Behind the Bastards - Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Robert tells Brandie how Richard Doty crafted an elaborate alien ruse to destroy Paul Bennewitz's mind, all with the goal of hiding the U.S. government's drone and stealth bomber programs. Spying, dis...information accusations follow UFO figure Rick Doty — an exclusive interview – Mystery Wire INTERVIEW: Defiant Rick Doty defends against 'liar' claims — punk rock and UFOs Mirage Men: UFO researcher Mark Pilkington on deception and psychological warfare | WIRED  https://www.tweaktown.com/news/81486/ex-air-force-intelligence-officer-ufos-are-50-000-years-ahead-of-us/index.html Ex-Air Force Intelligence Officer: UFOs are 50,000 years ahead of us Here’s a thing about Richard Doty that not many know... : r/UFOs The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Unthinkable True Story of How the US Government Conspired to Destroy a UFOlogist Who Knew Too Much | by Cybertheticproject | Medium The real Men in Black, Hollywood and the great UFO cover-up | Movies | The Guardian The U.S. Government UFO Cover-Up Is Real—But It’s Not What You Think - The Atlantic Robert Bigelow: Is There Life After Death? - The New York Times Here’s a thing about Richard Doty that not many know... : r/UFOs https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/were-going-to-work-miracles/ https://www.amazon.com/Saucers-Spooks-Kooks-Disinformation-Aquarius/dp/0994617682 https://bookshop.org/p/books/project-beta-the-story-of-paul-bennewitz-national-security-and-the-creation-of-a-modern-ufo-myth-greg-bishop/f43a1e97fc8139fd?ean=9781416513391&digital=t&source=IndieBoundSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, all of you beautiful people and also all of you ugly people, you know? All people are beautiful, except for I just kind of said that I didn't, that they're not. That was mean of me. There's inside and outside beauty, you know? There's only one kind. There's only one kind. I'm not going to say what it is. I'm not going to say which kind of beauty, but there's only one kind. There's only one kind. I'm not gonna say what it is.
Starting point is 00:00:25 I'm not gonna say which kind of beauty, but there's only one kind. That's fair. Yeah, it's elbows. Hmm, elbow guy. I'm an elbow guy. I'm an elbow guy. Yeah, I'm starting the wiki feed of elbows.
Starting point is 00:00:38 It's just a bunch of like really blurry cropped photos of like elbows of different celebrities. Oh my God. Do you know there's no nerve endings in your elbow skin? That's the hottest thing about it. Yeah, I know. It's an elbow guy. I had a friend in my comparative religions class that discovered weed and would make everybody bite his elbows the beginning of every class. Oh, that's a pervert. That's a pervert. That's an elbow pervert right there. Yes. he's a, well currently he's a born again meteorologist
Starting point is 00:01:06 in North Carolina. So yes, that is a pervert. No, I can see why you'd be scared that God is angry at you if you're that kind of pervert, cause he is. But that makes it hotter for a lot of us. Brandy Posey, welcome back to the program. You want to plug anything at the top before we get too deep into elbows? Yeah, of course, before we get too deep into elbows?
Starting point is 00:01:25 Yeah, of course, before we get elbow deep into aliens. That's right. Bowen. Bowen with Robert and Brandy. Get it down, baby. Yeah, I run a comedy record label. It's called Burn This Records. We seek to create equity between our artists in a way that most comedy labels don't I have put out 17 albums last year was our first year this year. We have about 15 It's digital only and everybody is that's a lot of funny But a good person which is a Venn diagram that I wish more people in comedy paid attention to yes well, I think that's awesome, so check that out everybody and
Starting point is 00:02:04 Yes, well, I think that's awesome. So check that out everybody and Let's let's get you ready to get back into this story into these aliens and the aliens and spooks Bow deep but aliens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah speaking of bows Richard Doty Probably doesn't have nice elbows He's our Air Force Office of Special Investigations When you said when you said bows, I was like, are we talking for your hair? Are we talking? Nope. Are we talking speakers?
Starting point is 00:02:31 Are we talking? Nanny Bo. There's so many Bose. Does he have no Bose? No, no, no partners. What are we talking about? Oh yeah. You know what?
Starting point is 00:02:41 Speaking of Bose, I will let Pete, people, yesterday I wound up just because it happened as I was driving, like responding to a three car crash. And there was a young woman in the middle car who was the only one who was hurt. And she was hurt because she had a beret in like the back of her hair. That's not where it's got a claw. A claw.
Starting point is 00:02:57 The claw clip. It was a claw shaped one, yeah. Which is a no go. Anyway, don't wear those in the car. Don't wear those in the car. Do your hair, you't do not wear those in the car. Don't wear those in a car. Do your hair. You can bring your clip in the car, but do not wear it while you're in the car.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Cause it's just bad, bad. Yeah. No, I have a friend that is her sister's an ER nurse. And when she gets in her car, her whole back seat is full of those claws. Cause when he gets in her car and she throws it, she just takes it out and throws it in the back seat. Because the number one thing that she sees in her ER room
Starting point is 00:03:27 is that in women's skulls from car accidents. So, it's small. Thankfully, this lady seemed fine. I do like you saying, barrette, the way you said it. Barrette, wow, okay. You said it like so surgical. I thought that's what it was called. I thought that's what it was called.
Starting point is 00:03:41 You're not wrong, but you're also wrong. Anyway, don't wear those. And also if you're ever in a car accident and your head is hurt in any way shape or form go get checked out by a professional. Don't just assume it's okay. You don't want to wind up like that famous guy's wife. No. You got one brain man. I wasn't saying that to be flippant. It's a real problem. Yes, yes. Go to the doctor. So let's talk about fucking UFOs.
Starting point is 00:04:12 And a guy who didn't go to the doctor maybe enough or maybe went too much, I don't know. Richard Doty was born sometime around the immediate post-war period. He is, I haven't actually run into his exact... That said, I didn't go super hardcore digging into it. His father and his uncle Edward were his chief influences growing up and both were military men.
Starting point is 00:04:35 This guy is kind of an early, I think mid boomer, something like that. His uncle Edward had been a career officer and meteorologist in 1947. He'd been made chief of an Air Force Weather Research Station working on something called the Atmospheric Divergence Project. Now, decades later, because Richard Doty is not just the guy who's going to spread a bunch of lies to Paul Benowitz that helps drive him mad. He also becomes an alien influencer, claiming that, oh no, I actually did also see real aliens,
Starting point is 00:05:10 guys, and you can totally trust me. I know that my whole thing is I lied to a guy about aliens for years, but also you can trust me when I tell you about aliens that I saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I lied because I also tell the truth. That's how it works. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now that I'm out, you can trust me. So Richard Doty, the spook and liar kinda guy, also tell the truth. That's how it works. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now that I'm out, you can trust me.
