Bill Moore,

Paul Bennewitz
and The Aviary
- or -
Aviary + (Bennewitz * 39) = Heavens Gate?
An Relatively Holy Excerpt from award-winning
investigative journalist Howard Blum’s 1990
Fine Alchemical Worke Out There
 

Excerptus Caeruleus:

"And for four years Bennewitz never suspected his friend of any sin worse than skepticism. Moore was the perfect spy. Why? That was the one question Moore kept asking himself as he, now an insider, observed the government’s sustained campaign against Bennewitz. Why were Doty and the Falcon so intent on discrediting one solitary UFO crusader?

[...]

"...Moore had no doubts about the effectiveness of the government’s disinformation program. Moore watched as Bennewitz was driven to the breaking point. As he was fed stories about evil and threatening grays, Bennewitz grew more emotional. He kept guns and knives hidden throughout his house. He had extra locks installed on his doors. He could not sleep. He turned his business over to his son. At lunch with Moore, Bennewitz, his hands shaking, his face as haggard as a skeleton’s, told his friend that aliens were coming through his walls at night and injecting him with hideous chemicals. The chemicals knocked him out; he was very worried about what the aliens had done to him when he was unconscious. As he spoke, he smoked constantly. Moore, whose job was to be observant, counted each of the twenty eight cigarettes Bennewitz had puffed in the course of the forty-five-minute meal. It was not long after that lunch that Bennewitz was hospitalized for exhaustion and fatigue.

[...]

"He [Moore] suppressed all his natural emotions: his anger and revulsion at Bennewitz’s torture, his impatience with the Falcon’ s capriciousness, his eagerness to run to the media for help and protection. He let everything well up inside. He held it back, a fair trade, he felt, for his chance to ’learn the truth.’

[...]

"He called them, in deference to the Falcon, his first contact and his first stab at word code, ’the aviary.’ He no longer had any doubts about their position, their power.

[...]

"And Moore, how did he feel about his tacit complicity in the government’s plot against Bennewitz? Did he feel ashamed by his silence? By his betrayal of his friend? He has yet to comment, and his reluctance is understandable. Instead, he preferred to describe his work with Doty as an ’opportunity,’ his spying on Bennewitz as ’the price I had to pay.’

[...]

"Keeping secrets is a habit. It is the way officials -- spies, generals, and scientists -- are taught to behave. Because some explanations are not simple. All is never explained. Because now that we are at the end of a politics of global conflict, as men and states abandon their allegiances to failed ideological gods, all that is left for a great nation to protect and believe in is its tattered secrets."

[End Excerptus Caeruleus]

With the sun beginning to set, the humpback Manzano foothills would cast long, broad shadows across Coyote Canyon. The sky would slowly start to bleed, turning from a deep, brilliant desert blue to a pastel shade, a faded denim color streaked with an irradiating red, until, at last, it all settled easily into a soft zinc gray. And then the lights would appear. In these last moments before the New Mexico night began, coming from somewhere in the west near Kirtland Air Force Base, the strange craft, their running lights aglow, began their maneuvers. They would fly in a circling formation in the dusk sky above the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility, and next fly south toward the Coyote Canyon test area. Every evening they came. Their arrival was as regular as the sunsets, and no less spectacular.

From the deck of his house perched high in the Four Hills section of Albuquerque, Paul Bennewitz had a perfect view. Night after night, he paced the deck, an eight-millimeter movie camera in his hand, as he, with considerable anxiety, recorded the erratic, hovering flight paths of these craft. At the same time, his tracking antennas would also be at work, sweeping in unison across the sky. With lumbering deliberativeness, the huge antennas automatically rotated toward the ships, vectoring in on their flight. They moved clockwise, their rotors loudly grinding, until contact was made.

