SUBJECT: E B E's FILE: UFO1036
PART 17
Moore's Confession: By mid-1989 the two most controversial
figures in ufology were Moore and Lear. Moore's MUFON lecture on
July 1 did nothing to quiet his legion of critics. On his arrival
in Las Vegas, Moore checked into a different hotel from the one
at which the conference was being held. He already had refused to
submit his paper for publication in the symposium proceedings, so
no one knew what he would say. He had also stipulated that he
would accept no questions from the floor.
Moore's speech stunned and angered much of the audience. At one
point the shouts and jeers of Lear's partisans brought
proceedings to a halt until order was restored. Moore finished
and exited immediately. He left Las Vegas not long afterwards.
In his lecture Moore spoke candidly, for the first time, of his
part in the counterintelligence operation against Bennewitz. "My
role in the affair," he said, "was largely that of a freelancer
providing information on Paul's current thinking and activities."
Doty, "faithfully carrying out orders which he personally found
distasteful," was one of those involved in the effort to confuse
and discredit Bennewitz. Because of his success at this effort,
Moore suggested, Doty was chosen by the real "Falcon" as "liaison
person, although I really don't know. Frankly, I don't believe
that Doty does either. In my opinion he was simply a pawn in a
much larger game, just as I was."
From disinformation passed on by AFOSI sources, and his own
observations and guesses, according to Moore, "by mid-1982"
Bennewitz had put together a story that "contained virtually all
of the elements found in the current crop of rumors being
circulated around the UFO community." Moore was referring to the
outlandish tales Lear and Cooper were telling. Moore said that
"when I first ran into the disinformation operation . . . being
run on Bennewitz . . . [i)t seemed to me . . . I was in a rather
unique position. There I was with my foot . . . in the door of a
secret counterintelligence game that gave every appearance of
being somehow directly connected to a high-level government UFO
project, and, judging by the positions of the people I knew to be
directly involved with it, definitely had something to do with
national security! There was no way I was going to allow the
opportunity to pass me by without learning at least something
about what was going on. . . . 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." Some of the same people who were
passing alleged UFO secrets on to Moore were also involved in the
operation against Bennewitz. Moore knew that some of the material
he was getting--essentially a mild version of the Bennewitz
scenario, without the horror, paranoia and conspiracy--was false,
but he (along with Jaime Shandera and Stanton Friedman, to whom
he confided the cover-up story in June 1982; Friedman, however,
would not learn of Moore's role in the Bennewitz episode until
seven years later) felt that some of it was probably true, since
an invariable characteristic of disinformation is that it
contains some facts. Moore also said that Linda Howe had been the
victim of one of Doty's disinformation operations.
Before he stopped cooperating with such schemes in 1984, Moore
said, he had given "routine information" to AFOSI about certain
other individuals in the UFO community. Subsequently he claimed
that during this period this emphasis) "three other members of
the UFO community . . . were actively doing the same thing. I
have since learned of a fourth. . . . All four are prominent
individuals whose identities, if disclosed, would cause
considerable controversy in the UFO community and bring serious
embarrassment to two of its major organizations. To the best of
my knowledge, at least two of these people are still actively
involved" (Moore, 1989b).
Although he would not reveal the identities of the government
informants within ufology, Moore gave the names of several
persons "who were the subject of intelligence community interest
between 1980 and 1984." They were:
(1) Len Stringfield, a ufologist known for his interest in
crashed-disc stories; in 1980 he had been set up by a
counterintelligence operative who gave him phony pictures of what
purported to be humanoids in cold storage.
(2) The late Pete Mazzola, whose knowledge of film footage from
a never-publicized Florida UFO case was of great interest to
counterintelligence types. Moore was directed to urge Mazzola to
send the footage to ufologist Kal Korff (who knew nothing of the
scheme) for analysis; then Moore would make a copy and pass it on
to Doty. But Mazzola never got the film, despite promises, and
the incident came to nothing. "I was left with the impression,"
Moore wrote, "that the file had been intercepted and the
witnesses somehow persuaded to cease communication with Mazzola."
(3) Peter Gersten, legal counsel for Citizens Against UFO
Secrecy (CAUS), who had spearheaded a (largely unsuccessful)
legal suit against the NSA seeking UFO information.
(4) Larry Fawcett, an official of CAUS and coauthor of a book on
the cover-up, Clear Intent (1984).
(5) James and Coral Lorenzen, the directors of the Aerial
Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) periodically "subjects of
on-again, off again interest . . . mostly passive monitoring
rather than active meddling," according to Moore. Between 1980
and 1982 APRO employed a "cooperative" secretary who passed on
confidential material to counterintelligence personnel.
(6) Larry W. Bryant, who was battling without success in the
courts to have UFO secrets revealed. Moore said, "His name came
up often in discussions but I never had any direct involvement in
whatever activities revolved around him."
These revelations sent shock waves through the UFO community. In
September CAUS devoted virtually all of an issue of its magazine
Just Cause to a harshly critical review of Moore's activities.
Barry Greenwood declared that the "outrageousness" of Moore's
conduct "cannot be described. Moore, one of the major critics of
government secrecy on UFOs, had covertly informed on people who
thought he was their friend and colleague. Knowing full well that
the government people with whom he was dealing were active
disinformants, Moore pursued a relationship with them and
observed the deterioration of Paul Bennewitz'[s] physical and
mental health. . . . Moore reported the effects of the false
information regularly to some of the very same people who were
'doing it' to Paul. And Moore boasted in his speech as to how
effective it was" (Greenwood, 1989). Greenwood complained further
about Moore's admission that on the disastrous Cover-up . . .
Live show Falcon and Condor had said things that they knew were
untrue. "In the rare situation where two hours of prime time
television are given over to a favorable presentation of UFOs,
here we have a fair portion of the last hour wasted in presenting
what Moore admits to be false data. . . . Yet he saw fit to go
ahead and carry on a charade, making UFO research look ridiculous
in the process. Remarks by Falcon and Condor about the aliens'
lifestyle and preference for Tibetan music and strawberry ice
cream were laughable." So far as Greenwood and CAUS, skeptical of
the MJ-12 briefing document from the first, were concerned, "July
1, 1989, may well be remembered in the history of UFO research as
the day when the 'Majestic 12' story came crashing to Earth in a
heap of rubble. Cause of death: Suicide!"
end of part 17
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