Starting point is 00:05:25 So Richard Doty, the spook and liar kind of guy, has in kind of modern interviews, tells viewers that the Atmospheric Divergence Project his uncle worked on was an attempt to, quote, change or neutralize gravity around a rocket to aid in space travel. Now, I haven't found the exact details in the specific project his uncle worked on, but I don't think this is true. Because while I did not find the reports on that project, I did spend way too much of my research time reading through an Air Force handbook on meteorological techniques and atmospheric divergence impacts the growth of storm systems in a bunch of ways that are
Starting point is 00:06:01 obviously relevant to an Air Force meteorologist and not at all involved with fucking up gravity for space travel. This sounds like a normal meteorologist thing to do. Richard is a tall tail spinner. One of the issues with my sources, because I've got a bunch of articles in here that you can find, but there's also two books that I read for this. One is Sausage Spooks and Coox by Adam Go-Wrightley and one is Project Beta by Greg Bishop. Both of them are very entertaining. I think Greg's book, Project Beta, is the better book. Both of these guys also believe in stuff I don't. Particularly Bishop,
Starting point is 00:06:38 while I think he... because I've caught there's some stuff in Go-Wrightley's book that I caught that's just not factually just slips slips, that he slipped up on. I think Bishop is more familiar with the subculture, but also Bishop definitely believes a bunch of shit I don't. And he's, you can tell he kind of is excited at like talking with these spooks and spies. And I think he gives them a lot more credit than he ought to.
Starting point is 00:07:03 Oh, God, and he's caught up in the romance of it all. I think he is. Not in a way that I think makes his basic conclusions wrong or his book not worth reading. Again, I think it's actually quite worth reading. It's quite a good book and I think he's a good writer. I just don't, I'm not simpatico with him on all of the conclusions he comes to about these guys. I don't mean that as an insult to the man.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Because again, I liked his book a lot. But that is an issue when it comes to trying to figure out shit here, right? And in Project Beta, Bishop does do about the best of any of them at questioning Doty by saying, perhaps this had something to do with weather control or maybe it was something more prosaic. And it didn't. It wasn't weather control or gravity. It's just studying how this thing that affects meteorological forecasts work. Very normal thing for a meteorologist to do. Anyway, Doty joined the Air Force as a young man, just like his pa and uncle and per bishop. He entered in 1968 as a combat security policeman.
Starting point is 00:08:03 Doty would later claim he was, quote, tested and tracked throughout his career to become a base security guard and then a special agent for AFOC, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Now, that's how Doty tells the story. And I don't think he's, I don't, I think that's very silly because I'm not an expert on this, but I've known a number of people who were in different military intelligence roles. And I will tell you one thing that is very consistent. Base security guard is not a job that you are scouted for your entire career.
Starting point is 00:08:39 Right? No. Like it's kind of a shit gig, actually. Like nobody likes base security. And it's not really what most kids join wanting to do with their lives, right? No, no. It's like a step above base janitor,
Starting point is 00:08:53 but like also the same kind of. Yeah. And not to besmirch either job necessarily, but also like you're not passing security. Yeah. Yeah. I'll smudge it some. I'm smudge in a little here.
Starting point is 00:09:04 I'll let you just a scooch of smerch, we'll take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Doty really wants people to believe that he was like, he was scouted by the Air Force because like, we need a guy we can trust to do security for our very secret, very real alien projects. And like, wow, we noted from the beginning
Starting point is 00:09:22 of his time in the Air Force that he had something special, right? And that's the way he talks about his background. This is very observant of a report, but with aliens, it feels like. Yes, yes, yes. And you know, Afosi is more prestigious than base security.
Starting point is 00:09:37 He eventually does, you know, he's a special agent. He's a sergeant, but he's also a special agent for this. And that is like a more prestigious role, but also his job with an Af II isn't the most prestigious thing because other members of that agency are literally this is like The time that he's in is one of like the high points for like spy shit anywhere in the world like history, right? other guys and aphos II are locked in life-and-death spy battles with like Fucking got some of the best spies on planet earth, right?
Starting point is 00:10:07 You've got the foreign, Russian and Chinese agents. There's some really interesting shit going on here. Doty's job during this like great international game is to lie to people who believe they'd been molested by Martians. So he doesn't have the sexiest job within this sort of field, right? Not quite espionage for the capital G.
Starting point is 00:10:28 He's not James Bond, you know? There are some guys in apathy doing some really, like you talk about the ethics of it, but like interesting spy shit. He's, I mean, it is interesting, but not in the same way. I'd like to see his Bond movie though. I would like to see. Oh, for sure, yes. Yeah, this low rent Bond is definitely a movie that I'd be into.
Starting point is 00:10:48 That's kind of the premise of the Slow Horses TV show, right? Which does have what's the Commissioner Gordon's in it and he's great. I have mixed opinions on it, but he's always a charm. The original commission, well, not the original, the one from the Nolan movies. I forget his name, Gary Oldman. So Dodie today claims that right after basic training, and again, this is also bullshit, he was taken to a room and shown footage of UFOs. And like, I don't believe that if there are aliens that the government has evidence of,
Starting point is 00:11:19 obviously, there's some people that they let into that secret within military intelligence. It's not going to be anyone who just finished basic because you know who can finish basic training? Almost anyone. Like that's part of the point. Yeah. Hey, 18 year old without a frontal lobe that is fully formed. You want to see aliens right now? Like, I don't want to fuck with you specifically, maybe, but like,
Starting point is 00:11:40 not like an official constructive capacity for sure. Yeah. Hey, guy whose primary hobby is getting blackout drunk every single night of the week. Let's show you an alien video. Yeah, exactly. You know all those pushups you did? Guess what? Here's also aliens. You passed the test. Yeah. Now, this is generally described as a test. And I think that's how like Bishop describes it in his book
Starting point is 00:12:05 Is that Doty was being tested to see who or at least Doty's claims He was being tested to see you know if he could be trusted with more detailed info about extraterrestrials So I guess there's a possibility that maybe something like this did happen and it wasn't real aliens But it was just like let's show a bunch of guys alien footage and like see who leaks it right that they saw something You know see who we can trust. Stuff like, I don't think even then I kind of doubt it cause they weren't really doing that to guys who just finished basic, but shit like that is happening
Starting point is 00:12:32 within different kinds of intelligence agencies. And it's not just aliens. They lie about, disinfo is given out to people during this period of time in different intel roles just to see if they can be trusted, right? Like that's a thing that happens. Doty also claims that he served as a guard at Area 51 where he saw a UFO. Now again, Area 51 is a real base.
Starting point is 00:12:53 They are really doing experimental shit with planes there. This could be true. And in fact, the story he tells might be true, but not in a way he wants you to think. Because he claims while he's there He sees them wheeling out this huge black disc that some sort of craft that they're trying to get into the atmosphere That they like launch And it doesn't look like anything he's ever seen and his commanding officer takes him aside, right? Because he sees Dodie's fascinated in this and here's the conversation that is related in the book project beta
Starting point is 00:13:23 Fascinated in this and here's the conversation that is related in the book project beta Airman Doty, do you know what that craft was asked the officer? No, sir That's what is generally known as a UFO and it's not one of ours. It's on loan Yes, sir. Someday if you play your cards, right you will learn know a lot more But for now you are to tell no one about this and you are not to discuss it with anyone. Is that clear? Doty never talked about it again. And first off, obviously he did. He's telling us the story. Yep. I'm reading it in a book.
Starting point is 00:13:50 It's definitely been recounted several times. But also, that could be basically true and have nothing to do with aliens. He could have been on guard duty, seen a weird craft that maybe was a fucking French or Canadian thing that we were doing tests on. So it's on loan. And his boss is just kind of like, hey, you know, maybe if you play your cards right,
Starting point is 00:14:11 you'll get, we'll trust you with more stuff, right? And I don't know. I don't know if Dodie actually gets much more trust. But this could be largely accurate, although I don't think that's likely. That said, there's evidence he is work He probably that he definitely does see Experimental craft through his job for FOC later in his career because he's working at bases where they're doing that That doesn't mean that he's told what it all is because they they silo that info Even if it's your job to stop people from finding out about these programs
Starting point is 00:14:40 You may not be told much about them because it's a need to know thing and you don't, right? You need to stop people from filming the weird craft. You don't need to know how it works. You don't need to know what it is, right? Like. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They don't want curious people working on like lower levels of this stuff at all.
