Operation Bird Droppings

The MJ-12 Saga Continues:

By Robert Hastings
ufohastings.com
© 4-2-09

Disinformation Specialists Richard “Falcon” Doty
and Robert “Condor” Collins are still leaving little presents all over the place for the uninformed and unsuspecting. Watch where you step!

     Jeez! It’s not like I don’t have other things to do. With the publication of my book UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, and following my July 18, 2008 appearance on Larry King Live, I have received a number of intriguing and seemingly confirmatory leads from former or retired military personnel regarding the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites over the last six decades.

While I would much prefer following up on those apparently legitimate leads, I guess I am going to have to roll up my shirt sleeves and attempt to educate a few well-intentioned but way-too-gullible folks regarding the supposed validity of the MJ-12 “documents” and related disinformation which is still being spread around by Richard Doty and Robert Collins, sometimes in emails or online posts, but most egregiously in their co-authored book Exempt From Disclosure. The first version was published in 2005 and the second in 2008. The Introduction, in each edition, should have opened with these words: “First, before we begin, bend over!”

Ah well, I suppose it’s time for me to counter-attack, before this crap-fest gains even more ground on the Internet and at UFO conventions. (Yes, I do understand that some folks in ufology and among the general public will not benefit from my informed input, preferring instead their own biases and strained theories about MJ-12. That’s not my problem.)

An Early Exposé
Hmmm, where to begin? I guess I should mention that my ground-breaking 1989 paper “The MJ-12 Affair: Facts, Questions, Comments” first brought to light UFO researcher Bill Moore’s now-notorious, voluntary involvement in the disinformation and spying operation being run out of Kirtland AFB’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the 1980s. It is now online at:

http://tinyurl.com/d2wzww

The paper also revealed, for the first time, that Moore’s allegedly high-level U.S. Air Force sources for UFO-related disinformation—whom he named “Falcon” and “Condor”—were in reality Sgt. Richard C. Doty and Capt. Robert M. Collins, respectively. While other diligent researchers, including Barry Greenwood and the late Bob Todd, had already developed circumstantial evidence that Doty was Falcon, I was able to divulge that Michael Seligman, the producer of the October 14, 1988 television program UFO Cover up? Live! (the ufological equivalent of Reefer Madness) had blurted out in a taped conversation with researcher Todd Zechel that the two leading UFO “experts” appearing in the program—back-lit and voice-altered to hide their identities and using the pseudonyms Falcon and Condor—were in fact Doty and Collins.

To this day, a disgraced Bill Moore continues to claim that “Falcon” is actually someone else—supposedly an Air Force colonel for whom Doty acted as an intermediary. Moore further claims that Doty only stood in for the colonel during the ridiculously bogus TV show, taking on the Falcon persona only temporarily. Condor/Collins now tells the same convoluted tale to anyone who will listen. The fact remains, however, that none of the original MJ-12 promoters—Moore, Doty, or Collins—has ever produced a shred of evidence for the colonel’s existence. After 25 years, he remains the “man behind the curtain.” (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Dorothy! He might be much, much less than he first appears to be.)

In any case, at one point during the televised farce, one of the birds told the American viewing audience that aliens—which had supposedly been captured after UFO crashes and were living at Los Alamos—loved ancient Tibetan music and Strawberry ice cream. (Presumably, the back-lit filming on the darkened set, designed to hide their identities, also prevented the audience from seeing Doty and Collins trying to keep a straight face during their interviews.) Condor/Collins now admits to his and Doty’s participation in the easily-discredited program but, in doing so, distorts and justifies the affair with his trademark disinformational spin.

After I circulated my paper to several dozen ufologists in March 1989, Moore showed up unannounced at my front door in an obvious effort to intimidate me into publishing a retraction. I responded by personally sending him a letter in which I threatened to have a court-issued injunction brought against him, to prevent him from physically approaching me in the future. Shortly after receiving that letter, Moore lied about it in his own letter to Caveat Emptor magazine, saying that he had received a letter from my attorney, warning him to steer clear of me. I immediately challenged Moore to produce that non-existent letter.

(It’s now been 20 years, Mr. Moore, but I’m still waiting for a copy of my attorney’s letter to you. Maybe your dog ate it, eh? Or maybe the MJ-12 Retrieval Squad—on one of those slow days when UFOs weren’t falling out of the sky all over the place—came and stole it from you. Was that it, Bill? You can come clean with us. We trust you.)

Anyway, in June 1989, The MUFON UFO Journal published my paper and, shortly thereafter, the bird poop really hit the fan. Several of the journal’s readers came forward with accounts of various suspect tales being offered to them by Moore or Doty. Importantly, Barry Greenwood and Bob Todd produced even more convincing forensic evidence confirming the fraudulent nature of the MJ-12 “documents.” Their findings, still stand as unimpeachable, no matter how many pro-MJ-12 wishful-thinkers tell you otherwise. A good introduction to the many problems found by Greenwood, Todd and other researchers may be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/c56bn8

By July, Moore, undoubtedly sensing the inevitable, finally relented and delivered what has naively come to be known as his “confession” speech to a stunned audience attending MUFON’s International Symposium in Las Vegas. In keeping with the overall situation, Moore’s mea culpa was a combination of fact, disinformation and outright lies.

True, Moore did spill the beans on the spying and disinfo op being run out of Kirtland AFB’s OSI, and his willing participation in it, but he also threw in a bunch of bull—some of it relating to myself, given that my paper had effectively forced his revelations—and generally excused his own abhorrent behavior as justifiable, because it supposedly served a greater purpose.

In other words, while Moore did admit that he had agreed to act as a spy and disinformation agent, targeting other researchers on Doty’s behalf, he left out a lot of relevant facts, and also twisted much of what he divulged to make him look as good as possible under such disgraceful circumstances—saying that he had merely been playing along with Doty so that he could get inside the disinfo operation, as deeply as possible, and hopefully learn the real facts about UFOs from the low-level OSI agent and those to whom he reported.

