base]], and was commissioned an officer of the [[New Mexico State Police]] on December 1, 1988.[^1][^2] From May 29, 1979 his recorded assignments were with units of the [[Air Force Office of Special Investigations]] (AFOSI) at Kirtland, where he was the special agent named in the October 1980 reports on [[Paul Bennewitz]].[^3][^4] In 2005 he told the radio host [[Art Bell]] that he had given Bennewitz disinformation on orders.[^5] [[Robert Hastings]] and [[Philip J. Klass]] have named him as "Falcon," the intelligence source whom [[William L. Moore]] described as the origin of material on [[Project Aquarius]] and the [[Majestic-12]] papers; Doty and Moore have both denied it.[^6][^7]
### Service record
The National Personnel Records Center released Doty's service information to the researcher [[Alejandro Rojas]] in April 2013. The record gives his place of entry as the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station at [[Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania]], and his place of separation as Kirtland. Among his decorations are the Air Force Commendation Medal with two bronze oak leaf clusters, the Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with palm.[^1]
A chronology of service assignments prepared on March 21, 1984 lists him as a security policeman from January 10, 1970 and a law enforcement specialist from January 1, 1971 at [[McChord Air Force Base]] in Washington State, where he became noncommissioned officer in charge of security inspections in March 1973. He was a patrolman and gateguard at [[Wiesbaden]], Germany, from September 24, 1973, and at [[Lindsey Air Station]], Germany, from January 2, 1976. From December 1, 1976 he was a law enforcement flight chief with the 44th Security Police Group at [[Ellsworth Air Force Base]], [[South Dakota]]; the chronology repeats the flight chief entry as of December 5, 1977 and lists him as a law enforcement instructor there from June 19, 1978. On May 29, 1979 he was assigned as a security police investigator, counterintelligence technician, with AFOSI Detachment 1700 at Kirtland, and on February 11, 1980 as noncommissioned officer in charge of a base investigations detachment at Kirtland. That is the last entry in a chronology prepared four years later.[^3]
The release lists his military education as including an Identi-Kit training course (two weeks, April 1979), a Special Investigators Course (fourteen weeks, May 1979), a Protective Services Operations Course (three weeks, April 1980), a Counterespionage Course (six weeks, November 1983) and a Dynamics of International Terrorism course (one week, August 1984).[^3] A separate list of his organizations names AFOSI District 70 at Lindsey Air Station, an assignment that the 1984 chronology does not date.[^3] Klass wrote in 1997 that Doty was transferred to an AFOSI post in [[West Germany]] in 1985, that within two years he was dismissed from AFOSI for turning in bogus claims about his activities, and that he spent the last two years before retirement as manager of the noncommissioned officers' mess hall at Kirtland, citing his own newsletter of January 1991; Klass repeated the account in a letter to the newsletter [[Saucer Smear]] in 2000.[^7][^8] The release of Doty's service information shows his separation as a retirement as a master sergeant at Kirtland and lists a 1606 Services Squadron at Kirtland among his organizations; it records no dismissal.[^1][^3]
### Ellsworth Air Force Base and the National Enquirer letter
On February 9, 1978 the [[National Enquirer]] received at its Florida offices an anonymous letter mailed from [[Rapid City, South Dakota]], enclosing what appeared to be a carbon copy of an incident report dated November 16, 1977 from the commander of the 44th Missile Security Squadron at Ellsworth. The report described a security policeman at a missile launch site who met an individual in a glowing green metallic uniform whose weapon disintegrated his rifle and burned his hands, a security team member who shot two similarly dressed figures who then rose and left in a saucer-shaped object, and the later discovery that the missile's nuclear components were missing. The reporter [[Bob Pratt]] and colleagues spent nine days in Rapid City, were told by the base information officer, Major [[Arthur Jungwirth]], that nothing of that nature had ever happened, and found more than twenty discrepancies in names, identity numbers, occupations and physical layouts. Pratt wrote in the [[MUFON UFO Journal]] in January 1984 that he could "say positively that it never happened," and that a researcher had later been told by an AFOSI agent, whom he did not name, that the incident was real, and that he had been told the agent had since admitted it never happened.[^9]
Doty's service chronology places him at Ellsworth as a law enforcement flight chief from December 1976 and as an instructor from June 1978 until his assignment to Kirtland in May 1979.[^3] In their 1990 report for the [[Fund for UFO Research]], Moore and [[Jaime Shandera]] wrote that the Ellsworth document had been officially fabricated as part of a government counterintelligence and disinformation operation, that Doty was serving with the 44th Security Police Group at the time and was in his second year as law enforcement flight chief in December 1977, and that Doty had admitted to them he was aware of the Enquirer operation but claimed to have been only peripherally involved. They added that Doty's handwriting samples had no point in common with the longhand notations on the document, that its typeface and that of its cover letter differed from the typeface of the Weitzel letter described below, and that men from Washington, possibly from the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], had been involved in a counterintelligence and disinformation training exercise at Ellsworth in late 1977 and early 1978.[^10]
Moore asked Doty about the Ellsworth document in late 1981; according to Moore and Shandera, Doty replied that the event had never occurred, that security regulations barred further comment except to say that what little truth there was had been loosely based on a sighting by a local sheriff's deputy that had not involved a landing, and that he had not created the document.[^10] Hastings wrote in 1989 that, according to [[Bruce Maccabee]], Moore had acknowledged that Doty confessed to forging the Ellsworth document, and that Doty apparently claimed the incident had actually occurred and that he typed the report to bring it to public attention.[^6]
### Kirtland, Schmitt and Bennewitz
On April 20, 1979 Senator [[Harrison Schmitt]] of [[New Mexico]] and U.S. Attorney R. E. Thompson directed a conference in [[Albuquerque]] on cattle mutilations, attended by about 180 people, at which Schmitt said he had conferred with Attorney General [[Griffin Bell]] and that the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] had been designated to handle the matter; a New Mexico State Police officer from Dulce, [[Gabe Valdez]], reported on ninety dead cattle and six horses.[^11] Thirty-nine days later, on May 29, 1979, Doty's chronology shows his counterintelligence assignment at Kirtland.[^3] Doty said in 2005 that in "early 1979" he "was briefed in to this counter intelligence program" and given access to the history of earth's visitation by extraterrestrials.[^5]
On October 24, 1980 Bennewitz, the owner of [[Thunder Scientific]] in Albuquerque, contacted Doty through Major [[Ernest E. Edwards]], commander of the 1608th Security Police Squadron, with what an AFOSI form of October 28, 1980 records as knowledge and evidence of threats against the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. On October 26 Doty and [[Jerry Miller]], chief scientific advisor of the Air Force Test and Evaluation Center and a former [[Project Blue Book]] investigator, interviewed Bennewitz at his home. Bennewitz produced photographs, more than 2,600 feet of 8mm film and electronic recording tapes from fifteen months of independent research; the form is signed by Major [[Thomas A. Cseh]], commander of the Base Investigative Detachment.[^4]
A second AFOSI form, dated November 26, 1980, covers a meeting on November 10 in the 1606th Air Base Wing conference room attended by Brigadier General [[William Brooksher]], other officers, Dr. Lehman of the [[Air Force Weapons Laboratory]], and Bennewitz, who presented film and photographs and said he had documented proof of contact with the beings flying the objects. On November 17 Doty told Bennewitz that AFOSI would not become involved. On November 26 Doty received a telephone call from a person who identified himself as Senator "Schmidt" of New Mexico (the form's spelling) and asked about AFOSI's role; Doty said AFOSI was not investigating, and the caller said he would ask the Secretary of the Air Force which agency should. Bennewitz had spoken with the senator for months, and the senator had telephoned Brooksher about the Security Police role at Manzano.[^12] On July 30, 1981 Senator [[Pete Domenici]] asked to speak with Doty; he was in the inspector general's office, left immediately to meet Bennewitz, and his aide was told that AFOSI had conducted no formal investigation of Bennewitz, according to a communication signed by Colonel [[Frank M. Huey]].[^13]