Starting point is 00:14:57 Like they're not, they want you to just come in and be like, my job is to do this and then have winders up to everything else. I didn't see shit. This is why I've been saying this for years The government should have all of its security done by street level drug dealers, you know Those guys can keep their fucking mouth shut, you know, absolutely ain't no snitches
Starting point is 00:15:16 Exactly Area 51 all security provided by coke dealers. Just don't give me any coke then they talk about everything Otherwise it ends very badly provided by coke dealers. Just don't give them any coke. Then they talk about everything. Yeah, yeah. You gotta keep them sober, otherwise it ends very badly. Ooh man, what a fun place. Just a bunch of sober coke dealers. Yeah, a bunch of sober coke dealers at Area 51. This is gonna end well.
Starting point is 00:15:39 So there's evidence that a lot of, you know, Doty is a credulous guy. He does come to, at least he will claim to believe in this. He might just be fucking with everybody. I don't really know. But a lot of guys in his level in different intel agencies are believers themselves. At any rate, Doty claims that his chief mentor in spy shit was a guy named Sealy Howard, a former insurance salesman. According to
Starting point is 00:16:05 Dodie, he gave him this sage advice early in his spook career. There are three sorts of people you will be dealing with. The first are the ones who will believe anything you say. The second are those who will, at least at first, refuse to believe you. The last is the group who won't believe you at first, but might be willing to be convinced. And what I find interesting about that is those last two groups are the same group of people. Yes. The people who don't believe you at first, but you can make them believe you. I don't see the difference. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:31 Yeah. No, it's just one is just on a longer timeline and eventually. Yes. Yeah, sure. So as soon as Paul Benowitz called the Air Force with results of his surveillance, they knew they might have a problem. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations very quickly became concerned that Paul Benowitz had stumbled onto a secret laser-based tracking system located in Kirtland. Greg Bishop, who wrote Project Beta, noted that these transmissions sounded like gibberish
Starting point is 00:17:00 language that had been distorted and sped up. Or to a true believer like Paul, they sounded like alien speech. Edwards, chief of Kirtland-based security, had previously described Doty to a friend at the NSA as his drug man. And so that's less cool than it sounds, as Greg Bishop writes. The duty simply involved checking for allegations of illegal drug use on the base, but it was only one of agent Doty's minor assignments. The FOC has jurisdiction over all criminal and security investigations at Air Force facilities Most FOC agents must carry a high security clearance agents need to know what they are protecting so that security threats can be recognized quickly Benowitz carefully described to Doty what he had seen and recorded all while trying to keep what he really thought was going on to
Starting point is 00:17:42 himself for the moment and This is where I think Bishop is too credulous because again, think back to Roswell. The first guy, like they don't tell the people who are looking and responding to that crashed balloon that Project Mogul exists. It's very common for these guys not to be in the loop about stuff. Right? Especially since he's just a sergeant, you know? Like he's not a super high level guy here.
Starting point is 00:18:07 That said, Doty is kind of sent to talk to Benowitz and he's like, hey, you know, why don't you come to the base and we can talk about your research? And so Paul heads to the base and he shows Doty what he's got. And Doty is initially kind of, you know, bored. And then he perks up when Paul starts to show him
Starting point is 00:18:24 his radio array. He returns to the base to talk with some NSA colleagues about bringing an expert out to Paul's home to see what he'd built. So he visits Paul at his house, and this time with an actual scientist in tow, another engineer, a guy named Lou Miles. And the fact that Paul has now been invited to the base to talk, he's had a guy come over to his house from Air Force Intelligence. Paul takes this as evidence that I'm on the right track and the Air Force supports me. I'm now kind of helping the Air Force find evidence that there's aliens. I kind of got my ex-files job
Starting point is 00:19:06 because they think I'm so cool and smart. Oh, buddy. I know, it's really sick because he's just trying to help, you know? Yeah, no, he is just trying to help. He just wants to keep his country safe. They're sizing you up, buddy, to see what kind of a threat you are.
Starting point is 00:19:21 Oh, no, my man, no, not at all. So the expert Doty brings to Paul's home is Lou Miles. Like Valdez, that state trooper, Miles was a guy who wanted to believe he had been involved to an extent with Project Blue Book, which was like a multi-year Air Force investigation into UFOs. It's one of the big seminal moments
Starting point is 00:19:42 in early UFO history, right? Yeah, yeah. He was also now the chief scientist for Kirtland's test center. So he knew the reality behind a lot of the strange aerial phenomena that guys like Paul credited to aliens. So he's both like open to believing, but also like, oh, but I know that I know what you're actually seeing and it's not aliens. It's this thing that we're working on. Nevertheless, he was good at talking to Benowitz while Doty hung back and took photos with a hidden camera for the NSA. Who was also involved in this? It's kind of murky
Starting point is 00:20:12 exactly where a FOC begins and the NSA ends and like there's some evidence the CIA is also gets involved. There's like a lot of people are kind of interested in what Paul is doing. involved. A lot of people are kind of interested in what Paul is doing. But no one's interested in Paul's evidence of alien interference. They're again, interested in whether or not he's actually gotten any encrypted shit. And they also think he might be useful because being an actually brilliant engineer working in the aerospace industry and someone who goes to these UFO conventions, he's kind of trusted within the UFO community. So if they want to get a lot of people to like pay attention to something
Starting point is 00:20:51 other than the real shady shit they're doing at Kirtland, he might be able to convince them, right? He might be able to distract attention away from the real shit that's being done that they wanna hide. So yeah, for the next year, Paul waits for updates from the military and he continues his special interest exploring extraterrestrial phenomena. In May of the next year, 1980, a 26 year old woman named Myrna Hansen called the state
Starting point is 00:21:16 police to claim that she and her six year old had been accosted by alien visitors near Eagle Nest, New Mexico. The state troopers basically shrugged and handed the case over to the only cop they knew who dealt with this sort of shit, Gabe Valdez. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe Valdez's attitude is that Murnau was probably a plant. That's not clear to me. Again, a lot of sketchy shit's going on here. Immediately doesn't trust the woman.
Starting point is 00:21:42 Okay, good. Yeah. Well, but also, this kind of shit was going on. So I don't trust the woman. Okay, yeah. But also, yeah, that's kind of shit also going on. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Man, six year old fucking with me. Right. Right. Yeah. Calls our boy Paul and they go off to meet Mirna. Now by the start of the eighties, the science of hypnotic regression, which is not really a science, had taken off among people who believed or wanted to believe that they had been abducted by aliens, right? So let me turn you into a chicken first and then tell me if you saw the aliens or not. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:11 Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to hypnotize you and then walk you like say a bunch of leading things that get you to tell a fun alien story, right? You know, a lot of this stuff is some similar shit's happening with like the satanic panic. We're just into the idea. I mean, there's a lot of this in the X-Files, right? This idea that people have memories locked away that this psychologist or psychiatrist who definitely doesn't ever wind up fucking his patients can unlock. Yeah, yeah. It's super cool.
