Special Agent Richard C. Doty.
In 1987, after comparing three documents (the anonymous letter to APRO,
the September 8, 1980, AFOSI Complaint Form, and a purported AFOSI
document dated August 14, 1980, and claiming "frequency jamming" by UFOs
in the Kirtland area), researcher Brad Sparks concluded that Doty had
written all three. In 1989 Moore confirmed that Doty had written the
letter to APRO. "Essentially it was 'bait,'" he says. "AFOSI knew that
Bennewitz had close ties with APRO at the time, and they were interested in
recruiting someone within . . . APRO . . . who would be in a position to
provide them with feedback on Bennewitz'[s] activities and
communications. Since I was the APRO Board member in charge of Special
Investigations in 1980, the Weitzel letter was passed to me for action shortly
after it had been received." According to Bruce Maccabee, Doty admitted
privately that he had written the Ellsworth AFB document, basing it on a real
incident which he wanted to bring to public attention. Doty has made no
public comment on any of these allegations. Moore says Doty "was almost
certainly a part of [the Ellsworth report], but not in a capacity where he
would have been responsible for creating the documents involved" (Moore,
1989a).
Doty was also the source of an alleged AFOSI communication dated November 17,
1980, and destined to become known as the "Aquarius document." Allegedly sent
from AFOSI headquarters at Bolling AFB in Washington, D.C., to the AFOSI
District 17 office at Kirtland, it mentions, in brief and cryptic form,
analyses of negatives from a UFO film apparently taken the previous month.
The version that circulated through the UFO community states in its
penultimate paragraph: "USAF NO LONGER PUBLICLY ACTIVE IN UFO RESEARCH,
HOWEVER USAF STILL HAS INTEREST IN ALL UFO SIGHTINGS OVER USAF
INSTALLATION/TEST RANGES. SEVERAL OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, LED BY NASA,
ACTIVELY INVESTIGATES [sic] LEGITIMATE SIGHTINGS THROUGH COVERT COVER....
ONE SUCH COVER IS UFO REPORTING CENTER, US COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY,
ROCKVILLE, MD 20852, NASA FILTERS RESULTS OF SIGHTINGS TO APPROPRIATE
MILITARY DEPARTMENTS WITH INTEREST IN THAT PARTICULAR SIGHTING. THE
OFFICIAL US GOVERNMENT POLICY AND RESULTS OF PROJECT AQUARIUS IS [sic] STILL
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET WITH NO DISEMINATION [sic] OUTSIDE OFFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE CHANNELS AND WITH RESTRICTED ACCESS TO 'MJ TWELVE'."
This is the first mention of "MJ-12" in an allegedly official government
document. Moore describes it as an "example of some of the disinformation
produced in connection with the Bennewitz case. The document is a retyped
version of a real AFOSI message with a few spurious additions." Among the
most significant additions, by Moore's account, are the bogus references to
the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and to NASA, which he says was NSA
(National Security Agency) in the original.
According to Moore, Doty got the document "right off the teletype"
(Moore, 1990) and showed it to Moore almost immediately. Later Doty
came by with what purported to be a copy of it, but Moore noticed that it
was not exactly the same; material had been added to it. Doty said he
wanted Moore to give the doctored copy to Bennewitz. Reluctant to involve
himself in the passing of this dubious document, Moore sat on it for a
while, then finally worried that the sources he was developing, the ones who
were telling him about the U.S. government's alleged interactions with EBEs,
would dry up if he did not cooperate. So eventually he gave the document to
Bennewitz but urged him not to publicize it. Bennewitz agreed and kept his
promise.
As of September 1982 Moore knew of three copies of the document: the one
Bennewitz had, one Moore had in safekeeping, and one he had in his briefcase
during a trip he made that month to meet someone in San Francisco. He met the
man in the morning and that afternoon someone broke into his car and stole
his briefcase. Four months later a copy of the document showed up in the
hands of a New York lawyer interested in UFOs, and soon the document was
circulating widely. Moore himself had little to say on the subject until he
delivered a controversial and explosive speech to the annual conference of the
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Las Vegas in 1989.
In late 1982, "during," he says, "one of the many friendly conversations
I had with Richard Doty," Moore mentioned that he was looking into the old
(and seemingly discredited) story that a UFO had crashed in Aztec, New Mexico,
in 1948. This tale was the subject of Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the
Flying Saucers. (Moore's long account of his investigation into the affair,
which he found to be an elaborate hoax, would appear in the 1985 MUFON
symposium proceedings.) Doty said he had never heard the story and asked for
details, taking notes as Moore spoke.