### The Weitzel letter
In July 1980 the [[Aerial Phenomena Research Organization]] received an anonymous letter, reproduced as Appendix B to the Moore and Shandera report, from a writer who said he was an airman of the 1550th Aircrew Training and Testing Wing at Kirtland. It described a sighting near [[Pecos, New Mexico]], on July 16, 1980 by a [[Civil Air Patrol]] cadet, [[Craig R. Weitzel]], a visit the next night by a man calling himself Mr. Huck of [[Sandia National Laboratories|Sandia Laboratories]] who demanded Weitzel's photographs, and a report to "a Mr. Dody, a special agent with OSI" who took the photographs; the writer said Dody later disavowed any knowledge of them. Its closing paragraphs said that two Sandia employees had told the writer a crashed UFO, including one that crashed near [[Roswell Incident|Roswell]] in the late 1950s, was stored in the Manzano storage area; that the writer's commander, Colonel [[Bruce Purvine]], had said OSI took over UFO investigations when Project Blue Book closed; and that AFOSI District 17 had a special secret detachment investigating sightings and cattle mutilations in the area.[^14] Moore, who was the APRO board member in charge of special investigations, told the 1989 [[MUFON]] symposium in [[Las Vegas]] that the letter was written by Doty and was "bait": AFOSI knew Bennewitz had close ties with APRO and wanted to recruit someone in the organization to report on Bennewitz. Moore said the letter was passed to him, that it was not long afterward that he came to know Doty, and that he began giving Doty information about the Bennewitz case.[^15] The 1990 report adds that Moore's cooperation with AFOSI derived from his meeting in October 1980 with the source codenamed Falcon, who designated Doty as middle-man, and that the stylistic differences between the Ellsworth documents and the Weitzel letter indicated two distinct writers.[^15]
Hastings reported that Craig Weitzel, found by the researcher [[Benton Jamison]] in 1985, said he had reported a sighting to Doty in 1980 but that the event did not resemble the one in the letter, and that, in Hastings's words, a typeface analysis by [[Brad Sparks]] showed the letter was "almost certainly" typed on the same typewriter as Doty's 1980 AFOSI complaint form, an analysis Hastings called incomplete.[^6]
### The Aquarius message
The text printed as Appendix C of the Moore and Shandera report, presented as the Aquarius document, is a one-page message marked secret, "for AFOSI only," dated November 17, 1980, from AFOSI headquarters at [[Bolling Air Force Base]] to the AFOSI district at Kirtland, analyzing five items of negative and film. It states that the policy and results of "Project Aquarius" were classified top secret with restricted access to "MJ Twelve" and that the Bennewitz case was being monitored by "NASA/INS."[^16] On December 5, 1983 the Air Force Intelligence Service told Peter L. Clarke of [[KOB-TV]] in Albuquerque that its files held only a copy of a message of unknown origin that mentioned Bennewitz, that the purported originator, AFOSI, had reviewed it and confirmed it was a hoax, and that the Intelligence Service had no record of receiving it from AFOSI.[^17]
Moore wrote in 1989 that the Aquarius document was a retyped version of a real AFOSI message with a few spurious additions, apparently created by AFOSI, and handed to him so that he would pass it to Bennewitz. In the 1990 report Moore and Shandera corrected the date of delivery to March 2, 1981, when Falcon showed him an original, and said Moore later received a retyped version at a meeting in Albuquerque with Falcon and Doty. Moore gave Bennewitz a marked copy in June 1981 and told him it might be a set-up. The text in Appendix C is, according to the report, a reconstruction: in late 1988 Moore worked from the retyped copy and his 1981 notes, then took the result to Doty, who supplied a few additional changes; Falcon took no part.[^18] Klass wrote that the term "MJ Twelve" first appeared in this teletype, which Doty provided to Moore in early 1981.[^7]
### Falcon, Condor and the Howe meeting
Linda Moulton Howe told Hastings that when Doty invited her to his office at Kirtland in early April 1983 and showed her a document, he identified himself by the code name Falcon and said Moore had given it to him. She signed an affidavit; Doty did not. Hastings wrote that the document, as Howe described it, was a "Briefing Paper for the President" containing a catalog of crashed UFO cases including one near Aztec, New Mexico, and that Doty confirmed to her the existence of a secret government group called MJ-12.[^6] According to Howe, quoted by Klass, Doty said she was being shown a "briefing paper" because the government intended to release to her several thousand feet of film of crashed discs and bodies for a [[Home Box Office]] documentary; she received no film.[^7] Doty wrote to [[Barry Greenwood]], editor of the [[Just Cause]] newsletter, on March 3, 1988 that he knew "of no secret Government investigation of UFOs" and had "never heard of MJ-12."[^7] In 2005 Doty said on the radio that Howe had been invited to Kirtland and shown a document, that he was the primary agent with two others, and that the operation was carried out on orders.[^5]
Hastings wrote that in early December 1988 a member of the production team of the television program [[UFO Cover-Up? Live]], whom he did not name, identified Doty as Falcon and the program's second source, "Condor," as [[Robert Collins]], a recently retired Air Force captain assigned to a plasma physics group at Sandia. Hastings wrote that both Doty and Collins denied involvement.[^6] Moore denied that Doty was Falcon; Klass wrote that there was good reason to believe he was.[^7]
### The FBI inquiry of 1988 and 1989
On September 15, 1988 a special agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, whose name is redacted, contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in [[Dallas]] with a possible classified document concerning Operation Majestic-12. FBI Dallas reported on October 25, 1988 that the document had been received from a person, whose name is redacted, who said an individual "at the school," whom he would not name, had given it to him as something received in the mail, and that there had been two radio talk-show appearances on "Operation Majestic-12" in the previous six weeks. The file reproduces the November 18, 1952 Eisenhower briefing document with "BOGUS" written across its pages. On November 30 OSI advised that the document was fabricated, and FBI headquarters wrote on December 2, 1988 that it was "completely bogus" and told Dallas to close the case.[^19] Doty told Bell in 2005 that the FBI had investigated him in 1988 or 1989 because it thought he had disclosed the documents, that Klass had raised the matter, and that he told the FBI and Air Force officials to take him to the [[The Pentagon|Pentagon]], where he said the documents were.[^5] In July 2000 he wrote that he "went through two Government investigations regarding the MJ-12 documents," that both had cleared him, and that he was not involved in any conspiracy with Moore to create documents; the editor of Saucer Smear added that Doty claimed to have passed two lie detector tests.[^8] The FBI file as released does not name him; he retired from the Air Force on September 30, 1988, according to the National Personnel Records Center, or October 1, according to Hastings.[^1][^6]
### New Mexico State Police
On November 30, 1988 the chief of the New Mexico State Police told Officer Richard C. Doty that he was commissioned effective December 1, 1988 as a junior patrolman at an annual salary of $19,279, assigned to [[Grants, New Mexico|Grants]].[^2] The personnel file released in 2021 under the state Inspection of Public Records Act, 321 pages, records a Hazardous Materials Safety Board Level I certificate issued in June 1989, a notice that he was not selected for the explosive ordnance disposal team in May 1991, his appointment as a team member on December 1, 1994, and his appointment as temporary commander of the unit on December 27, 1999. On April 25, 2000 the chief assigned four other officers to report to Sergeant Doty in Albuquerque on April 28 for explosive ordnance disposal support to the [[Secret Service]] during Vice President [[Al Gore]]'s visit. He was removed from the team effective July 2, 2005, per correspondence submitted by his lieutenant and himself. A benefits record dated February 9, 2015 gives December 1, 1988 as his date of hire, February 13, 2015 as the end of coverage, and "Employee retired" as the reason. The state withheld his military discharge, disciplinary records and performance appraisals. The requester's description of the file as beginning "circa August of 1988 as a Staff Sergeant" does not match the commission letter.[^2]
