Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

As a former Board Member of the Fair Witness Project (Pg. 49) I can tell you that this is an insightful look into UFOs and the U.S. Government. I predict this book will be ignored by many mainstream UFO Researchers who need to understand this story more than anyone. If you can't be in on the conversation, at least be in the room. There is much to learn here. Highly Recommended!

Sub-Title: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth

This is one of those books that I really have to wonder about. It is certainly something that the conspiracy buffs will love. It says that Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist living in Albuquerque observed strange lights and detected radio messages from the nearby Kirkland Air Force Base. OK so far.

It then says that the Government then planned and executed a deliberate disinformation program to Mr. Bennewitz. The Government program was intended to make him believe that these were extraterrestrial visitors. In fact, the book claims that the whole idea of UFO's came from the Government's furtile imagination. Further, from this start the whole UFO community got its basic set of beliefs defined for them by the Government.

One point I definitely don't believe, the author says that pictures taken of a complex of buildings are made to disappear when developed. That one just doesn't ring.

In spite of this problem, anyone interested in UFO's should find this book very interesting.

In 1978 Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist in New Mexico, began monitoring the radio transmissions of the nearby Sandia Labs, convinced the strange lights hovering over the labs were evidence of an extraterrestrial alien invasion. His letter-writing campaign to the media and even the President to alert them resulted in an alliance between Air Force investigators and Bill Moore, author of the first Roswell incident book to keep tabs on him. The mystery eventually drove Bennewitz to a mental institution and the alliance prompted the spread of misinformation on the topic which began in 1989 and continues to this day. Project Beta is informative, engaging reading from cover to cover.

It's difficult to reach any profound conclusion about the volume of events discussed in PROJECT BETA: THE STORY OF PAUL BENNEWITZ, NATIONAL SECURITY, AND THE CREATION OF A MODERN UFO MYTH; much like the title alone, the information presented isn't necesssarily additive to any other result but "don't believe what you were just told."

Of course, this fact goes hand-in-hand with the book's subject: Bennewitz, an inventor and businessman, discovers possibly 'irrefutable' scientific evidence that something 'alien' is taking place involving the DOD's Sandia Labs. Monitored and decoded radio transmissions give the appearance that the Earth is being considered ripe for invasion by an unseen alien force. Rather than find his efforts stymied by the military, Bennewitz finds himself a sort of confidante by a plethora of insiders, all whom poke and prod the man to continue his work in possibly fradulent avenues. For the next decade, he finds himself pushed to his psychological limit, believing that he has somehow been placed in a clandestine race to save mankind partnered with Air Force investigators unwilling to do anything about it.

Of course, the principle problem with constructing an account about disinformation is that the author is showing you his cards at the poker table. Greg Bishop knows that the reader will understand the nature of disinformation as he's stripped the theory naked as part of the story he's telling. However, what he doesn't do very well is 'reconstruct' these events to any ultimate conclusion, despite Bennewitz's obvious mental abuse. Few of the details Bishop discusses can be substantiated because of the massive disinformation campaign, and any reasonably intelligent person can probably reach the midpoint of PROJECT BETA and have the revelation, "How am I to know for certain that I'm not the one being misinformed here?"

Still, author Bishop manages to craft a novel that is equal parts intriguing, frustrating, and confusing. The reader cares for Bennewitz -- despite some reservations about the man's stability -- and any reader would genuinely hope that some of these players who confess to be 'good friends' with the man would break their patterns of deceit long enough to help the inventor keep his fragile sanity. Bishop appears to justify their continued abuse of Bennewitz by routinely underscoring how much these men and women cared about the kindly inventor, but that becomes an increasingly difficult 'reality' to accept given Bennewitz's eventual destination.

PROJECT BETA by Gregory Bishop illuminates our darkest hour in UFOlogy with a spotlight so bright that you can almost read this page-turner in the dark.

With a devoted wife and two sons, Paul Bennewitz, then a fiftysomething electrical physicist and accomplished aerobatics pilot, had everything to live for. The company he founded, Thunder Scientific Labs, manufactured specialized instrumentation for high-profile clientele like NASA and the United States Air Force. He even played guitar.

