Associated Investigator's Report #1 The Fund for CIA Research? Who's Disinforming Whom? One of the nation's leading sponsors of UFO research and investigations, the Fund for UFO Research, has had a long-standing secret relationship with the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence community. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, an optics and laser specialist with the Naval Surface Weapons Laboratory near Washington, DC, one of the Fund's founders and members of the group's Executive Committee, has been secretly meeting with CIA officials since 1979, briefing them about various UFO matters and investigators. In a recent interview, Maccabee confirmed that he has given a number of briefings on UFOs at CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia, the most recent of which was on Friday, May 28, 1993, just before the Memorial Day weekend. While the latest presentation was primarily about "residual magnetic effects" allegedly discovered after an incident near Gulf Breeze, Florida, other meetings with the CIA have involved such matters as "MJ-12," the Roswell incident, purported UFO photos and films, physiological effects on UFO witnesses, psychic phenomena and UFO researchers. Maccabee described one meeting at a CIA conference room that he said was "standing room only," in which he briefed CIA personnel on the supposed super- secret "MJ-12" group detailed in "documents" revealed by William L. "Bill" Moore, a person who subsequently claimed to be a government disinformation agent. At the same time and for undisclosed reasons, Maccabee briefed the CIA men on the CIA's own UFO files released under the Freedom of Information Act Following the "MJ-12" conference, Maccabee was told by Ron Pandolfi, a CIA official who is Maccabee's main contact at the agency, that he had "created a lot of spies" within the CIA. It seems that in the aftermath of the session CIA officers began snooping on each other and combing each other's files in some sort of bizarre search for evidence of the fabled UFO control group, sparked by Maccabee's talk. Maccabee even persuaded Pandolfi to have the CIA's librarian for "MJ-12" references in the Roscoe HillenKoetter (an early CIA director) files. The results were negative, reportedly. Maccabee first approached the CIA in early 1979 after traveling to New Zealand to investigate the filming of an alleged "UFO" from a plane by a television crew. Although most people who viewed the film were unimpressed by the jumpy blob of nocturnal light, Maccabee for unclear reasons, decided the film represented some sort of probative evidence of UFOs and set out to bring it to the attention of CIA officials. He then put out feelers through his contacts with companies performing tasks for the CIA, and later a meeting was set up at CIA Headquarters, during which he screened the film and summarized his analysis of it. A short time later, Maccabee revealed details of his meeting to W. Todd Zechel, founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) and UFO researcher specializing in government coverup. Zechel had initiated a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA in September 1977 in conjunction with Peter Gersten, a New York attorney, and Ground Saucer Watch, a Phoenix- based UFO group for which Zechel was Director of Research. In December 1978 the suit resulted in the CIA releasing more than a thousand documents it had claimed didn't exist prior to the suit. In recorded conversations with Zechel, Maccabee disclosed that a CIA official had taken him aside after the New Zealand UFO film briefing and revealed that he was the custodian of the CIA's UFO files. These files, the official said, consisted of some 15,000 UFO-related documents, of which, he claimed, only "two or three thousand were really interesting," the remainder being mostly mundane Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) reports and items of lesser interest. All of these documents had been turned over to the CIA's Freedom of Information Staff, the official told Maccabee, in response to the FOIA suit Zechel had filed. It should be noted, at this point, that the CIA had been ordered to search all of its files for UFO-related documents and make a full accounting of them. This Stipulation and Order was in accordance with an agreement Zechel and Gersten had worked out with the CIA's attorney and a U.S. Attorney at a Status Call hearing on the suit on July 7, 1978. It was then that Zechel had, in a rather forceful manner, threatened to have CIA officials criminally prosecuted for issuing false replies to FOIA requests on UFOs. Faced with this, the CIA had backed down and agreed to cooperate. However, subsequently the CIA only accounted for 1,000 documents and claimed to be withholding a mere 57. What Maccabee was told in confidence by the CIA's UFO files custodian dove- tailed exactly with statements made by CIA