### Statements in 2000
In June 2000 the publisher [[James W. Moseley]] reported in Saucer Smear, after telephone interviews, that Doty told him he had visited [[Area 51]] and had been told alien technology was kept there, though his clearance was not high enough to see it, and that Doty said he told Bennewitz years afterward that he had been hoaxed.[^20] In a letter to the July 2000 issue Doty wrote that Moore "was a coded source for OSI," "was paid for his information" and "was used to provide disinformation to Ufologists"; that "two alien spacecrafts crashed in the desert of New Mexico in the summer of 1947" and the government recovered five bodies and one live alien that lived until 1952; that "we don't have any UFOs at Area 51"; and that "during my OSI days, I did perform disinformation operations against many different targets, but everything I did was sanctioned by our Government." Moore wrote in the same issue that he could confirm Doty's comments about Bennewitz and the "energy balls," one of which he had seen briefly in Bennewitz's home.[^8]
### Statements in 2005
On [[Coast to Coast AM]] on February 27, 2005 Doty, with the author [[Greg Bishop]], said he was "the counter intelligence officer for the base," that Bennewitz's equipment could tap sensitive communications at Kirtland, which housed what he called probably the largest nuclear storage area in the southwest, and that AFOSI convinced Bennewitz that what he was picking up was alien in origin. Asked by Bell whether he had dispensed disinformation, Doty answered "That is absolutely true." He said that when Bennewitz claimed an alien base lay under [[Archuleta Peak]] near [[Dulce, New Mexico]], AFOSI "fortified his thought" with a fence, Army helicopters from [[Fort Carson]] and "things planted onto the ground," and that this was easier than obtaining a search warrant and seizing Bennewitz's equipment, which would have produced publicity. He said he visited Bennewitz and Bennewitz's son against his commander's orders to say the stories were untrue, named four such operations, two of them against Bennewitz and Howe, and said: "I followed orders. Everything we did was following orders." He said that disinformation was a primary tactic of [[United States]] intelligence in the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s, that he "was trained" in it at a counterintelligence and counterespionage school, and that the [[National Security Agency]] had become involved in the Bennewitz matter because of its interest in his equipment.[^5]
On the same broadcast Doty said he was briefed in a room at the Air Force special security office on a recovery at Roswell by a colonel and a civilian, with a classified 16mm film, and that his 1979 briefing included the statement that in the early 1950s the government had placed Air Force intelligence personnel as advisers to motion picture companies, beginning with a film he named as The Day the Earth Stood Still, to condition the public for a release. He also said that he learned after leaving OSI, in a room with six or seven retired intelligence officers, that a government operation from 1977 or 1978 until 1982 had taken organs from cattle, horses, elk and deer for a biological agent prevention system, and that it had been arranged so that the public would attribute the mutilations to aliens; he said he had no official knowledge of it at the time.[^5]
On July 11, 2013 Rojas wrote to the Air Force asking whether Doty had acted under orders when, as Doty has said according to Rojas, he lied to two senators, broke into a civilian's home and distributed forged documents. AFOSI released records on Rojas's [[Freedom of Information Act]] request on August 2, 2013; Rojas wrote that its public affairs office then stopped speaking with him and that he had received no answer. Rojas wrote that Gabe Valdez of the New Mexico State Police told him he was present when Doty flew Bennewitz over Dulce, that Doty told Bishop and retired Army Colonel [[John B. Alexander]] of the break-in, and that Doty says he was demoted at one point, which the military records Rojas obtained do not show.[^21]
### Footnotes
[^1]: National Personnel Records Center, "Information Releasable Under the Freedom of Information Act" (NA Form 13164), decorations list, and cover letter of April 26, 2013 to Alejandro Rojas, request no. 2-11444310069, Richard C. Doty, pp. 2 to 4 of the 8-page release, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/Doty-Service-Records1.pdf
[^2]: New Mexico Department of Public Safety, response of March 29, 2021 to John Greenewald under the Inspection of Public Records Act and personnel file of Richard C. Doty (321 pages), including the memorandum of Chief Neil W. Curran of November 30, 1988 (Appointment and Assignment), the Hazardous Materials Safety Board letter of July 3, 1989, the explosive ordnance disposal team letters of May 10, 1991, November 30, 1994, December 27, 1999, April 25, 2000 and June 29, 2005, and the benefits record of February 9, 2015, https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/richarddoty-personnelfile.pdf
[^3]: National Personnel Records Center, "Chronology of Service Assignments" prepared March 21, 1984 (master personnel records of Doty, Richard C., page 204), "Organization, Command, Location" list, and "Military Education" entries, in the release of April 2013, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/Doty-Service-Records1.pdf, pp. 5, 6 and 8.
[^4]: AFOSI Form 96, Multipurpose Internal OSI Form, file 8017D93-0/29, "Kirtland AFB, NM, 8 Aug - 3 Sep 80, Alleged Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Lights in Restricted Test Range," transmittal date October 28, 1980, signed Thomas A. Cseh, reproduced as Appendix E, p. 93, of William L. Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Fund for UFO Research, 1990); copy at http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S1-Bennewitz-AFOSI-Visit-Oct-80.pdf
[^5]: "Greg Bishop and Richard Doty, Coast to Coast AM with host Art Bell," transcript of the broadcast of February 27, 2005, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S5-Greg-Bishop-and-Richard-Doty-Coast-to-Coast-AM-with-host-Art-Bell-Interview-Transcript.pdf (transcript; the audio was not reviewed).
[^6]: Robert Hastings, "The MJ-12 Affair: Facts, Questions, Comments," March 1, 1989, reproduced on the UFONET bulletin board and at https://sacred-texts.com/ufo/hastings.htm
[^7]: Philip J. Klass, Skeptics UFO Newsletter no. 44, March 1997, pp. 1 to 5, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/docs/SUN/SUN44.pdf
[^8]: James W. Moseley, ed., Saucer Smear, vol. 47, July 15, 2000, "Missives from the Masses" (letters of Richard Doty, William Moore and Philip J. Klass), http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss000715.htm (printout of June 14, 2013), pp. 6 to 7.
[^9]: Bob Pratt, "Ellsworth," MUFON UFO Journal, January 1984, repost at http://www.mufon.com/bob_pratt/ellsworth.html (printed June 13, 2013).
[^10]: William L. Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Fund for UFO Research, 1990), "The Ellsworth Document (Dec. 1977)," pp. 4 to 6, excerpt at http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/The-MJ-12-Documents-An-Analytical-Report-Excerpts.pdf
[^11]: FBI Albuquerque, airtel to Director and letterhead memorandum "Cattle Mutilations," April 25, 1979, on the conference of April 20, 1979, FBI Vault, Animal Mutilation, Part 04, https://vault.fbi.gov/Animal%20Mutilation/Animal%20Mutilation%20Part%2004/view
[^12]: AFOSI Form 96, file 8017D93-0/29, transmittal date November 26, 1980, Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, Appendix E, pp. 95 to 96, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S3-Bennewitz-Kirtland-Bennewitz-Meeting-Nov-80.pdf
[^13]: AFOSI Form 158, AFOSI Communication, "Dr. Paul Fredrick Bennewitz, Congressional Inquiry," July 30, 1981, AFOSI District 17/CC, signed Frank M. Huey, Appendix E, p. 97, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S4-Bennewitz-AFOSI-Domenici-July-81.pdf
[^14]: Anonymous letter to APRO, reproduced as Appendix B, pp. 81 to 82, of Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S17-Weitzel-Letter.pdf
[^15]: Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, "The Weitzel Letter (July, 1980)," pp. 6 to 7, quoting Moore, "UFOs and the U.S. Government, Part I," read at the MUFON Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989, excerpt at http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/The-MJ-12-Documents-An-Analytical-Report-Excerpts.pdf
[^16]: Message R 171130Z NOV 80, FM HQ AFOSI Bolling AFB DC/IVOE to AFOSI Dist 17 Kirtland AFB NM/BID, info 7602 AINTELG Ft Belvoir, "Subject Case Nr: 8017D93-126," Moore and Shandera, MJ-12 Documents, Appendix C, p. 83, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/S18-Aquarius-Document.pdf
[^17]: Susan Cooksey, Freedom of Information Manager, Air Force Intelligence Service, letter to Peter L. Clarke, KOB Television, December 5, 1983 (reply to request of November 18, 1983), printout of a reproduction at http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/KOB-TV-Bennewitz-FOIA.pdf
[^18]: 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.