If that was actually the case, Moore’s fantasy was ridiculously naïve, given the well-documented very high-level, need-to-know secrecy surrounding much of the U.S. government’s handling of the UFO phenomenon. In my opinion, Moore’s “explanation” for his actions was actually designed to portray his own disreputable behavior in the best possible light. (Bizarrely, on at least two occasions during Moore’s speech, without even faintest hint of hypocritical self-consciousness, he urged other ufologists to be more ethical in their actions in the future.)

For those of you who haven’t heard or read it, Moore’s mea culpa, later published in two consecutive issues of the MUFON UFO Journal, may be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/dkxopf

http://tinyurl.com/d8cdro

So, what did UFO researcher Moore specifically confess to that was so repellant to his audience? Well, for starters, he admitted to spying on fellow researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen, the founders of the seminal Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO), and reporting on their activities to Doty back at Kirtland AFB. Further, Moore said he knew that Doty had sent a hoaxed letter to the pair, as “bait,” but because he was playing along with OSI, did not tell them about it. At the time, Moore was serving as APRO’s Director of Research. (All of this is of course reminiscent of the CIA’s 1953 Robertson Panel recommendation that professional intelligence operatives infiltrate civilian UFO organizations for the purpose of monitoring UFO-proponents’ activities. Civilian Moore did his dirty work for the government voluntarily and for no pay, or so he claims.)

Moore also admitted that he had performed the same shameful service by monitoring the late Paul Bennewitz, who had been provided with OSI-created lies about alleged UFO activity and alien schemes against humanity. According to Moore, Bennewitz had become a target for this disinformation and harassment after he informed OSI, in October 1980, that he had photographed UFOs over the Manzano [Nuclear] Weapons Storage Area, located just east of Kirtland AFB, on several occasions during the previous 15 months. Soon-to-be-released evidence, collected and analyzed by another researcher, will prove that this was indeed true.

Doty and Collins, in their thoroughly unsubstantiated book, Exempted From Disclosure, have come up with a questionable, or at least incomplete, story to explain why Bennewitz was originally targeted. They claim that Bennewitz had also stumbled upon a top secret counter-intelligence program based at a facility south of Kirtland, where the Air Force was attempting to disrupt Soviet satellites by beaming electronic signals at them. Perhaps this was the case, however, as far as I am aware, we have only Doty’s and Collins’ word for it. That, obviously, falls far short of verification.

(Based on my own research into nuclear weapons-related UFO activity, it seems as likely to me that Bennewitz was targeted simply because he began telling anyone who would listen that UFOs were repeatedly hovering over the Manzano WSA. As I mention in my book, UFOs and Nukes, I now know that similar events occurred at the Weapons Storage Areas at Malmstrom AFB in 1975; at F.E. Warren AFB in 1980-81; and at RAF Bentwaters in December 1980. Other researchers had already established that such incidents also occurred at the WSAs at Wurtsmith and Loring AFBs in 1975. Doty himself wrote an OSI report about the 1980 UFO sightings at the Manzano facility, however, certain elements in that document now appear to be suspect. Jeez, whatta shock!)

In his “confession” Moore denied any responsibility for the steep decline in Bennewitz’ mental health, even though he was fully aware of the bogus nature of the OSI-generated stories being directed at Paul, about underground bases where the aliens supposedly known as the Grays were genetically-altering harvested organs from cattle and even humans they had mutilated. At some point during this long disinformational charade, a terrorized Bennewitz took to wearing a sidearm at home to protect himself from the possibility of alien abduction. Mercifully, Paul Bennewitz is now on the other side, wherever that may be, and hopefully has more peace than Doty and the Kirtland AFB OSI ever granted him during his last years on Earth.

According to the current crop of Doty/Collins supporters, although Moore and his birds were lying to everyone in sight in the 1980s, now they’re telling the truth! As I said earlier, if you’re one of those inclined to believe that Falcon and Condor have actually belatedly revealed the facts in their book, you royally deserve the poop they dropped on you!

The Duping of Linda Moulton Howe
Anyway, if all of the were not enough, Moore, together with Doty and Collins, also performed the same kind of disinformation-based operation against the sincere but gullible Linda Moulton Howe, an Emmy-award filmmaker whom OSI had also targeted, apparently with the intention of derailing the HBO-funded documentary on a U.S. government UFO cover-up she had been contracted to produce.

In a series of letters between Howe and HBO, copies of which she later sent to me, Linda repeatedly pleaded for more time to do her work, saying that her Air Force contact (Doty) had promised her film footage of the Roswell UFO recovery and other spectacular documentation, as long as she would cooperate with the government’s own time-table for the film’s release. Of course, these promises were more of Doty’s lies, delaying tactics designed to postpone as long as possible the production’s completion. (Even Moore admitted as much, during his Las Vegas speech, in a frustratingly far-too-rare moment of candor.)

Eventually fed up by the delays, HBO lost interest and let the time-dependent contract with Howe lapse. So, what potentially may have been a worthwhile UFO documentary, had Howe not fallen into Moore’s and Falcon’s clutches, never materialized.

For his part, Condor/Collins now claims that he himself never misled Howe about the legitimacy of the MJ-12 documents and the other information provided to her by Doty. During a February 28, 2009 email exchange with me, which is now posted at http://tinyurl.com/cokk6f Collins indignantly denied that he had ever shown Linda Moulton Howe MJ-12-related “documents” at his home in Albuquerque, in November 1987. “Linda has a hard time getting her facts right,” he wrote, “And [I] never showed Linda anything related to Mj12 when she was at the house in '87.”

However, following that heated exchange, I listened to an audiotape recording I had made of an October 22, 1988 telephone conversation with Howe. The UFO Cover-up? Live! TV show had been broadcast only a few days earlier, on October 14th, and I wanted to get her take on it. The following pertinent excerpts from that tape follow here:

LMH:“Only me. [It had] nothing to do with John Lear.”