Starting point is 00:22:39 Yeah, people aren't susceptible to being influenced to say things to right please somebody either Yes, nothing sketchy here whatsoever. Definitely not. Yeah speaking of things that aren't sketchy Sponsors of this podcast Never never they would never do anything illegal. Although we did just find out that what's that food box company has child labor So which one I'd be curious. I don't know, Sophie, which one was it? I don't remember. One of them. Anyway, here's ads.
Starting point is 00:23:14 This is David Eagleman, host of the Science Podcast, Inner Cosmos. For Valentine's Day, we're diving into the question, what is love from the brain's point of view? What does love have to do with how you were raised, or the symmetry of someone's face, or the smell of their underarms? Why does the character of love change throughout our lives? Why is heartbreak like drug withdrawal? And what does any of this have to do with sweaty t-shirts or rom-coms or monogamous
Starting point is 00:23:45 animals and the future of love and AI? Join me for this week's Inner Cosmos for a deep dive into the neurobiology of love. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Sponsors love that sort of thing. That's their problem for going dynamic. That's right.
Starting point is 00:24:17 That's right. So, Gabe called our boy Paul and off they went to meet Myrna Benowitz, who is working for that civilian organization, not working for but is like one of the head guys at APRO that civilian looking into UFO things. And like is also working with this actual sheriff's deputy partners he and and Gabe partner with a University of Wyoming professor who's a quote unquote expert in hypnotic regression. And this guy's name is literally Dr. Leo Sprinkle. Fuck yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:51 Great stuff. What a name. Great stuff. Man, good on you Leo for making it to adulthood. Yeah, that's a real boy named Sue situation. Leonardo Sprinkle. No, no. Leonardo Sprinkle.
Starting point is 00:25:04 Yeah. Oh, fuck me. So in his book, Saucers, Spooks and Cooke's, Adam Gowrightly summarizes, Benowitz by this time had convinced himself that the E.T.'s were transmitting a mind control beam to repress Myrna Hansen's memories. Benowitz believed
Starting point is 00:25:20 that the E.T.'s were likely beaming him in an attempt to disrupt his ongoing UFO probe. To thwart this extraterrestrial electronic harassment, Benowitz arranged for Hanson's regression to take place in his 1979 Lincoln Town Car with multiple sheets of aluminum foil draped over the windows to deflect the dreaded alien beams. Benowitz connected these perceived beams to cattle mutilations. It's so cool. I love this shit. I love it. He's fucking wrapping his car in 10, no he sees the aliens are blocking our memory with the beads.
Starting point is 00:25:49 Oh, he's married, right? Is he got a wife? Oh yeah, he's got a wife and she is a long suffering. I don't know much about her, but a saint, I'll say that much. No, the power of dis- She's putting up with a lot. I know the power of disassociation
Starting point is 00:26:03 this woman is capable of, man. Oh yeah. It's like, honey, I need the car to disassociation this woman is capable of. Oh, yeah. It's like, honey, I need the car to go to the grocery store. No, I have to go interview this woman. I got the aluminum cable. Where's your tin foil? Get that tin foil out. Babe, we need it for the potatoes tonight.
Starting point is 00:26:16 Absolutely not. I need it to protect us from aliens. And again, he's been talking to Dodie for months at this point. And Dodie is kind of just like every, he's yes-anding everything Paul says, right? Like, oh yeah, that sounds real, Paul, yeah, definitely. Oh yeah, no, no, aluminum foil, great idea, man. Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:26:34 So- Is this where the aluminum foil comes from? Is this like the origin of that, like this'll block waves? Part of it, yeah. I don't know that Paul is the only guy who starts it, but this is like he is on the ground floor of the aluminum foil will stop the aliens from reading your mind thing.
Starting point is 00:26:54 Yes, that's definitely fair to say. He's among, because he's very influential in this culture too. Yes, yeah, yeah. So we can see at this point, he's already kind of starting to go over the edge, right? Yeah. Paul begins writing analysis
Starting point is 00:27:05 of Myrna's hypnotic regression sessions replete with lines like, the alien does all caps kill with the beam generally. Generally, huh? Kill with the beam, huh? Yeah, where are those bodies? Where are those bodies, Polly Boy? Okay, Paul.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Now, the reality is that Hanson had just brought up a bunch of existent UFO lore during her sessions, right? She complained about missing time. She described being picked up in a tractor beam. She claimed an alien crewman had brandished a silver knife before cutting into a cow's chest. And she eventually described being taken to an underground base where a metallic device
Starting point is 00:27:43 was put inside her brain. Now, this is part of why there's some theorizing that like maybe she was a plant is this is when and Paul is the guy who really does more than anyone to start this. This is when you start getting these these UFO conspiracies about underground bases. And they're usually either like bases that are our military shares with the aliens or maybe the aliens run the base, you know. There's some stories about them having fights with the army and whatnot and these bases underground. But the real thing behind this is that a bunch of people in Albuquerque had watched, and like this is something that Paul would have seen from his house, as the Air Force
Starting point is 00:28:23 dug this massive underground nuclear storage space, like the largest weapons, underground weapons storage base ever, or at least at that point in time. And so people are like wondering, like what's this really for? And the answer is pretty evil, like it's for nukes, but. Yeah, yeah, it's the whole full of nukes, yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:43 There's a lot of theories as to why. So Hansen also claimed, per Benowitz, that she had picked up an STD described as a vaginal disease like streptococcibacillus from the aliens. Paul wrote to his colleagues at the volunteer alien hunting group that, quote, we are trying to culture it. No luck as yet. Also, it has evaded all of our known antibiotics with penicillin. Damn, nobody's doing sex ed on these aliens.
Starting point is 00:29:09 That's the problem. They gotta learn to wrap it up. Whatever it is, you gotta wrap it up though. Paul, you are an electrical engineer. I don't think that you are qualified to say that it's an unlike, it can't be like, it's gotta be an alien STD. Maybe it's a normal one.'s it's a it's got to be an alien STD. Yeah, it's a normal one.
Starting point is 00:29:26 Maybe it's just a normal one. Yeah, exactly. You're not a doctor, Paul. You should first off, you should be given this late antibiotics, Paul. You're not a doctor. You're really not. So he also revealed that Murna was being, quote, badly beaten on by the alien with their beams 24 hours a day. And once Myrna starts talking to him about how the she's just constantly being beam attacked, Paul
Starting point is 00:29:50 starts to believe that he too is being beaten on with beams. And he urges his colleagues who plan to do regression work to lock themselves in a car in a garage coated with three layers of aluminum foil to protect themselves from the beams. He's doing well, is what you'd say at this point. He's doing great. Paul, our boy Paul, very healthy and making rational choices. Oh, Paul. Paul, you've fallen so far. You were doing so good, buddy.
Starting point is 00:30:19 So Doty is occasionally checking in with Paul, but he's also spending the intervening months, you know, 79, early 1980, working on another mark. And this guy is a journalist or a quote unquote journalist, depending on how you see it, with a reputation for he is considered to be one of the more rigorous guys within the UFO community by the UFO community. Take of that what you will. His name is George Moore. At least that's how he's described in Project Beta, but also the author of Project Beta
Starting point is 00:30:49 really likes this guy and is impressed by him. So I don't feel the same way about Moore. Go Rightly's narrative makes him out to be less, more of one of an interchangeable number of UFO kind of weirdos. Although one who is you know Reached out to by the government to spread disinfo and more claims that like he's down with this, right? And the reason we're talking about him is that he is the co-author of that book that first big book that gets like UFOs back in vogue, right? He's interviewing that guy from Roswell. He's one of the guys who helps make Roswell into the thing that it is in our culture.