[^19]: FBI, "Majestic 12," file 65-81170, Part 01, 24 pages: SAC Dallas airtel to Director, October 25, 1988; Director to FBI Dallas, teletype, December 2, 1988; https://vault.fbi.gov/Majestic%2012/Majestic%2012%20Part%2001%20%28Final%29/at_download/file
[^20]: James W. Moseley, "The Paul Bennewitz Case Revisited," Saucer Smear, vol. 47, June 15, 2000, http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss000615.htm (printout of June 7, 2013), pp. 1 to 3.
[^21]: Alejandro Rojas, "Open letter to the U.S. Air Force regarding allegations of UFO disinformation," Open Minds, May 6, 2014 (letter sent July 11, 2013; AFOSI FOIA case 2013-03291-F), https://openminds.tv/open-letter-u-s-air-force-allegations-ufo-disinformation/ ; Rojas, "Ex-Air Force Law Enforcement Agent Says He Hoaxed Major UFO Mythologies," HuffPost, May 13, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exair-force-law-enforceme_b_5312650

174
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/J. Allen Hynek.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,174 @@
---
category: "UFO & Anomalous Phenomena"
tags:
- Person
- Astronomer
- UFO
- UAP
- ProjectBlueBook
- RobertsonPanel
- CUFOS
- AirForceConsultant
alias:
- J. Allen Hynek
- Josef Allen Hynek
- Joseph Allen Hynek
- Allen Hynek
- Dr. Hynek
- J. A. Hynek
summary: "Astronomer who served as scientific consultant to the Air Force's UFO projects from 1948 to 1969, attended the Robertson Panel as an associate member, and in 1973 founded the Center for UFO Studies."
born: 1910
died: 1986
location: "Chicago, Illinois (born)"
relations:
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Project Blue Book]]"
role: "scientific consultant to Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book"
start: 1948
end: 1969-07-01
fn: 1
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[F. W. Dodge Company]]"
role: "evaluator under subcontract 130-7000 for the Aerial Phenomena Office"
start: 1967-07-01
end: 1968-06-30
fn: 14
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Foreign Technology Division]]"
role: "consultant, nature of work unknown"
start: 1970-04
end: 1974
fn: 21
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Ohio State University]]"
role: "instructor to professor of astronomy"
start: 1935
end: 1956
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory]]"
role: "supervisor of technical reports"
start: 1942
end: 1946
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory]]"
role: "associate director and chief of upper atmosphere studies and satellite tracking section"
start: 1956
end: 1960
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Northwestern University]]"
role: "professor and chairman of astronomy, director of Dearborn Observatory"
start: 1960
fn: 3
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Robertson Panel]]"
role: "associate member"
start: 1953-01-14
end: 1953-01-17
fn: 6
- type: founded
with: "[[Center for UFO Studies]]"
start: 1973
fn: 2
- type: head_of
with: "[[Center for UFO Studies]]"
role: "scientific director"
start: 1973
end: 1986
fn: 2
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who advised the [[U.S. Air Force]] on reports of unidentified flying objects from 1948 until 1 July 1969, a period that covered [[Project Sign]], [[Project Grudge]] and [[Project Blue Book]]. He was an associate member of the 1953 [[Robertson Panel]], testified to House committees in 1966 and 1968, and in 1973 founded the [[Center for UFO Studies]].[^1][^2]
### Education and war work
Hynek was born in [[Chicago]] in 1910, took a B.S. at the [[University of Chicago]] in 1931 and a Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1935, and taught at [[Ohio State University]] from 1935, as professor from 1950 to 1956 and assistant dean of the Graduate School from 1950 to 1953. He was supervisor of technical reports at the [[Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory]] from 1942 to 1946 and a civilian with the [[U.S. Navy]] in 1944.[^3]
A [[The Washington Post|Washington Post]] article, undated but referring to the Battle of the Bulge as "last December," reproduced by Project 1947 from Hynek's file at the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]], reported that a group of scientists "headed by Dr. Allen Hynek, astronomer loaned by Ohio State University," had disclosed the radio proximity fuze developed at [[Silver Spring, Maryland|Silver Spring]], Maryland, as "Navy Project A," and reported that Hynek said without the proximity fuze the war probably would still be on.[^4]
### Consultant to Sign, Grudge and Blue Book
Hynek was the Air Force's UFO consultant from 1948, and comments "from an astronomical point of view by Dr. Hynek predominate" in the August 1949 Grudge report. He told a House committee in 1968 that the Air Force asked him twenty years earlier to assist "in weeding out those reports arising from misidentification of planets, stars, meteors, and other celestial objects," that he found some 30 percent of the then current cases very probably had astronomical causes, and that the remaining reports "were ostensibly being explained by the consultant psychologist," explanations that reminded him of "a magician saw[ing] a woman in half."[^1][^5]
In 1952 the Air Force's [[Edward J. Ruppelt|Ruppelt]] reexamined the 1948 death of Captain [[Thomas Mantell]] with Hynek's assistance, and Hynek concluded that the object was probably not Venus.[^5]
### The Robertson Panel, January 1953
The panel memorandum lists Hynek of Ohio State among two "associate members," with [[Frederick C. Durant]]. He attended the Wednesday afternoon session, both Thursday sessions and the Friday sessions. On Thursday "the Project STORK support at Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, was described by Dr. Hynek." On Friday he read "a prepared paper making certain observations and conclusions." In the discussion of a "sky patrol" he suggested amateur astronomers, noted that "if a program of watching could be an adjunct of planned astronomical programs, little cost would be involved," and later proposed that amateur astronomers "might be a potential source of enthusiastic talent 'to spread the gospel'" in the educational program.[^6]
His name appears in braces in the online edition of the memorandum, which marks the names deleted from the version printed in the Condon Report in 1968.[^7] His paper "Unusual Aerial Phenomena" appeared in the [[Journal of the Optical Society of America]] in April 1953 (received 22 December 1952); it states that several hundred reports had been studied and that "a hovering nocturnal light" does not appear readily explainable by astronomical causes, mirages, balloons or conventional aircraft. He had it read into the House record in 1968.[^8]
[[Jennie Zeidman]], his assistant from 1953 to 1956, wrote that during her first month working for Hynek he went to Washington for the Panel, called "an associate member, a second stringer, which was odd because he had been working directly with the data for about five years," and returned saying: "They're not going to have a scientific investigation. For some strange reason they voted it down. They didn't even take a decent look at the data, and they decided to discredit them."[^9]
### Project Henry and the Battelle channel
Zeidman wrote that Hynek named his 1953 consultancy "Project Henry," that a courier brought him teletype reports from [[Wright-Patterson Air Force Base|Wright-Patterson]] weekly, that Hynek was paid to investigate only reports Blue Book assigned to him, that "Hynek often said he knew the best cases were withheld," and that her pay came from Ohio State although Hynek told her: "You're working for a contractor ... A contractor who doesn't want to be known." She identified the courier from a [[Columbus, Ohio|Columbus]] city directory as a Battelle employee. She described [[Project Stork]] as an effort "to ascertain the capability of the Soviet Union to engage in technological warfare" and wrote that Blue Book Special Report 14, the statistical study done at the [[Battelle Memorial Institute]], was "a product of Project Stork." She described a "Report to Stork on Blue Book Henry" of August 1953 compiling 148 flying object reports that passed through Hynek's hands between January and July 1953, with 22 percent unknowns and 10.8 percent insufficient data, and a summary of correspondence with 35 amateur astronomical societies, 19 Ground Observer Corps filter centers and 48 Civil Aeronautics Administration control towers. In summer 1953, she wrote, Blue Book's Lieutenant Bob Olsson, a sergeant and a man to whom she was not introduced questioned her in Hynek's office about the project and Hynek's attitude.[^9]
