X Descending (26 page)

His claim to have been in Laos in early 1968 also contradicts other online messages he has written in which he gave his dates of USAF service as 1968 to 1988, dates that do match his official service records. Using the same email address I had found on the History Channel web site, Doty has also posted messages on military-related web sites, at times mentioning his assignment locations at McChord AFB, Ellsworth AFB, and Hahn, Germany—all places he is said to have been stationed previously. In this type of post his dates do match what is in his military service records, so his claims to have been at LS-85 or any of the other sites in Laos that he mentioned, expose something that deserves explanation. Is it deception, or simply confusion (perhaps like the earlier confusion over whether it was his father or his uncle who was involved with Project Blue Book?) Equally puzzling is that none of the online messages I found in which he described any Air Force service included any mention of having worked with AFOSI.

It was time to verify that this second email address I had found belonged to the right Richard Doty. Then I would ask him about his posts on the History Channel web site.

I contacted Greg Bishop first. He verified that this second email address was, in fact, one that Doty used. In January of 2006, I wrote to Doty at this second email address, primarily to prove to myself, once and for all, that the email account was actually his. As my reason for writing, I asked him whether he would now be willing to tell me who had told him to contact Jerry Miller prior to their 1980 visit to Paul's home. This was something about which I had long been curious because it had never been clear who had told Doty to contact Miller, or why. Doty might have been ordered to take Miller along because Miller had some expertise that was required (implying Miller's was the more important role.) However, if, in fact, Doty was the primary agent in place responsible for decisions affecting the Bennewitz investigation, then Doty himself may have requested a technical expert to examine the evidence Bennewitz had. In other words, though he might have presented himself as simply an AFOSI agent, Doty may actually have been in charge of the operation and had wanted someone knowledgeable (i.e. Miller) to provide an opinion, perhaps "damage assessment" of the film Bennewitz had taken. This latter scenario would fit well with a comment Doty made to me that, "Jerry assisted me during the Bennewitz investigation."

The day after I sent my email to Doty, I had a reply. He identified a Major John Brisbois, a former supervisor, as the person who gave him Miller's name and the information that Miller was an "expert in the subject of UFO's" (this was an interesting revelation since I cannot imagine Miller's resume or the local base directory had that listed as an area of expertise.) Nevertheless, I had proven that the name and email address associated with the message I had found on the History Channel web site was the
right
Richard Doty.

With that, I wrote to him again, this time asking specifically about the message I had found on the History Channel web site and the discrepancies with his official service records. What resulted was a series of emails in which—like slow motion “bullet-time” in The Matrix films—direct questions seemed to slip by him with no direct answer. I expressed my confusion over his dates of service...was it twenty years or 23 years, which I had also seen stated. He wrote back that he did not know where I got the information and said he had never “given an interview” with the History Channel. I sent him the link to the message, which was not an interview, and a link to an older version of his service records. He reemphasized that he had been in the Air Force for twenty years, and then added that on occasion people had made up information about his service. But, he did not even acknowledge the glaring question of why this information was in a message with his name and email address. When I wrote again and pointed out that he had totally ignored that question, his response seemed very peculiar. He simply wrote that there are "other Richard Doty's", as if that somehow explained things. My reply—that there were others out there with my name as well but that they did not use my email address—did not go over so well.

His replies now became decidedly more abrasive and defensive. After suggesting that I must have no idea how emails operate (something I do happen to know very well) he proclaimed that in the past he had been a “hacker” and that it was very easy to spoof email addresses (i.e. sending an email that appears to come from someone else’s address or a spurious one). But within a couple of sentences he suddenly acknowledged that the email address was ,in fact, his, though it was not his
normal
email address. It was only a proxy that he uses to
receive and reply
(a rather moot point by then since we had been exchanging emails for several days). In responding to his remarks I told him that while it is possible to spoof an outbound email address, it is extremely difficult to see that as a logical explanation for why his email address was attached to so curious a message in such an obscure place as the History Channel site, and several links deep in the Vietnam war forum. He still had not addressed the issue of why his stated dates of service did not include this apparent pre-history in Laos, and he never did. He did not care what I thought, and told me so. Nevertheless, I had found the information, and his reaction to my having found it made me even more suspicious.

In the summer of 2007, I came across another intriguing bit of information. An acquaintance I have known for several years, who is aware of much of my research, told me that a presentation made at the 2007 MUFON Symposium contained something I would be interested in. Shortly before preparing the presentation and accompanying paper,
The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origin of MJ-12
, the authors, Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood, had been given access to some very significant material. In that material was a transcript of a conversation between Bill Moore and author Robert Pratt. Eventually, I was able to obtain a section of this transcript, which contained a description that sounded all too familiar.

The conversation took place in July of 1982 and was a discussion between Moore and Pratt about a book that they were planning to write. It was to be a fictionalized account of an Air Force OSI Officer and his pursuit of the truth behind the UFO phenomenon. Though the book was never published, it became known in the following years that the manuscript had been finished. In Moore’s own publication, FOCUS (Sept. 30, 1989), he stated that Richard Doty had played a role in the “fiction based on fact” book and, based on accounts by those who have seen the manuscript, it is easy to see the central character as modeled on Doty himself. In 1982, while Moore and Pratt were discussing possible motivations for the central character, Pratt asked Moore some telling questions about the person he refers to as “D”. Within the context of the conversation there can be little doubt that Moore is talking about Richard Doty when he tells Pratt that:

“Well, he was at a site, which apparently was a listening post that was overrun in either Laos or Cambodia, and he told me the name of the site at one time…but apparently that was one of the kind of things that disillusioned him. I guess some of the people that were there were killed. It could be that they couldn’t leave the place until they had destroyed some of their equipment so that it didn’t fall into the hands of the—it could be that. I don’t know. But it was overrun. Whether they hadn’t provided adequate support or backup or defense for that site or whether they had allowed it to fall for another reason, I don’t know.”

