For years I wasn’t sure what to make of the bizarre things I had heard about Paul Bennewitz. Was he completely mad or were the people saying that trying to cover something up? After researching for a while I am quite sure Bennewitz was not completely mad, somewhat, but not completely. He did finally have a complete breakdown but not until after being tormented by certain sinister individuals for years. If Bennewitz had not been such a bright individual he probably would have been better off because it was bringing attention to one of his inventions and what it was picking up and recording that caused most of the trouble.

Paul Bennewitz had a Masters degree in electronics and was the owner of Thunder Scientific Corp which did work for Sandia Labs, Phillips Labs, Kirtland AFB and many other such organizations. There are many players in this tragic black comedy, Bennewitz himself, Richard Doty the master of disinformation, Bill Moore (the UFO researcher and disinformer), John Lear pops up from time to time and there is also a poor woman who obviously had some horrible experience named Myrna Hansen.

May 5, 1980, Myrna Hansen had what is now known as an abduction experience. She was driving along one night to her home in Eagles Nest, New Mexico when she saw a bright light which was sucking a cow up into what could only be called a UFO, at least two other people witnessed this event. Myrna had expected to arrive home about 9:00 that evening but instead did not get there until 1 a.m.. When she got home she called the police department for help. The officer referred her to Officer Gabe Valdez who in the past had many of his cows mutilated and he referred her to Paul Bennewitz who Gabe knew was interested in cattle mutilation and UFO’s. Two days later Myrna came to stay at the Bennewitz residence. Bennewitz became convinced that she had been implanted with some sort of device that was controlling her and keeping her from remembering everything that had happened so he preferred regression sessions, done by Leo Sprinkle a psychologist and Professor at University of Wyoming, be done in his car with many layers of foil over the windows to keep the EM signals from getting in or out. This sounds rather funny now, but as far as I know Bennewitz was the first person to come up with the theory that abductees were being implanted. It was during these sessions that Myrna told about being taken to a underground base that Paul somehow figured out was near Dulce.

In the Bennewitz home sat a receiver he had built that was picking up low frequency EM signals which he said were coming from Kirtland AFB around the Manzano weapons storage area. The neighborhood he lived in is as close as you can get to the Manzano area, the two are separated only by barb wire and electric fences. His house was only about 1 mile away from Manzano mountain. He had also been taking photos and 8mm film of lights he saw hovering and moving rapidly around the Manzano area. Everyone in Albuquerque has known for ages that Manzano Mountain is mostly hollowed out with tunnels throughout. I have known this since I was a child because my Grandfather worked at Sandia Lab and had told us and just about everyone who knew this told everyone they knew so I am sure Paul Bennewitz knew this too. Paul was sure that the signals and pictures he was recording were signs of a eminent alien invasion so he contacted Kirtland AFB along with NM Senators and Congressmen to warn them. Kirtland was very interested in what Paul was recording, since they had many secret projects going on that needed to be protected from eavesdroppers and this is where Richard Doty enters the picture in late 1980.

Richard Doty is on the record saying he worked for the OSI as a disinformation officer. I checked with Linda Howe who tells me that she did meet him at Kirtland where he gave her some information that was true, but at the same time that seems to only be to get her to believe his other information that was not true. He recalls that she did not fall for this and the “operation” with her was a failure. Paul Bennewitz on the other hand was eager to believe whatever Doty told him. It seems that Bill Moore who at the time was working himself as a disinformation agent tried to tell Bennewitz not to believe everything Doty or even Moore himself told him, but to no avail.

Still, Paul Bennewitz was not a complete nut. The signals he was receiving were real signals that Doty says the NSA who had their own offices at the base were doing the sending and receiving. Doty was eventually replaced by NSA agents who wanted to make sure Bennewitz discredited himself by spreading wild stories about UFO’s. They also wanted to keep a eye on him to make sure that he wasn’t sharing his method of intercepting these signals with Soviet spies posing as UFO enthusiasts. Bennewitz was even sent some sort of software that was suppose to decode the messages which basically gave him a bunch of nonsense about a alien invasion.

Eventually Paul Bennewitz became convinced that the true threat was the underground alien base somewhere near Dulce. According to Richard Doty the military wanted Paul to think the aliens were responsible for cattle mutilations because really they were being done by the military and that the NSA wanted him to concentrate his energy on Dulce rather than Kirtland where there was real stuff going on, so they set up a elaborate hoax to go along with his disillusions. According to Doty they helicoptered in bunches of debris from Kirtland that would look like stuff that belonged to spaceships and even pounded large tubes into the ground of Archuleta Mesa to make it look like air shafts for the underground base. When this was all done Doty flew Bennewitz over the site to show him what the Air Force was concerned about. Bennewitz apparently believed every word. Bennewitz was so interested in the area that he purchased his own plane and began flying reconnaissance missions over the site himself. During one of these flights he came across the wreckage of what may have been a early prototype stealth bomber. He snapped many photos of it, but made the mistake of showing them to Richard Doty. Bennewitz was then told that this was a experimental nuclear aircraft that the aliens had shot down to teach the US a lesson about flying over their base and that Bennewitz and others should stay away do to the radiation. With everyone keeping away, this gave the air force time to clean up the wreckage and the NSA time to steal Bennewitz’s photos of it. All that remains is the drawing he made of the crash, but other researchers such as Bill Moore saw the original photos.

In 1988, after 8 years of constant stress and lack of sleep Paul Bennewitz finally had to be taken to a mental hospital. His paranoia had reached a all time high and he had pretty much barricaded himself in his home, he was hardly eating or sleeping and was sure aliens were coming into his home late at night and injecting him with strange chemicals. Richard Doty who says no matter what he had done to Paul he considered him a friend and felt very badly about this turn of events and even rushed to visit him at the hospital. He was released after a month and his family who was very concerned about his health effectively kept him away from the subject of UFO’s and ET’s until his death in 2003 at the age of 75.

Next week - My personal thoughts on the Bennewitz story.