RH: “So, John Lear wasn’t associated with that at all then? I thought you’d said that he was trying to get you and John Lear together...”

LMH: “No, but John Lear went with me to see Collins in November, a year ago.”

RH: “That’s what I’m asking about. So, it was November of ’87?”

LMH: “Yeah, we were at Collins’ house because I invited John to go with me...”

RH: “Um, you said that Collins, at his home in Albuquerque, showed you a number of documents.”

LMH: “Yeah, he had a ring binder...”

RH: “Of uncensored documents?”

LMH: “Yeah, of uncensored documents.”

RH: “Including the Eisenhower briefing paper?” (Perhaps the most important of the MJ-12 “documents”)

LMH: “Yeah.”

RH: “What else did he have?”

LMH: “He had some memos allegedly from MJ-5 and MJ-8, one of which I had seen before, in ‘83. So, I assume he got it from Moore.”

RH: “Um, did he lead you to believe, uh, you said before that he made the statement that he was working with Moore. Did he imply that he was one of the sources that was supplying Moore with documents?”

LMH: “No, he never said it in that light. He said he was assisting Bill Moore with research, so I find it interesting that he ended up being “Condor”, if that’s the case, and I think it is.”

RH: “Well, let’s assume for the moment that Collins is “Condor.” Um, the relationship would be, if you take at face value what he’s saying [in UFO Cover-up? Live!], that he’s supplying Moore with information, rather than Moore giving him documents and so on.”

LMH: “Right, right.”

RH: “More specifically, what were the documents, or what were some of the things Collins was saying to you, about the information [he had in his possession]? Does it tie into the alien supposedly at Area 51 and all of that?”

LMH: “Yeah. Oh yeah!”

RH: “How about the underground bases in New Mexico?”

LMH: “In terms of Area 51, I wouldn’t say that Collins was far-ranging [in his comments to me]. Some of the other stuff [he told me] went into underground bases in New Mexico and all of that. But Area 51 is key [and] he knows about Archuleta [Mesa]. He has some questions about what Bennewitz has [claimed] but he’s not denying everything [relating to a supposed underground alien base at the mountain site]. I think Bennewitz’ work is of interest to them.

RH: “Have you heard references to live aliens living at Kirtland [AFB]?”

LMH: “Yeah, Los Alamos.”

RH: “Los Alamos, but not Kirtland?”

LMH: “No. That CE11 (?) electromagnetic chamber is supposed to be only at Los Alamos and at Edwards [AFB]. There’s only supposed to be two of them. Whether we put the aliens in the electromagnetic enclosure to keep them in, or to keep our minds shielded from them, I don’t know. It could be both.”

RH: “Who gave you the information relating to these two locations, Los Alamos and Edwards?”

LMH: “I saw it in one of the memos in the ring binder that Bob Collins showed me.”

RH: “But Doty never made reference to that?”

LMH: “No, nope.”

END OF TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

So, in a taped conversation less than one year after-the-fact, Linda Moulton Howe unequivocally stated that Condor/Collins did indeed meet with her, and John Lear, at his house in Albuquerque, in November 1987—at which time he showed the two of them a number of MJ-12-related documents and memos, and vouched for their legitimacy.

As noted earlier, Collins now denies that such a meeting with Howe ever took place. However, as I mentioned to him in our recent email exchange, it seems to me that a court of law, where everyone would be testifying under oath, may be the best venue to sort all of this out. Of course, in John Lear, we have someone who can presumably support Howe’s version of events.

The bottom line: Robert Collins is now once again lying about his past. He was directly involved in disseminating disinformation related to MJ-12 as early as November 1987—an endeavor he was actively, publicly pursuing a year later, in the guise of Condor, on UFO Cover-up? Live! (And, I will argue, a function he continues to perform today, some 20 years later. He once used a ring binder; now he has email and the Internet.)

While none of us, save Linda Howe and John Lear, were at Collins’ home to observe the little mind games to which she was unwittingly subjected, each of us can nevertheless evaluate the public statements made by Condor/Collins on the television show and judge for ourselves whether or not he was actively engaged in a disinformational game designed to confuse the issue relating to the U.S. government’s involvement with UFOs.

Unfortunately, even after her futile, months-long wait for the “Roswell UFO” film, Linda still spoke glowingly of the supposedly legitimate UFO-related information she was getting from her inside sources at Kirtland, not realizing that she was playing into Doty’s and Collins’ hands by unwittingly assisting in the dissemination of their disinformation, first within ufological circles and eventually to a wider public audience. Indeed, in the late 1980s, newspaper and magazine stories about MJ-12 were rampant for a period of time.

In any case, during another moment of candor during in his Las Vegas speech, Bill Moore said, “Disinformation is a strange and bizarre game. Those who play it are completely aware that an operation’s success is dependant upon dropping information upon a target, or ‘mark,’ in such a way that the person will accept it as truth and will repeat, and even defend it to others as if it were true. Once this has been accomplished, the work of the counterintelligence specialists is complete. They can simply withdraw in the confidence that the dirty work of spreading their poisonous seeds will be done by others. Those of you who want proof of how well the process works only need look at the Bennewitz case, or the Aztec [UFO crash] case. Every time one of you [ufologists] repeats an unverified or unsubstantiated bit of information, without qualifying it as such, you are contributing to that process; and every time you do it, somebody in a need-to-know position sits back and has a horse laugh at your expense.”

What Moore didn’t say, given his obvious intention to project himself as someone who was on top of the situation—someone who was secretly using the users—is that he was arguably as much a victim of OSI’s schemes as were Howe and Bennewitz. His self-confessed willingness to get his “hands dirty” for Doty, as he so aptly put it, has cost him dearly, as well it should.

Anyway, just before I circulated my MJ-12 paper in March 1989, I called Linda Howe a final time and pleaded with her to disavow her endorsement of the claims that Doty, Collins and Moore had made to her. I then wrote her a letter, in which I sincerely praised her cattle mutilation investigations, but warned her of the damage she was creating, both to her own reputation, and to ufology in general, by supporting and spreading around the quite-obvious disinformation she had been given. Howe never responded.

