From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 12:13:08 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 12:23:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Paul Bennewitz? - Maccabee


 >From: Laurel Oplatka <calabash2003@webtv.net>
 >To: ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net
 >Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 10:49:13 -0800 (PST)
 >Subject: Paul Bennewitz?

 >On Dr. Maccabee's website, I just read/reviewed his report on
 >UFO Landing near Kirtland AFB, and would like more material
 >about Paul Bennewitz, as his involvement with the UFO subject is
 >much more complicated, as I understand.

 >Some years ago, when visiting the Lorenzens of APRO, Coral
 >Lorenzen gave me a 17 page Summary & Status report called
 >'Project Beta' by Bennewitz. We didn't have time to discuss it
 >but I am very interested in finding out, if anyone is privy to
 >info, as to whether this material is the product of
 >disinformation, and also more details about whether Bennewitz
 >was discredited and if so, by whom?

I did not spend a lot of time studying the Bennewitz
involvement. I concentrated on the AFOSI aspects of the Kirtland
Landing (and other sightings in the summer of 1980). My
recollection is dim and others can correct me as needed:

Sometime in the late 1970's Bennewitz was working with a lady
abductee/contactee who told him (through hypnosis?) that there
was an underground alien base near Dulce, NM. Bennewitz,
independently, was receiving electromagnetic signals at his
company headquarters and laboratory which is/was just outside
one of the gates at Kirtland AFB (Thunder Research, as I
recall). He came to believe the signals he received were
communications between Kirtland and the aliens. (Subsequent
research suggested that he had detected radiation from a large
device at Kirtland which was intended to simulate the
electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon... said device was
used to test the vulnerability of aircraft to EM pulses.)

Bennewitz contacted Kirtland to point out that he was detecting
this radiation and AFOSI investigated.

AFOSI - Air Force Office of Special Investigations, normally a
criminal investigative unit, but often used to investigate UFO
reports.

This is how Richard Doty became involved with Bennewitz in the
fall of 1980. However, previous to that, in August 1980 there
were sightings in the area that were reported to AFOSI
headquarters (and forms the basis for my paper, UFO Landings At
Kirtland AFB or Welcome To The Cosmic Watergate, the paper
referred to on my web site.) The landing was in a restricted
area in the Mazano mountains. Doty was the investigator of the
Kirtland Landing case.

So, you have UFO sightings in the summer of 1980, and then AFOSI
was contacted about Bennewitz's claim of detecting
communications with aliens. 'Naturally' AFOSI was interested.
Could Bennewitz be tapping into classified transmissions?

A big meeting was held at Bennewitz's lab in November (?) 1980.
Doty and other intel agents and scientists were there. Bennewitz
showed a movie he had of a strange object near an airplane
taking off and reported on the electromagnetic signals he had
received. Subsequently the overt investigation of Bennewitz was
dropped as it seems that Bennewitz's electromagnetic signals
could be explained (although perhaps Bennewitz wasn't told the
explanation).

I presume that Bennewitz was duly impressed by the interest
shown by the AF in what he had "discovered" and this may have
convinced him he was on the right track.... aliens existed, and
they communicated with Kirtland and there was a base near Dulce.

This series of events, which have been documented (written down)
piecemeal in several sources (e.g. Bill Moore writings) led to the
following:

1) Moore and Berlitz' Roswell book came out in the late summer
of 1980. This led to Doty contacting Moore in the fall of 1980.
Moore investigated, among other things, Bennewitz. As Moore has
explained it, he decided to go along with Doty/AFOSI and supply
Bennewitz with documents that were probably only partially true.
One of the documents was the "seed" which grew, 7 years later,
into the MJ-12 controversy. This document, called the "Acquarius
Document" refers to an analysis of Bennewitz's film and refers
to UFO information in Project Acquarius that can only be
accessed by "MJ-12."

Yes the first mention of that dreaded phrase!

6 years later I was informed of this and tried to locate
"Project Acquarius." A DIA librarian located a report from
Project Acquarius through "channel B" and I talked to a guy who
was custodian of the report.... but I couldn't see it.

