Article/Document:
How Disinformation Experts Spread Fear About UFOs
Anne Strieber
original source | fair use notice
Summary: Bill Moore, UFO investigator and author, has learned a great deal about the government coverup of UFO information over the years. A large part of this coverup has to do with what intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, refer to as DISINFORMATION.
Bill Moore, UFO investigator and author, has learned a great deal about the government coverup of UFO information over the years. A large part of this coverup has to do with what intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, refer to as DISINFORMATION.
In his speech to the MUFON convention in LAs Vegas on July 1, 1989, Mr. Moore had this to say about the subject: "Disinformation is a strange and bi- zarre game. Those who play it are completely aware that an operation's success is dependent upon dropping false information upon a target or `mark', in such a way that the person will accept it as truth and will repeat, and even defend it to others as if it were true. One of the key factors in any successful disin- formation scheme is that it must contain some elements of truth in order to be credible. Once the information is believed, the work of counterintelligence is complete. They can simply withdraw in the confidence that the dirty work of spreading their poisonous seeds will be done by others."
Some of the most frightening and bizarre stories about UFOs and visitors may well be lies that originated with disinformation experts and are innocently spread by gullible people who do not bother to check facts, but who love a good story. And some of the people telling these tales may not be so innocent- they may be disinformation experts themselves.
While there is no final proof that the U.S. government has sponsored disin- formation programs concerning UFOs, the circumstantial evidence is growing stronger every day. It is a matter of record that at least one individual spread disinformation in this field while working as a government employee in an intelligence-related job, and the revelations of Bill Moore and others in- dicate that false stories have been planted among UFO researchers for years.
Certainly something strange happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947, when Air Force officials retrieved some debris with properties that did not fit any known technology. According to Colonel Jesse Marcel, who gave a number of videotaped interviews before he died, and who was responsible for the recovery of this debris, the fact of its extreme strangeness was covered up by the Air Force.
This coverup took place when the cold war was just starting and America was entering a period of near-paranoia over the issue of Soviet expansionism. America's obsession with secrecy began when President Truman created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 in order to obtain information about the threats being made by the Communists after the second world war. Ever since then, Americans have been told less and less about what is really going on in our government. As Norman Thomas, who unsuccessfully ran for President many times,said, `Where the secrets start, the republic stops.' We may live in a democracy, but we cannot have an effect on policy which we know nothing about.
When Bill Moore became a director of the now dormant APRO (Aerial Phenome- na Research Organization) in 1979, he became acquainted with the work being done by Paul Benewitz and Dr. Leo Sprinkle with a young woman who remembered being abducted and witnessing cattle mutilations. Bennewitz had become con- vinced that aliens had implanted some sort of communication device in the wom- an's head, and that they were using this device to control her actions.
Since Paul Bennewitz was a physicist, he had a certain amount of electron- ics equipment at his disposal, and he set out to determine whether he could de- tect the electromagnetic signals he believed aliens must be using to exercise control over their alleged victims, and to try to devise a way to shield vic- tims from the control of these signals. He told APRO in late '79 that he be- lieved he had succeeded in detecting low frequency signals from UFOs and had begun to make calculations about the sort of electronic and propulsion technol- ogy employed by the aliens. He also began to take pictures of strange lights maneuvering in the vicinity of the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility, which is located to the east of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Ben- newitz had a perfect view of the weapons base from his home in the Four Hills section of the city.
Bill Moore says, "In early September, 1980, I was approached by a well- placed individual within the intelligence community who claimed to be directly connected to a high-level project dealing with UFOs. This individual told me that he spoke for a small group of similar indiivuals who were uncomfortable with the government's continuing cover-up of the truth and indicated that he and his group would like to help me with my research into the subject in the hope and expectation that I might be able to help them find a way to change the prevailing policy and get the facts to the public without breaking any laws in the process. The man who acted as liason between this group and myself was an Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent named Richard Doty. I knew I was being recruited, but at that point I had no idea for what."
It soon became apparent to Bill that he was expected to supply information to this individual about the activities of Paul Bennewitz and APRO in exchange for being given `sensitive' (or presumably classified) information on UFOs. Bill realized that, whatever it was Bennewitz was involved with, he was the subject of considerable interest on the part of not one but several government agencies, and that they were actively trying to defuse him by pumping as much disinformation through him as he could possibly absorb. Bill decided to play along with these government agents so he could learn more about the disinfor- mation process by witnessing it firsthand.
Bennewitz, for his part, continued to make what seemed to be increasingly bizarre claims, most of which gave every appearance of having been influenced by a heavy blanket of disinformation mixed with a small, but significant, amount of truth. The problem was always one of keeping a level head and trying to sort the fact from fantasy - something which Paul Bennewitz was having a hard time doing.