In any case, after his pathetic performance in Las Vegas, Bill Moore was effectively drummed out of legitimate ufological circles and, thankfully, has more or less faded from public view. Alas, unlike Moore, other members of the Kirtland Cabal appear to have still more poop to share with all of us and continue to foul the ufological landscape with their, ahem, “inside” information and allegedly astute insights.

Falcon’s Follies
As bait, Linda Howe had initially been approached and presented with a now-discredited Air Force “report” on a supposed UFO/alien encounter at one of Ellsworth AFB’s nuclear missile sites in 1977. It is now known that Richard “Falcon” Doty was involved in the forging of that “document”—a fact first revealed by UFO researcher Dr. Bruce Maccabee and later alluded to by Bill Moore himself, in his Las Vegas speech. Doty also forged many other UFO-related files, according to an informed source whom I interviewed in February 2004. I will gladly present that individual in a court of law, if circumstances permit.

More recently, Condor/Collins has posted at his website another alleged account of UFO activity at Ellsworth, supposedly occurring in 1970. The title of the posting is “Ellsworth Air Force Base SD UFO Incident 1977—or was it really 1970?” This blatant come-on ignores the fact that the 1977 incident was a hoax, something Collins knows full well, given that his own book’s co-author, Richard Doty, forged the “report” on it. To insure that the new “document” would be noticed, Collins emailed a link to it to a very long list of individuals on March 10, 2007, but wisely covered himself by asking the recipients whether it was real or not.

On his website, Collins has a scan of the newly-discovered “report.” Upon learning of it, I forwarded the alleged Air Force report to one of my retired Minuteman missile targeting team sources, USAF TSgt. John Mills, whose dramatic 1978 UFO encounter in Ellsworth AFB’s missile field I mention in my book, UFOs and Nukes. He quickly found numerous factually-inaccurate statements and format errors in the “report” and calls it an obvious hoax.

For example, Mills writes, “The site [where the incident supposedly occurred] is listed as Delta 4, in the 68th Strategic Missile Squadron. Delta 4 was [actually] in the 66th Strategic Missile Squadron out near Philip. Opposite ends of the spectrum [geographically] and the wrong squadron to boot.” Mills then devoted a full page to identifying the great many technical errors contained in the supposed “report” circulated by Collins. His unequivocal conclusion: “The document is totally bogus.”

So here we have yet another example of Robert “Condor” Collins disseminating a hoaxed document about UFOs, more than two decades after his first disinformational endeavors, which were intended to mislead researcher Linda Moulton Howe and, eventually, the general public. I wonder if Collins’ current publishing partner, Richard Doty, forged this “document” too? As mentioned earlier, I have been told by a highly reliable source that Doty belatedly admitted to forging a number of documents while with OSI. But, once again, it seems to me that this question is best answered in a court of law, where everyone is placed under oath, and where lies become perjury, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.

In their book, Exempt from Disclosure, on the “About the Authors” page, Condor/Collins and Falcon/Doty summarize their military backgrounds. Mention is made of Doty’s being recruited as an agent by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI or simply OSI) in 1978, his graduation from OSI Academy in Washington D.C., and his subsequent assignment with the OSI District Office 17 at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, in May 1979, where he became involved in a program relating to the “collection of intelligence and counterintelligence [pertaining to] UFOs and other foreign intelligence.”

This last reference is a polite way of saying, and excusing the fact, that Doty secretly spied on American citizens who had an interest in UFOs, recruited at least one civilian researcher (Moore) to assist him in those operations, and disseminated disinformation to those same unwitting persons with the intention of deflecting their interest in false directions, thereby disrupting their ability to decipher the governments’ actual knowledge of, and activities relating to, UFOs.

Unfortunately, some of those OSI-targets themselves naively disseminated that disinformation to an international audience—and, in doing so, polluted the collective understanding of what really has gone on in secrecy—with a mixture of lies, half-truths and paranoid fantasies. A variation of this dissemination process continues to this day, with the release of the latest MJ-12 “documents” and the disinformational rehash, sometimes with new twists, offered up by Doty and Collins, not only in their bogus book, but also in numerous emails and online postings.

Not surprisingly, the bio on Doty that appears in the jointly-authored book neglects to mention that, after being transferred from Kirtland to Wiesbaden AFB, Germany, he got into some kind of trouble allegedly involving the handling of money, according to then-Commander of the 1608th Security Police Squadron, Major Ernest Edwards, who knew Doty in New Mexico. While the available details remain sketchy, it has been confirmed that Doty was subsequently stripped of his agent status, booted from OSI and, upon returning to Kirtland AFB, ended up working in the base’s East Dining Hall, until his retirement on November 1, 1988. I have a copy of Doty’s DD-214—a summary of his military service—which confirms his unglamorous last assignment in the Air Force.

Upon retiring, Doty applied to be a New Mexico State Policeman and was hired. When I mentioned Doty’s troubles in Germany to Gabe Valdez, also a state policeman—who is best known for his cattle mutilation investigations—he told me that his own brother, yet another state policeman, was the individual who had done the background check on Doty during the state police application process. Valdez then added, “I guess we didn’t do a very good job.” Frankly, I agree with that assessment.

Now, Doty will probably deny all of this, as he did to various journalists in 1989—I still have his letters to them—but the facts mentioned here would be verified in court, if it comes to that. When those journalists and others began asking questions about Doty’s whereabouts after leaving the Air Force, in the wake of Bill Moore’s admissions about the OSI disinformation operation at the MUFON convention, Doty tried to lay low by telling some of them that he was on a secret intelligence assignment that he could not discuss. I have those letters too, Rick. In reality, Doty was working at the time as a state policeman in Grants, New Mexico, a fact confirmed to me by Gabe Valdez.

