GB: It was one of 4 or 5 proposals I sent out and that was the one that Simon and Shuster wanted. The other main reason was that I had a personal connection because I have known Bill Moore since 1988 which is kind of late in the game, but it was the year before he made his announcement in Las Vegas that freaked everybody out and that really affected me because I was there at that conference. I was sitting at Bills table helping him sell books and things and he wouldn’t tell me what he was going to talk about. He said that it was really going to blow the lid open and make a lot of people mad but maybe a lot of people will have their eyes opened and we can do things differently.
So when the lecture was about to start, I walked in and took a seat about two thirds of the way up the front. Phil Klass was in the front row with a tape recorder and Bill started his lecture and a few minutes into it, people started yelling at him and interrupting him. I’ve never heard such a violent reaction to anything politically or otherwise. I wondered why that was and why people were so mad that it began my interest. I knew Bill and as time went on, I asked him more and more questions about it. I thought this would be a story to cover as no one else was going to talk about it. Bill was in the middle of it, we were on friendly terms and I thought he’d tell me more than he might tell somebody else and that indeed was what happened.
SM: Tell us about that announcement.
GB: It wasn’t specifically about Bennewitz. He was part of it but the speech ran for about two and a half hours, it was a long talk.
SM: Good grief.
GB: Well, it would have run shorter but he kept getting interrupted. The State director kept having to get up and say, Look, let Bill say what he has to say. He’s here to give a which was answered followed by shouts of things like, Why should we He’s full of crap. The announcement was that many of the stories that had been circulating about underground bases, abductions in exchange for technology, alien intervention in human events throughout history, specifically those three things were mainly the product of a disinformation campaign and that Ufologists who were listening to government people who were thinking that they had an inside source and this was the real stuff, his warning was, you had better watch out because a lot of that stuff is not true and I know because I’ve been through it. At first they were confused because they thought he was one of them, and he was up to that time, and I think he still was. Now suddenly a lot of the things they’d been told and a lot of the things they’d built their reputations on were in question. He said, I had the wherewithal to find out these things and you didn’t That’s a very bad thing to say to a Ufologist. Somebody that’s been working on something for a really long time, to say to them, Hey, you that have been working on this for 10 years. Most of what you’re talking about and putting in your newsletters and saying at your lectures is based on false information.
That’s a really hard one to handle for anybody. They got very upset with him.
I could see why they’d get upset but I Couldn’t understand why they’d stay upset for so long. Now its been over 15 years since he gave that talk and his interest in ufology dropped off. Actually I’ve had him on my internet radio show about 3 times and I always get old line Ufologists listening in and commenting on it. Nobody says anything bad. Its all kind of sunk in. Its taken about 10 years to get this information to sink in and for people to realize there were a lot of things that were false. In fact a couple of them said, Well, I knew that all along anyway and these are the people that were yelling at him in the beginning.
SM: Another thing that the book has done for me is clarify Bill Moore for me because I’ve always been very confused about him up to now in terms of how he was seen. Sometimes when he was referred to, it would be in a negative sense. At other times it would be in a positive sense. Obviously, I was well aware of his long time connection with Stan Friedman. Stan has never said a bad word about him that I can find. But always there was this thing about, Well he was involved in psyops (psychological operations,) he was involved with Bennewitz and its been very confusing trying to justify him in terms of his place in ufology. But in terms of how far I’m into the book, the impression I get is that he was as much a victim as anybody else.
GB: But you know what He was a willing victim. He agreed to be a victim.
SM: Well yes, but he had an enormous carrot dangled in front of him.
GB: Yes he did. Let me back up a little bit about Bill. Its very hard for me to come in and condemn Bill because for one thing, I’ve seen what’s happened from that lecture on and what people have said and his attempts to explain himself and them not listening because most people, especially if you’re highly emotional about it are not going to be listening to what’s coming out of your mouth. Whatever you say is going to be interpreted the way you want to hear it when it comes into your consciousness. That happens with everyone. If you’ve ever been in a relationship then you know that! The point with Bill is, and as this isn’t a radio interview so I can bring this up, I don’t know how much interest there is in the Academy Awards but remember that director who was given an award and who had given names to the Committee of Un American Activities and a lot of people were mad at him for that, Elia Kazan.
They gave him a life time achievement award and half the people stood up and clapped and the other half sat. Warren Beatty, who tries to appear as one of the most left leaning people in Hollywood, got up and clapped and Ed Harris who was a little bit younger just sat there with this grim look on his face. The point with Beatty was, and he said this in the press when they asked him this, why he was the way he was with Kazan given his politics, and he said, I knew him personally, he gave me my start, he was very kind to everybody I know and I have a hard time turning on him because of that. Or something to that effect. And that’s how I feel about Bill. As far as I can tell, He’s always been very straight with me, as much as he could be, if he could tell me something he would, if he Couldn’t he’d tell me why. And he would also tell me things he didn’t want to get out to the public but he thinks will help me in my search for whatever I’m looking for. If he can help me out, hell give me some tidbits of information but occasionally I’m not supposed to spread them anywhere. From that aspect I find it hard to pillory Bill and like you said, the fact that he had something dangled in front of him which any of those people that were yelling at him, I’m certain if they had gotten that deal, many of them would have done the same thing.