[[Jan Aldrich]]'s Project 1947, which hosts Hynek's contract papers, states that [[Project Henry]] "was funded by the Air Force through the Battelle Memorial Institute," that Ruppelt and Olsson forwarded cables "to either Project White Stork or directly to Hynek," and that Hynek had reported his survey of astronomers' opinions on UFOs "to Battelle Memorial Institute's Project White Stork and Project Blue Book." Blue Book Report No. 8 of 31 December 1952 summarized interviews by "an astronomical consultant" with 44 professional astronomers, of whom, it stated, 7 were completely indifferent, 12 mildly indifferent, 17 mildly interested and 8 very interested, and five had made sightings.[^4][^10]
### Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Northwestern
From 1956 to 1960 Hynek was chief of the upper atmosphere studies and satellite tracking section and associate director of the [[Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory]], and a visiting lecturer at [[Harvard University|Harvard]], before becoming professor and chairman of astronomy at [[Northwestern University]] and director of its [[Dearborn Observatory]] in 1960.[^3] A chronology of Blue Book hosted by the [[National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena]], drawing on the writer [[Jerome Clark]], states that after Major [[Robert J. Friend]] took over Blue Book in 1958, Hynek organized "the first of several meetings" between Blue Book staff and [[Air Technical Intelligence Center]] personnel in 1959 and proposed reevaluating some older reports.[^11]
### Payments and contract channels in the 1960s
Hynek's services "for the Aerial Phenomena Office" from 1 July 1963 to 30 June 1968 were paid at $5,190.00 for fiscal 1964, $4,617.50 for 1965, $5,475.00 for 1966, $5,000.00 for 1967 and $3,040.00 for 1968, a total of $23,322.50, with expenses totaling $10,082.94. Subcontract 130-7000, dated 4 August 1967, between [[F. W. Dodge Company]], a division of [[McGraw-Hill]], and Hynek, covered 1 July 1967 to 30 June 1968 for up to 750 hours at $10 per hour, a maximum of $7,500, under prime contract F33657-67-C-1447. Its stated objectives included determining whether the phenomena "constitute a threat to the security of the United States" and "methods of exploiting the possible scientific or technical potential of these phenomena/objects," and its reports could be classified up to Secret. A cover letter from the project manager [[John J. Sweeney]] was copied to Major Quintanilla.[^12]
Hynek's telephone log for November 1967, filed with the contract papers, records calls to Lieutenant Marano at Blue Book, to witnesses in several states, and to Colonel Friend, who "asked about Blue Book and had a number of comments concerning my recent article." It records Hynek recommending, "when asked," that the Condon Committee send an investigator to [[Newfield, New York]]: "They did." It records a call "relative to a report reaching me that an investigator purporting to be from the Air Force had confiscated some photographs," of which he wrote "Got nowhere in this investigation." It also records that he sent investigators to [[Oconto, Wisconsin]], before the case was officially reported, and paid $20 toward gasoline and travel expenses, and that the case "turned out to be unequivocally Venus." The log for May 1968 records a call to Sweeney at [[Fairborn, Ohio]], "at his request regarding forthcoming visit."[^12]
In comments on [[Donald Keyhoe]]'s article in the January 1966 issue of [[True (magazine)|True magazine]], Hynek wrote as consultant that nine of the eleven cases Keyhoe cited were not in Air Force files and that "under the present operating regulations, this office is not authorized to investigate cases not officially reported through channels," a restriction he recommended be changed so that reports made to the press and to private organizations such as the National Investigations Committee could be investigated. Of Keyhoe's statement that the government had set up 46 research projects on gravity control, Hynek wrote that he did not know "of any bonafide antigravity projects."[^13]
### Michigan, March 1966, and the House Armed Services Committee
Hynek investigated reports from [[Dexter, Michigan|Dexter]] and [[Hillsdale, Michigan|Hillsdale]], [[Michigan]], of 20 and 21 March 1966, with personnel of [[Selfridge Air Force Base]] and the Blue Book office, and suggested at a press conference that burning swamp gas might account for the lights. The Air Force release recorded that pranks with flares had occurred at Hillsdale and that a photograph released to the press was a time exposure of the crescent moon and Venus.[^14] Zeidman wrote that Hynek telephoned her from Hillsdale at midnight on 26 March 1966, told her that the Air Force had told him "Say something," and that the swamp-gas episode "distressed him terribly because in effect the Air Force had forced him to compromise his scientific integrity."[^9]
On 28 March 1966 Representative [[Gerald Ford]], [[House Minority Leader]], wrote to the chairmen of the [[House Committee on Armed Services]] and the [[House Committee on Science and Astronautics]] that Hynek "dismissed all of them as the product of college student pranks or swamp gas or an impression created by the rising crescent moon and the planet Venus," and the accompanying news release described Hynek's explanation as "flippant." Ford enclosed a column by [[Roscoe Drummond]] and articles by [[Bulkley Griffin]] of the [[Griffin-Larrabee News Bureau]].[^15]
At the Armed Services Committee hearing of 5 April 1966, chaired by [[L. Mendel Rivers]], Hynek testified with Secretary of the Air Force [[Harold Brown]]. His opening statement said that "the body of data accumulated since 1948 through the Air Force investigations deserves close scrutiny by a civilian panel of physical and social scientists." Asked by Representative [[William H. Bates]] of [[Massachusetts]] the question put to Brown, whether anyone of scientific knowledge had concluded that the phenomena came from extraterrestrial sources, he answered that he knew "of no competent scientist who would say that these objects come from outer space," and to Representative [[L. N. Nedzi]] of Michigan he said "the possibility should be kept open as a possible hypothesis."[^5]
### The Condon Committee
Hynek briefed the University of Colorado's [[Condon Committee]] in its preliminary study; Hynek, [[Jacques Vallee]] and [[William Powers]] of the Dearborn Observatory are thanked in its acknowledgments for consultation "voluntarily supplied."[^16] The report records that "Prof. Hynek strongly believes that the teams should have four or more members" and recommends "giving each report what he calls the 'FBI treatment,'" meaning thorough interviewing and "an active quest in the neighborhood where the sighting occurred to try to discover additional witnesses."[^17] [[Philip J. Klass]], quoting a book by the Condon staff member [[David Saunders]], wrote that Hynek attended a secret meeting in [[Denver]] on 12 December 1967 with Saunders, [[Norman Levine]], [[Mary Lou Armstrong]] and [[James E. McDonald]], where, in Saunders's account, "Hynek wanted to create a visible group of qualified individuals who took the UFO problem seriously, so that in the event of a Congressional hearing, there would exist an organization to which the Congress could turn," and left early with a cold before McDonald raised the Low memorandum.[^18] Hynek's own log records attending a Denver meeting "unofficially, and at my own expense" on 13 December.[^12]
Zeidman wrote that within a few months of the start of the Colorado project Hynek told her he knew it had been decided that the findings would be negative, and that for years he "had understood that he was being kept out of the inner circle, that even with his high security clearances it was judged that he had no need to know what was really going on."[^9]
### The House symposium, 29 July 1968
Representative [[Donald Rumsfeld]] introduced Hynek to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics: "As his Congressman I am delighted he has been invited to appear on this panel." Hynek testified as a "private citizen and scientist and not as a representative of the Air Force." He said his earlier reticence "was based on a carefully weighed decision" because "a scientist must try to be sure of his facts" and "must not cry 'wolf' unless he is reasonably sure there is a wolf." He recalled that "the then chief scientist at the Pentagon" had asked him "just how much longer we were 'going to look at this stuff,'" and that he had replied that "we hadn't really looked at it yet" in the sense that "the FBI looks at a kidnapping, a bank robbery, or a narcotics ring." He stated that "the feeling is definitely on the increase that we should either fish or cut bait" and "my recommendation is to fish," and that he had "private information from a very large number of scientists who are interested." He recommended that Congress establish a "UFO Scientific Board of Inquiry, properly funded," and that the United States seek [[United Nations]] cooperation for an "international clearinghouse for the exchange of information," and stated that "my swamp gas record in the Michigan UFO melee should suffice to quash any such ideas" of his being a believer. Asked by Representative [[Ken Hechler|Hechler]] whether the Air Force had measured up to a thorough scientific analysis, he answered that the invitation letter "strongly stated that we would not discuss the Air Force participation in these matters, and I would like to therefore not speak to that point."[^8]
