X Descending (28 page)

Paul had been near the Archuleta Mesa several times, a fact that was not necessarily a secret. But after meeting Myrna Hansen and hearing her story, the Archuleta Mesa was back on the front burner, with ideas of an underground base beginning to flourish. Her description of an underground facility with vats containing bodies or body parts, a description only elicited under hypnotic regression, would be played up by others in years to come. Her story diverted Paul's attention back to that area and, along with the Air Force helicopter flights he would be treated to later, drove home the idea that there really was an underground base.

It certainly appears that Paul began to obsess over the possibility that aliens were cooperating with humans on or under the mesa above the town of Dulce. Paul was a pilot himself, and he eventually flew over the area and took numerous photographs. He produced black-and-white 8x10 inch photographic prints, complete with clear overlays on which he had circled disks on the ground, aliens, and other things he claimed had been destroyed in some kind of battle. He sent me copies of these photos but, even examining them closely, I could never see any of what he thought was clearly visible. I told Paul that I could not see any of these things and, to his credit, he seemed truly puzzled by that. I was puzzled too. Was he seeing things, or was I not seeing correctly? Or, had someone switched the photos before I got them? That idea was certainly no stranger than the entire scenario of aliens and underground bases. Nevertheless, I could not see what he said was visible in the pictures he sent me. Other photographs allegedly showed an advanced aircraft he believed had crashed on the Archuleta Mesa, the so-called “Black Ship”, which was supposedly built with alien technology. There was a shadowy outline in the black and white photos, but what he said was in that outline was simply not clear enough for me to decide there really was something there.

If the photographs I saw did not show anything clearly anamolous, why was Paul so certain they did? The whole thing made no sense to me at all. By most accounts, Paul’s mental state was deteriorating by then, but who knows what else might have been going on? I can easily understand how someone who examined this aspect of this case might well have been convinced it was nonsense. Keep in mind however, that it is now known that an AFOSI operation had been underway for some time to stuff Paul full of as much disinformation and misinformation as he could swallow.

The Weitzel Letter

The "Weitzel Letter", briefly described earlier, was so-called because it contained the name and address of a young man, Craig Weitzel. It was the first of many strange documents, traceable to Kirtland AFB, to turn up between 1980 and 1981. It is significant not because it spawned any great amount of research in itself, but because it seems to have been specifically intended to draw interest
to
the Kirtland AFB/Albuquerque area. The letter was sent anonymously to APRO, but the Lorenzens chose not to release it publicly because of their justifiable suspicion of anonymous material. Sometime later, apparently without the Lorenzens permission, a copy of it was sent out by someone at APRO, and with that, the letter began to circulate among other researchers. But at APRO headquarters, soon after the letter arrived, the Lorenzens reportedly handed it to their new board member in charge of investigations—Bill Moore.

The anonymous author of the letter described a series of strange events that had occurred to an acquaintance of his, Craig Weitzel, when the two of them had been on a training assignment at Kirtland AFB. The beginning of the letter described Weitzel seeing and filming an unidentified flying object and one of the occupants, then went on to say that, after the incident, Weitzel had been in contact with a “Mr. Dody” from Kirtland Air Force Base. After speaking with “Mr. Dody”, Weitzel had refused to discuss the matter any further. The letter ended with allegations that crashed UFOs were possibly being stored in the Manzano Weapons Storage Area.

I placed a telephone call to Craig Weitzel at his home sometime after I had received a copy of this anonymous letter. The fact that his address had been included in it certainly made it seem more credible, and it was a simple matter to call directory assistance and ask for a Weitzel at the given address. I was a bit surprised when the address turned out to be valid, but, in no time at all, I was speaking to a woman who identified herself as his mother. She said Craig just happened to be in town for a few days and, although he was sleeping at that moment, she would wake him up. When Craig came on the line, I learned that he was fully aware of the letter and, in fact, did know something about what was reported in it. Significantly though, he denied most of the details and events as they were described, with one, perhaps major, exception.

