All language subtitles for Alien.Files.Reopened.S01E04.1080p.WEB.h264-FREQUENCY_track3_[eng]

[narrator] Ever since humankind
first looked to the heavens,

we have asked the question,

"Are we alone?"

Tales of otherworldly beings...

ancient prophecies
and predictions...

and sightings
here on Earth...

have heightened
our sense of anticipation.

But in recent years,
these claims have become

more frequent.

Do you believe our government
has made contact

with intelligent
extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss
in a public setting.

[narrator]
More insistent.

Biologics came with some of
these recoveries, yeah.

[narrator]
And ever more dramatic.

In 1978, one man claimed to
have intercepted and decoded

extraterrestrial messages being
transmitted from deep within

a U.S. Air Force base.

Classified intelligence
operations were launched,

explanations given,
but the truth remained elusive.

Recent claims from
former military personnel that

extraterrestrial communication
has not only happened, but is

commonplace, has
stunned lawmakers.

You believe UAPs pose
a potential threat to

our national security?
-Yes.

-Yes.
-Yes.

[narrator]
What are we not being told?

Our team of experts
reopen the files.

They'll analyze
the intelligence,

investigate the science,

and reveal the truth.

[slides clicking]

In the late 1970s,
Paul Bennewitz owned a small

but successful business in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He was also a committed UFO
enthusiast who had spent nearly

two decades looking for UFOs
when, in his own garage,

he stumbled upon
a huge discovery.

Within 10 years,
he would lose everything.

It all began in 1978.

Paul Bennewitz owned
a private company outside

Kirtland Air Force Base,
Thunder Scientific Laboratories.

[narrator] Thunder Scientific's
biggest client was

the U.S. Navy, specifically
their nuclear weapons storage

facility at Manzano Base,
located inside

the Kirtland Air Force Base
in Albuquerque.

Kirtland is one of
the U.S. Air Force's

biggest and busiest bases,
with over 20,000 people

stationed there.

Living near the base
piqued Paul's curiosity.

He would often see strange
colored lights flying around

the base at night.

And as a committed member of
APRO, Aerial Phenomena

Research Organization,
he couldn't ignore them.

Bennewitz had been a pilot
and knew that what he was

seeing didn't come
from any known aircraft.

Enthusiasts have long claimed
that New Mexico and Colorado are

a hotbed of alien activity.

New Mexico and Colorado
also happen to be home to

11 significant military bases.

[narrator] And in the 1970s,
some significantly weird things

occurred there,
things like cattle mutilations.

Farmers would find cows that
had organs removed with

surgical precision
and no sign of blood.

In several cases,
no tire tracks were found

near the carcass.

And and locals had reported
seeing spotlights from

unidentified helicopters.

Thousands of cattle mutilations
have been reported,

and there are many different
theories about what might have
caused them.

[narrator]
In one incident, a New Mexico
state trooper, Gabe Valdez,

claimed to have looked inside
a mutilated cow and found

a creature that resembled
a small hybrid human.

He also claimed to find
gas masks nearby.

Bennewitz
began to ask questions.

Could the cattle mutilations be
the work of aliens?

Or were the military testing
secret weapons?

He became obsessed
with finding out.

Paul Bennewitz was
an expert in electronics.

He was able to build
electronics and scan

for radio frequencies
and other type of radio signals.

[narrator]
And he quickly discovers
that he is onto something.

[birds cawing]

Paul had made,
in his laboratory, this device

that collected
electromagnetic emissions.

He started collecting them,
and he realized that one of

the frequencies was a very high
frequency in a gigahertz range.

He knew that that particular
frequency wasn't in use by

anybody, at least
he didn't think so.

So he started more collection
projects on his own,

bringing in
different equipment.

[narrator]
The signals are subtle,

no discernible words
or messages.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock] He
recognized these as data bursts.

He quickly put them inside
his computer, but what came out

was nonsense.

[narrator]
He writes a program to try
to decode the data bursts.

Soon, he deciphers
his first message.