On January 10 and 11, 1983, attorney Peter Gersten, director of CAUS, met
with Doty in New Mexico. There were two meetings, the first of them also
attended by Moore and San Francisco television producer Ron Lakis, the second
by Gersten alone. During the first meeting Doty was guarded in his remarks.
But at the second he spoke openly about what ostensibly were extraordinary
secrets. He said the Ellsworth case was the subject of an investigation by
AFOSI and the FBI; nuclear weapons were involved. The National Enquirer
investigation, which had concluded the story was bogus, was "amateurish." At
least two civilians, a farmer and a deputy sheriff, had been involved, but
were warned not to talk. The government knows why UFOs appear in certain
places, Doty said, but he would not elaborate. He added, however, that
"beyond a shadow of a doubt they're extraterrestrial" (Greenwood, 1988) and
from 50 light years from the earth. He knew of at least three UFO crashes, the
Roswell incident and two others, one from the 1950s, the other from the
196Os. Bodies had been recovered. A spectacular incident, much like the
one depicted in the ending of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
took place in 1966 The NSA was involved in communications with
extraterrestrials; the effort is called Project Aquarius. Inside the
UFO organizations government moles are collecting information and
spreading disinformation. Doty discussed the Aquarius document and said the
really important documents are impossible to get out of the appropriate files.
Some are protected in such a way that they will disintegrate within five
seconds' exposure to air. These documents tell of agreements between the
U.S. government and extraterrestrials under which the latter are free to
conduct animal mutilations (especially of cattle) and to land at a
certain base, in exchange for information about advanced UFO technology.
Doty also claimed that via popular entertainment the American people are
being prepared to accept the reality of visitation by benevolent beings from
other worlds.
At one point in the conversation Doty asked Gersten, "How do you know that
I'm not here to either give you misinformation or to give you information
which is part of the programming, knowing you are going to go out and spread
it around?" (Howe, 1989).
In the 1970s, as director of special projects for the Denver CBS-TV
affiliate, Linda Moulton Howe had produced 12 documentaries, most
of them dealing with scientific, environmental and health issues.
But the one that attracted the most attention was Strange Harvest, which
dealt with the then- widespread reports that cattle in Western and
Midwestern states were being killed and mutilated by persons or forces
unknown. Most veterinary pathologists said the animals were dying of
unknown causes. Farmers, ranchers and some law-enforcement officers
thought the deaths were mysterious. Some even speculated that
extraterrestrials were responsible. This possibility intrigued Howe, who
had a lifelong interest in UFOs, and Strange Harvest argues for a UFO
mutilation link.
In the fall of 1982, as Howe was working on a documentary on an unrelated
matter, she got a call from Home Box Office (HBO). The caller said the HBO
people had been impressed with Strange Harvest and wanted to know if Howe
would do a film on UFOs. In March 1983 she went to New York to sign a
contract with HBO for a show to be titled UFOs-The ET Factor.
The evening before her meeting with the HBO people, Howe had dinner with
Gersten and science writer Patrick Huyghe. Gersten told Howe that he had
met with Sgt. Doty, an AFOSI agent at Kirtland AFB, and perhaps Doty would
be willing to talk on camera or in some other helpful capacity about the
incident at Ellsworth. Gersten would call him and ask if he would be
willing to meet with Howe.
Subsequently arrangements were made for Howe to fly to Albuquerque
on April 9. Doty would meet her at the airport. But when she arrived that
morning, no one was waiting. She called his home. A small boy answered and
said his father was not there. Howe then phoned Jerry Miller, Chief of
Reality Weapons Testing at Kirtland and a former Blue Book investigator. (He
is mentioned in the October 28, 1980, "Multipurpose Internal OSI Form"
reporting on Doty and Miller's meeting with Bennewitz.) She knew Miller from
an earlier telephone conversation, when she had called to ask him about
Bennewitz's claims, in which she had a considerable interest. Miller asked
for a copy of Strange Harvest. Later he had given Howe his home phone
number and said to contact him if she ever found herself in Albuquerque. So
she called and asked if he would pick her up at the airport.
Miller drove Howe to his house. On the way Howe asked him a number of
questions but got little in the way of answers. One question he did not
answer was whether he is the "Miller" mentioned in the Aquarius document.