representatives during the course of the suit, during which attorney Gersten was led to believe in excess of 10,000 documents would be made available. There was also a letter to Zechel from the CIA's FOIA staff asking him to suspend action on a particular request, stating, "1,000 pages of additional UFO related documents have just been located" and were being processed. It was also clear from analyzing the documents released on December 15, 1978, that the CIA was continuing to be deceptive. Brad Sparks, a researcher with CAUS, found references in the released material to more than 200 other UFO- related documents which the CIA had failed to acknowledge. Moreover, it was evident the CIA had carefully selected the documents it released, even with heavy censorship. The CIA only accounted for documents related to matters Zechel and Sparks had uncovered during their investigation of CIA involvement, and excluded many others such as conclusions of its emergency studies of UFOs in 1952, 1957, 1965, 1967, and others. These studies were carried out in secret, utilizing Domestic Contact Service (a.k.a. Domestic Collection Division) agents, during a number of UFO flaps and in conjunction with the Condon Committee study (1966-68). A Missed Opportunity In March 1979, after the CIA filed deceptive affidavits with the court about its purported search of files, Gersten set out to file an Order to Show Cause Why the CIA Should Not Be Held in Contempt of Court. The Show Cause order asked the court to penalize the CIA for failing to comply with the Stipulation and Order agreed to in 1978. It was during the construction of the Show Cause motion that Maccabee made his remarkable revelations to Zechel, who immediately asked if he could speak with the CIA officer. Shortly, Maccabee informed Zechel that the CIA man refused the request. Maccabee also declined to identify the CIA official, other than to say he was formerly a medical doctor with the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence who had become the head of a CIA subgroup that among other things conducted research concerning psychic phenomena. Zechel hurriedly informed Gersten of Maccabee's disclosures, but attempts to enlist Maccabee's cooperation with the suit were met with refusal and obfuscation, including an attempt by Maccabee to mislead Brad Sparks by telling him the briefing did not take place at CIA headquarters, and he claimed to be unsure if the men he met with were CIA employees. This clever manipulation of the facts threw Sparks off the trail and made Zechel's information about the meeting appear to be suspect. It was clear from Maccabee's other statements to Zechel that Maccabee intended to cooperate with the CIA on a continuing basis and that he hoped to become its sort of UFO-man-on-call, perhaps being dispatched around the world to investigate UFO sightings--sort of the James Bond of UFO encounters. Zechel found this to be a rather silly fantasy in light of the fact he had found the CIA had been conducting secret studies of UFOs since 1952, and perhaps even before that, and had utilized high-tech cameras, sensing devices and a nationwide field staff of agents who became covert operatives in 1973. In any case, no thanks to Maccabee the Order to Show Cause was filed one day late and thrown out of court when the U.S. District Court judge upheld the CIA's Out of Time motion. The CIA had been 88 days late with its filing, surpassing a 60 day extension by 28 days. But that mattered not to Judge John Pratt, whose rulings had been reversed five times in the past by higher courts for decisions unfairly favorable to the CIA. In the years since, Maccabee and Zechel had several phone conversations revolving around Maccabee's relationship with the CIA. At one point, Zechel asked him, directly, if he was working for the CIA. "You might say that," Maccabee replied. In April 1990, however, Maccabee began to back-pedal on what he'd been told by the CIA's UFO files custodian in 1979. Suddenly he contended the official had said "there might be as many as 15,000 UFO-related documents" scattered throughout headquarters. In this version, The CIA man had merely been speculating about the totality of the CIA's collection, judging by the one or two thousand he had control over. The 1990 interview with Maccabee was witnessed by UFO lecturer Robert Hastings as it played over a speaker phone in Zechel's office. Several years earlier, Hastings had called Maccabee about another matter and in passing asked him about reports of his contacts with the CIA, the 1979 briefing. Maccabee feigned puzzlement and denied the whole thing. In the most recent interview, Maccabee continued to cling to his contention that the CIA official had been guessing about the 15,000 number. When it was pointed out to him this was illogical in light of the fact the acknowledged custodian would have no reason to suppose another 