Then banks of ultra-sensitive receivers -- lovingly hand-crafted machines, the cherished brainchildren of Bennewitz’s own ingenious designs -- would come alive. A steady, low-frequency electromagnetic beep ... beep ... beep would fill his workroom. [cf. the silly historical treatise A Message From Our Space Brothers via Shortwave Radio (ca. 1954) by Adamsky’s friend and carnival barker, occultist George Hunt Williamson -B:.B:.] The signal came in modulated pulses, loud and clear and well-defined like the exultant opening chords of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He never doubted those strange craft were sending a message.

Each night it was all recorded. There were over 2,600 feet of film. A locked filing cabinet held the tapes of months of encounters. These were Paul Bennewitz’s clues and, after much painstaking analysis, his proof. They were the irrefutable cornerstones of his great discovery -- Project Beta.

Brother Leo, B:.B:. 7°=4°
 

Caerulean Adeptus Exemptus

The insights that culminated in Project Beta, Bennewitz’s grand theory about UFOs, first surfaced under hypnotic regression. It was 1979 and Dr. Leo Sprinkle, a New Mexico psychologist, was challenged by the story a deeply troubled female patient had revealed under hypnosis. From the very depths of her subconscious, she had purged herself of a most remarkable tale. She had been abducted by aliens.

Dr. Sprinkle believed her, and he did not believe her. Filled, then, with a sense of concern and fascination, as well as skepticism, he decided to consult his friend Dr. Paul Bennewitz. It was his hope that Bennewitz, an accomplished physicist, a prodigious inventor, a man of science with a wizard’s mind as well as a soft, sympathetic spot for all talk about UFOs, might be able to contribute some insightful analysis. Bennewitz was most definitely interested, and the woman was eager for whatever help he -- or anyone -- might offer. It was arranged that Bennewitz would be present during her hypnosis.

The sessions continued for three months. The woman would slip into a trance easily, her eyes nearly closed, her voice a low monotone; and then, under Dr. Sprinkle’s prodding, more and more of her repressed encounter would come forth. Moments before her abduction, she recalled as the two men listened, she had witnessed a bizarre ritual. The aliens were killing cattle, draining the beasts of their blood. She saw it all. That was why they took her. They took her to their ship and she was forced to watch as the aliens did strange things, things she couldn’t quite understand, things she still didn’t quite recall, with the cattle and with the blood. And then they did things to her.

As Paul Bennewitz listened over the course of those months to the woman’s agonized tale, he did not at first know what to make of it. But the more he mulled it over, he became convinced -- absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt -- that she was telling the truth. No one, he felt, could be that good an actress. Her pain was genuine.

But there were still crucial pieces missing from her story. It was necessary, Bennewitz realized, his own fears building, to learn what the aliens had done to this poor woman. He urged Dr. Sprinkle on. The facts, however, were buried too deep, were too successfully repressed. Yet Bennewitz was unyielding. He was convinced those lost moments aboard the spacecraft were the keys to understanding the motives of the aliens. His task was apparent. What the victim couldn’t remember, the rescuer -- and by now he saw himself in that role -- would discover. So piece by piece, part observation, part scientist’s logic, part instinct, he over many months came to an understanding about what had happened. The aliens had surgically implanted mind- control devices in the woman’s skull. They could see what she saw. They could hear what she heard. They could control her every move.

Bennewitz was terrified.

Still, goaded on by what was at stake, in a state of constant alert, he conceived Project Beta. His careful and documented monitoring of the alien ships flying over the New Mexico desert, and the messages they were sending to control their victims, began.

From the start, rumors full of mystery and promise involving Project Beta swirled through the tightly bonded communities of kindred thinkers who lived across the Southwest. And so, looking at subsequent events from this perspective, perhaps it was inevitable that Bill Moore’s and Paul Bennewitz’s paths should cross. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1981, after Project Beta had been in operation for nearly two years, that a curious Moore, now a director at the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), a Tucson-based group of UFO investigators, drove east from Arizona to the scientist’s home in Albuquerque. His assignment was to evaluate Bennewitz’s findings.