"Ground, ground,
women of Earth are needed.

"Flexible the next discharges.
Our ship, all women.

"Do not command
the north among us.

"You have many friends.
Water very short.

"Resist all attempts
at alteration.

"Listen.
Orange.

Make peace."
Alarmed but intrigued,

Bennewitz continues decoding
the burst and then does

something daring.

He replies on the same
frequency and receives

a shocking response.

"Take vast portion universe
against our aggression.

"The number of
our crashed saucers is eight.

"Alien forces
mean no help to you.

"Metal,
we come invisible.

"We will not join sides
with anyone.

Our race is dying on
the home planet."

He comes to
an ominous conclusion.

Paul was thoroughly convinced
he was exchanging messages

with extraterrestrials.

According to Paul,
the aliens' planet was dying,

and they came here
to Earth to live with other

extraterrestrials
who were already here.

[narrator] So Bennewitz took
to his Cessna to revisit

the area around
the Air Force Base.

He suspected that
extraterrestrials were beaming

radio bursts from
a secret underground base.

And they had something to do
with the cattle mutilations.

But he needed proof.

As he flew over Dulce,
New Mexico,

he discovered a large alloy
dome over 11.6 meters across

and noticed metal
debris and wreckage,

like a battlefield in
a remote area.

Whatever happened out there,
Bennewitz felt he'd seen enough.

Paul believed that an invasion
was imminent and the public

must be warned.

So Paul Bennewitz did the right
thing, the patriotic thing,

and he brought this information
to the military.

[narrator]
Paul Bennewitz gathers all he's
learned and delivers a detailed

dossier to U.S.
Air Force headquarters.

Paul claimed he had evidence of
electromagnetic emissions

coming from inside the base.

[narrator]
The U.S. Air Force Office of
Special Investigations receives

hundreds of these claims every
year, but Paul's is different.

Paul is highly skilled
and has access to a secure

military base --
they take him seriously.

[Doty] He was receiving the
laser signals and was able to

determine what frequencies
they were coming in.

And so the United States Air
Force Research Laboratory said,

"We're gonna fund you,

and you're gonna show us
how to do it."

[narrator]
The government assigns
Richard Doty to the case.

Overnight, Bennewitz goes
from being just another

UFO enthusiast to an asset
of the U.S. government.

He is to keep working and send
his findings directly to Doty.

He would call me and explain
that he had this data.

It was my job to go pick up
this data and transport it to

Kirtland and turn that
over to them.

One day in 1981, Paul receives
a call from Bill Moore.

Bill Moore is very well known
in the UFO community.

He is one of the authors of
"The Roswell Incident."

[narrator]
Moore wants to meet.

He has information
Bennewitz has to see.

[McDonald] Bill handed Paul
a file with a warning.

And the file was
Project Aquarius.

And he told him to keep
the information in this

to himself.

The information in this file
indicated that there was

an extraterrestrial presence
on the planet Earth.

[narrator]
It's the mid-1970s,

and electronics engineer
Paul Bennewitz believes

he's uncovered evidence of
extraterrestrial messages being

beamed to Earth by
an alien race in difficulty.

Having reported these contacts,
he is handed a file from none

other than the author of
the acclaimed book,

"The Roswell Incident,"
ufologist Bill Moore.

The file was revelatory.

It mentioned the Majestic 12,
an unconfirmed elite group of

U.S. leaders
who have jurisdiction over

extraterrestrial activity.

Paul most certainly thought
that he had been validated

and that whatever
communication was happening,

the military understood it.

[narrator]
The Project Aquarius document

confirms Bennewitz's fears,

drawing him deeper
into his investigation.

Paul now believes that the U.S.
government reached an accord

with extraterrestrials, who were
being accommodated in

New Mexico.

And he writes Project Beta,
a detailed plan to defeat

the aliens
living in our midst.

[Doty] It was a project that
he developed and that dealt

with his understanding of what
the extraterrestrials wanted

and what they were
going to do as far as

the invasion, the contacts
the extraterrestrials wanted

with certain people on Earth,

and then what
their final goal was.

