A Collection Of Extraterrestrial Incidents And Coverups Part Four

 PART 4……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….  In the 1970s, as director of special projects for the Denver CBS-TVaffiliate, Linda Moulton Howe had produced 12 documentaries, most of   them dealing with scientific, environmental and health issues.But the one that attracted the most attention was Strange Harvest, which dealt with the then widespread reports that cattle in Western andMidwestern states were being killed and mutilated by persons or forces unknown. Most veterinary pathologists said the animals were dying ofunknown causes. Farmers, ranchers and some law-enforcement officers thought the deaths were mysterious. Some even speculated thatextraterrestrials were responsible. This possibility intrigued Howe, who had a lifelong interest in UFOs, and Strange Harvest argues for a UFO mutilation link.  In the fall of 1982, as Howe was working on a documentary on an unrelated matter, she got a call from Home Box Office (HBO).  The caller said  the  HBO people had  been impressed with Strange Harvest  and wanted to know if Howe would do a film on UFOs. In March 1983 she went to New York to sign a contract with HBO for a show to be titled UFOs-The ET Factor.  The evening before her meeting with the HBO people, Howe had dinner  with Gersten and science writer Patrick Huyghe. Gersten told Howe that  he had met with Sgt. Doty, an  AFOSI agent at Kirtland AFB, and perhaps Doty would be willing to talk on camera or in some other helpful capacity about the incident at Ellsworth. Gersten would call him and ask if he would be willing to meet with Howe.  Subsequently arrangements were made for Howe to fly to Albuquerque on April 9. Doty would meet her at the airport.  But when she arrived that morning, no one was waiting. She called his home.  A small boy answered and said his father was not there. Howe then phoned Jerry Miller, Chief of Reality Weapons Testing at Kirtland and a former Blue Book investigator. (He is mentioned in the October 28, 1980, "Multipurpose  Internal OSI Form" reporting on Doty and Miller's meeting with Bennewitz.) She knew Miller from an earlier telephone conversation, when she had called to ask him about Bennewitz's claims, in which she had a considerable interest.  Miller asked for a copy of Strange Harvest. Later he had given Howe his home phone number and said to contact him if she ever found herself in Albuquerque. So she called and asked if he would pick her up at the airport.  Miller drove Howe to his house. On the way Howe asked him a number ofquestions but got little in the way of answers. One question he did not answer was whether he is the "Miller" mentioned in the Aquarius document. When they got to Miller's residence, Miller called Doty at his home, and Doty arrived a few minutes later, responding aggressively to Howe's question about where he had been. He claimed to have been at the airport all along;  where had she been? "Perhaps," Howe would write, "he had decided he didn't want to go through with the meeting, and it was acceptable in his world to leave me stranded at the airport until Jerry Miller called his house" (Howe, 1989).  On the way to Kirtland, Howe asked Doty, whose manner remained both defiant and nervous, if he knew anything about the Holloman landing. Doty said it happened but that Robert Emenegger had the date wrong; it was not May 1971 but April 25, 1964-12 Hours after a much-publicized CE3 reported by Socorro, New Mexico, policeman Lonnie Zamora.(Zamora said he had seen an egg-shaped object on the ground. Standing near it were two child-sized beings in white suits.) Military and scientific personnel at the base knew a landing was coming, but "someone blew the time and coordinates" and an "advance military scout ship" had come down at the wrong time and place, to be observed by Zamora.  When three UFOs appeared at Holloman at six o'clock the following morning, one landed while the other two hovered overhead. During the meeting between the UFO beings and a government party, the preserved bodies of dead aliens had been given to the aliens , who in turn had returned something unspecified. Five ground and aerial cameras recorded this event.  At the Kirtland gate Doty waved to the guard and was let through. They went to a small white and gray building. Doty took her to what he described as "my boss's office."  Doty seemed unwilling to discuss the Ellsworth case, the ostensible reason for the interview, but had much to say about other matters. First he asked Howe to move from the chair on which she was sitting to another in the middle of the room. Howe surmised that this was to facilitate the surreptitious recording of their conversation, but Doty said only, "Eyes can see through windows."  "My superiors have asked me to show you this," he said. He produced a brown envelope he had taken from a drawer in the desk at which he was sitting and withdrew several sheets of white paper. As he handed them to Howe, he warned her that they could not be copied; all she could do was read them in his presence and ask questions.  The document gave no indication anywhere as to which government, military or scientific agency (if any) had prepared the report, titled A Briefing Paper for the President of the United States on the Subject of Unidentified Flying Vehicles. The title did not specify which President it had in mind, nor did the document list a date (so far as Howe recalls today) which would have linked it to a particular administration.    The first paragraph, written--as was everything that followed in what Howe characterizes as "dry bureaucratese," listed dates and locations of crashes and retrievals  of UFOs and their occupants. The latter were invariably described as 3 1/2 to four feet tall, gray-skinned and hairless, with oversized heads, large eyes and no noses. It was now known, the document stated on a subsequent page, that these beings, from a nearby solar system,have been  here for many thousands of years. Through genetic manipulation they influenced the course of human evolution and in a  sense created us. They had also helped shape our religious beliefs.  