Shortly after I circulated my MJ-12 paper, Doty wrote a nasty letter to me, denying all of my published paper’s revelations about Moore, Collins and himself. Not knowing that I knew of his actual whereabouts, he also once again claimed that he was currently working on a secret intelligence assignment and could not be contacted directly. However, Doty wrote, he had a P.O. box in Grants where he received mail. I quickly responded by sending a certified letter to his attention at the Grants state police office. Realizing that I had caught him in yet another lie, he never responded. I still have both of those letters too, Mr. Doty.

The Serpo Hoax
In 2006, a group of British researchers, operating under the banner of Reality Uncovered (RU), initiated an online exposé relating to another of Richard Doty’s attempts at disinformation. Titled “Project Serpo Uncovered,” their now-reorganized findings open with:

On 2nd November 2005, Victor Martinez, the moderator of a UFOlogy-related electronic mailing list, posted an email from an anonymous source claiming to be a retired official of the U.S. government. The information referred to a top secret exchange program of twelve U.S. military personnel to planet ‘Serpo,’ a planet in the Zeta Reticuli star system, between the years 1965-78.
More messages soon followed and so did a website, all promoting the same general idea; that of ET contact and an extended stay on an alien planet.

The facts however paint a rather different picture to the fantastical ‘Exchange Program’ outlined above. The majority of the information regarding the Serpo Project has either passed through or is directly from Richard Doty, a person well-known in the field of UFOlogy. Furthermore, some of the names brought out to lend support to the story, in particular Paul McGovern, are in reality also none other than Richard Doty. Read on for the real story behind Project Serpo...

All of this may be found at www.realityuncovered.net, where there is an overview of the Serpo hoax investigation by RU.

A detailed discussion on the same website (www.realityuncovered.net) regarding Richard Doty pretending to be Paul McGovern may be found there as well. Bob Collins copied me on a supposed Doty/McGovern email exchange as recently as March 29, 2009. In view of RU’s investigation, Collins’ email should have been titled “Doty Talks to Himself.” In any case, the Serpo hoax is alive and well, thanks to Falcon’s and Condor’s latest online droppings.

One of those posting on the RU forum, Shawnna Connolly, eventually confronted Doty in an email, challenging the claim found in Exempt from Disclosure that Doty had attended law school and passed a New Mexico bar exam, thus sparking an exchange every bit as nasty as those from the late 1980s, when a newly-exposed Falcon/Doty sparred with journalists and researchers, including myself. A summary of the Doty/Connolly exchange currently posted at the RU website begins:

Rick Doty's Blackmail…
This is a continuation of the release of information that has been gathered during the long investigation into the Project Serpo story by Reality Uncovered. This part includes a few examples of the many incidents of unethical behaviour by two of the individuals responsible for ‘delivering’ Serpo to the public domain. The following is updated information we are providing to help make everyone aware of what has really been going on ‘behind the scenes’ of Serpo...

Doty's Harassment of Shawnna
Toward the end of the ‘heated’ argument between Collins & Doty and us regarding the Bar Exam and Law School issues, Richard Doty started privately emailing Shawnna threatening emails. He claimed to have some information about trouble with the law in her past and threatened to make those [sic] public unless she stopped talking about him. He was threatening to use a fabricated criminal past about Shawnna if she wouldn't remain silent about her findings. At one point in the evening, Mr. Doty sent Shawnna 8 emails in the span of one hour.

June 15th, Rick sent Shawnna the following email:

From: "Rick Doty"
Date: June 15, 2006 8:32:43 PM PDT
To: "Shawnna Connolly"
Subject: Re: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: SERPO, SEINU and DISCLOSURE Open Mind -The Progressive Sceptics and Para-Politics Forum - Bob Collins resolves the 'Doty email' issue

Ms. Connolly:

You have falsified several things about me, my occupation and my past. You have hoaxed my email address and my name.

Now, if you wish to see how well I'm versed in law, I'll show you.
-----------------------

Nine minutes later - he sends her the following threat:

----------------------
From: "Rick Doty"
Date: June 15, 2006 8:41:37 PM PDT
To: "Shawnna Connolly"
Subject: Re: Convicted Felon

I was just informed by two people on Victor Martinez's list that you are a convicted felon. You were convicted of forgery and embezzlement.

I will publish this on the forum.
-----------------------

Shawnna - never one to be phased [sic] by threats, calls his bluff:

----------------------
From: Shawnna Connolly
To: Rxxxxxxxxxx@msn.com
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 21:53
Subject: Your threat - "Convicted Felon"

[You] appear to be desperate, Mr. Doty.

I have NEVER done anything wrong in my entire life, much less been charged, or convicted of ANYTHING.

Go ahead and post this - it would be my pleasure to SUE a New Mexico state policeman presenting false information on the internet and fraudulently passing himself off as a lawyer (page 91, second edition of Exempt from Disclosure, and page 96 of the first edition of Exempt from Disclosure).

Always,
Shawnna
-----------------------

But Doty continues using his threatening tactics - I'm sure they've worked before. But apparently he's never met anyone like Shawnna before....

----------------------
From: "Rick Doty"
To: "Shawnna Connolly"
Subject: Re: Your threat - "Convicted Felon"
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 03:57:50 +0000

You'd have to sue the persons who spread the information, mainly Victor's list of people, who forwarded me the email.

Now, you see how things can be spread? Whether its truth or not, it was spread.

Oh, I'll spread it, just like you spread lies about me.

By the way, you can't sue unless you can prove venue, which can't be done on Internet traffic. You might want to check the laws!

Just keep you mouth shut about me and I'll do the same with you.

If not, then things will get very interesting with Internet Traffic.

-----------------------

While the threats were disturbing, Shawnna would not allow Mr. Doty to intimidate her, and she contacted the NM State Police and forwarded this information & evidence of all of the threats to his immediate supervisor.

Shawnna heard back from his supervisor as a result of our report. Capt. Pete Kassetas of the New Mexico State Patrol [sic] assured Shawnna that Mr. Doty had been spoken to and would not be contacting her again. He also said that if for some reason she did hear from Mr. Doty again, she was to contact him right away. Shawnna asked Capt. Kassetas if the department was OK with Doty claiming to have passed the NM State Bar exam and presenting himself to be a lawyer—his response was that he couldn't talk to her about the details but that issue was also being investigated.