The clear similarity between the incident Moore described to Bob Pratt in their 1982 conversation and the incident at LS-85 that Doty wrote about on the History Channel web site in January 2005 is undeniable. Moore was told of the incident by “D”, who was later revealed to be Doty himself, and who apparently had been at a site that was overrun in Laos or Cambodia where several men were killed. (Moore could not remember which or the site name). Years later someone named “Rick”, writing from one of Richard Doty’s admitted email addresses, gave an account of having been at a site in Laos (two sites in fact) which were overrun and where several people were killed. The more telling incident, clearly identified in his online posting, took place a good eight months before his supposed August 1968 enlistment in the Air Force.

Based on Doty’s reaction when I confronted him with his LS-85 claim, it was not hard to draw the conclusion that something in that message posed a risk if someone, like me, began digging into that area of his past. If he had been in the Air Force a year earlier than most people thought, it should not have created any real issue in itself. Was there something else? Was it something he had been doing there or somewhere he had been that posed the problem? If there were any clues to be found they would again have to come from his message on the History Channel web site.

He wrote that he had been at Lima Site 85 a few weeks before it was attacked. When the site was finally overrun in March of 1968, he claims he was at a second site called Lima Site 20A, also known as 20 Alternate or simply Alternate. LS-20A was a secret CIA air base that served as the headquarters for CIA and US Officers. It was also the Command Post of General Vang Pao for the US "Secret Army" of Hmong tribesman during the Vietnam War.
⁶¹
Pictures of the site can easily be found on the Internet showing the single narrow runway of the airfield surrounded by scattered low-slung buildings, massive rock outcroppings, and mountains.

The connection to the CIA—and the air fields frequented by short takeoff and landing aircraft flown by Air America—brought a peculiar sense of déjà vu. John Lear, who became something of a notorious figure in the 1980’s after stepping into the Bennewitz controversy and spreading tales of MJ-12 and underground alien bases, flew for Air America. Lear has often talked of flying for the CIA in Laos. Vientienne, Laos in 1973 is the only location I have seen tied to a specific date, though in one online profile he is said to have flown for the CIA from 1966 to 1983.
⁶²
I knew from my own experience with him that he had talked of flying for Air America in Laos, and I recall during a visit to his home that he had an immense map of Laos and Vietnam on one wall. But the actual locations he frequented were not something I thought much about at the time. Others who have visited his home have also seen the mementos he keeps of his days flying in Southeast Asia, in particular a photograph of one base that seems to hold special significance. It is reportedly a wide-angle panorama of the CIA’s secret base at Long Tien.
⁶³
Long Tien is sometimes spelled Long Chien or Long Tieng, but it is also known by its CIA designation…Lima Site 20A… the same site where Richard Doty claimed to have been in 1968.

To say I was surprised to discover this amazing coincidence would be an understatement. I cannot help but wonder what the odds are that Lear and Doty, apparent strangers, would both have a connection to a highly secret CIA air base on the far side of the world, and then both became infamous in the Bennewitz case for elaborate stories and misinformation. (A full and even more revealing discussion of my investigation into Doty’s Laos connection can be found in Appendix A.)

If Doty has a hidden past that was intentionally removed from his service records, or if he was in Laos but not in the Air Force at the time (which would also explain its absence from his record), then who is he really? It certainly raises the question of whether, during his Bennewitz investigation, he was simply an AFOSI agent, or something more. Similar questions might be asked about the enigmatic Jerry Miller, the only person known to have assisted Doty during the investigation. Was it purely coincidental that Miller, a reputed expert on UFO’s and a former Project Blue Book investigator, happened to be located in Albuquerque right when he would be needed? At the time of his visit to Paul’s home he was reportedly with the Air Force Test & Evaluation Center (AFTEC, since renamed AFOTEC). Could there have been a direct reason to have someone from the “test and evaluation” center go see what Paul had caught on film?

On what may be a related side note, in the 1985 meeting Ernest Edwards had with Sandia Security representatives Ortega and Stone, Edwards reported that the “briefing” Paul gave on the base in November of 1980 had been presented to “...the heads of AFWL and AFOTEC, and Sandia representatives”. However, in the widely circulated Air Force document written soon after the meeting took place and that also lists those in attendance, AFOTEC (or AFTEC) was
not
mentioned. It is certainly possible that Edwards’ recollection was faulty, but it is curious that he names an agency that is not named in the earlier document but that just happens to be the agency Jerry Miller was purportedly associated with.

There is also the issue mentioned earlier of Miller’s involvement and function within the Defense Intelligence Agency. Was he serving a number of different roles, working with both AFTEC and DIA? If he was listed in a DIA telephone directory then it seems safe to presume that the DIA position was legitimate. Even more curious was a comment Doty made to me in an email exchange when he described Jerry Miller “as a senior intelligence manager for the Air Force Test and Evaluation Center”. It adds another perspective to Miller's involvement and raises additional questions about who Miller may have been reporting to.

These questions are a few among the many that may forever go unanswered unless a full accounting can be demanded. Who is Richard Doty and who did he work for—and with? Who is Jerry Miller, and who is Robert Fugate, that they had secret roles in the operation to discredit Paul Bennewitz? Who was directing the operation and could authorize such actions against an unsuspecting and well-meaning civilian? What, and whose, were the vehicles Paul saw and filmed? Within a year of Paul Bennewitz taking the films from his rooftop, and no later than early 1981, all the disinformation and misinformation that would confuse researchers and the public for many years to come had been planted. Counterintelligence professionals had devised it, and they did their job well. To this day, even fewer people are aware of the real evidence Paul had, evidence that only he would have been fully able to explain.