Then Bennewitz noticed the UFOs. From the deck of his home perched high in the Four Hills neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, he photographed and filmed mysterious nocturnal lights cavorting over nearby hush-hush military installations. Soon after, ultrasensitive radio receivers of his own design tracked the luminous phantoms and recorded the covert signals -- modulated pulsed transmissions, loud and clear -- of the UFOs. Clues became proof and Bennewitz became terrified. At times his own worst enemy, the prodigious inventor and electronics wizard went public and contacted newspapers, TV stations, congressmen, UFO researchers and organizations, and even President Ronald Reagan.

Certain unelected and non-accountable powers (National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Air Force Office of Special Investigation) decided to discredit and "neutralize" Bennewitz for keeps.

Enter William Leonard Moore, primary instigator and once fierce proponent of such trivialities as the so-called Philadelphia Experiment, MJ-12, and the alleged military retrieval of a crashed "flying disc" near Roswell, New Mexico. These three "mysteries" have most unfortunately drained precious time, money and manpower from far more legitimate and rewarding avenues of investigation and research into current unknown and unexplained phenomena and events.

By Moore's own admission, representatives of those previously identified unelected and non-accountable powers offered him a Faustian bargain. If he would watch various civilian UFO organizations and researchers in general and Paul Bennewitz in particular as the government disinformation game played itself out in earnest, they would let him in on classified UFO material.

Readers must make up their own minds regarding the actions and intentions of the key players in this stranger-than-fiction nightmare about one man's ruin at the hands of a government bent on concealing the truth. Very highly recommended.
(Copyright 2005 by Robert A. Goerman)

Greg Bishop's book is a straightforward journalistic tome about the process of disinformation that the government purportedly utilizes against the UFO community. While it's interesting to see the process, the title leads us to believe that we'll learn more about Paul Bennewitz, the man who either discovered or created the Dulce Base (depending on your point of view).

Instead, we spend most of our time with the two men most responsible for deceiving the poor, paranoid Bennewitz-- Air Force Intelligence agent Richard Doty and UFO researcher Bill Moore. While these tales are interesting, Bishop does raise the spectre of doubt as to what happened throughout the book. Perhaps Doty wasn't in the loop. Maybe Moore was also being fed disinformation. The events of the case are largely presented without judgment, and not much analysis.

The result of this is a story that leaves as many loose ends as tied threads. At the end of the day, there's not enough evidence to the contrary to dismiss the concept of an operation at Dulce (far-fetched as the idea is), and there's not enough for anyone to say that there's definitely nothing going on.

By not taking a position, Bishop maintains his journalistic credibility. However, the lack of analysis also makes this an often frustrating read. To his credit, he does include Bennewitz's entire report on what he termed "Project Beta" as an appendix.

If you're interested in espionage techniques, you'll find this book mesmerizing. If you're trying to get to the actual bottom of the Dulce Myth, you'll be sadly disappointed.

And that's as fair as I can be.

Given how large a presence the UFO phenomenon maintains in our culture, this book is well worth the read, even if you're not terribly interested in UFOs. The ideas are everywhere, and Project Beta lays out how some government players had a large role in actively encouraging the development of the UFO culture through disinformation campaigns intended to both keep prying eyes away from their real secret projects, and to identify the prying eyes as well. At the heart of the story is Paul Bennewitz, whose life and mental stability were intentionally destroyed as a victim of these operations.

Richard Doty, one of the key officials feeding disinformation to Bennewitz actually served as a consultant for The X-Files, from 1994 to 1996 and he even wrote the screenplay for an episode- "The Blessing Way" and was an extra on two other episodes- "Anasazi" and "Paper Clip"

Much of this disinformation is still drawing support by those who want to believe and don't attempt to dig further than initial researches which confirm what they want to believe- in actuality, this is the true strategy behind successful disinformation- leading someone to something that appears true on an initial glance, creating an impassioned true believer.

To be clear, Bishop is not a "debunker" and does believe in UFOs. However, he is part of a growing group of researchers who do not believe in the "extra-terrestrial hypothesis" as an explanation, and instead believes there is something else unknown which produces this phenomena. He does not discount the possibility entirely, but the evidence seems to point to other directions and he even points out that the air force has witnessed legitimate UFO sightings they cannot explain, which are distinctly separate from the kinds of disinfo stories intentionally "leaked" to the public.

Although this idea is growing, it is not new and has been written about by others, including John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and even Carl Jung.