Shawnna hasn't heard from Doty since...

END OF WEBSITE POSTING

This exchange is also at www.realityuncovered.net. After reading it, I found the reference to which Ms. Connolly alluded in the 2005 edition of Exempt from Disclosure, regarding Doty’s claims of having passed the New Mexico bar exam. It reads:

Since retiring from the Air Force in November 1988 I have managed to have a successful second career as a New Mexico State Trooper having received many commendations for my outstanding work in the field of law enforcement. During the last few years I have been able to finish my law degree and recently just passed the New Mexico state Bar examine [sic]...

This claim by Doty is absolutely false, as anyone who wishes to check into the matter will discover. In fact, a few members of RU did just that and got written confirmation from the University of New Mexico that Doty’s and Collins’ claims about Doty having graduated from the university’s law school in 2003 were untrue. That discussion may be found by searching: www.realityuncovered.net ([keyword law claims] While the thought of Doty as an attorney is laughable on many levels, I note here his documented 25-year history of rampant misspelling—e.g. “examine” for “exam”—as well as his poor grammar, as evidenced in his many communications with others, not to mention the letters and documents he has forged over the years.)

So, Mr. Doty and Mr. Collins, what kind of excrement will you two birds drop to rebut this illuminating cache of information from the Reality Uncovered folks? Go for it! I have already pulled on my Hi-Top rubber boots.

Regardless, I think Shawnna Connolly—given her sincere quest for the facts and her obvious bravery in the face of intimidation—would make an excellent witness in a courtroom. So would Stephen Broadbent and the other researchers associated with the Reality Uncovered (realityuncovered.net) exposé on Serpo, MJ-12, and related disinformation. A fuller discussion of these topics may be found at: www.realityuncovered.net (keyword "blog")

Aaaargh! Speaking of MJ-12, I must now return to that sordid subject yet again.

MJ-Hell: It Still Lives!
For those of you unaware of this unfortunate development, we now have new-and-improved MJ-12 “documents” to further muddy the waters. Although no involvement with them on the part of Moore, Doty and/or Collins has been proved thus far, both Doty and Collins endorse their authenticity. These bogus papers came out of the woodwork, just as the first batch did 25 years ago, with no verifiable origin—that is, having no provenance, something essential to historical research, not to mention separating fact from fiction. Despite the sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle flaws and fabrications found in the latest batch of MJ-12 papers, a few well-intentioned researchers—who should have learned their lesson the first time around—have taken the new “documents” to heart and have, of their own volition, disseminated them far and wide while vouching for, or at least implicitly endorsing, their integrity. There are several websites devoted to the supposed validity of this MJ-Crap 2.0, but I certainly won’t advertize those fetid flytraps here.

I recommend instead the Fund for UFO Research’s online heads-up about one of the “documents,” the so-called SOM 1-01 field manual, supposedly written for military personnel engaged in the recovery of crashed UFOs:

http://www.cufos.org/ros5.html

The bio for one of the authors of this specially-issued bulletin, veteran UFO researcher Jan L. Aldrich, summarizes his expertise by saying that he “is familiar with protocols for establishing tactical bivouac areas with exclusion areas, operational security, and nuclear weapon accident/incident operations during field deployments. While at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he was with the Directorate of Training Development, where he was tasked with analyzing and developing training manuals and materials.”
In a recent email to me, Aldrich wrote,

Robert,
[Regarding] Robert M. Collins, who had experience in military intelligence, I have difficulty believing anyone with much military experience would endorse SOM 1-01. I understand that the USAF is not generally thought of as a field-operating organization. However, that said, they do have to go out and do crash rescue and recovery, they do have to do technical intelligence on captured enemy equipment and, further, they have to engage in normal operational security and counter-intelligence. Also, the writing of operational and technical manuals has very simple standards for organization, content and maintenance. Even a short exposure to the military, as an officer, should have been enough [for Collins] to see the faults and failings in SOM 1-01...

[The] style of writing and the simple act of updating of the manual, which is not done properly, should give clues that this item was a fake...even a nodding acquaintance with the military should have raised all types of red flags when reading through SOM 1-01...

Jan

In a follow-up email, in response to my request for some specifics relating to the flaws found in the supposedly-genuine 1954 field manual, Aldrich wrote:

I [found] about 50 problems with SOM 1-01 when I quit looking at the manual. If you go into the UFO Update [website] archives, I went into great detail about them. The emails are contained in the first few months of the archive.

Despite that exhaustive effort, Aldrich then generously devoted two full Word document pages to further critiquing the SOM 1-01 for me. For those of you interested in reading his comments, I have placed the full text at the end of this article. At the end of the critique, Aldrich wrote:

When I arrived in Europe [in 1984], I was not sufficiently trained in security and intelligence to do my job. I took every course that U.S. Army Europe had to offer, and dozens of correspondence courses, some of which amounted to over 120 sub-course booklets. One of the things I studied was the history of classified documents and directives from Truman on up to the [then] present day. As a subject-matter expert for Army meteorology, I had to analyze various training, operations, and maintenance manuals. Since the then-current system, at the time of my job, came into the Army inventory in 1947, I am very familiar with 1954 manuals, as the manual for hydrogen-generating equipment was originally written in 1954, and was still in use during my tenure.

[MJ-12 proponents such as] the Woods, Friedman, and Hamilton have an answer for my and others’ objections. [However, while] they all know what they are talking about for manuals, security, and operations in the 1980s, it was different in 1954. They apparently have no idea what was going on then...