Starting point is 00:31:34 He's written a bunch of other stuff. He's a very influential figure within this field. That inspires Doty and a colleague to approach him. In July of 1980, Jim Lorenzen of APRO receives a letter with no return address claiming to tell the story of an 18 year old civil air patrol member who had sighted a UFO and then been threatened by a man in black named Mr. Huck.
Starting point is 00:31:56 The young man had reported this to a Mr. Dobie at Afosai. That's the Air Force, that's Doty's agency. So, Lorenzen gets this letter and he thinks it's weird and he sends it to Bill Mitchell, who's the best journalist he knows, or Bill Moore, who's the best journalist he knows, and Moore immediately is like, oh, this is bullshit. And he knows it because he does some actual journalism.
Starting point is 00:32:20 Like, he reaches out to the named witness and the witness is like, well, yeah, I saw some like weird lights But I never was I was never threatened by a man in black. Like none of the rest of this is real Man the tiniest amount of journalism Yeah, it really that's all it takes Let me just double check this. Oh, just ask this guy if this happened The letter was actually the creation of Doty and his colleagues at Afosai.
Starting point is 00:32:46 They were hoping to rope in somebody like Bill, right? Somebody smart enough to have credibility in the subculture, but also who might fall for a fake, right? They didn't succeed in tricking him, but they continued fishing in September of 1980. Moore finished a blockbuster book, The Roswell Incident, which is, yeah, that's one of the things that reignites public entrance. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. So military intelligence gets very interested after this point. And while he's doing his book tour, he keeps getting calls at radio stations where like guys will be like, hey, do you want to have a meeting? You know, I'm from a government intel agency and I'd like to talk. And he eventually agrees and he's met by a man who dresses and acts very much like a
Starting point is 00:33:28 spy in the movie. Now my opinion on what's happening here is that there's some two way feedback. Moore desperately wants to be a journalist working on classified fringe like X files kind of stories, right? And he wants to feel like he's part of this great game of spies and spooks. Now the spooks he's talking to, these are real spies, but they're not the high level operators working to unearth
Starting point is 00:33:53 Russian nuclear secrets or doing the fucking cool shit that they make movies about. They are some enlisted guys at the Air Force mostly, tasked with lying to rubes to cover up flight testing, right? And they, here's the thing, this is like a two-way street because they also wanna feel like they're doing cool spy shit, right? And so Dodie and George Moore,
Starting point is 00:34:14 part of what they're both doing, because they're both much more rational than Paul is at this point, they're kind of larping together in my opinion, you know? They're kind of like, well, Dodie, I get to play like I'm this very serious man in black and Moore's like, and I get to play like I'm fucking Fox Molder almost, right? You know, the show's not on the air at this point,
Starting point is 00:34:31 but that's what they're both getting here, right? And Moore is offered a deal by Doty and a colleague. Help us out with some odd jobs, right? We need some like deniable work that you can do and we'll pass you some classified UFO information, right? Oh, I see. Yeah, got it. Yeah. That's how that yeah. Yeah Yeah And the first dossier that Dodie and his friend hand over is bullshit like George again to some minor reporting is able to figure
Starting point is 00:34:57 This out from Bishop's book quote after a few preliminaries the question started Well, what did you discover more through the paper down on the table and trying to sound less annoyed than he actually was, replied, This whole mess is a lie. None of these people exist. The agent and Doty looked at each other and smiled. What's going on? asked Moore.
Starting point is 00:35:15 You passed the test, said the man, whom he would eventually refer to with the code name Falcon. Within a few years, Moore and his colleagues would begin to assign code names to their growing coterie of contacts so that they could talk freely about developments without fear of identification if they were overheard. And, you know, maybe this was a test. I think it's likely that they were like, OK, so you figure out this is bullshit. Let's just tell him that that was a test and then, you know, stroke his ego.
Starting point is 00:35:39 It helped believe the next thing we say, maybe. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We're going to keep refining from our side until we actually make him a believer. And he'll feel great because he's passed all these tests. So he's going to start looking less and less because of how smart he believes he is too. Right. And they hand him some shit. And he'll admit, like, I knew some of what I was putting out
Starting point is 00:35:58 into the UFO community was was bunk. But I think some of it's real, too. And like, you know, he's being a shady character here as well. Now, unlike Paul Benowitz, George is a pretty, I think a mentally resilient guy. Like he definitely is a believer to some extent, but I think he also, I don't think he takes it as seriously as Paul does, right?
Starting point is 00:36:23 I don't think this is breaking his brain. I think he's having a good time, right? My favorite story from Moore is that Doty and his partner apparently thought Moore might be gay and decided to test him by like one day when they're hanging out, they like park the car and Moore is like, and a bunch of men start walking past the car wearing tight pants or high heels and dresses
Starting point is 00:36:46 that like fit really weird. And like, it doesn't seem like they would like, are comfortable in. And apparently this is a test because they want him to troll the gay bars of Santa Monica looking for a guy that the AFOC wants for some reason. Oh my God. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:37:04 It was a slow day in the office when they came up with it. It was like, yeah, we got to do something this weekend, right? All right. So Dodie and his colleagues, they get some of what they want out of more, right? He launder some info into the UFO community, some of the disinfo they want to distract from their real programs. But he's also not he's he's a little too smart, right? He's not willing to destroy himself publicly as much as was necessary for the kind of misinformation that they wanted to get out. And this is where Paul Benowitz reenters the story.
Starting point is 00:37:33 It is obvious by 80 81 that this is a guy who was not well, but also he's respected and he is a guy who because of his tech acumen might endanger some top secret operations. So yeah, the decision was basically made, let's fuck them up a little, right? Paul gets invited to give a speech at Kirtland and most of the attendees leave before he's done. But like one of them is like, oh, this is really interesting stuff, Paul. And that just lights his ego on fire. Paul, so happy to hear this.
Starting point is 00:38:04 He applies for Air Force grants, which he does not receive, but he apparently gets an NSA grant. And I think that's maybe the NSA fucking with him because some real fuckery is about to happen here. I love an ironic grant. It's ironic grant money still spends. It's a little more messed up than even that. So Dodie is now spending hours with Paul Benowitz and he claims that they became friends and
Starting point is 00:38:30 that he found the orders he received to spread lies to Paul personally distasteful. If you watch the documentary Mirageman, you'll see a lot of Doty and he does express a degree of what kind of feels like real regret over what he did to Paul. He is also a spy and a professional liar. So I don't know that I believe he's really, or he just knows that he needs to perform regret, right? I think that's probably likelier. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:55 So what's, what do you think like the, like the internal notes of a person that it constantly lies are like, is it just like a notebook? Is it like a series of post-its around their house? How do you keep that shit straight? It sounds exhausting. One of the things that you get when you like read these stories and like the way in which a lot of the writers and quote unquote journalists who cover this stuff, the degree of credulity they have to these guys stories. The thing that becomes clear to me is like, oh, this is your first time being lied to by a weirdo in the desert.