When they got to Miller's residence, Miller called Doty at his home, and Doty
arrived a few minutes later, responding aggressively to Howe's question about
where he had been. He claimed to have been at the airport all along; where
had she been? "Perhaps," Howe would write, "he had decided he didn't want to
go through with the meeting, and it was acceptable in his world to leave me
stranded at the airport-until Jerry Miller called his house" (Howe, 1989).
On the way to Kirtland, Howe asked Doty, whose manner remained both defiant
and nervous, if he knew anything about the Holloman landing. Doty said it
happened but that Robert Emenegger had the date wrong; it was not May 1971 but
April 25, 1964-12 Hours after a much-publicized CE3 reported by Socorro, New
Mexico, policeman Lonnie Zamora. (Zamora said he had seen an egg-shaped
object on the ground. Standing near it were two child-sized beings in white
suits.) Military and scientific personnel at the base knew a landing was
coming, but "someone blew the time and coordinates" and an "advance military
scout ship" had come down at the wrong time and place, to be observed by
Zamora. When three UFOs appeared at Holloman at six o'clock the following
morning, one landed while the other two hovered overhead. During the meeting
between the UFO beings and a government party, the preserved bodies of
dead aliens had been given to the aliens , who in turn had returned
something unspecified. Five ground and aerial cameras recorded this event.
At the Kirtland gate Doty waved to the guard and was let through. They
went to a small white and gray building. Doty took her to what he described
as "my - boss' office." Doty seemed unwilling to discuss the Ellsworth
case, the ostensible reason for the interview, but had much to say about
other matters. First he asked Howe to move from the chair on which she was
sitting to another in the middle of the room. Howe surmised that this was to
facilitate the surreptitious recording of their conversation, but Doty said
only, "Eyes can see through windows."
"My superiors have asked me to show you this," he said. He produced a
brown envelope he had taken from a drawer in the desk at which he was
sitting and withdrew several sheets of white paper. As he handed them to
Howe, he warned her that they could not be copied; all she could do was read
them in his presence and ask questions.
The document gave no indication anywhere as to which government, military or
scientific agency (if any) had prepared the report, titled A Briefing Paper
for the President of the United States on the Subject of Unidentified Flying
Vehicles. The title did not specify which President it had in mind, nor did
the document list a date (so far as Howe recalls today) which would have linked
it to a particular administration.
The first paragraph, written--as was everything that followed-- in what Howe
characterizes as "dry bureaucratese," listed dates and locations of crashes
and retrievals of UFOs and their occupants. The latter were invariably
described as 3 1/2 to four feet tall, gray-skinned and hairless, with
oversized heads, large eyes and no noses. It was now known, the document
stated on a subsequent page, that these beings, from a nearby solar system,
have been here for many thousands of years. Through genetic manipulation
they influenced the course of human evolution and in a sense created us. They
had also helped shape our religious beliefs.
The July 1947 Roswell crash was mentioned; so, however, was another one
at Roswell in 1949. Investigators at the site found five bodies and one
living alien, who was taken to a safe house at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory north of Albuquerque. The aliens, small gray-skinned
humanoids, were known as "extraterrestrial biological entities" and
the living one was called "EBE" (ee-buh). EBE was befriended (if that was the
word) by an Air Force officer, but the being died of unknown causes on June
18, 1952. (EBE's friend, by 1964 a colonel, was among those who were there
to greet the aliens who landed at Holloman.) Subsequently, it would be
referred to as EBE-1, since in later years another such being, EBE-2, would
take up residence in a safe house. After that, a third, EBE-3, appeared on
the scene and was now living in secret at an American base.
The briefing paper said other crashes had occurred one near Kingman,
Arizona, another just south of Texas in northern Mexico. It also mentioned the
Aztec crash- The wreckage and bodies had been removed to such facilities as
Los Alamos laboratory and Wright-Patterson AFB. A number of highly
classified projects dealt with these materials. They included Snowbird
(research and development from the study of an intact spacecraft left by
the aliens as a gift) and Aquarius (the umbrella operation under which the
research and contact efforts were coordinated). Project Sigma was the ongoing
electronic communications effort. There was also a defunct project
Garnet, intended to investigate extraterrestrial influence on human
evolution. According to the document, extraterrestrials have appeared at
various intervals in human history-25,000, 15,000, 5000 and 2500 years ago as
well as now--to manipulate human and other DNA.