Moore, who prided himself on his ability to size people up, found much to admire in the scientist. Bennewitz, mesmerizingly articulate, able to pepper any conversation with seemingly inexhaustible flourishes of esoteric information, had the confident manner of a man who had grown up being the smartest boy in the class. And yet there was also something disquieting about him. Moore found his intensity -- a trait many would agree Moore could analyze with considerable authority -- especially disconcerting. It was as if Bennewitz felt his role was to serve as one of history’s not so silent witnesses; or, perhaps he even saw himself as a prophet, one of those high- minded souls whose nagging earnestness was meant to call lesser lives into question [you catchin’ all this, Ed "Make a Dent in History" Dames? -B:.B:.]. Whatever it was, it rankled Moore. He preferred to take Bennewitz in small doses.

As for Project Beta, Moore viewed the footage of the hovering lights and listened to the tapes of recorded messages. It was undeniable that Bennewitz had seen and heard something; the films clearly depicted unusual lights maneuvering near the Sandia National Labs complex, a classified Department of Energy facility on the Kirtland base. And, just as certainly, Bennewitz’s receivers had been monitoring odd low-frequency electronic signals. But Moore was not at all convinced that these "discoveries" had anything at all to do with UFOs.

The strange craft might be, he reasoned, nothing more ominous than Air Force helicopters or perhaps even some sort of experimental plane. Similarly, Moore found it difficult to accept that the signals were alien radio transmissions. Bennewitz’s highly touted computer-generated decoding program was based, as best Moore could tell, on the sort of shaky assumptions that would just as readily have translated the pulses of Morse code into an extraterrestrial monologue.

Moore returned to Arizona and announced to APRO that as far as he was concerned Bennewitz was a dedicated researcher who just didn’t seem to have the emotional objectivity to sort, as he noted with deadpan candor, "the shit from the candy." Still, over the years Moore remained in touch with Bennewitz and the two men became friends; after all, they were involved in the same quest. And it was with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment that Moore watched as Project Beta evolved into an all-encompassing theory. What had started with some fragile conjectures about mind-controlling aliens had, Moore would state with a sigh, "blossomed into a tale which rivaled the wildest science fiction scenario anyone could possibly imagine."

According to Bennewitz -- and supported, he insisted with unshakable ferocity, by his research -- two opposing forces of aliens had invaded the United States. The white aliens wanted intergalactic brotherhood; they came to this planet in peace. However, the malevolent group, the grays, were in control. It was the grays who were responsible for the cattle mutilations, the human abductions, and the implanting of mind-control devices in humans. The government was not only aware of this, but had also negotiated a secret treaty with these invaders.

The grays were granted the right to establish an underground base beneath Archuleta Peak near Dulce in northwestern New Mexico, and in return the military had received a shipment of extraterrestrial weapons. But then an atomic-powered alien spaceship crashed on Archuleta Peak. The grays suspected sabotage. And, Bennewitz was convinced after decoding radio transmissions, the treaty was about to be broken. The angry grays were preparing for nothing short of total war.

It was a theory that Bennewitz, in his own mind another Paul Revere, was devoted to circulating. He attempted to contact not just UFO researchers like Moore, but also congressmen, military commanders, members of the scientific establishment, and even the President.

"Instead of withholding judgment until all of the facts were in, Paul insisted on repeatedly going off half- cocked to anyone who would listen," Moore complained. The way Moore saw it, Bennewitz was "his own worst enemy."

It would not be until months later, after Moore was recruited by the Falcon and given his assignment by Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Richard Doty, that Moore would realize Bennewitz had a more formidable enemy -- the government of the United States.

Disinformation, as the Soviet term desinformatsiya was quickly anglicized by admiring Western intelligence agencies, is the propagation of false, incomplete, or misleading information to targeted individuals. But for a disinformation campaign to be truly successful, it must accomplish two related goals. One, the target must act on these new "facts." And two, the target must be irrevocably diverted from the more fruitful path he had previously been following.