### End of the consultancy and the Center for UFO Studies
An Air Force memorandum of 20 October 1969, with the signature block of Brigadier General [[C. H. Bolender]], states that Hynek "served as a scientific consultant until 1 July 1969" and recommends "not renewing the consultant contract."[^19] On 3 March 1969 Hynek, signing as director of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, had written to Colonel [[George R. Weinbrenner]], commander of the [[Foreign Technology Division]] at Wright-Patterson, enclosing a "Preliminary Proposal for Subject Investigation," dated 14 March 1969, for a pilot study of reports of cars losing ignition and lights near luminous objects. The proposal cites "the potential military* and scientific value of this electrical damping phenomenon," with an asterisked note quoting an [[Associated Press]] report of 9 November 1957 that "a device capable of disrupting the operation of motor vehicles" was something the armed forces would like developed, while the chief engineer of the [[National Inventors Council]] said he knew of no research aimed at producing one. It states that Hynek had compiled "well over one hundred such reports," that a second phase "will and must" be entered into as a major effort "calling for the deployment of the best scientific facilities of the Air Force and its contractors," and that if the phenomenon is real "it is obviously in the national interest to gain an understanding of the phenomenon and its practical application before other nations, in which this phenomenon is also reported to occur, gain an advantage." It asks for "full and complete personal access by the Principal Investigator to Blue Book data of all degrees of classification," includes a consulting fee for the principal investigator, and states that the project should be "entirely apart from Project Blue Book."[^20]
Zeidman wrote in 1991 that the researcher Brian Parks had obtained, through the [[Freedom of Information Act]], Hynek's record of employment as a Foreign Technology Division consultant from 1970 to 1974, "an executive appointment, beginning in April 1970, less than six months after Blue Book's official closure," working "only a few days each year," and that it was not known whether the work related to UFOs.[^21] She wrote that in October 1973 she drove Hynek from a small building at Wright-Patterson to Columbus, that he introduced her to a man in dress uniform who "may have been a major," that he "would not tell me anything about what he was doing at Wright-Patterson," and that on 26 December 1976 in his Evanston home he said: "It's very definitely connected with intelligence somewhere."[^21]
His book [[The UFO Experience|The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry]] appeared in 1972, and in 1973 he started the Center for UFO Studies, serving as scientific director until his death in 1986 and naming [[Mark Rodeghier]] as his successor.[^2] Project 1947 states that the Center received most of the National Investigations Committee's files, that Hynek held a copy of the Blue Book microfilm, and that some reports he forwarded under his contract do not appear in the Blue Book files.[^4] Hynek appeared in a cameo in the 1977 film [[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]], on which he was a consultant, and questionnaires of the Center were available in theater lobbies.[^4][^22]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Edward U. Condon, ed., Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (University of Colorado, 1968), Section V, chapter 2, "UFOs, 1947-1968," pp. 851 and 909, http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/s5chap02.htm; Air Force action memorandum, "Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO)," 20 October 1969, with signature block of Brigadier General C. H. Bolender, paragraph 1, http://www.nicap.org/Bolender_Memo.htm.
[^2]: "About Us," Center for UFO Studies, https://cufos.org/about-us/ (history section: The UFO Experience in 1972, the Center started in 1973, scientific director until 1986, Mark Rodeghier appointed successor); Jorja Siemons, "Time Capsule: A look at J. Allen Hynek," The Daily Northwestern, 7 March 2023, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/03/06/lateststories/time-capsule-a-look-at-j-allen-hynek-the-nu-professor-whose-ufo-research-inspired-close-encounters-of-the-third-kind/.
[^3]: Biography and statement of J. Allen Hynek, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 2d Session, 29 July 1968, pp. 1-3, https://nicap.org/books/1968Sym/1968_UFO_Symposium.pdf.
[^4]: "A few words about the late Dr J. Allen Hynek," Project 1947, http://www.project1947.com/hynek/index.htm, reproducing a Washington Post clipping (page 1, undated) from Hynek's FBI file and describing his contracts and the Center's holdings.
[^5]: Condon, Section V, chapter 2, "UFOs, 1947-1968," pp. 847, 851 and 908-910, http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/s5chap02.htm.
[^6]: F. C. Durant, memorandum, "Report of Meetings of the Office of Scientific Intelligence Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, January 14-18, 1953," Central Intelligence Agency, 16 February 1953, Tab B and Part I (Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday) and Part II ("Instrumentation to Obtain Data," "Educational Program"), in Condon Report Appendix U, https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/appndx-u.htm.
[^7]: Editors' notes in the online Condon Report, Appendix U, https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/appndx-u.htm.
[^8]: J. A. Hynek, "Unusual Aerial Phenomena," Journal of the Optical Society of America 43 (April 1953), p. 311, as read into the record, and Hynek's statement and answers to questions, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, pp. 1-16.
[^9]: Jennie Zeidman, "I Remember Blue Book," International UFO Reporter, March/April 1991, sections "Project Stork," "Project Henry" and "Blue Book and beyond," https://www.project1947.com/articles/jzbluebook.htm.
[^10]: "Project Henry," Project 1947, http://www.project1947.com/projecthenry/index.htm; Condon, Section V, chapter 2, pp. 864-866.
[^11]: "Blue Book," NICAP, https://nicap.org/bios/WHO-WAS/BLUE_BOOK.htm.
[^12]: Subcontract 130-7000 and related memoranda, as hosted at http://www.project1947.com/hynek/jah_af_contract.htm.
[^13]: "Comments by Air Force Consultant, J. A. Hynek on Keyhoe's Article, January 1966 Issue of True Magazine," http://www.project1947.com/hynek/jah_dek_66true.htm.
[^14]: Condon, Section V, chapter 2, pp. 898-899, quoting the Air Force press release on the Dexter and Hillsdale investigation.
[^15]: Gerald R. Ford to Representatives George P. Miller and L. Mendel Rivers, 28 March 1966, with news release, Gerald R. Ford Congressional Papers, Press Secretary and Speech File, Box D9, folder "Ford Press Releases - UFO, 1966," Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0054/4525586.pdf.
[^16]: Condon, Section II, p. 21, and Appendix W, "Acknowledgments," http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/sec-ii.htm and http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/appndx-w.htm.
[^17]: Condon, Section II, "Summary of the Study," p. 24, http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/sec-ii.htm.
[^18]: Philip J. Klass, "The Condon UFO Study: A Trick or a Conspiracy?" The Skeptical Inquirer 10 (Summer 1986), quoting David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong (Signet, 1968), https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1986/07/22165324/p42.pdf.
[^19]: Air Force action memorandum, 20 October 1969, paragraphs 1 and 5, http://www.nicap.org/Bolender_Memo.htm.
[^20]: J. Allen Hynek to Colonel George R. Weinbrenner, 3 March 1969, and "Preliminary Proposal for Subject Investigation," 14 March 1969, as hosted at http://www.project1947.com/hynek/jah_af_prop69.htm.
[^21]: Zeidman, "I Remember Blue Book," final sections.
[^22]: Siemons, "Time Capsule: A look at J. Allen Hynek," The Daily Northwestern, 7 March 2023.

149
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Sean Kirkpatrick.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,149 @@
---
category: "UFO & Anomalous Phenomena"
tags:
- Person
- UAP
- AARO
- DIA
- NRO
- Physicist
- IntelligenceOfficer
alias:
- Sean Kirkpatrick
- Sean M. Kirkpatrick
- Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick
- Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick
- Sean Michael Kirkpatrick
summary: "Physicist and intelligence officer, first director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office from July 2022 to December 2023, who later said the Pentagon and AARO convinced Congress not to enact a review board."