One paragraph stated briefly, "Two thousand years ago
extraterrestrials created a being" who was placed here to teach peace and
love. Elsewhere a passing mention was made of another group of EBEs, called
the "Talls."
The paper said Project Blue Book had existed solely to take heat off the Air
Force and to draw attention away from the real projects. Doty mentioned
an "MJ-12," explaining that "MJ" stood for "Majority." It was a
policy-making body whose membership consisted of 12 very high-ranking
government scientists, military officers and intelligence officials. These were
the men who made the decisions governing the cover-up and the contacts.
Doty said Howe would be given thousands of feet of film of crashed
discs, bodies, EBE-1 and the Holloman landing and meeting. She could
use this material in her documentary to tell the story of how U.S. officials
learned that the earth is being visited and what they have done about it. "We
want you to do the film," Howe quotes him as saying.
When Howe asked why she, not the New York Times, the Washington Post or 60
Minutes, was getting this, the story of the millennium, Doty replied
bluntly that an individual media person is easier to manipulate and discredit
than a major organization with expensive attorneys. He said that another plan
to release the information, through Emenegger and Sandler, had been halted
because political conditions were not right.
Over the next weeks Howe had a number of phone conversations with Doty,
mostly about technical problems related to converting old film to videotape.
She spoke on several occasions with three other men but did not meet them
personally.
Doty suggested that eventually she might be allowed to film an interview
with EBE-3. But the current film project was to have a historical emphasis;
it would deal with events between 1949 and 1964. If at some point she did meet
EBE-3, however, there was no way she could prepare herself for the "shock and
fear" of meeting an alien being.
Howe, of course, had informed her HBO contacts, Jean Abounader and her
superior Bridgett Potter, of these extraordinary developments. Howe urged
them to prepare themselves, legally and otherwise, for the repercussions
that would surely follow the release of the film. The HBO people told her
she would have to secure a letter of intent from the U.S. government
with a legally-binding commitment to release the promised film footage. When
Howe called Doty about it, he said, "I'll work on it." He said he would mail
the letter directly to HBO.
Then HBO told her it would not authorize funds for the film production
until all the evidence was in hand and, as Potter put it, Howe had the
"President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs of Staff
to back it up" (Howe, 1989). But proceed anyway, Howe was told. Now she was
furious at both HBO and Doty.
When she called him at the base, he remarked that he had good news and bad
news. She and a small crew would soon be able to interview the retired
colonel (then a captain) who had spent three years with EBE-1. The bad news
was that it would be three months before the thousands of feet of film of
EBE-1 and the Holloman landing/contact would be available. Meanwhile,
before she could screen the footage, Howe would have to sign three
security oaths and undergo a background check. She would also have to
supply photographs of all the technical assistants who would accompany her to
the interview.
The interview was repeatedly set up and canceled. Then in June Doty called
to say he was officially out of the project. This was a blow because Doty was
the only one she could call. She did not know how to get in touch with the
others and always had to wait for them to contact her.
By October the contacts had decreased. The same month her contract
with HBO expired. All she had was the name of the Washington contact.
In March 1984 this individual called her office three times, although she
was out of town working on a non-UFO story at the time. "Upon returning
home," she writes, "I learned the man was contacting me to explain there
would be further delays in the film project after the November 1984
election" (Howe, 1989).
For Howe that was the end of the matter, except for a brief sequel. On
March 5, 1988, Doty wrote ufologist Larry W. Bryant, who had unsuccessfully
sought access to Doty's military records through the Freedom of Information
Act, and denied that he had ever discussed government UFO secrets or
promised footage of crashed discs, bodies and live EBEs. Howe responded by
making a sworn statement about the meeting an producing copies of her
correspondence from the period with both Doty and HBO.
In 1989 Moore said that "in early 1983 I became aware that Rick [Doty] was
involved with a team of several others, including one fellow from Denver
that I knew of and at least one who was working out of Washington,
D.C., in playing an elaborate disinformation scheme against a prominent
UfO researcher who, at the time, had close connections with a major
television film company interested in doing a UFO documentary." He was
referring to Howe, of course. The episode was a counterintelligence sting
operation, part of the "wall of disinformation" intended to "confuse"
the Bennewitz issue and to "call his credibility into question." Because of
Howe's interest in Bennewitz's work, according to Moore, "certain
elements within the intelligence community were concerned that the story of
his having intercepted low frequency electromagnetic emissions from the
Coyote Canyon area of the Kirtland/Sandia complex would end up as part of
a feature film. Since this in turn might influence others (possibly even the
Russians) to attempt similar experiments, someone in a control position
apparently felt it had to be stopped before it got out of hand." In his
observation, Moore said, "the government seemed hell bent on severing the ties
that existed between [Howe] and [HBO]" (Moore, 1989b).