[narrator]
In his plan, Bennewitz
makes some extreme claims.

[McDonald]
Paul Bennewitz did believe
that hundreds of thousands of

Americans were implanted with
some type of listening

or monitoring device.

He might have come to
the belief that these implants

could control them
and take over them.

[narrator] Worried that the U.S.
Air Force Base isn't acting

on his information,
he sends Project Beta to

senators and even the President
of the United States.

Paul Bennewitz's
UFO research is becoming

an all-consuming obsession.

He feels alone in his beliefs,
becomes increasingly paranoid,

and longs for some form
of affirmation.

[Doty] One night, Bill Moore
and I went out to Paul's house.

Paul was...

quite despondent.

We asked Paul what
was the problem.

Paul says, "I'm really worried
about the aliens.

"They're gonna try
to take over Earth.

They're gonna invade Earth."

Then he took us into his --
a room next to his bedroom

and showed us these rifles
he had on a bed.

And on a shelf above where
the rifles were laying

were knives,
a whole series of knives,

different types
of knives.

And I asked Paul, I said,
"What are these knives

for, Paul?"

He says, "If the bullets don't
kill them, the knives will.

Because I think they're just
biological, just like we are."

[narrator]
Bennewitz is convinced that
all humans are being watched

and scanned
by alien life forms.

He produces a wildly spiking
seismograph as proof.

When Moore feels a hot flash,
Paul insists that he's being

remotely scanned.

Paul even shows the marks on
his arms where he claims he was

injected while he slept.

As his paranoia grows,
he begins to trust no one.

Paul did believe that nowhere
was safe, and he was having

difficulty trusting people.

[narrator] Even as his life is
falling apart around him,

Paul ignores all pleas to stop.

It did get to a point
where Paul was so afraid,

terrified, and suffering from
paranoia, he felt so unsafe,

that he did barricade himself
in his home by putting sandbags

in front of
the doors and windows.

[narrator]
This was the final straw.

His family has him committed.

He would spend the next
20 years in mental agony

because nobody
would believe him.

And even though some of Paul
Bennewitz's claims were extreme,

Richard Doty,
a counterintelligence officer

with the United States
Air Force Office of Special

Investigations and respected
UFO investigator, and author

Bill Moore have now confirmed
that others were true.

On July 1st, 1989,
at the annual MUFON convention

in Las Vegas, Nevada,
Bill Moore, at one time

Bennewitz's trusted friend
and collaborator, took to

the stage and confessed to
a stunned audience that he had

been part of a government plan
to exploit Paul Bennewitz.

The plot had started from
the very first contact Bennewitz

made with the U.S.
Air Force Office of

Special Investigations.

Project Seven Lambs

was a counterintelligence
operation.

We used deception to try to
convince Paul that what he was

seeing was actually
extraterrestrials

and not some classified program.

Paul Bennewitz had tapped into
something that was highly

classified at Kirtland
Air Force Base.

Kirtland contained
a starlight laser system.

The laser was directed into
the air and could blind

passing satellites,
primarily the Soviet satellites,

to prevent the satellites from
taking pictures of the base

and all the classified
areas of Kirtland.

Paul was able to tap into
the signal that was used to

transmit that laser from
ground base up in the air.

The second thing was he was
photographing these objects

that were flying around
Kirtland Air Force Base.

But these objects were
the United States Air Force

experimental drone program,
the very, very first

experimental drone program
the Air Force

or the military had.

[narrator] The deeper
Bennewitz got into it,

the deeper his convictions

about UFO contacts became,
and the more he became a person

of interest to other
intelligence agencies.

Without us knowing it,
National Security Agency

started a clandestine operation
against Paul Bennewitz.

[narrator] The NSA established
a surveillance post across

the street, further feeding
Bennewitz's paranoia.

And then there was Bill Moore's
role in the operation.

Doty claims he recruited
Bill Moore as an asset in 1980

as part of an operation that had
nothing to do with UFOs.