location: "Columbus, Georgia (born)"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]]"
start: 2022-07-20
end: 2023-12-01
role: "first director"
fn: 2
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Kathleen Hicks]]"
start: 2022-12-23
end: 2023-12-01
role: "Deputy Secretary of Defense, to whom the AARO director reports on operational and security matters under 50 U.S.C. 3373"
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "[[National Reconnaissance Office]]"
start: 2003
role: "program manager, Advanced Technologies program"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
start: 2005
role: "staff scientist, Directorate of Science and Technology"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Defense Intelligence Agency]]"
start: 2007
role: "chief technology officer in a joint CIA and DIA program office, later division chief; Defense Intelligence Officer for Scientific and Technical Intelligence 2012 to 2016"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[United States Strategic Command]]"
start: 2016
end: 2017
role: "Deputy Director of Intelligence"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[National Security Council]]"
start: 2017
role: "Director, National Security Strategy"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[United States Space Command]]"
role: "deputy director of intelligence and Director of National Intelligence representative"
fn: 3
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Oak Ridge National Laboratory]]"
role: "chief technology officer for national security programs, per his own biography"
fn: 10
- type: head_of
with: "[[Nonlinear Solutions]]"
role: "chief executive, per his own biography"
fn: 10
- type: member_of
with: "[[Elara Nova]]"
role: "partner, as listed on the firm's website"
fn: 17
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act]]"
role: "AARO director whose emails and interview state that the Pentagon and AARO convinced Congress not to enact the review board"
fn: 7
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
Sean M. Kirkpatrick is an American physicist and intelligence officer who was the first director of the [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]] (AARO) of the [[Department of Defense]], from its establishment in July 2022 until December 1, 2023.[^1][^2] A biography released by the Defense Department traces service in the [[Air Force Research Laboratory]], the [[National Reconnaissance Office]], the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]], the [[National Security Council]] and two combatant commands.[^3] As director he testified to the Senate that AARO had found "no credible evidence" of extraterrestrial activity, wrote after his departure that claims of hidden recovered craft come from "a small group of interconnected believers," and told an interviewer in 2024 that AARO and the Defense Department had convinced Congress not to adopt the review board in the [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act]].[^4][^5][^6][^7]
### Career before AARO
The Defense Department biography, released with the announcement of AARO, states that he was born in Columbus, Georgia, "to an Army family," studied physics at the [[University of Georgia]], took a doctorate there in 1995 and is an adjunct professor at the university. It states that he held a postdoctoral position at the [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]] under an Air Force Office of Scientific Research program, a National Research Council fellowship at the [[Naval Research Laboratory]] in 1996, and in 1997 a position at the Air Force Research Laboratory building an ultrafast laser physics laboratory. In 2003 he was offered a program manager position at the National Reconnaissance Office, "and converted to CIA in 2005"; in 2007 he was assigned as chief technology officer of a joint CIA and DIA program office, "where he later became division chief as a DIA officer"; and in 2010 he became space control portfolio manager for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Intelligence in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A biography prepared for a conference of the [[Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association]] places the 2007 assignment "within the Advanced Systems Division."[^3][^8]
From 2012 to 2016 he was the Defense Intelligence Officer for Scientific and Technical Intelligence, the Defense Department's counterpart to the National Intelligence Manager for Science and Technology, and near the end of that period was on special assignment to the Principal Deputy [[Director of National Intelligence]] leading the intelligence community's support to the [[Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center]]. He was Deputy Director of Intelligence of [[United States Strategic Command]] from 2016 to 2017 and, in 2017, Director for National Security Strategy at the National Security Council. In August 2018 he was appointed senior intelligence advisor to the commander of Air Force Space Command and the Joint Force Space Component Command, and then deputy director of intelligence and Director of National Intelligence representative at [[United States Space Command]], the fifth organization for which the biography says he was the intelligence community lead for establishment. The Defense Department announcement of AARO described him as "most recently the chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center."[^2][^3][^8]
In the same years the Defense Intelligence Agency administered the contract of [[Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies]] under the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]]. Documents of the agency record that DIA awarded the contract in September 2008, that it received 26 technical reports by July 31, 2009, and that the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence recommended in 2009 against Senator [[Harry Reid]]'s request for a special access program. The biography places Kirkpatrick in a joint CIA and DIA program office from 2007, as a DIA division chief afterwards, and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2010; the released agency documents redact the names of the DIA program manager and the reviewers.[^3][^9]
### Appointment to AARO
On July 20, 2022 the Defense Department announced that Deputy Secretary of Defense [[Kathleen Hicks]], in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, had on July 15, 2022 renamed and expanded the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group as AARO under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, [[Ronald Moultrie]], who "named Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick" as director. The released biography states that he "was asked by USD(I&S) to stand-up and lead AARO in early 2022," and the announcement stated that an AARO Executive Council led by Moultrie would provide oversight along six lines of effort: surveillance, collection and reporting; system capabilities and design; intelligence operations and analysis; mitigation and defeat; governance; and science and technology.[^2][^3] Under 50 U.S.C. 3373, as amended by the fiscal 2023 defense authorization, the AARO director is appointed by the Secretary of Defense in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security on administrative matters, and reports "to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence on all operational and security matters of the Office."[^5] A biography on an advisory board page states that as director he "reported to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence."[^10]
### The Loeb draft and the Senate testimony
A draft paper dated March 7, 2023, "Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," lists Kirkpatrick as "Director of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office" and [[Avi Loeb]] as head of the [[Galileo Project]] at [[Harvard University]]. It derives constraints on the interpretation of highly maneuverable UAP from "standard physics and known forms of matter and radiation," and raises the possibility of an artificial interstellar object as "a parent craft that releases many small probes." Its acknowledgements state that the work "was supported in part by Galileo Project at Harvard University and conducted in partnership with the Department of Defense, All-domain, Anomaly Resolution Office."[^11]
On April 19, 2023 Kirkpatrick was the sole witness before the [[Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities]], presided over by [[Kirsten Gillibrand]], with Senators [[Jacky Rosen]] and [[Joni Ernst]] present. In her opening remarks Gillibrand referred to the 2017 media reports about activities "set in motion by the late long-serving Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid more than a decade ago." In his opening statement Kirkpatrick said the AARO team "of more than three dozen experts" was organized around four functional areas (operations, scientific research, integrated analysis and strategic communications), that "only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous," that "I will not close a case that I cannot defend the conclusions of," and that "AARO's mission is to turn UAP into SEP, somebody else's problem." He said: "I should also state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics." He told the subcommittee that AARO was tracking "a total of 650 cases," that those showing "some sort of advanced technical signature" were "single percentages of the entire population of cases we have," that he had "indicators that some are related to foreign capabilities," and that people with alternative theories should submit their research to credible peer-reviewed journals: "That is how science works, not by blog or social media."[^4]
### The dispute with David Grusch
At the House Oversight subcommittee hearing of July 26, 2023, Representative [[Virginia Foxx]] quoted Kirkpatrick's statement of "no credible evidence" and asked [[David Grusch]] whether it was correct. Grusch, who had been sworn, answered: "It is not accurate. I believe Dr. Kirkpatrick mentioned he had about 30 individuals that have come to AARO thus far. A few of those individuals have also come to AARO that I also interviewed." After Foxx said "OK," he added: "And I know what they provided Dr. Kirkpatrick and their team." Representative [[Anna Paulina Luna]] asked whether the information Grusch had given Kirkpatrick was pertinent to national security. Grusch replied: "Yes. Him and I had a classified conversation in April 2022 before he took over AARO in July 2022 and I provided him some concerns I had."[^12]
Kirkpatrick wrote in January 2024 that "as of the time of my departure, none, let me repeat, none of the conspiracy-minded 'whistleblowers' in the public eye had elected to come to AARO to provide their 'evidence' and statement for the record despite numerous invitations."[^6]
### Statements on the Disclosure Act
On July 17, 2024, in an interview by [[Marik von Rennenkampff]] quoted by [[Douglas Dean Johnson]], Kirkpatrick said of the 2023 Disclosure Act: "We convinced Congress last year not to go down that road." He said AARO and the department had written a request for reconsideration noting that the language duplicated the historical report required by the 2022 defense authorization. He also said: "We found no evidence of any of these allegations. None. And I had access to everything there was to have access to," and that he had briefed members of Congress "with the SAPCO director and the CAPCO director from ODNI." He told Johnson by email on July 23, 2024 that the Defense Department's 33-page redline of the bill reflected "many of the objections I tried to articulate," that no one in the [[White House]], the National Security Council or Congress pressed him to soften his position, and that the department had proposed keeping an eminent domain provision under AARO's authority because "since we know nothing exists, we didn't feel it made our job harder." The review board was removed in conference and the enacted law, Public Law 118-31, carried no eminent domain provision.[^7][^13]