Starting point is 00:39:30 I spent a lot of my childhood and like, not childhood, young adulthood in off grid places just listening to lies from dudes at bars and stuff. I've heard a lot of crazy stories that definitely aren't true. And that's a ton of fun. But I think some of these these people just like, decide they want to live as if that's real. You know? That's fair. Yeah. How many times how many timeshares do you think they own? It feels like oh my god, these guys are these guys are very, very vulnerable to time shares. On some of his early visits to hang with Paul, he's shown a complex computer system, Doty
Starting point is 00:40:10 is, that Benowitz had constructed and had his employees help him build to translate these encrypted messages. It's unclear what's actually happening. Is he just getting random static and then running it through an algorithm to create text based on that? And then kind of going through it almost like it's one of those word puzzles and just picking up words out of a feed of words and then saying, oh, this is a message from the aliens, right? Because some people will say, it looked like gibberish to me, but he would pull out you know, five or six words from this like paragraph of nonsense and say like, this is
Starting point is 00:40:48 the real message, right? Yeah. And this is a quote from Doty. Benowitz had the computer rigged up to antennas on his roof that included a small microwave dish and he would look at the screen and there would be images on the screen that certainly wasn't an alien, but he was convinced that it was. I would actually tell him, I don't see anything. And he said, I see it and I can hear them.
Starting point is 00:41:08 And he had these earphones he would put on and he said, I can hear them talking. And I asked Paul, what language are they speaking? He said, they're speaking their language. And he wrote a hundred page document about the alien language. When he went out to Kirtland to give his presentation to all these generals, he presented them with that information. So the NSA, and this is probably where the NSA gets heavily involved and maybe why they give him that grant because a plan gets hatched to gift Paul with a new computer, right?
Starting point is 00:41:37 That he's told is a gift from AFOC. Some accounts, maybe Doty offered him the machine. The story we hear more often is that an Air Force consultant named Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who's a former scientific advisor for Project Blue Book and a big guy in the alien community now, I think he denies this, but you'll hear that too. We don't really know exactly what happened here because I've also heard the NSA did it. I've heard that the Air Force did it. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:42:07 Adam Gorightly notes, this computer had been provided at the behest of the US Air Force and embedded in the software was a code that generated an alien language. With the aid of the Air Force computer, Benowitz claimed he established constant direct communications with the alien using a form of hex decimal code with graphics and printout. What's happening here probably is that because some versions of the story say that the NSA was literally set up across the street in a rented house sending messages directly to Paul's computer. It was maybe a little less direct than that, but basically he's got this machine that's probably programmed to allow them
Starting point is 00:42:47 to send him fake messages from aliens. And so he starts getting messages like this. "'Ground, ground, women of earth are needed. "'Flexible, the next discharges our ship. "'Women do not command the north among us. "'You have many friends. "'Water, very short. "'Resist all attempts at alteration.
Starting point is 00:43:03 "'Listen, orange, make peace." And Paul doesn't know what to make of this. He becomes convinced actually that this is the aliens trying to trick him into thinking that they're peaceful, but he knows they're really dangerous. Oh, he's so close. He's getting there. Yeah, he's getting there.
Starting point is 00:43:18 Yeah. Greg Valdez, who's Gabe's son, visited Benowitz during this period, and he described seeing the computer in use. He would type a question into the computer in a very complex-for-the-time period form of a computer program, much like a current email. Much to everyone's surprise, he would get an answer to the questions he was asking. Sometimes he would get an immediate response, and sometimes it would take several minutes.
Starting point is 00:43:40 He would even receive very crude and basic pictures or graphics on his computer of these aliens. Some of these aliens. Some of these pictures resembled birds with reptile features and some resembled reptiles with bird features. During this question and answer session, Gabe instructed Paul to ask the simple question, where are you from? Paul already knew the answer to the question because he had already asked the question and he answered it verbally when a response came back on the computer.
Starting point is 00:44:02 It simply said the zeta reticulis star system. So they're now really fucking with this guy in a way that's very irresponsible. I mean, I wanna know who is writing this stuff because that's the best job on the base. Right, maybe Dodie. It's probably a team of guys, right? Probably, yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:21 Because Dodie, there's some evidence he was working with the NSA. So maybe it's multiple, almost certainly multiple people feeding him bullshit. But yeah, the result is that Paul Gross convinced that the US government has signed a treaty with aliens, perhaps to breed some sort of hybrids. And they've been given real estate in an underground base near Dulce, New Mexico. This paid played the happy dual role of covering up ongoing weird experiments around Dulce, you know, there's that poison gas fucking hole, and diverting the attention of Paul and others away from Kirtland Air
Starting point is 00:44:57 Force base and towards somewhere less harmful, right for their ends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Now, during his communications with the ETs, Paul became convinced that there was a secret war going on. Dozens of base security in Dulce had been murdered by the aliens in a gunfight. He wrote up plans to lay siege to Dulce base and began working to develop a sort of beam weapon
Starting point is 00:45:20 that could kill aliens. Now- Oh, Paul, Well, okay. Yeah, now we're making beam weapons, huh buddy? Oh yeah. He was like, I better hope the aliens don't have aluminum foil. Listen folks, if you have a friend
Starting point is 00:45:33 who's making beam weapons to fight the underground aliens, I actually don't know how you should handle that situation, but probably don't give him a computer that lies to him. I think you gotta sign him up for bowling league or something. I think you gotta- Get up for bowling league or something. I think you gotta- Get him bowling, yeah. Let's get some more social contact hobbies.
Starting point is 00:45:50 Take him out camping maybe. Fill out that social schedule a little bit more. You know what, see if he wants to play D&D, maybe his imagination needs a little bit of a workout. That might be great, yeah. Yeah. Now if a lot of this sounds like the overarching conspiracy plot for the first five seasons of The X-Files, that's because this is almost certainly the direct inspiration for a lot
Starting point is 00:46:09 of The X-Files. This is in fact, because this is all happening in the 80s, not long before The X-Files starts. Yeah. So, Benowitz, as he's communicating with these aliens, he's gathering information on this secret underground base and this war he believes is going on underneath everyone's noses. He's sending back everything he's getting to special agent Doty, his good friend. And Doty dutifully forwards this up the chain and encourages Paul, keep digging. You're getting close.
Starting point is 00:46:36 He's doing the deep throat thing, right? He's like, keep digging, agent Mulder. Yeah, yeah. They're so close. They're going to get there. Yeah, yeah. He's telling him that the aliens at Dulce base had been responsible for what he'd seen over Kirtland. And he does this because he's like, oh yeah, man, you know what? I ran it up the flagpole and that underground base, that's why you were seeing those weird lights. Don't look near the
Starting point is 00:47:00 Air Force base. Keep hanging out around Dulce. That know? That's where the shit's going on, right? Yeah. Go Rightly claims, the ultimate intent of stringing Benowitz along, according to researchers like Greg Bishop and Christian Lambrite, was to shift Benowitz's attention away from Kirtland to a remote area like the Archuleta Mesa near Dulce,
Starting point is 00:47:20 where Afosai could ramp up their disinformation operation and more easily stage UFO events. Speaking of staged, you know what's not staged is the reliability of our sponsors. That's completely legitimate. Don't even question it. Don't think about it. Hand over your credit card information.
Starting point is 00:47:42 Text it to me. I'll buy stuff for you. This is David Eagleman, host of the science podcast, Inner Cosmos. For Valentine's Day, we're diving into the question, what is love from the brain's point of view? What does love have to do with how you were raised, or the symmetry of someone's face, or the smell of their underarms? Why does the character of love change throughout our lives?