Doty's assertion that Howe had misrepresented their meeting was not to be
taken seriously, according to Moore, since Doty was bound by a security oath
and could not discuss the matter freely Moore said that the Aztec crash,
known beyond reasonable doubt never to have occurred, was something Doty
had added to the document after learning from Moore of his recent
investigation of the hoax.
In December 1984, in the midst of continuing contact with their own sources
(Doty and a number of others) who claimed to be leaking the secret of
the cover-up, Moore's associate Jaime Shandera received a roll of 35mm film
containing, it turned out what purported to be a briefing paper dated
November 18, 1952, and intended for president-elect Eisenhower. The
purported author, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, reported that an "Operation
Majestic-12," consisting of a dozen top scientists, military officers and
intelligence specialists, had been set up by presidential order on
September 24, 1947, to study the Roswell remains and the four humanoid
bodies that had been recovered nearby. The document report that the team
directed by MJ12 member and physiologist Detlev Bronk "has suggested the
term 'Extra- terrestrial Biological Entities', or 'EBEs', be adopted as the
standard term of reference for these creatures until such time as a more
definitive designation can be agreed upon." Brief mention is also made of a
December 6, 1950, crash along the Texas-Mexico border. Nothing is said,
however, about live aliens or communications with them.
In July 1985 Moore and Shandera, acting on tips from their sources,
traveled to Washington and spent a few days going through recently
declassified documents in Record Group 341, including Top Secret Air
Force intelligence files from USAF Headquarters. In the 126th box whose
contents they examined, they found a brief memo dated July 14, 1954, from
Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President, to Gen. Nathan Twining.
It says "The president has decided that the MJ-12/SSP [Special Studies
Project] briefing should take place during the already scheduled White House
meeting of July 16 rather than following it as previously intended. More
precise arrangements will be explained to you upon your arrival. Your
concurrence in the above change of arrangements is assumed" (Friedman, 1987).
The Cutler/Twining memo, as it would be called in the controversies
that erupted after Moore released the MJ-12 document to the world in
the spring of 1987, is the only official document-not to be confused with
such disputed ones as the November 17, 1980, Aquarius document-to mention
MJ-12. (Several critics of the MJ-12 affair have questioned the
memo's authenticity as well, but so far without unambiguous success.) The
memo does not, of course, say what the MJ12 Special Studies Project was.
MJ-12 Goes Public: Just prior to Moore's release of the MJ-12 briefing
paper, another copy was leaked to British ufologist Timothy Good, who took
his copy to the press. The first newspaper article on it appeared in the
London Observer of May 31, 1987, and soon it was the subject of pieces in
the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC-TV's Nightline. It was also
denounced, not altogether persuasively, both by professional debunkers and by
many ufologists. The dispute would rage without resolution well into 1989,
when critics discovered that President Truman's signature on the September 24,
1947, executive order (appended to the briefing paper) was exactly like
his signature on an undisputed, UFO-unrelated October 1, 1947, letter to his
science adviser (and supposed MJ-12 member) Vannevar Bush. To all
appearances a forger had appended a real signature to a fake letter. The
MJ-12 document began to look like another disinformation scheme.
Although acutely aware of the mass of disinformation circulating throughout
the UFO community, Moore remained convinced that at least some of the
information his own sources were giving him was authentic. In 1988 he provided
two of his sources, "Falcon" (Sgt. Doty according to some) and "Condor" (later
claimed to be former U.S. Air Force Capt. Robert Collins), to a television
production company. (Moore and Shandera had given them avian names and
called the sources collectively "the birds.") UFO Cover-up . . . Live, a
two-hour program, aired in October 1988, with Falcon and Condor, their faces
shaded, their voices altered, relating the same tales with which they had
regaled Moore and Shandera. The show, almost universally judged a laughable
embarrassment, was most remembered for the informants' statements that the
aliens favored ancient Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream. Critics found
the latter allegation especially hilarious.