"By 1981", according to Bill, "Paul was gathering data from a variety of sources and amalgamating it with information being fed to him by a number of government people in whom, for some reason, he seemed to have an implicit and abiding faith. The story that emerged from this melange of fact, fiction, fan- tasy, heresay, hard data and government disinformation was absolutley incred- ible! Yet somehow, Paul believed in it and set out on a one-man crusade to tell the world that malevolent aliens from space were in league with our gov- ernment to take over the planet. What had begun in 1979 as an effort to learn whether the behavior of a woman who claimed she had been abducted by UFO aliens was being influenced by some sort of radio remote control had, in the space of less than three years, blossomed into a tale which rivaled the wildest science fiction scenario anyone could possibly imagine."
Bennewitz continued with his experiemnts regarding the radio signals he was receiving and the film footage he was getting of unusual lights. Both of these phenomena seemed to be largely connected to activities within the Kirtland AFB Sandia National Labs complex just south of the city of Albuquerque. Bill feels that Bennewitz definitely was receiving some sort of low frequency electromag- netic signal on his equipment, and is equally certain that his photos and films depicted unusual lights, most of which were filmed while hoovering or maneuver- ing over the Kirtland/Sandia complex. The real question is whether this evi- dence was sufficient to conclude that either of these phenomena was directly related to UFO activity, or whether, in fact, the strange things he was witnes- sing had to do with some classified government research project going on near- by. Either reason would be a good explanation for the government's counterin- telligence activities in this case.
Bill reports that government survelliance of Paul's activities, some of which Paul was astute enough to detect and some of which Bill learned about but Paul seemed unaware of, included wire taps and even break-ins. "Paul took these activities as proof positive that he was onto something big. Unfortu- nately, he seemed largely unaware that the same people who would go to such lengths to spy on him also had the capabilities to mount an effective disinfor- mation campaign."
In any case, by mid-1982, Paul's story contained virtually all of the ele- ments found in the current crop of rumors being circulated around the UFO com- munity by people such as John Lear. There were two groups of aliens, one mal- evolent, one more friendly. The malevolent ones, which he referred to as the `greys', were really in control, and they were the ones responsible for the cattle mutilations, for human abductions and the implanting of sinister control devices in humans, for having first made and then broken a secret treaty with the U.S. government, for maintaining a secret underground base in Dulce, New Mexico, and for having supplied the U.S. government with alien space hardware and weapons which ultimately proved defective or which were caused to crash, thus leaving human civilization virtually defenseless against invasion.
Bill Moore says, "I know that this whole body of information if false, be- cause I was in a position to observe much of the disinformation process as it unfolded. And I can tell you it was effective, because I watched Paul become systematically more paranoid and more emotionally unstable as he tried to as- similate what was happening to him. He had guns and knives all over his house, had installed extra locks on his doors, and he swore that `they' (meaning the aliens) were coming through his walls at night and injecting him with hideous chemicals which would knock him out for long periods of time. He began to suf- fer increasing bouts of insomnia. I knew at that time that he was not far from an inevitable nervous collapse. His health had deteriorated, he had lost con- siderable weight, his hands shook as if from palsy, and he looked terrible. I tried to counsel him to drop the entire UFO thing before his health was com- pletely destroyed. Not long afterward I heard he had been hospitalized and was under psychiatric care."
The disinformation campaign was also effective because it insured that no one in the mainstream media or scientific or scientific community would pay any attention to the outlandish claims that Paul Bennewitz made. Thus the ele- ments of truth that were conatained in his experiments became lost to the pub- lic forever.
Were UFOs ever actually involved with all of this? Bills says we may never really know. Perhaps Bennewitz had merely stumbled upon signals generated from some sophisticated, high-level government project whose security people hit upon UFO-related disinformation as the ultimate cover. Or perhaps he discovered a real government UFO project which elected to disinform him to protect what they were really doing. The one thing that Bill does know from first-hand ex- perience is that there was a tremendous amount of government disinformation involved, and that a large proportion of what we are hearing today about mal- evolent aliens, underground bases and secret treaties with the U.S. government has its roots firmaly planted in the Bennewitz affair. "The current crop of disinformation is really nothing new; it's just that a different crop of people are spreading it this time around," says Moore.
From this experience, and from his other research, Bill has come to the conclusion that the U.S. government counterintelligence people have conducted an on-again, off-again campaign of deception and disinformation against the American public about the UFO phenomenon for more than 40 years. He feels that the people who have been responsible for the operations are highly placed indi- viduals within the intelligence community. There are several possible explana- tions for this situation. One, the disinformation could be a security cover for a real UFO project which exists at a very high level and is known only to an e- lite few. Two, it could be a security process designed to divert attention away from real, but non-UFO related, high tech research and development projects. Three, it may be a manipulation by UFO aliens themselves as part of a longterm plan to gradually make human society aware of their presence here. Bill's po- sition is that the truth is best described in terms of a combination of all of the above.
It's a fact that somebody powerful is spreading disinformation about UFOs. It would be foolish to believe any story on the basis of too little evidence. On the other hand, those people who have experienced the visitors first-hand need not allow themselves to be convinced that their experiences were mere hal- lucinations.
People who have encountered the visitors know the very real fear that comes from confronting the unknown. There is no reason why they should have to en- dure the additional terror of being inundated by sensationalized rumors about aliens that began ten years ago with a government disinformation campaign against one individual.
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