Later, when he learned that
Moore had access to many UFO

groups, Doty decided to use him
to penetrate those groups.

[narrator] And Bennewitz was one
of those whom Doty believed

Moore could usefully keep tabs
on for the government.

Bill Moore was
an asset for U.S. intelligence.

What we wanted to do
in the Paul Bennewitz operation

is use Bill Moore as a person

outside U.S. intelligence
to get closer to Paul.

[narrator]
Doty and an agent referred to
only as Falcon approached Moore

and offered to tell him
the truth about UFOs

and extraterrestrials in
exchange for information

about the UFO community.

To win his trust, they took him
to classified areas

and revealed documentation
about the crashed spacecraft.

Then they showed him
the Silver Sky Memo.

[Doty]
It was a summary of events
from the Roswell crash

and other crashes up to

the U.S. government's
involvement with

the research and development of
extraterrestrial crafts.

That document was,
I would say, 80% real.

[narrator] Having won his trust,
Moore took the deal.

He would receive secret UFO
documents and would report

on his community.

He would also disseminate
any fake stories

that Doty brought to him.

This diet of disinformation
fed Bennewitz's obsession.

His claims grew
increasingly outrageous,

and his actions
more erratic,

until he finally met someone
who had firsthand experience of

what he'd suspected all along.

Bennewitz met with a woman named
Myrna Hansen, who claimed that

she had witnessed UFOs lifting
cows with tractor beams.

When the apparently brief event
was over, she realized that

a significant amount of time
had actually passed.

[narrator] Myrna Hansen
believed she and her son

may have been
abducted by aliens.

It was the opening
Bennewitz was looking for.

All he needed now
was corroboration.

And that came via two men
who had significant experience

in studying those who claimed
to have had contact with

extraterrestrials,
Dr. Allen Hynek

and Dr. Leo Sprinkle.

Dr. Allen Hynek
was a physicist.

He worked for
the United States Air Force

on Project Blue Book from

1963 to 1969.

Dr. Hynek and Dr. Sprinkle
brought Myrna Hansen to Paul,

because they wanted to

confirm some of the things
she was saying with some of

the things Paul
was saying.

[narrator]
Dr. Sprinkle specialized
in hypnotic regression therapy

and had a session
with Myrna Hansen.

The story that emerged
was fantastical.

[Bader]
She apparently told him that
she was transported onto one of

the ships, examined
by gray-type aliens,

and even witnessed
a cow mutilation.

[narrator]
According to Richard Doty,
the Air Force Office of

Strategic Intelligence put
her under hypnosis as well.

[Doty] She told us a story about
waking up and seeing these vats

with human beings
inside of them.

Then she tells us about
an underground facility

she went to.

And what shocked us was she was
describing a classified bunker

on Kirtland Air Force Base
out in an area

called Coyote Canyon.

Inside was all concrete.

There was an elevator.

She described that bunker.

She described
the elevator going down.

She described
a panel on the bottom.

She described this round circle
door that the aliens

would come out of.

[narrator]
She claimed that they had
inserted several devices into

her body, then attempted to
wipe her and her son

Shawn's memories.

Myrna Hansen's revelations
served only to drive Bennewitz

further into paranoia.

This was the last hypnosis
Dr. Sprinkle would undertake.

Undeterred, Bennewitz
turned to James Harder to

continue the regressions.

Paul sought out to get a second
regression session for

Myrna Hansen.

They were concerned that
they were being listened

into by the aliens.

They ended up doing the session
in a garage, in a car,

with the windows
being covered in tinfoil.

[narrator]
He claimed this was the only
way to block the alien beams

that were controlling
Myrna's memory.

He wrote to APRO,
the Aerial Phenomena Research

Organization based in Tucson,
Arizona, to appraise them

of the situation.

"The situation here is
serious," he wrote.

"She is getting
the best treatment.

"She's also being badly beaten
on by the aliens

with their beams."

This all took place while
he was first receiving

the alien messages.