13,000 documents were located in other files, Maccabee had no response other than to assert it seemed logical to him. In point of fact, the custodian of the UFO files had merely inherited them as the result of being "Keeper of the Weird," as Maccabee described it. There were general files on UFOs from several CIA offices, including Scientific Intelligence, thereby presenting no basis to suppose there were large numbers of additional documents elsewhere or for making an educated guess as to their total. In other words, why would a person who believed he was custodian, that 13,000 other UFO documents were being stored in other places somewhere in The answer seems clear: Maccabee treasures his secret relationship with the CIA more dearly than he feels any need to be forthright about matters vitally important to objective researchers. Although for years Maccabee has closely guarded the custodian's identity, in the most recent interview he confirmed the official's name is Christopher C. "Kit" Green, more recently the chief of the Biomedical Sciences Department at General Motors. Dr. Green attained a Ph.D. in Neurophysiology in 1969 and in 1976 received his M.D., Doctor of Medicine, degree. Green was awarded the National Intelligence Medal for his work on a "classified project" from 1979 to 1983, precisely the years in which Maccabee was meeting with him at CIA headquarters. Green uses somewhat of a cover story to describe his CIA work, calling himself a "Scientific Advisor on the Advisory Board to the Directorate of Intelligence, CIA." According to Maccabee, Green sought out Bill Moore in 1988 or 1989, shortly after Moore had his 15 minutes of fame as a technical consultant for "UFO Cover-Up? Live!," the disastrous two-hour TV special that featured back-lit ravings by "Falcon" Doty and "Condor" Collins. Subsequently, Green became BLUEJAY in Moore's fabled aviary, although it's unclear if Green realized he'd become a member of the flock. But then birds of a feather do flock together, don't they? According to Maccabee's account, "BLUEJAY" Green volunteered to carry out special missions for Moore, the confessed disinformationist. One of these assignments involved Green trying to make contact with Robert Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence under President George Bush. It appears Moore told Green that Gates held some lofty position in the current configuration of the mythical "MJ-12," and Green was supposed to approach gates by passing some sort of code word or phrase, a scenario right out of an old pulp spy novel. Maccabee, with some disgust, says Green "bungled" the code word and the rendezvous fell through. Remarkably, Maccabee seems not to understand how foolish all this looks to people who have intensely studied the government's handling of UFOs over the years, nor does he seem to question the validity of Moore's activities, long after Moore publically confessed to being a liar and betrayer of fellow ufologists, a la his contention in 1989 that he was a "controlled informant" at the annual MUFON symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dr. Maccabee, Bill Moore & MJ-12 At this point we are forced to review the whole sordid history surrounding Bill Moore, his associate Rick Doty and his highly dubious claim to have been ordered to spy on Paul Bennewitz by members of unnamed agencies of the United States Government. This review is necessary in order to appreciate the lack of judgment that Dr. Maccabee (and therefore FUFOR) has demonstrated in his continuing support for and association with Bill Moore and more importantly Bill Moore's best known creation--the MJ-12 hoax. Paul Bennewitz is a man with a long history of mental illness who, when lucid, ran a company called Thunder Scientific Corp., a manufacturer of temperature and humidity measuring devices, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mr. Bennewitz claimed to have observed and filmed alien spacecraft activity over restricted areas of Kirtland, AFB and tried to interest Air Force officials in his sightings. Robert Hastings, a resident of the same city, spent some time with Bennewitz on two occasions after stories of Bennewitz's UFO encounters began to surface. Contrary to Moore's claims that Bennewitz had seen and filmed super-secret UFO-like craft over the Manzano Weapons Storage Area and the Coyote Canyon Test Site, Hastings found the films to be hoaxes so crude and poorly done as to be laughable. It was quite obvious, Hastings says, that one film was of several birds in flight (metaphorically appropriate, wouldn't you say?). During the screening, Bennewitz claimed the birds' flapping wings were alien spacecraft "force fields" moving up and down. Another film "looked like Bennewitz had thrown it on the floor and walked on it," Hastings added. The film was nothing more than a series of smudges, hair and other debris. A third film purportedly