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Starting point is 00:48:35 or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so near the end of 1981, Richard Doty convinces his superiors to let him take Paul on a special helicopter flight around the Archuleta Mesa. Since Paul is a pilot and they see some stuff, you know, there's some, and apparently Doty claims that he and other agents put out props, right,
Starting point is 00:49:00 to look like air vents for the secret underground base and other evidence, right? This is so crazy. There the secret underground base and other evidence, right? This is so crazy. There's an art director involved. Yeah, there's an art director. It's become a full production. There's production meetings about what to do to this poor man. Yeah, they're having pitches and stuff. They've got pitch meetings on fucking with this guy. There's a whole, there's a prop team now. Yes. Oh no.
Starting point is 00:49:26 So because Paul's a pilot, after this first trip, he follows this by doing his own recon flights over the area and he gets very obsessed with this. And I have some questions. I don't know if I believe Doty entirely that like he's being handed all of the men and equipment necessary to carry out a staged operation on the scale he describes.
Starting point is 00:49:47 But also it's possible, and in fact, maybe likely, Paul is sometimes seeing some real stuff. He reports seeing what he describes as a crashed Delta wing aircraft. And in this area at this time, they're working on prototypes of the stealth bomber, which looks like that. Yeah. And in fact, Greg Bishop's Project Beta, that's his basic conclusion, is that Paul might have seen some of the testing stages of the prototype of the stealth bomber, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:19 And maybe that was part of what Doty was doing, was if we get this guy to talk about, if we, if we show, if we get, if we let this guy see a little bit of the real stealth bomber program, but convince them it's aliens, then anybody who's talking about like a Delta wing aircraft, right, will be like, oh, you're just talking about a UFO, not this actual thing that we're working on. Right? Yeah, exactly. Let's get everybody off the scent once again.
Starting point is 00:50:41 So maybe that's what's happening, or maybe it was just an easy thing to make look like a plane from the air. Shit like this. They do this in World War Two a bunch. We do it and actually the Nazis do it too. Where you'll like make basically fake out of like wooden shit and spray paint tanks and stuff. So people think there's an army where it isn't right. So oh yeah. Yeah. Where I'm from in Maryland, there's a there's a fake cop car on like one of the high Is up just to slow you down? Love that shit Now there are other claims about what happened to Paul and his wife during this period that are more questionable
Starting point is 00:51:17 One write-up I found by the cyber Thetic project claims that Paul and his wife developed red sores or perhaps some sort of rashes on their body. I've seen that a few times. The Cyberthetic Project describes itself as a token project with a mission to unite holders so that they can communicate in an open forum on the blockchain without fear of being judged or censored. So you'd be right about questioning it as a source. That said, this is all a lot of fun, so I'm going to quote from it anyway.
Starting point is 00:51:44 Just a lot of fun, so I'm going to quote from it anyway. Just, you know, a lot of salt here. It has since been revealed that the NSA was in possession of sensitive documents concerning advanced technologies such as active denial systems and active denial technology. These technologies were apparently being developed by Sandia Labs and Kirtglund Air Force Base, with the aim of producing a non-lethal weapon that could be used against enemies. Were they using this technology on the Benowitz family? The answer to that is also unclear. What is clear is that Paul and his wife were being physically impacted by his research into UFOs. And that's maybe not like I don't I think probably likelier than some sort of weird beam weapon is that
Starting point is 00:52:20 Paul is losing his mind and he and his wife are both very stressed out by this and convinced that they're being targeted by aliens. And they have like shingles, a stress rash, like all sorts of shit, you know? Oh yeah, it feels like they probably would have like broken out in some sort of like, yeah, stress rash of some kind. Like, yes, that's fair.
Starting point is 00:52:38 I have several friends from the California fires that had them a week ago. Right, right. Imagine prolonged experience to potential aliens for years. Yeah, you have rashes too. Right. I don't think that that's it. It's all unlikely that something like that is the case here. Yeah. So as he grew more obsessed with seeking out the truth, Paul's business declined, which is another reason why maybe he's dealing with some stress related problems.
Starting point is 00:53:05 Oh, God, his poor office manager. He's just like, I just need you to sign off on this. Paul, we just really need to make this sensor, man. Can we? Okay. You've got the whole team working on translating alien speech. All right. Well, I'm going to maybe print out some resumes.
Starting point is 00:53:21 Yeah, exactly. In 1978, Thunder Scientific had 30 employees by 1981. The number was down by almost half. He starts hiding like guns and knives around his home as the 1980s wore on, because he's just incredibly paranoid now. And he continues to attend UFO events throughout the mid to late 1980s. His yarn about Dulce base, which was almost certainly invented or at least heavily egged on by Richard Doty, had been a magnificent success. In 1987, John Lear, a prominent ufologist, stated that he had independently confirmed elements of Benowitz's story, that there's this underground base at a Dulce. Several books in the late 1980s published their own variants of the story, which helped
Starting point is 00:54:07 to spark a paranoid belief in secret underground alien bases that is still a significant part of QAnon today. Like a lot of QAnon guys believe that there's a base under the Getty in Los Angeles. That's why I didn't burn. That's why I didn't burn. They kept it safe. That's where they keep the kids. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:54:24 Center or Villa? I where they keep the kids. Yeah, exactly. Center or villa? I think it's the center. Either way, do a pizza gate at both places. Sophie, you know what? No, that didn't end well for that guy. There's a lot that's sad about this, but one of the worst things is that Paul had almost certainly stumbled upon a very real
Starting point is 00:54:41 and very important conspiracy at Kirtland. See, today, Kirtland Air Force Base is a major testing site for advanced drone technology, including weapon systems to defeat drone swarms and other experimental tech. We know that in 1980, a black mystery vehicle was spotted at the base. This is right around the same time Paul is making his initial reports. Sophie's going to show you a picture of this mystery vehicle that is being tested at Kirtland Air Force Base, when Paul is observing shit, right?
Starting point is 00:55:09 It looks kind of like an SR-71, but it's like a drone version almost. This was apparently, now we know this was called at the time a TDUX tow target. A write-up in the war zone describes it as a high-speed towed aerial target to support the testing of infrared and electronic countermeasures or IRCM and ECM respectively. Something like this would both look very weird in the sky and also might put off some of
Starting point is 00:55:38 the signals that Paul was, you know, received. Yeah. Right. Now, I don't know if this is what he saw, or it was other stuff, because other shit is being tested at Kirtland, including precursors to our modern drone program, right? Paul very likely came across evidence
Starting point is 00:55:54 of the development of unmanned weapons systems that have gone on to kill huge numbers of people. No aliens need to be involved at all for this to both make sense and be a real conspiracy theory. It's also very likely Doody wasn't fully in the loop as to what was being developed there because he wouldn't need to be. And in fact, the more he believed the bullshit
Starting point is 00:56:13 he was pushing on Paul, the safer the real secrets were. In 1988, yep, yep, cool stuff. The drone program, it always comes back to that. Hooray, so exciting. but they make pretty firework alternatives. It's fine It's all good stuff. Oh Yeah, don't worry. They can form Steve Harvey in the sky. Yeah, they can make it's fine That what if they the aliens love Steve Harvey? Oh my god, Paul Benowitz went to the Air Force I keep seeing Steve Harvey's face in the night sky.