The July 1947 Roswell crash was mentioned; so, however, was another one at Roswell in 1949. Investigators at the site found five  bodies and one living alien, who was taken to a safe house at the Los Alamos National Laboratory north of Albuquerque. The aliens, small gray-skinned humanoids, were known as "extraterrestrial biological  entities" and the living one was called "EBE" (ee-buh). EBE was befriended (if that was the word) by an Air Force officer, but the being died of unknown causes on June 18, 1952. (EBE's friend, by 1964 a colonel, was among those who were there to greet the aliens who landed  at Holloman.) Subsequently, it would be referred to as EBE-1, since in  later years another such being, EBE-2, would take up residence in a safe house. After that, a third, EBE-3, appeared on the scene and was now living in secret at an American base.  The briefing paper said other crashes had occurred one near Kingman,Arizona, another just south of Texas in northern Mexico. It also mentioned the Aztec crash- The wreckage and bodies had been removed to such facilities as Los Alamos laboratory and Wright-Patterson AFB. A number of highly classified projects dealt with these materials. They included Snowbird (research  and development from the study of an intact spacecraft left by the aliens as a gift) and Aquarius (the  umbrella operation under which the research and contact efforts were coordinated). Project Sigma was the ongoing electronic communications effort. There was also a defunct project Garnet, intended to investigate extraterrestrial influence on human evolution. According to the document, extraterrestrials have appeared at various intervals in human history-25,000, 15,000, 5000 and 2500 years ago aswell as now--to manipulate human and other DNA.  One paragraph stated briefly, "Two thousand years ago extraterrestrials created a being" who was placed here to teach peace and love. Elsewhere a passing mention was made of another group of EBEs, called the "Talls."  The paper said Project Blue Book had existed solely to take heat off the Air Force and to draw attention away from the real projects. Doty mentioned an "MJ-12," explaining that "MJ" stood for "Majority." It was a policy-making body whose membership consisted of 12 very high-rankinggovernment scientists, military officers and intelligence officials. These were the men who made the decisions governing the cover-up and the contacts.  Doty said Howe would be given thousands of feet of film of crashed discs, bodies, EBE-1 and the Holloman landing and meeting. She could use this material in her documentary to tell the story of how U.S. officials learned that the earth is being visited and what they have done about it. "We want you to do the film," Howe quotes him as saying.When Howe asked why she, not the New York Times, the Washington Post  or 60 Minutes, was getting this, the story of the millennium, Doty replied bluntly that an individual media person is easier to manipulate and discredit than a major organization with expensive attorneys. He said that another plan to release the information, through Emenegger and Sandler, had been halted because political conditions were not right.  Over the next weeks Howe had a number of phone conversations with Doty, mostly about technical problems related to converting old film to videotape. She spoke on several occasions with three other men but did not meet them personally. Doty suggested that eventually she might be allowed to film an interview with EBE-3. But the current film project was to have a historical emphasis; it would deal with events between 1949 and 1964. If at some point she did meet EBE-3, however, there was no way she could prepare herself for the "shock and fear" of meeting an alien being.  Howe, of course, had informed her HBO contacts, Jean Abounader and   her superior Bridgett Potter, of these extraordinary developments. Howe urged them to prepare themselves, legally and otherwise, for the repercussions that would surely follow the release of the film. The HBO people told her she would have to secure a letter of intent from the  U.S. government with a legally-binding commitment to release the promised film footage. When Howe called Doty about it, he said, "I'll work on it." He said he would mail the letter directly to HBO.  Then HBO told her it would not authorize funds for the film production until all the evidence was in hand and, as Potter put it, Howe had the"President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs of Staff to back it up" (Howe, 1989).  But proceed anyway, Howe was told. Now she was furious at both HBO and Doty. When she called him at the base, he remarked that he had good news and  bad news. She and a small crew would soon be able to interview the  retired colonel (then a captain) who had spent three years with EBE-1. The bad news was that it would be three months before the thousands of feet of film of EBE-1 and the Holloman landing/contact would be available.  Meanwhile, before she could screen the footage, Howe would have to sign three security oaths and undergo a background check. She would also have to supply photographs of all the technical assistants  who would accompany her to the interview.  The interview was repeatedly set up and canceled. Then in June Doty called to say he was officially out of the project. This was a blow because Doty was the only one she could call. She did not know how to get in touch with the others and always had to wait for them to contact her.  By October the contacts had decreased.  The same month her contractwith HBO expired. All she had was the name of the Washington  contact.In March 1984 this individual called her office three times, although she was out of town working on a non-UFO story at the time. "Upon returning home," she writes, "I learned the man was contacting me to explain there would be further delays in the film project after the  November 1984 election" (Howe, 1989).  For Howe that was the end of the matter, except for a brief sequel.  