I was also in a critical nuclear weapons position for seven years, so I know about sensitive operations and security. Twice, I served as acting Intelligence Officer in a nuclear-capable artillery battalion. I also served for a time as an adjutant, both unusual positions for an enlisted man. Finally, I served on the Special Staff of the Commanding General of the Southern European Taskforce. So I have significant experience in a number of areas related to manuals, operations, and security. I have, at one time or another, had the additional duties of Top Secret Control Officer, Classified Document Custodian, Communication Security (COMSEC) Custodian, Cosmic TS Control Officer, Security Manager, Interviewing Officer for Special Background Investigations, Nuclear Release Authentication Training Officer, etc.

Well, as noted earlier, the man knows his field manuals. Fortunately, the person(s) who forged the SOM-01-I “manual” did not, which makes exposing it easier, at least for knowledgeable and credible military document examiners such as Aldrich.

I will also mention this fact, excerpted from the wikipedia.org webpage on MJ-12, which is at http://tinyurl.com/c56bn8:

A document entitled ‘SOM1-01:Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal’ and found on www.majesticdocuments.com contains paragraphs with subheads set in the sans serif ‘Helvetica’ typeface. The document purports to be from 1954 yet the typeface in question was first designed in 1957 by the Swiss graphic designer, Max Miedinger. The capitalized sans serif letter ‘R’ (and others) found on many pages confirms that this typeface is not the much earlier Akzidenz Grotesk sans serif typeface. This evidence seems to strongly suggest that this document is a fabrication.

The bottom line: As was the case with the earlier batch of MJ-12 “documents” that surfaced 25 years ago, the newly-disseminated MJ-12-related SOM-01-I “field manual” is undoubtedly a forgery.

However, frustratingly, the great majority of folks who so confidently hold-forth on the supposed authenticity of the alleged field manual, and other MJ-12 papers, are not qualified to address these arcane technical issues, which is why Moore, Doty and Collins and their ilk have gotten away with so much over the years, at least in some quarters, when they dress up their disinformation as legitimate history.

While no evidence currently exists to link the bogus “field manual” to Doty or Collins, the fact that both of them promote its legitimacy so vigorously is sufficient cause for concern. Whether this “document’ is eventually proven to be one of the Doty-created forgeries, mentioned to me by my confidential source, remains to be seen.

Finally, in a long-overdue but welcomed follow-up to my 1989 article on MJ-12, researcher Brad Sparks’ comprehensive, well-documented paper on the subject, which he delivered at MUFON’s 2007 International Symposium, only serves to substantiate my initial findings regarding the disinformational underpinnings of the entire, apparently never-ending MJ-12 charade. Sparks’ illuminating paper may be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/2xdpak

In Conclusion

Whether or not Falcon/Doty and Condor/Collins are actually officially-sanctioned disinformation agents these days, or merely habitual liars with an as-yet unknown agenda, if a large feathery creature approaches you with the offer of leaked UFO “documents” or “inside” information about the U.S. government cover-up of same, I would be very, very wary. Better yet—to quote Monty Python—Run away! Run away!

Alas, far too many individuals, confident in their own positions on MJ-12 and Serpo, will never take this advice. It takes two to tango, and Doty and Collins could not have succeeded in their schemes were it not for the seemingly endless supply of sincere-but-gullible ufologists, ufological-wannabes, and the occasional, usually self-appointed document expert. As noted earlier, Bill Moore once said in a moment of candor, “Every time one of you repeats an unverified or unsubstantiated bit of information, without qualifying it as such, you are contributing to [the] process [of spreading the disinformants’ poisonous seeds]; and every time you do it, somebody in a need-to-know position sits back and has a horse laugh at your expense.”

But these unwitting dupes will get no pity from me. Their own lack of due-diligence, at least in most cases, has left them in the untenable position where they now find themselves. No, it’s the millions of people in the general, uninformed, unsuspecting public who warrant my concern. Countless humans worldwide wonder about the merits of the UFO phenomenon and are genuinely seeking credible information upon which to form an opinion. Then come along “conmen” like Fal-con and Con-dor, together with their witting or unwitting civilian stooges, to make things much more difficult for the average person on-the-street, who is simply looking for the facts about UFOs, such as they are, at the present time.

So sue me for libel, Mr. Doty and/or Mr. Collins! I’m ready to take it to the next level. Let’s see how your, and Mr. Moore’s, myriad of lies hold-up in a legal venue. It’s high time we put all of your shenanigans behind us, once and for all. You know where to reach me. The ball is in your court. Until then, I will continue to write articles and emails about your bogus “contributions” to ufology.

Admittedly and understandably, differences of opinion exist about what UFOs are, and what those who pilot them are up to. For example, despite my 35-year investigation of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites—which, unlike the MJ-12 saga, relies on authentic declassified U.S. government documents, as well as the taped testimony of more than 100 USAF veterans who don’t need to hide behind bird names and can be openly identified—a great many people nevertheless remain skeptical about the validity of my findings. That’s entirely understandable and predictable. Paradigm shifts usually take time and the universal acceptance of the UFO reality will be no different.

However, when already-exposed tricksters such as Richard Doty and Robert Collins continue to intentionally confuse the issue, by disingenuously spreading around their poop as if it were real data, worthy of investigation and eventual acceptance—when it is actually worthless, not to mention misleading, as it is intended to be—then the rest of us, ufologists or otherwise, must stand firm and at every opportunity expose these incorrigible liars for what they are.

Those who are “disinforming” us about UFOs are effectively delaying our understanding of the facts by lying about the government’s actual knowledge of the phenomenon. Moreover, these agents’ input is all the more corrosive because it provides free ammunition to the UFO-debunking crowd, who only have to point to Doty’s and Collins’ many bogus utterances, about this or that, to justify to themselves that the whole UFO question is unworthy of their time and attention.

For example, it appears that the Reality Uncovered folks, despite their excellent investigations relating to the MJ-12 and Serpo hoaxes, have “thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” by mistakenly assuming that the disinformants’ nonsense is the only UFO data worth pursuing. While preparing this article, I contacted two of the website’s moderators and another leading contributor. I first complimented their exposé on Doty and Collins and then mentioned my own, well-grounded research on UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites, and provided them with information pertaining to the testimony from my ex-USAF sources about the UFO-reality. None of them ever responded.