Starting point is 00:56:47 I don't know what's going on. In 1988, Paul published plans for an assault on Dulce base, which he'd become convinced was the nexus of an alien plan to control the world. That same year, he became convinced that his wife was working with the aliens or perhaps in control of the entire alien conspiracy. Or wife.
Starting point is 00:57:08 Yeah, she's really putting, she's really going through it here. And in this passage from Gil Reitley's book, which is based on interviews with Bill Moore and Richard Doty, he describes a profoundly ill man. Both Bill Moore and Richard Doty on separate occasions witnessed first-hand Benowitz's mounting paranoia, describing him as spun out and barricaded inside his home, chain smoking cigarettes, waiting in fevered anticipation for the final ET showdown. In Project Beta, Greg Bishop recounted, Benowitz told Moore that after the aliens injected him they would make him drive his car into the desert in the middle of the night, but
Starting point is 00:57:42 he couldn't remember what he did after he got there. Around this time, Benowitz's family committed him to a mental health facility for nervous exhaustion. You will sometimes hear it errantly stated that he commits suicide as a result of this. He does not. This thankfully doesn't have as sad a story as it might. Paul gets out after about a month and he seems to have pulled himself out of the UFO community after this point And his wife stay together. They're married more than 50 years and he lives until 2003
Starting point is 00:58:14 So, you know kind of a happy ending but boy it didn't it almost wasn't Yeah, for real man Also shout out to the place he was committed, apparently. Apparently they did the job, yeah. That's some serious deep programming. Paul, Paul, man, you gotta stop. You gotta stop using the computer the NSA gave you.
Starting point is 00:58:39 Yeah, we have a computer man. Man, some poor doctor just cracked all of their knuckles and said, all right, let's get into it. Paul, we need to have a long conversation about things that are real and things that aren't. So Richard Doty would eventually retire from the Air Force and spend much of his retirement and golden years
Starting point is 00:58:57 doing the UFO convention circuit. He came, he will say that he was hired to consult on two seasons of the X-Files and that he wrote the screenplay for an episode. He's not credited as the writer for that episode. But you know, his stuff definitely helps inspire The X-Files, right? Like he is for sure involved in what becomes The X-Files purely because of like his role in UFO culture. I'm sure he wrote a script. Yeah, I'm sure he wrote a script, but.
Starting point is 00:59:26 Yeah, I'm sure he wrote a script, yeah. Yeah. A lot of people have written scripts. And he is, he's a member of a couple of different organizations now. He's a very controversial figure within the UFO community because he both definitely worked for Air Force Intelligence and tells a lot of stories
Starting point is 00:59:44 about seeing aliens he claims to have literally seen them and also admits that he lied about aliens for years to a guy who nearly lost his mind forever. I wouldn't trust him. But for an idea of how Richard Doty presents himself now, here's a clip from him on the New Realities YouTube channel being interviewed by a UFO ology author named Alan Steinfeld. Steinfeld.
Starting point is 01:00:09 I mean, you're no longer working for the Air Force Intelligence, right? But- That's right, that's right. I don't work for Air Force Intelligence. I mean, I'll just say. Well, don't be offended by this question, but how do we know you're still not working for them
Starting point is 01:00:24 and you're just saying you're not working for them? Well, there's a lot of controversy over that. But number one, I wouldn't have any reason to. I left the agency, left the intelligence agency back in 1988. Although people bring up the fact that I was brought back to active service in 91 and 93, but that had nothing to do with UFOs or disinformation. It had to do with what I did in Europe when after the wall fell. So I work as a private investigator. I have no connections, official connections with the United States government or intelligence community. I do have a lot of friends that still work within
Starting point is 01:01:13 the intelligence community and they feed me a lot of information that I share with you. I mean, I shared it with you at the Opho Megacon.. So, yeah, I mean, I think he's still, I even found an interview where he's like talked about, like he's asked about like, cause Tom DeLong of Blink 182 is a big guy and is involved with Doty in one of the organizations he's in. And one of the interviews is like,
Starting point is 01:01:38 are you doing a Paul Benowitz to Tom DeLong? He's like, of course not. I would never. I absolutely would never do that. I think he might be doing a Paul Benowitz on a DeLong. He's like, of course not. I would never. I absolutely would never do that. I think he might be doing a Paul Benowitz on a couple of guys. Maybe that's just fun for him. Yeah. It reminds me of what's the... In the Tanya Harding, in the assault of Nancy Kerrigan, Tanya Harding.
Starting point is 01:02:02 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The Galooly and his idiot friend, the amount of bullshit that they just believe about themselves and talk about. The other guy, Eckhart, he talked about how he was a special forces guy and had all this shit made up. You're like, damn, you believe this though. I've heard so many fun lies about being special forces from dudes like especially out in like the mountains like every old man you meet who like
Starting point is 01:02:31 Will tell you about all of the crazy shit. He did in Vietnam And it's it's just always it's always nonsense like yeah I know a guy who's out we're in the little mountain town where I used to live who was a SEAL team member during Vietnam and His reaction was very different which was like he handed me a book that was written about Like him and his colleagues and was like you want to know anything just read that I don't like talking about it Yeah, if you've actually done any of this stuff, you're like, it's not it's not what it's not the movies, but it's kind of a bad time I have a lot to answer for and process didn't like it not not happy with how that all went No, not worth the free beer to talk about a job really no. Yeah
Starting point is 01:03:17 Anyway, well That's the aliens or not, but maybe there's aliens. I don't know This is not conclusive on that matter one way or the other That's the aliens. Or not. But maybe there's aliens. I don't know. This is not conclusive on that matter one way or the other. But there's definitely a bunch of spy agencies who will lie to you and destroy your brain if they think it will help them hide the fact that they're making some fucked up shit to kill people in other countries. Of course.
Starting point is 01:03:41 Maybe the alien was inside of view listener the entire time The real alien was always the military industrial complex Exactly because you know define what an alien is. It's something that works against like the good of humanity then in that case The government is wrong by aliens Yeah, I don't know who knows who knows what's out there? Or in here, apparently. Yep. But what is out there and what is in here are your pluggables, Brandi. Bam! What a transition. Shabam! Nice work.
Starting point is 01:04:16 Thanks, Sophie. Yeah, you can find me online at Branddazzle on all of the platforms, including the new ones and the old ones. My podcast is called Lady to Lady, comes out every Wednesday and has been around for 13 years. Burn This Records is my comedy label that I run where I put out amazing comedy albums and people all over the country that are very funny and also good people. And then I have my own album coming out on that label at the in the middle of
Starting point is 01:04:54 March and I would love for you to buy it. That'd be amazing. Oh, yeah, Brady posy comm has all the information for all of the things But yeah come say hi. I if you're a fan of the show you like me. I promise so come on over All right, everybody. Well, that's the episode. Until next time, again, folks, I say this every time. Head to Kirtland Air Force Base, get a camera out and just start filming and go slowly insane. Get a pilot's license, fly over some random mesa. Parody, parody. Just do some shit. You know? Why not?
Starting point is 01:05:24 Nothing bad can happen. Or don't. Look, the world's going to hell in a hand basket. You might as well lose your mind about some alien shit. If you wanna test your relationship, go down an alien hole. See if your wife really loves you. This is the only way to know.
Starting point is 01:05:40 It's the only way to know. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, It's the only way to know.

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