Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth [Paperback]

Greg Bishop (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 8, 2005

THE HORRIFYING TRUE STORY OF A GOVERNMENT-AUTHORIZED CAMPAIGN OF DISINFORMATION THAT DEFINED AN ERA OF ALIEN PARANOIA AND DESTROYED ONE MAN'S LIFE.

In 1978, Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, engaged in some aggressive radio monitoring of the nearby Sandia Labs, then managed by the Department of Defense. When he became convinced that the strange lights hovering over the labs and Kirtland Air Force Base signaled the vanguard of an extraterrestrial alien invasion, he began writing TV stations, newspapers, senators -- and even President Reagan -- to alert them.

For the most part Bennewitz received form-letter replies, but Air Force investigators paid him a visit, as did Bill Moore, author of the first book on the Roswell incident. Before long Moore -- then a new force in civilian UFO research -- was tapped by a group of intelligence agents and a deal was struck: Moore was to keep tabs on Bennewitz while the Air Force ran a psychological profile and disinformation campaign on the unsuspecting physicist. In return, Air Force Intelligence would let Moore in on classified UFO material.

This is Bennewitz's harrowing tale, told by fringe-culture historian Greg Bishop. It is the troubling account of the custom-made hall of smoke and mirrors that eventually drove Bennewitz to a mental institution, as well as the story of the explosive propagation of disinformation that began in 1979 and reverberates through the UFO community and pop culture to this day.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This allegedly true tale of government secrecy reads like the entire story arc of the X-Files. Covering topics like alien invasion, UFOs, paranoia, cover-ups and smear campaigns, this book has all the elements of a compelling-though not entirely believable-yarn, but the narrative never gels into such a tale. In a nutshell, Bishop's story centers around the now-deceased Paul Bennewitz, a hapless electrical physicist living near Kirtland Air Force Base outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bennewitz detected what he believed to be signs of alien contact and began to grow alarmed, even panicked, by his observations. The book contends that while Bennewitz inadvertently did get close to something top secret, various government agencies fed him lies and disinformation to keep him believing in an imminent alien invasion until he was completely discredited and utterly insane. Eventually, author and UFO researcher Bill Moore was recruited as a mole to help in the disinformation campaign against Bennewitz. While hardcore UFO aficionados will no doubt salivate over the accusations, details and techie tidbits contained herein, Bishop never conveys a real sense of Bennewitz's personality and motivations, and neither Bennewitz nor Moore emerge as fully fleshed out individuals. Instead, Bishop tells readers that Bennewitz was a "genius at figuring things out" and "his Achilles heel was his credulity." It would have been nice to understand the broken man at the center of it all, but as it is, Mulder and Scully seem more three dimensional than the players in this narrative. Photos.
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Review

"This is both a true story and a little known but extremely important event in the social history of the fringe movements that swept America during the 1990s."

-- Paul Davids, Executive Producer for Showtime's Roswell

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Gallery Books; Original edition (February 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743470923
• ISBN-13: 978-0743470926
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Disinformation on disinformation February 25, 2005

By Stuart Miller

Format:Paperback

Unfortunately, Greg Bishop's book has already been misinterpreted. It has been claimed in other reviews here and indeed elsewhere that the book alleges that the entire UFO story is one that has been made up by various US intelligence agencies. This is quite simply not true and not only does the book state this clearly but quotes the chief protaganist, Richard Doty as saying that he accepted there were real ETs, real UFOs, and that we have been visited. Please read the book carefully.

And what you will read, if you do, is a masterful treatise on exactly how the US intelligence agencies have historically used the UFO phenomena for their own advantage in order to plant false information in the minds of those they want to target. And why would they do this? To lead them away from black budget activities that they would rather people didn't look at.

It does mean though that as a result of the activities of AFOSI, some of the tennets of modern ufology are false. It is extremely unlikely for example that there ever was an underground base at Dulce and that means no firefight and no large jars of embryonic humans etc.. The book also strongly suggests that cattle mutilations and the way they were carried out are comfortably within the scope of human ability.

This isn't a novel, it's a factual account of historical events with the main character already passed on at the time of writing and given these circumstances and the background this all falls into, Greg has done a marvelous job in bringing the personalities to light. Bennewitz is portrayed as brilliant, nay a genius, and yet at the same time deeply flawed by naivete. Bill Moore comes over as much a victim as anyone else and even Richard Doty is portrayed as having some humanity. What may indeed surprise some folk is that Greg does not paint the intelligence agencies as disgustingly evil. He demonstrates how they did their job and what their motivations were. There is an underlying level of respect shown towards them. In the end, it came down to one man's life against the potential loss of a great many other lives and while no normal people like to play god, in this case the choice was clear.

There are unintended lighter moments in the book and these can be found in the spying activities of Doty and his colleagues. A picture is painted of Bennewitz stepping out of his front door to go somewhere while almost simultaneously the spooks are stepping in through the back. It comes over as some neo British stage farce and all that appeared to be missing was Brian Rix dropping his trousers. Furthermore, Kirtland AFB seemed at the time to be like a three ringed circus with "dozens" of different intelligence agencies stationed at the base, all carrying out their own black projects with no one knowing what the other was doing.