### The Scientific American column
On January 19, 2024 [[Scientific American]] published Kirkpatrick's column "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter." He wrote that the story told by "conspiracists" involves hiding and attempting to reverse engineer as many as 12 craft, abandonment of the effort to private contractors, an attempted return to government control stopped by the CIA, and "all of this is without substantiating evidence." He wrote that "no record exists of any president or living DOD or intelligence community leader knowing about this alleged program"; that the narrative was "largely an outgrowth" of AATIP, "heavily influenced by a group of individuals associated with businessman and longtime ufologist [[Robert Bigelow]]"; that after the Secretary of Defense declined Reid's 2009 request for a special access program, the DIA concluded "that not only did no such material exist, but taxpayer money was being inappropriately spent on paranormal research at [[Skinwalker Ranch]] in Utah," and Reid enlisted Lieberman to ask the [[Department of Homeland Security]] for one; that AARO had located the proposal "complete with the participants"; and that in the early 2000s members of the same group took part in a study on disclosing the existence of extraterrestrials, erroneously described by them as White House sponsored, by a "futures" think tank. He described the promoters as "a small group of interconnected believers and others with possibly less than honest intentions," and wrote that his signing of AARO's Historical Record Report, Volume I, was among his last acts.[^6]
The DHS proposal he referred to is [[KONA BLUE]]. The Department of Homeland Security file, which carries declassification stamps of July 18, 2023, records a meeting in October 2011 between the DHS under secretary for science and technology and Senator Reid, then majority leader, and Senator [[Joseph Lieberman]], chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on the program's funding.[^14] AARO's report, which he signed, states that its investigators were "granted full access to all pertinent sensitive USG programs," that the originators of modern hidden-craft claims share ties to the cancelled AAWSAP and AATIP program, and that none have provided empirical evidence to AARO.[^15]
### Departure and later positions
On November 30, 2023 [[DefenseScoop]] reported that his last day in the office would be December 1, that he had a 27-year federal tenure, that his AARO team included more than 40 Defense Department personnel investigating more than 800 reports, and that in an interview with [[Politico]] he said his exit was based on having reached his personal and professional goals for AARO rather than on controversies; the deputy director [[Tim Phillips]], on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, became acting director. The Defense Department spokesperson [[Sue Gough]] said that he "assembled a very talented and dedicated team."[^1]
A biography on the advisory board page of the company Expeditionary states that "Immediately following retirement, he served as the Chief Technology Officer for National Security Programs at Oakridge National Laboratory," that he is chief executive of Nonlinear Solutions, LLC, and that he serves on the Army Science Board, the Air Force S&T Roundtable at the National Academies of Science, AFCEA's Intel Committee and the National Security Space Association Board.[^10] A podcast listing of April 23, 2024 describes him as owner of Nonlinear Solutions, "an advisory group that provides strategic scientific and intelligence consulting services" to clients in the defense and intelligence communities.[^16] The website of the firm Elara Nova lists him as a partner and states that he served as the intelligence community or Defense Department lead in establishing six "new-start" organizations, including the Space Command intelligence enterprise and AARO.[^17] The [[Oak Ridge National Laboratory]] website states that the laboratory "is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for the US Department of Energy."[^18]
### Statements about him
In written testimony to the [[House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform|House Oversight Committee]] on November 13, 2024, [[Michael Shellenberger]] wrote that the former director "has repeatedly dismissed and ridiculed the topic" and quoted [[Christopher Mellon]]'s assessment of the Historical Record Report that "this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service."[^19] At the same hearing [[Luis Elizondo]] said of AARO: "we established AARO for that very purpose. And, unfortunately, under its previous leadership, it failed."[^20] Matthew Ford, a journalist and host of The Good Trouble Show podcast, wrote in a statement dated November 18, 2024 and hosted on congress.gov with the hearing materials that he had "revealed that Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former Director of AARO, had assembled a secret technical advisory group to counsel AARO," that Kirkpatrick "confirmed the existence of this committee to members of Congress but refused to disclose the members' identities," and that "multiple sources" had told him that a former head of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology had been "hand-picked" for the group; Ford did not name his sources.[^21]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Vincent, Brandi. "Pentagon's UAP investigation chief to depart Dec. 1," DefenseScoop, November 30, 2023. https://defensescoop.com/2023/11/30/pentagons-uap-investigation-chief-to-depart-dec-1/
[^2]: "DoD Announces the Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office," July 20, 2022 (text of the Defense Department release with the establishment memoranda, as reproduced by The Black Vault). https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-the-all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office-july-20-2022/
[^3]: "Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick's Biography, Released by DoD," with "DoD Announces the Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office," July 20, 2022 (as reproduced by The Black Vault). https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-the-all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office-july-20-2022/
[^4]: U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, "Hearing to Receive Testimony on the Mission, Activities, Oversight, and Budget of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office," April 19, 2023, stenographic transcript, pp. 2 to 3, 13 to 14. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/transcript-4-19-2023
[^5]: 50 U.S.C. 3373(b) (establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, appointment of the Director and reporting lines), text of the Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3373
[^6]: Kirkpatrick, Sean. "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter," Scientific American, January 19, 2024. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-what-i-learned-as-the-u-s-governments-ufo-hunter/
[^7]: Johnson, Douglas Dean. "The UAP Disclosure Act: The proposed Pentagon/AARO re-write of November 2023," July 24, 2024, quoting Kirkpatrick's interview by Marik von Rennenkampff of July 17, 2024 and his emails of July 23, 2024. https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/uap-disclosure-act-pentagon-rewrite-nov-2023/
[^8]: "Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, Deputy Director of Intelligence and DNI Representative, USSPACECOM," biography, Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. https://www.afcea.org/event/sites/default/files/files/Kirkpatrick_Sean%20DR%20Bio.pdf
[^9]: Defense Intelligence Agency, packet presented to the Deputy Secretary of Defense on Senator Harry Reid's request of June 24, 2009 (talking points of November 17, 2009; memorandum of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.), released from the DIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room; Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., Info Memo U-10-2552/CE, in the Department of Homeland Security KONA BLUE records, pp. 55 to 56. https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dia/AAWSAP/09117-Final_Packet_Presented_to_DepSecDef.pdf and https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/06/AARO_DHS_Kona_Blue.pdf
[^10]: Expeditionary, "Advisory Board: Sean Kirkpatrick," biography (self-published). https://www.expeditionary.ai/about/seankirkpatrick
[^11]: Loeb, Abraham, and Sean M. Kirkpatrick. "Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," draft version of March 7, 2023. https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf
[^12]: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," July 26, 2023, Serial No. 118-53, transcript (questions of Reps. Foxx and Luna). https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116282/documents/HHRG-118-GO06-Transcript-20230726.pdf
[^13]: Public Law 118-31, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, December 22, 2023, Title XVIII, Subtitle C. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ31/pdf/PLAW-118publ31.pdf
[^14]: Department of Homeland Security, KONA BLUE records (56 pp.), pp. 37 to 38, 46 to 47. https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/06/AARO_DHS_Kona_Blue.pdf
[^15]: Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I, February 2024, Section VI, pp. 34 to 35. https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF.
[^16]: "Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. - Nonlinear Solutions LLC - Science And Technology For Emerging National Security Threats," Progress, Potential, and Possibilities podcast, April 23, 2024. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1531799/episodes/14943834-dr-sean-kirkpatrick-ph-d-nonlinear-solutions-llc-science-and-technology-for-emerging-national-security-threats
[^17]: Elara Nova, "Sean Kirkpatrick, Partner," team biography (self-published, undated). https://elaranova.com/team-members/sean-kirkpatrick/
[^18]: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, home page footer. https://www.ornl.gov/
[^19]: Shellenberger, Michael. "The United States Department Of Defense And The Intelligence Community Are Withholding Information About Anomalous Phenomena From Congress," written testimony, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, November 13, 2024, p. 3. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf
[^20]: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," joint hearing, November 13, 2024, Serial No. 118-135, transcript p. 39 (answer of Mr. Elizondo to Rep. Burlison). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg57440/html/CHRG-118hhrg57440.htm
[^21]: Ford, Matthew. "Written Statement of Matthew Ford," for the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," dated November 18, 2024 on its face (the hearing was held November 13, 2024); names of the alleged participants are redacted in the posted copy. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117722/witnesses/HHRG-118-GO06-Wstate-ElizondoL-20241113-SD001.pdf