He verified that he had seen an unusual object high in the sky while training at a facility north of Albuquerque, near Pecos. While on the lookout for helicopters, the group he was with had watched a silvery object as it hovered high in the sky. He then said, with extra emphasis, that when the object finally left the area it did so “exponentially!" From our conversation, it was clear to me that he had seen something highly unusual on that training mission. On the other hand, it was just as obvious that someone had embellished the story greatly and created a letter with enough enticing details that no worthwhile UFO researcher could ignore it.

That this anonymous letter was sent directly to APRO can lead to only one reasonable conclusion:
It provided a perfect rationale for someone from APRO to chase the story to Albuquerque
. Giving the name "Dody" in the letter virtually guaranteed that anyone following the clues would be directed to Kirtland AFB AFOSI agent Richard Doty, who would then become the point of contact. The Weitzel Letter would eventually take on much more significance in the case of Paul Bennewitz, but in the middle of 1980 things were just warming up.

The Recruitment of Bill Moore and the seeds of MJ-12

Questions about the full extent of Bill Moore’s involvement in the Bennewitz case have puzzled researchers for years. How he became involved and why he was selected by AFOSI is still a subject for debate. I held a somewhat neutral position on this until I began to look closely at the chronology of events while trying to fit the pieces together for this book. Ultimately, the timing, locations, things that happened and things that did not, all led me to conclude that his role could not have been as incidental or unforeseen as he has claimed.

When Paul first contacted Jim and Coral Lorenzen (of APRO) is unclear, though it may have been as early as 1978. By 1980, although the Lorenzens were interested in his experiences and had helped to put him in touch with Leo Sprinkle, it seems that they were not quite sure what to make of Paul and his claims. Whatever their relationship was with Paul, I have not seen any evidence that he kept them fully informed of his contacts at Kirtland AFB, though he certainly may have. Likewise, although it is possible that Paul met Richard Doty early in 1980, I have not seen any indication that he ever mentioned the name to the Lorenzens. Nor have I seen anything indicating that, on receiving the Weitzel Letter, they recognized the misspelling of "Dody" as a name they had heard before. So when the letter arrived at the APRO office that July, the Lorenzens may have had no reason to suspect it had any connection to Paul's activities. Regardless, that anonymous letter was almost certainly the first indication of the widening counterintelligence operation underway.

By Moore's own account, soon after the letter arrived at APRO, it was given to him because he had recently been appointed the APRO board member in charge of "special investigations". Incredibly, though Moore was the designated head of APRO investigations, he seems to have done little with the letter. According to
Project Beta
, Moore called Craig Weitzel and, with that, decided the letter was "hogwash". Years later, Moore would admit he had eventually learned the letter had been sent to APRO as 'bait', and it certainly drew the interest of other researchers who eventually saw copies of it, including me. But at the time, for Moore to not even try calling Kirtland AFB, which certainly would have led him to Richard Doty, is almost beyond belief. Why he did not more thoroughly investigate the letter at that time may never be known. But, he did do other things…

In 1989 Moore gave an explosive speech in Las Vegas, Nevada in which he confessed to having served as an informant for AFOSI. Moore admitted to spying on Paul Bennewitz and reporting what Paul was doing and thinking to Richard Doty. Moore's role also included participation in the overall AFOSI effort to pump disinformation into Paul Bennewitz—in Moore's words, "defusing" him. Moore went along with it, all the while watching Paul slowly deteriorate mentally.

After this speech, virtually the entire community of researchers and UFO enthusiasts roundly chastised Moore for what they perceived as a traitorous betrayal of Paul. It also became clear that through Moore and Doty, a number of questionable documents had been slipped into the fray, as well as the first mention of the mysterious “MJ Twelve” and “Project Aquarius”. The Moore-Doty collaboration led to years of FOIA requests and wasted time for anyone who became interested in things related to Paul Bennewitz. And it still does.