For the past three years, since 1980, Bill Moore learned from AFOSI agent Doty, counterintelligence officers from a variety of agencies had been running a disinformation campaign against Paul Bennewitz. The purpose of the exercise -- or so Moore would remember being told by a gloating Doty -- was systematically to confuse, discourage, and discredit Bennewitz.

Their work had been remarkably successful. It was government agents, pretending to be friendly co-conspirators or using other, more convoluted covers, who had first passed on to a gullible Bennewitz "official" documents and stories detailing the secret treaty between the U.S. government and evil aliens, the existence of underground alien bases, the exchanges of technology, the wave of brain implants, and even the tale about the spaceship that had crashed into Archuleta Peak. These "facts" became the linchpins of his grand theory; and, fulfilling all the government’s hopes, Project Beta -- the filming of airship maneuvers in the vicinity of nuclear bases and the monitoring of the unusual signals emanating from these craft -- had been now relegated to a secondary concern.

And now agent Doty wanted Moore to join the government’s team. He assigned Moore to spy on Bennewitz. Moore’s job was to report on a regular basis to Doty about the effectiveness of the government’s disinformation campaign. Did Bennewitz still believe all the wild tales that had been passed on to him?

For four years Moore kept a careful watch on his friend. For four years he listened mutely as Bennewitz complained that his phone was tapped, that his office had been broken into. Moore, the dutiful recruit, even passed on to Bennewitz the "Aquarius Document," an actual classified AFOSI message that had been skillfully doctored -- by Doty? the Falcon? Moore never asked -- to prove that an alien invasion was at hand.

And for four years Bennewitz never suspected his friend of any sin worse than skepticism. Moore was the perfect spy.

Why? That was the one question Moore kept asking himself as he, now an insider, observed the government’s sustained campaign against Bennewitz. Why were Doty and the Falcon so intent on discrediting one solitary UFO crusader?

The truth was never explained to Moore. He wondered if AFOSI had simply picked Bennewitz at random, that he was an unlucky target of an ongoing counterintelligence teaching exercise. Or, perhaps Bennewitz had actually been filming UFOs from his sun deck; the government’s long cover-up was jeopardized and, therefore, Bennewitz -- and his film and tapes -- must be discredited at all costs. Or, equally plausible, it was possible that Project Beta had been monitoring a top-secret military training program, and a plan to discourage anyone else -- foreign spies as well as believers in UFOs -- from paying too much attention to these maneuvers was quickly conceived. Moore would never know.

But whatever the reasons behind it, Moore had no doubts about the effectiveness of the government’s disinformation program. Moore watched as Bennewitz was driven to the breaking point. As he was fed stories about evil and threatening grays, Bennewitz grew more emotional. He kept guns and knives hidden throughout his house. He had extra locks installed on his doors. He could not sleep. He turned his business over to his son. At lunch with Moore, Bennewitz, his hands shaking, his face as haggard as a skeleton’s, told his friend that aliens were coming through his walls at night and injecting him with hideous chemicals. The chemicals knocked him out; he was very worried about what the aliens had done to him when he was unconscious. As he spoke, he smoked constantly. Moore, whose job was to be observant, counted each of the twenty-eight cigarettes Bennewitz had puffed in the course of the forty-five-minute meal. It was not long after that lunch that Bennewitz was hospitalized for exhaustion and fatigue.

And Moore, how did he feel about his tacit complicity in the government’s plot against Bennewitz? Did he feel ashamed by his silence? By his betrayal of his friend?

He has yet to comment, and his reluctance is understandable. Instead, he preferred to describe his work with Doty as an "opportunity," his spying on Bennewitz as "the price I had to pay." And, if one looked at it in such hard, pragmatic terms, it was a moment of high achievement. Moore had penetrated a cadre of top-level U.S. intelligence agents who were involved with UFOs. His course was set:

"I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough to lead those directing the process into believing that I was doing exactly what they wanted me to do, and all the while continue to burrow my way into the matrix so as to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why."

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