Lear's Conspiracy Theory: Events on the UFO scene were taking a yet more
bizarre turn that same year as even wilder tales began to circulate. The first
to tell them was John Lear, a pilot with a background in the CIA and the
estranged son of aviation legend William P. Lear. Lear had surfaced two or
three years earlier, but aside from his famous father there seemed
little to distinguish him from any of hundreds of other UFO buffs who
subscribe to the field's publications and show up at its conferences.
But then he started claiming that unnamed sources had told him of
extraordinary events which made those told by Doty and the birds sound
like bland and inconsequential anecdotes.
According to Lear, not just a few but dozens of flying saucers had crashed
over the years. In 1962 the U.S. government started Project Redlight to find
a way to fly the recovered craft, some relatively intact. A similar project
exists even now and is run out of supersecret military installation; one
is Area 51 (specifically at a facility called S4) at the Nevada Test Site
and the other is set up near Dulce, New Mexico. These areas,
unfortunately, may no longer be under the control of the government
or even of the human race. In the late 1960s an official agency so secret
that not even the President may know of it had made an agreement with the
aliens. In exchange for extraterrestrial technology the secret government
would permit (or at least not interfere with) a limited number of abductions
of human beings; the aliens, however, were to provide a list of those they
planned to kidnap.
All went relatively well for a few years. Then in 1973 the government
discovered that thousands of persons who were not on the alien's list were
being abducted. The resulting tensions led to an altercation in 1978 or
1979. The aliens held and then killed 44 top scientists as well as a
number of Delta force troops who had tried to free them. Ever since,
frantic efforts, of which the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is
the most visible manifestation, have been made to develop a defense against
the extraterrestrials, who are busy putting implants into abductees (as many
as one in 10 Americans) to control their behavior. At some time in the near
future these people will be used for some unknown, apparently sinister,
alien purpose. Even worse than all this, though, is the aliens' interest in
Human flesh. Sex and other organs are taken from both human beings and cattle
and used to create androids in giant vats located in underground
laboratories at Area 51 and Dulce. The extraterrestrials, from
an ancient race near the end of its evolution, also use materials from
human body parts as a method of biological rejuvenation. ("In order to sustain
themselves," he said, "they use an enzyme or hormonal secretion obtained from
the tissue that they extract from humans and animals. The secretions are then
mixed with hydrogen peroxide and applied on the skin by spreading or dipping
parts of their bodies in the solution. The body absorbs the solution, then
excretes the waste back through the skin" [Berk and Renzi, 1988].)
One of Lear's major sources was Bennewitz, who had first heard these scary
stories from AFOSI personnel at Kirtland in the early 1980s. By this time
Bennewitz had become something of a guru to a small group of UFO
enthusiasts, Linda Howe among them, who believed extraterrestrials were
mutilating cattle and had no trouble believing they might do the same thing
to people. Also Lear, whose political views are far to the right of center,
was linking his UFO beliefs with conspiracy theories about a
malevolent secret American government which was attempting to use the aliens
for its own purposes, including enslavement of the world's people through
drug addiction. A considerable body of rightwing conspiracy literature, some
with barely-concealed anti- Semitic overtones, was making similar charges.
Lear himself was not anti-Semitic, but he did share conspiracy beliefs with
those who were.
Another of his claimed sources was an unnamed physicist who, Lear
claimed, had actually worked at S4. To the many ufologists who rejected
Lear's stories as paranoid, lunatic or fabricated (though not by the
patently-sincere Lear), there was widespread skepticism about this
physicist's existence. It turned out that he did indeed exist. His name is
Robert Lazar, who, according to a story broken by reporter George Knapp on
KLAS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Las Vegas, on November 11 and 13, 1989,
claims to have worked on alien technology projects at Area 51. Lazar, whose
story is being investigated by both ufologists and mainstream journalists,
has not endorsed Lear's claims about human-alien treaties, man-eating ETs
or any of the rest and has distanced himself from Lear and his associates.
His claims, while fantastic by most standards, are modest next to Lears.
Cooper's Conspiracy Theory: Soon Lear was joined by someone with an even
bigger supply of fabulous yarns: one Milton William Cooper. Cooper surfaced
on December 18, 1988, when his account of the fantastic secrets he learned
while a Naval petty officer appeared on a computer network subscribed to by
ufologists and others interested in anomalous phenomena. Cooper said that
while working as a quartermaster with an intelligence team for Adm.