For several years after the intial contact with Doty, Moore went
on a number of wild goose chases to obtain documents that would
prove a top secret government investigation. This has been
written about elsewhere (Moore) and in Dec., 1984 the "biggie"
hit.... the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) which ostensibly
was the smoking gun and has been the subject of such
argmentation and anguish ever since. The existence of the EBD
was kept secret by Moore (and Shandara) while they investigated.
However, a second copy of same was leaked to a writer in England
(Timothy Goode, author of Above Top Secret) who went public with
it in March/April of 1987 and subsequently Moore released it in
the USA. This started an immense controversy that still rages in
the dim dark corners of ufology.

That is one "thread" of history that followed from the fateful
fall of 1980. Here is another:

2) Bennewitz's involvement with the AF and the on going
investigation of Kirtland events and Bennewitz's stories came to
the attention of John Lear, son of Bill Lear (of Lear Jet fame)
in the middle 1980's. Lear decided to go public with basically
everything Bennewitz said and this was a lot by now, Bennewitz
claimed to have investigated the Dulce Story and found it to be
true. The lady "witness/abductee/ contactee" (I forget her name)
had said there had been a battle for control of the underground
base and the aliens had won. She also talked about vats of human
body parts and other nice things in the alien base. Lear went
public with a version of this implying he had knowledge of deep
secrets of the US government - alien interactions. Had the US
sold out to the aliens? (What else could they do?)..... and so
on. Also, in a sort of cosmic convergence with Bennewitz and
Lear, we had one William Cooper who went public with ever more
unbelievable stories about aliens and documents and so on. At
the same time there was the KRLL document (written by....
Grace..forget his first name). ( I think a lot of this stuff
lives in perpetuity on the web. ) There were others claiming
information and documents. This stuff reached a crescendo in
December of 1987, about 8 months after the EBD had been
released.

Lear and Cooper sort of teamed up for a year or so, until Lear
realized that Cooper was a real "basket case" (psychopath of
some sort) who kept changing his story. (I talked to Cooper at
the time he first went public. He was claiming he had documents
that proved the cover up. He told me he had written them from
memory, having seen them over ten years before. He told me his
documents were correct but the ones provided by Bill Moore were
fakes. I mused over that.... Cooper's documents were word for
word identical to what Moore had provided months before Cooper
came on the scene. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
................................................................
...

Epilogue

Subequently Bill Moore "confessed" to having provided Bennewitz
with questionable documents and he was severaly criticized and
he dropped out of ufology. (I haven't had any contact with him
for close to 10 years now). He occasionally "appears" in
Moseley's 'Saucer Smear' newsletter.

Bennewitz spent time in one or more hospitals for psychological
problems. I tried to visit him in 1985 at the time of my
investigation of the Kirtland Landing referred to above. I went
to his company headquarters but he wouldn't see me. I left a
phone number and he called. He said he would talk only because I
was a friend of J. Allen Hynek. Bennewitz told me about the
aliens (and others?) sticking needles into him all the time. I
really didn't learn much of value from him.

Lear got fed up with ufology and dropped out.

Cooper took his conspiratorial ravings elsewhere. He wrote a
book Behold a Pale Horse, a name taken from Revelation... the
end times, etc. In that book I, among many others, was
identified as a CIA agent of destruction. Anyone who disagreed
with Cooper was a CIA agent . This was true even if Cooper
changed his story and you agreed with the last story he told
(one reason Lear split). A more accurate name for Cooper's book
woudl have been Behind a Pale Horse. Cooper was shot while
trying to avoid arrest a couple of years ago (had nothing to do
with UFOs)... more to do with militias.

..................

Someday someone ought to write this all down as a story.... Of
course the readers would think it all fiction. <LOL>

..................

I look forward to commentary and corrections on this brief
attempt at pulling this history out of you-know-where since I
haven't thought about this stuff for years! I know there are a
lot of other "players" out there in the UpDates list who have
pieces of it.