For Paul Bennewitz,
the picture was clear.

Aliens were here,
and they were a threat.

[narrator] From his home near
Kirtland U.S. Air Force Base,

New Mexico,
electrical engineer

Paul Bennewitz has become
increasingly convinced that

extraterrestrials are closely
monitoring human activity in

preparation to colonize
planet Earth.

The smoking gun, as far
as he was concerned,

was his discovery of what
he believes was their hidden

base in the hills of Agua Dulce
in the Arizona desert.

[Doty] Paul had a private
pilot's license.

He had a plane, a Cessna,
I believe it was a 180,

and Paul flew a lot.

In fact, he took me up to
around Dulce and showed me

things that he thought might be
connected to UFOs.

Paul took a lot of pictures of
Dulce from the air,

or actually Archuleta Peak,
which is next to Dulce.

He would see things
on the ground.

He started asking me
about different things that

he was photographing.

[narrator]
Bennewitz is not alone
in believing that there was

a secret underground base at
Dulce that housed aliens.

Even bolder claims were made by
Phillip Schneider,

an engineer who said he built
deep underground military bases

for the U.S.

He claimed that there are 192
of these bases in the USA,

all interconnected,
and 1,400 dotted

around the planet.

None of Schneider's claims were
substantiated before his death

by suicide in 1996.

And none of it explains why
Doty and the Office of

Special Investigations
encouraged Bennewitz's

more extreme beliefs.
-[knocking noises]

[Haseltine]
The suggestion is that

they deceived Bennewitz
because they wanted to shift

his attention
away from something

they didn't want publicized,

off to something else
that would be harmless.

Kirtland is about directed
energy mainly.

It's about their laser
and microwave weapons

and communication system.

[narrator]
It seems like an elaborate
operation just to neutralize

one man's unusual ideas.

If you've got a good asset,

you don't burn it
unless you have to.

[narrator]
And Paul Bennewitz was a good
asset, a key and trusted part

of the UFO community,
unknowingly disseminating

disinformation about what
was going on in Kirtland

and diverting attention away
from its real Cold War purpose.

The truth is Paul
was highly likable,

and people did
like him.

Paul Bennewitz was a good guy,
and he was a good husband,

and he was smart, and he was
patriotic, and he did do

the right thing, and he brought
the information

to the military.

They misled him,
misinformed him, turned him

into an asset, pushed him to
the point that he could not

handle it, ending him
in a psych ward.

[McDonald]
Bennewitz being committed
to a psychiatric hospital was

the final straw for Bill Moore.

His fateful speech at the MUFON
convention in July 1989,

in which he admitted that
he had encouraged Bennewitz's

obsession with UFOs at
the behest of the Air Force's

Office of Special
Investigations, cost him

the respect of his peers
and his career as

a UFO researcher.

Richard Doty's plan
had worked.

Between Bennewitz, Moore,
and a handful of other

high-profile UFO personalities,
OSI had managed to control

the extraterrestrial narrative.

If you can sufficiently
marginalize a group,

then no one will believe them,

even if they are
telling the truth.

[narrator]
For his work on Project Seven
Lambs, Richard Doty received

an award
from General John Vessey,

chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Despite Doty's success,
he left his position in OSI,

and years later,
his past caught up with him

in a surprising way.

Doty has now come out
and said that

extraterrestrials
are real.

Doty says that one of the key
aspects of counterintelligence

is mixing facts with
falsehoods, so that no one will

believe the facts when
presented with them.

[narrator]
So how can we trust the story
that Doty is telling us now?

The United States government
does, or at least did,

have extraterrestrials
contained

inside Area 51 at
a place called S2 Annex.

It existed during
my time at Area 51,

which was in
the middle '80s.

And we used it to
house extraterrestrials.

I'm not sure
if it exists today.

[narrator]
He even claims that an ET
had been held in New Mexico.

After the Roswell crash
in New Mexico in 1947,

we recovered a craft
in Corona, New Mexico.

And we also
recovered one live ET.