Even prior to my contact with them, the RU moderators had contemptuously referred to persons such as myself as UFO “believers” on their website. I suspect, however, if I were to call them UFO “unbelievers” they would strongly reject the label. That serious people take UFOs seriously seems to have escaped them, to borrow a phrase from researcher Robert J. Durant. (In fact, they probably won’t even get my point here, so I will spell it out for them: Drawing conclusions about something, after first rigorously investigating it, is fundamentally different from blindly “believing” in it.)

While it’s true, alas, that most UFO debunkers are unreasonably biased against the subject at the outset, even before examining the evidence, the disinformation now being spread around by Doty, Collins and their ilk—about pitched gun-battles at underground alien bases, and alien/U.S. military exchange programs between Earth and a distant planet, to mention two of the bogus stories currently in circulation—only further delays serious attention being paid to UFOs by any semi-open-minded scientist or journalist who, among other skeptics, will now have to be convinced even more of the validity of UFO research.

In short, disinformants are serving masters whose goals run counter to humankind’s collective long-term interests and enlightenment. If you who are reading this are blindly repeating and/or actively promoting any one of the many lies that Richard Doty and Robert Collins have posted on the Internet, or have spread around in emails, then you are unwittingly serving those unseen masters too. I think I hear a horse laugh somewhere in the distance.

Jan L. Aldrich’s critique of the SOM 1-01 “Field Manual”
The following items are neither the most important nor vital objections to SOM 1-01, rather some of the problems with it which are easy to understand without a lot of background and extensive commentary. --JLA

1. Posting Changes to Manuals:

In 1954, [one] received changes to a manual generally in the form of a document which had the changes-to-be-made written out, instructing the manual's owner to add, cross out, or change items in the manual. For example, such instructions might be:

Change 1, dated 5 November 1957, to SOM1-01, 1954:

Page 22, paragraph 2.c.2 change the words: ‘send to the nearest ASF collections point.’ To: ‘send to the Centralized ASF collection point, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.’

After the change had been made in the manual, the owner would write on the page ‘Changed by Change 1 dated 5 Nov 57,’ and indicate the date changed and his initials. Generally, the fact that the manual has been changed appears at the beginning of the paragraph changed. As some of these changes could change just about every page in the manual, the absolute minimum annotation would be ‘C-1 12 Nov 57 JLA..’ Most changes in the 1950s were made by hand written annotations, but even back then, there were tear-out pages which required the old page(s) be removed and new pages inserted. The new page would be have the change number indicated on the page.

[Despite these formal Army requirements,] SOM 1-01 indicates in the front cover that a number of changes were made, but nowhere in the manual are any of these changes indicated or annotated. Also, the requirement is that the outside cover of the manual be annotated with ‘Change 1 dated 5 Nov 57 posted 12 Nov 57 JLA.’ Such annotation on the cover indicates to the user who might be different than the manual's owner or custodian, that the manual was up to date with all relevant changes posted.

With a classified manual [like the allegedly genuine SOM 1-01], not posting or properly annotating the postings could be considered a security violation...

2. Manual Style. Paragraphs, Sub-paragraphs:

If you have a sub-paragraph, e.g. 2.a.1 then it must have a paragraph 2.a.2 as a minimum. If you don't, then the subparagraph (or, in this example, the sub-subparagraph) is not required. That is a military style requirement. However, a change could supersede subparagraph 2.a.2, but again, that the change was made should be annotated on the page.

3. Recovery Operations:

The manual instructs that operations be conducted so that the press and public cannot gain access or know what is going on. [But] it does not instruct the recovery team to utilize camouflage nets or tentage to preclude viewing from higher ground or from aircraft such as the press might hire to have a look about what is going on.

4. Recovery Operations and Technical Intelligence:

The manual does not tell recovery teams to set up a grid, photograph the scene and tag each item for future reference. (Identifying material and where it is found is, of course, basic to technical intelligence.)

5. Organization and Equipment:

The manual does not explain what specialized gear, what protective gear, what type of personnel occupational specialties, and what
specific training would be required for recovery teams.

6. Logistics, Transportation, Communication, etc.:

There is no guidance about supply rates, consumables, etc.; material handling gear and transportation, and communications.

7. Chain of command:

Who does the recovery team report to? [There is no mention of any kind.]

8. Special conditions:

How are liquids, gasses, fires and hazardous material handled in he recovery operations. [There is no mention of any kind.]


9. Standards:

The manual says that the site will be cleaned to the satisfaction of the commander in charge of the operation. This goes without saying and is not guidance at all. Military manuals of all epochs, since at least WWII, despite differences in wording and policy at the time, all contain elements of conducting military operations which are readily identifiable: That is ‘Task’ (what is to be done); ‘Conditions’ (under what kind of environment is the task to be preformed); and ‘Standards’ (what are minimum acceptable outcomes of the task). Basically, all military manuals can be analyzed in this manner...

In addition, I offer an opinion that in such [UFO] recovery operations, there would probably be instruction about removing soil from the area of a crash site. Interestingly enough years later, I obtained some information about a case of an explosion over western Maryland in he 1970s. Lou Corbin looked into before he died. The farm in question was showered with metallic fragments after the explosion. The farmer and neighbors picked some up. Corbin found that the military arrived at the farm, scraped off all the soil with earthmoving equipment, carted it off and replaced the farmer's soil. Corbin had the fragments analyzed by a NASA scientist. They were of earthly origin. However, the point is that SOM 1-01 is lacking in details for operations that the military actually engages in.

More . . .

Note-The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors here do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of The UFO Chronicles or its principals. Counterpoints are always welcome in the Comments Section."

UPDATE: Tim Cooper Renounces MJ-12 Documents

See Also:

"More BS from CSI on Big Sur"

CSICOP, Now CSI: CSI’s “Scientific” Analysis of UFOs: Thanks, but No Thanks!

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