What could possibly have motivated Bill Moore to agree to work with AFOSI? He not only deceived Paul, but some of his own friends and associates as well. He justified his decision, in part, by saying that if he had not agreed to do it, then his recruiters would simply have found someone else. That much was possibly true. He also said that he believed as long as he appeared to go along with their plans, he stood a chance of learning whatever he could about the behind-the-scenes military and government interest in the phenomenon. Whatever his true intentions might have been, the fact remains that whoever recruited him felt confident enough to risk exposing an extremely sensitive operation to an author who had already published one book ostensibly exposing government UFO secrecy. In my mind, that fact alone is enough to make Moore and his alleged "recruitment" deserve far more scrutiny.

Prior to this, Bill Moore had been making a new career for himself as a writer. At the time, he was promoting his latest book on the alleged UFO crash at Roswell, NM, which had as a central theme that the government and military conspired to hide the truth from the public. So why would AFOSI choose to recruit a writer who was making a career writing books exposing just the sort of thing they were recruiting him for? This question has bothered me for years because it is still unclear what, if anything, Moore gained from helping AFOSI. How could AFOSI be sure he would not write a tell-all book in the future and expose everything he knew about
them
? Perhaps Richard Doty hinted at some hidden reasons during a conversation he had with former Aviation Week and Space Technology writer Phil Klass. In answer to a question about whether Moore himself might have hoaxed the MJ-12 documents, Doty replied to Klass:

“I know some things that you don’t…the government I should say…knew some things about him that maybe other people don’t know, that would indicate to me that I don’t think he would do it. Now that’s my feeling. Maybe he did, I don’t know.”
⁶⁵

The government knew some things about Moore? Coming from Richard Doty it is a very interesting statement indeed.

Of all the tantalizing documents Moore claims he was given while working with AFOSI, none of them have provided any solidly useful and actionable evidence. Those that appear to contain the most significant information have never even been established as genuine. The result of his involvement was a great deal of controversy, but little substance. In the end, why Moore was chosen remains as perplexing as the question why he agreed to go along with it to begin with. So how did it happen?

In 1979 Moore supposedly moved to Arizona to be closer to APRO and to pursue his writing career. As an author with a well-known interest in the UFO phenomenon, he soon joined APRO and was in charge of "special investigations", a uniquely opportune position. That position gave him, among other things, responsibility for the Weitzel letter and potentially all of Paul's claims. Moore may have known about Paul through APRO, but I have seen nothing to indicate that he had ever met Paul before becoming an APRO board member. So, if Moore had investigated the Weitzel letter when he first received it, he would have undoubtedly come across Richard Doty weeks earlier than he has claimed. If he had gone to Albuquerque in the process, he could easily have met Paul then as well. The Weitzel letter might have put the Doty-Moore-Bennewitz triangle in place much sooner, had Moore pursued it. But according to him, both the Weitzel letter and his position with APRO were inconsequential to his meeting Richard Doty. His own chronology of the events leading to their first meeting takes a decidedly strange course.

Moore has said that the Weitzel Letter, as "bait", ended up serving no purpose. It was a series of strange telephone calls that eventually led to his being recruited to inform on Paul Bennewitz. In the first week of September of 1980—a month or two
after
the Weitzel Letter was given to him—Moore was on his way to a scheduled event in Washington, D.C. According to him, he received the first of two mysterious telephone calls in Omaha, Nebraska while he was there for a radio interview to promote the book he co-authored with Charles Berlitz,
The Roswell Incident
. The mysterious caller, claiming to be at nearby Offutt Air Force Base, said something to the effect that “We think you are the only person we’ve heard who seems to know what he is talking about.”
⁶⁶
The caller wanted to meet with Moore, but Moore did not have time because he was leaving Omaha almost immediately. As a result, that first call came to nothing.