of a "green fireball" phenomenon as reported in one of Doty's bogus documents was found by Hastings to be somewhat drawn on the underside of the 8 mm film strip with a green magic marker. Hastings, a compassionate and fair-minded person, quickly realized Bennewitz was a mentally disturbed man suffering from paranoid delusions revolving around alien beings. At one point, Bennewitz showed Hastings print-outs of complete garble which he claimed were messages from the "aliens." Bennewitz interpreted the garble for Hastings, explaining that the aliens had tracked him from his hotel to Bennewitz's home, that they liked him and wanted to rendezvous with later that evening at a remote site. Hastings said thanks but no thanks. A long time friend of Bennewitz's has confirmed that Bennewitz has been repeatedly hospitalized by his family and treated for mental illness over the past decade, long before Moore had reportedly began working his alleged disinformational magic on Bennewitz. For a better impression of Bennewitz's mental state, check out this description taken from an advertising flyer for Christa Tilton's 'The Bennewitz Papers, 'a book based upon his ramblings: "Bennewitz reported [that] horrid people began following him, breaking into his home to install wire taps, Air Force men showing up at his doorstep at all hours..he was being drugged and was convinced aliens were coming into his home and sticking him with needles. He became a frightened man. He also felt like the government was possibly behind some of the happenings." There was probably thousands of people all over the country suffering from the same sort of paranoid delusions as Paul Bennewitz. What set Bennewitz apart was that he came into contact with an AFOSI agent named Sgt. Richard Doty. "Falcon" Doty first surfaced during an attempt to sell a hoaxed incident about a pitched battle with aliens at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, where Doty had been stationed. Bob Pratt, armed with a legitimate looking report about the reported case that had been concocted and leaked to Doty, conducted a lengthy investigation for the 'National Enquirer' but failed to find even a shred of supporting evidence. Later, Doty began sending phony letters to APRO, trying to bait them in similar fashion. Then, while stationed at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, Doty came into contact with Bennewitz as a result of Bennewitz's attempts to get Air Force officials to listen to his rantings about alien encounters. While other Kirtland officials had politely declined to meet with Bennewitz, Doty apparently saw an opportunity to make hay with Bennewitz's bales. Doty even invited Jerry Miller, a former investigator with the Air Force's 4602nd Sq., the group that did legwork for Project Blue Book, to a meeting with Bennewitz. Miller came away convinced Bennewitz was nothing more than a mentally disturbed person, a "nut case," and advised Doty that he was wasting But devious Doty was not discouraged. He concocted reports incorporating some of Bennewitz's stories, adding his own embellishments, then sought out Bill Moore, whom he heard speaking about UFOs on a local radio station. The pair soon found a great deal in common: Doty was determined to make big money by concocting phony UFO stories and Moore was determined to get rich by exploiting the subject. In fact, Moore told Todd Zechel in early 1980 that "I'll bet you've heard that you can't make money off UFOs? Well, I proved that wrong!" Bruce Maccabee was present when Moore made this brag, but apparently did not see what dangers it foretold. Moore showed some of Doty's reports during a documentary on UFOs produced by Ron Lakis, and later Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett of CAUS captured one of them on video tape freeze-frame, then submitted FOIA requests for the documents. Doty responded to the request by forwarding several "reports," which were dutifully reprinted in 'Clear Intent' , Greenwood and Fawcett's book. This process legitimized the "documents" and convinced even skeptical UFO advocates that Bennewitz had stumbled onto something important. Shortly thereafter, members of CAUS took the bait Doty had dangled. Peter Gersten CAUS's attorney, made contact with Doty through Bill Moore and a meeting was arranged. There, Doty alluded to possessing other "hot" information on UFOs and subsequently offered to sell Gersten "documents," stating he needed money because his wife had recently divorced him and he owed legal fees. Gersten wisely declined the offer, fearing he was either being set up for criminal prosecution or that Doty was attempting a swindle. Moore, the man who had resurrected the Roswell incident (a case for which the best explanation at that point seemed to be some sort of top secret constant altitude balloon project), began working with Doty on developing documents to support crashed s