Bernard Clarey, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Meet, in the early 1970s
he saw two documents, Project Grudge Special Report 13 and a Majority
briefing. (In conventional UFO history, Grudge was the second public Air
Force UFO project, superseding the original Sign, in early 1949 and lasting
until late 1951, when it was renamed Blue Book. Whereas Sign investigators at
one time concluded UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin--a conclusion the
Air force leadership found unacceptable--Grudge, as its name suggests
coincidentally or otherwise, was known for its hostility to the idea of UFOs
and for its eagerness to assign conventional explanations, warranted or
otherwise, to the sighting reports that came its way.) Cooper's account of
what was in these reports is much like the by-now familiar story of
crashes, bodies, contacts and projects, with some elaborations. Moreover, he
said the aliens were called "ALFs" (which as any television viewer knows,
stands for Alien Life forms) and the "M" in MJ-12 is for Majority not
Majestic. Later he would say he had seen photographs of aliens, including a
type he called the "big-nosed grays"-like those that supposedly landed at
Holloman in 1964 or 1971. The U.S. government was in contact with them and
alien-technology projects were going on at Area 51.
If this sounded like a rehash of Moore and Lear, that was only because
Cooper had yet to pull out all the stops. On May 23, 1989, Cooper
produced a 25-page document titled The Secret Government: The Origin,
Identity And Purpose of MJ-12. He presented it as a lecture in Las Vegas
a few weeks later. In Cooper's version of the evolving legend, the "secret
government," an unscrupulous group of covert CIA and other intelligence
operatives who keep many of their activities sealed from even the President's
knowledge, runs the country. One of its first acts was to murder one-time
Secretary of Defense (and alleged early MJ-12 member) James Forrestal the
death was made to look like suicide-because he threatened to expose the
UFO cover-up. Nonetheless, President Truman, fearing an invasion from
outer space, kept other nations, including the Soviet Union, abreast of
developments. But keeping all this secret was a real problem, so an
international secret society known as the Bilderbergers, headquartered in
Geneva, Switzerland, was formed. Soon it became a secret world government and
"now controls everything," Cooper said.
All the while flying saucers were dropping like flies out of the heavens. In
1953 there were 10 crashes in the United States alone. Also that year,
astronomers observed huge spaceships heading toward the earth and in time
entering into orbit around the equator. Project Plato was established
to effect communication with these new aliens. One of the ships landed and
a face-to-face meeting took place, and plans for diplomatic relations
were laid. Meanwhile a race of human-looking aliens warned the U.S.
government that the new visitors were not to be trusted and that if the
government got rid of its nuclear weapons, the human aliens would help
us in our spiritual development, which would keep us from destroying
ourselves through wars and environmental pollution. The government rejected
these overtures.
The big-nosed grays, the ones who had been orbiting the equator, landed
again, this time at Holloman AFB, in 1954 and reached an agreement with the
U.S. government. These beings stated that they were from a dying planet that
orbits Betelguese. At some point in the not too distant future, they said,
they would have to leave there for good. A second meeting took place not long
afterwards at Edwards AFB in California. This time President Eisenhower was
there to sign a formal treaty and to meet the first alien ambassador,
"His Omnipotent Highness Krlll," pronounced Krill. He, in common with his
fellow space travelers, wore a trilateral insignia on his uniform; the
same design appears on all Betelguese spacecraft.
According to Cooper's account, the treaty's provisions were these:
Neither side would interfere in the affairs of the other. The aliens would
abduct humans from time to time and would return them unharmed, with no memory
of the event. It would provide a list of names of those it was going to take.
The U.S. government would keep the aliens' presence a secret and it would
receive advanced technology from them. The two sides would exchange 16
individuals each for the purpose of learning from and teaching each other.
The aliens would stay on earth and the humans would go to the other planet,
then return after a specified period of time. The two sides would jointly
occupy huge underground bases which would be constructed at hidden locations
in the Southwest.
(It should be noted that the people listed as members of MJ-12 are largely
from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
These organizations play a prominent role in conspiracy theories of the far
right. In a book on the subject George Johnson writes, "After the Holocaust
of World War II, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories became repugnant to all
but the fringe of the American right. Populist fears of the power of the rich
became focused instead on organizations that promote international
capitalism, such as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign
Relations, and the Bilderbergers, a group of world leaders and
businesspeople who held one of their early conferences on international
relations at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands" [Johnson, 1983].
According to Cooper, the trilateral emblem is taken directly from the alien
flag. He adds that under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter MJ-12 became
known as the 50 Committee. Under Reagan it was renamed the PI-40
Committee.)