On March 5, 1988, Doty wrote ufologist Larry W. Bryant, who had unsuccessfully sought access to Doty's military records through the Freedom of Information Act, and denied that he had ever discussed government UFO secrets or promised footage of crashed discs, bodies and live EBEs. Howe responded by making a sworn statement about the meeting and producing copies of her correspondence from the period with both Doty and HBO. In 1989 Moore said that "in early 1983 I became aware that Rick [Doty] was involved with a team of several others, including one fellow from Denver that I knew of and at least one who was working out of Washington, D.C., in playing an elaborate disinformation scheme against a prominent UfO researcher who, at the time, had close connections with a major television film company interested in doing a UFO documentary." He was referring to Howe, of course. The episode was a counterintelligence sting operation, part of the "wall of disinformation" intended to "confuse" the Bennewitz issue and to "call his credibility into question."  Because of Howe's interest in Bennewitz's work, according to Moore, "certain elements within the intelligence community were concerned that the story of his having intercepted low frequency electromagnetic emissions from theCoyote Canyon area of the Kirtland/Sandia complex would end up as part of a feature film. Since this in turn might influence others (possibly even the Russians) to attempt similar experiments, someone in a control position apparently felt it had to be stopped before it got out of hand." In his observation, Moore said, "the government seemed hell bent on severing the ties that existed between [Howe] and [HBO]" (Moore, 1989b).  Doty's assertion that Howe had misrepresented their meeting was not  to be taken seriously, according to Moore, since Doty was bound by a security oath and could not discuss the matter freely. Moore said that the Aztec crash, known beyond reasonable doubt never to have occurred, was something Doty had added to the document after learning from Moore of his recent investigation of the hoax.  In December 1984, in the midst of continuing contact with their own sources (Doty and a number of others) who claimed t be leaking the secret of the cover-up, Moore's associate Jaime Shandera received a roll of 35mm film containing, it turned out what purported to be a briefing paper dated November 18, 1952, and intended for president-elect Eisenhower. The purported author, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, reported that an "Operation Majestic-12," consisting of a dozen top  scientists, military officers and intelligence specialists, had been  set up by presidential order on September 24, 1947, to study the Roswell remains and the four humanoid bodies that had been recovered nearby. The document report that the team directed by MJ12 member and  physiologist Detlev Bronk "has suggested the term  'Extra- terrestrial  Biological Entities', or 'EBEs', be adopted as the standard term of reference for these creatures until such time as a more definitive designation can be agreed upon." Brief mention is also made of a December 6, 1950, crash along the Texas-Mexico border. Nothing is  said, however, about live aliens or communications with them.  In July 1985 Moore and Shandera, acting on tips from their sources, traveled to Washington and spent a few days going through recently declassified documents in Record Group 341, including Top Secret AirForce intelligence files from USAF Headquarters. In the 126th box whose contents they examined, they found a brief memo dated July 14, 1954,  from Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President, to Gen. Nathan  Twining. It says "The  president has decided that the MJ-12/SSP  [Special Studies Project] briefing should take place during the  already scheduled White House meeting of July 16 rather than following it as previously intended. More precise arrangements will be explained to you upon your arrival. Your concurrence in the above change of arrangements is assumed" (Friedman, 1987).  The Cutler/Twining memo, as it would be called in the controversies that erupted after  Moore released the MJ-12 document to the world inthe spring of 1987, is the only official document-not to be confused with such disputed ones as the November 17,1980, Aquarius document-to mention MJ-12. (Several critics of the MJ-12 affair have questioned   the memo's authenticity as well, but so far without unambiguous success.) The memo does not, of course, say what the MJ12 Special Studies Project was. MJ-12 Goes Public: Just prior to Moore's release of the  MJ-12 briefingpaper, another copy was leaked to British ufologist Timothy Good, who took his copy to the press. The first newspaper article on it appeared in the London Observer of May 31, 1987, and soon it was the subject of pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC-TV's Nightline. It was also denounced, not altogether persuasively, both by professional debunkers and by many ufologists. The dispute would rage without resolution well into 1989, when critics discovered that President Truman's signature on the September 24, 1947, executive order (appended to the briefing paper) was exactly like his signature on an undisputed, UFO-unrelated October 1, 1947, letter to his science adviser (and supposed MJ-12 member) Vannevar Bush. To all appearances a  forger had appended a real signature to a fake letter. The MJ-12 document began to look like another disinformation scheme.  Although acutely aware of the mass of disinformation circulating throughout the UFO community, Moore remained convinced that at least some of the information his own sources were giving him was authentic. In 1988 he provided two of his sources, "Falcon" (Sgt. Doty according to some) and "Condor"(laterclaimed to be  former U.S. Air Force Capt. Robert Collins), to a television production company. (Moore and Shandera had given them avian names and called the sources collectively "the birds.") UFO Cover-up Live, a two-hour program, aired in October 1988, with Falcon and Condor, their faces shaded, their voices altered, relating the same tales with which they had regaled Moore and Shandera. The show, almost universally judged a laughable embarrassment, was most remembered for the informants' statements that the aliens favored ancient Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream. Critics found the latter allegation especially hilarious.......  To be continued....