This is a masterful account that needed to be written and the UFO community has nothing to fear from it. It will take one hell of a book to be published this year that betters this from a Ufological perspective.

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best contributions to UFO research February 3, 2005

By Nick Redfern

Format:Paperback

The Excluded Middle editor, radio host, author and lecturer Greg Bishop has provided the field of UFO research with what is without doubt one if its major, published contributions. The subject matter of Project Beta is an unusual one; and were it not for the fact that the story is meticulously detailed, referenced and researched, the reader might be forgiven for thinking that they had stumbled upon a high-tech, X-Files-meets-Robert Ludlum-style thriller. But Project Beta tells a very real story - and one that is as harrowing as it is informative.

In essence, the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction book relates the story of physicist Paul Bennewitz, who after stumbling upon Air Force and National Security Agency secrets that he believes are connected to the activities of sinister extraterrestrials and UFOs, is bombarded by the murky world of officialdom with a mass of disinformation, faked stories and outright lies in order to both divert him from his research and lead to his mental and psychological disintegration.

While anyone and everyone with an interest in UFOs should read Greg's book, it is unlikely to please some - particularly the I-want-to-believe crowd that foam at the mouth whenever the words "underground base," "cattle mutilations," and "alien abductions" surface. As Greg shows, many of the cornerstones upon which today's ufological lore are built, had their origins in the fertile minds of military intelligence and the behind-the-scenes spook-brigade.

The UFO truth might not be "out there" after all - it may all be one big con behind which a veritable plethora of classified, military projects have been hidden.

Hopefully, Project Beta will open the floodgates that lead to questions being asked at a higher, official level about the Bennewitz affair, and those who manipulated the man to the point of collapse will be made to answer for their actions.

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Adventures in Deception March 12, 2005

By Terry W. Hansen

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I wanted to like this book but in the end found it unsatisfying. The topic - military disinformation - is interesting and worthy enough but the book fails to live up to its potential in several respects.

First, the author himself cannot always distinguish between information and disinformation about UFOs, a subject with which he seems only moderately conversant. He signals his confusion from the very start, when he cites a bogus claim by (evidently) CIA historian Gerald K. Haines. In 1997, Haines claimed that the CIA used UFO reports as cover for spy planes such as the U-2, and that the Air Force knowingly went along with this deception. Always ready to accept CIA material, the `New York Times' ingested the story - hook, line, and sinker. And thus another bogus claim became historical fact.

There are many problems with the claim. First, the CIA is never a credible source about its own history. After all, it is in business to deceive. Second, spy plane flights were too few in number to account for many UFO reports and they were carried out in areas far from public view. Third, the black U-2 and A-12 "Oxcart" flew at very high altitudes and were difficult to detect both visually and (in the case of the A-12) on radar. Fourth, UFO reports of the era bear little if any resemblance to the flight characteristics of high-altitude spy planes. But most fatally, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Robert Friend, head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book from 1958 to 1963, later said there is absolutely no truth to the CIA's claims. Not only was Haines wrong about an agreement between the CIA and Air Force but Friend said he never received a single UFO report that he thought could be attributed to a spy plane. Oops!

Although Bishop is occasionally taken in by such tall tales, he is normally more skeptical. His book would have been far more useful if he had used footnotes to indicate the sources of his (mis)information. Any book that aims to distinguish between lies and truth should at least make clear its sources.

Project Beta is ostensibly the story of Paul Bennewitz, a loyal American fed a steady diet of intellectual rusty nails and broken glass by the U.S. intelligence community until he went slowly mad. But it has even more to do with the adventures of Bill Moore, the UFO investigator turned intelligence asset, who vainly hoped to penetrate the secrecy that has surrounded UFOs since the 1940s. Bishop has pulled together some entertaining accounts of life in this wilderness of mirrors. The author jumps back and forth through time and often wanders off on distracting tangents but eventually manages to come back to the main topic.

Perhaps most disappointing is the author's lack of moral outrage at the picture he paints. He seems to accept that the institutionalized deception that has spread throughout American society was an unavoidable cost of defeating the Evil Soviet Empire. To fight a dragon we had to become a dragon ourselves. Thus, the sacrifice of Bennewitz, a loyal American who only sought to help his country, was readily justifiable on "national security" grounds. Bishop evinces little concern about the contempt with which military officials now regard both American citizens and their elected officials. Nor does he seem to appreciate the corrosive effect military deception has had upon a society that hopes to remain a democratic republic.

It seems just as likely that the U.S. military has used secrecy and deception to protect itself from public scrutiny and accountability, rather than to defend the nation. The darkest secret within the many layers of deception is that many of the weapons programs that are helping to bankrupt our nation don't work as advertised and were unnecessary in the first place.