Dateline: Tuesday, July 12, 2005
By: STUART MILLER
By: Phenomena News Editor
Phenomena News Editor, Stuart Miller, talks to Project Beta author Greg Bishop about how 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.
SM: In our prior email correspondence, you commented about a slightly negative review of the book that had appeared on Amazon.
GB: The guy gave it five stars but he said he didn’t know if any of it was true and that the premise of the book was that everything about UFOs was made up by the government. He either didn’t read the book or he read it with a preconception that he kept.
SM: I’ll tell you something. When Nick (Redfern) launched the book publicly, Nick’s emails everywhere were the first I think that most people knew about the book….
GB: Oh really? God, I have even more to thank him for than I thought I did. I just saw a couple of the reviews he put up. They were really positive and I was very happy about it.
SM: Oh he did, he reached out and really pushed very hard and got others to get behind it too. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think the UFO community could not have known the book was coming out. But the point I wanted to make was, to an extent, Nick’s email gave that same impression. Maybe that guy read it and just absorbed it and went into the book with that attitude. Nick had certainly convinced me before I’d started to read the book, that all of the ufology was a myth and it was a very pleasant surprise to open the book to realize that that’s not what you’re saying.
GB: I’m saying that a great deal of the wackier elements of ufology, especially the stuff that happened about underground bases, exchange of technology and that aliens seeded the planet with religious leaders, all that’s either been made up or capitalized on by the Intelligence agencies.
It’s hard to get that across to someone who has no grounding whatsoever in the field and that’s the kind of people who want to buy the book so it has to have some kind of the point, and you can’t have these grey areas where people get disinterested or confused.
SM: But the difficulty with this stuff is, well for example, a letter would
have been sent to Bennewitz and within that letter, there would be a large
element of disinformation and made up crap and so on, but there would also
be elements of truth and the trick is to identify those elements that are
true. I can’t remember the name of the air force officer who wrote a
particular letter to Bennewitz, it’s the one where he goes on about the four
rolls of film, but then he goes on about Roswell. Now if you weren’t reading
that within this book and knowing that a substantial part of it was a load
of bunk, it’s very compelling. It’s the sort of thing you not only want to
read but also to believe.
GB: Yeah, exactly. I think they tapped into that “want to believe” vein very
well and the main reason was to keep people away from sensitive air force
projects and the secondary reason was to find out who was interested, why,
and what they think. And the third reason, which not many people talk about
but which I think makes a lot of sense is that they got off on it. They
thought it was kind of funny.
SM: What, just basically yanking people’s chains?
GB: Any job you do there are boring parts and standard parts, and these are
government people. They were actually leading these people on a wild goose
chase and that is the point of counter intelligence, to lead people away
from what they didn’t want them to see. Well, they did that and they also
capitalised on these stories. Rick Doty grilled Bill Moore on different
aspects of the UFO phenomenon – its history, different cases etc and then
capitalised on those when talking to other people. Like for instance Linda
Howe; I mentioned that little episode in the book too.
SM: Just for the record, could you specifically identify commonly held
beliefs within ufology that, as a result of your research, are clearly
bunkum. The first thing that comes to mind is Dulce, so presumably there is
no underground base at Dulce?
GB: I’m pretty certain there isn’t a base there. There was something placed
there to make him think so though.
SM: Oh, the vehicles and shafts.
GB: He (Bennewitz) got the idea there was something there from the episode with Myrna Hansen. I don’t know if I made that clear because it wasn’t clear to me where he got the idea that there was a base at Dulce.
SM: Oh, you did make that clear, you did make the connection or the implied connection because I remember you saying that within her testimony that she said she was taken to an underground base.
GB: The funny thing was she was taken to an underground base, well she said
she was, I have no idea, but the funny thing was, she described part of the
Manzano nuclear weapons storage complex very accurately. There was no way
she could have been there or known anything about it. She didn’t know anyone
in the military as far as I know, and the air force was very disturbed about
that. Dulce began with the idea that Bennewitz had that there was a base
there and that the air force and the NSA to some extent were quite happy to
let him believe that and encourage it because it took his attention away
from Kirtland AFB.
So that’s one of the myths I suppose that has grown up. There are
unexplained things about that. I can’t remember the man’s name but he came
out in, I think the early 90s and said he’d been a guard at that base and he
was going around lecturing about it. Then he surprise, surprise, died
mysteriously of some fast acting disease or he killed himself, I can’t
remember which, sometime in the mid 90s. That’s the only reference I’ve seen
where somebody has said that they were actually there but I don’t know what
his motivations were, what he thought or whether he was a crazy person and
if anybody ever checked up on him.
The other thing they brought up with Paul was specifically in this letter
from this guy, I think he was with the NSA but he was working with Lockheed
at the time. He’s actually around and I know his name but I don’t want to
give it out because I didn’t have his permission, I didn’t talk to him.