And he was in captivity
from 1947 to 1952.

He provided us information
regarding a communications

device that was aboard
the craft that we recovered.

He explained how it worked,
and he actually was able to

operate the craft to send
messages back to

his home planet.

I don't know that we knew how
that occurred, but we were able

to obtain that communications
device and look into it

and try to duplicate it.

[narrator]
Was Kirtland Air Force Base
housing aliens that helped

the government make
technological advances,

as Doty now claims?

Were the transmissions
Paul Bennewitz intercepted

new military technology,
or in fact,

unexplained signals
from outer space?

To try and find out,
it's necessary to go back to

the very start of
Paul Bennewitz's obsession with

Kirtland Air Force Base,
and how it was triggered by

the spate of inexplicable
cattle mutilations across

New Mexico in the late 1970s,
rumored to be caused by

space aliens.

There has been no concrete
evidence that cattle

mutilations are linked
to extraterrestrials.

[narrator]
Now, over 40 years later,
Richard Doty is claiming

there may be something in
Bennewitz's claims.

I think that the ETs are taking
substances from cattle.

There must be a reason
why they're taking blood,

urine,
body parts from cattle

and using 'em in some manner,
and I believe that they're

using 'em for
experimental reasons.

[narrator]
It was during this widely
reported and macabre phenomenon

that Bennewitz discovered
data bursts being transmitted

from Kirtland.

He stumbled onto
something the government

didn't want him
to know about.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock] Data bursts
are a great military tool.

Data is sent at high speed in
very short bursts of time.

It can be easily mistaken
for static or lightning,

so less likely
to be intersected.

Usually, a data burst is
digitized and compressed.

It's also encoded,
and there's many different ways

of doing that.

Bennewitz will not only have to
receive and store the data,

but you also have to
demodulate it, decompress it,

and decrypt it too.

The likelihood
he could do all that

was vanishingly close
to zero.

[narrator]
Which suggests that the only
way Bennewitz could have

done it is if somebody
wanted him to.

Had Bennewitz been sent
messages that

the National Security Agency
knew he would be able to decode?

One of the things one of
our technical advisors says

was, "You know what?
NSA is doing this.

They're sending him signals."

So we went to talk to NSA
and NSA says, "No,

"we don't --
we didn't do that.

We don't have
the ability to do that."

You wouldn't have to use
someone as sophisticated as NSA

to do that.

Having been at NSA and being
one of their senior leaders,

I find that highly unlikely.

[narrator]
But Doty now claims they found
listening devices planted by

another intelligence agency
in Bennewitz's house.

Although surprisingly,
there was nothing on

his computer to suggest
it had been tampered with.

We went into the residence,
and we found every one of

those bugs,
and we removed them.

But none of those bugs were
on his computer.

None of them.

We got a computer expert,
one of ours.

She took that computer apart,
examined every single piece of

that computer in there,
and found it.

There's nothing in there that
would cause these messages.

And so we were confused.

We couldn't figure out why
he was receiving

these messages.

Now you ask, maybe they were
really coming from ETs.

[narrator] Or there could be
a simpler explanation.

Paul was either doing it,
literally doing it, or he was

just making it up,
but we couldn't determine that.

[narrator]
Either way, Paul Bennewitz
was right about one thing.

If ETs were going
to contact us,

current belief is
they'd use radio waves.

Radio waves are considered
the most likely method of

interstellar communication.

[narrator]
It's one of the ways that SETI,
the Search for Extraterrestrial

Life program, which began years
after the Paul Bennewitz

incident, scans the skies.

Organizations like SETI search
for radio signals transmitted

by extraterrestrial
civilizations.

SETI looks for radio
transmissions because these are

the easiest to send and receive
over wide areas.

Only when they've
eliminated all spurious noise

do they start to suspect
an alien signal.

But the efforts to communicate
are currently speculative,

and success is uncertain.

The vastness of space
and the limit of technology

means communicating with
anything out there

is challenging.

The only documented signal
that I know about is
the "Wow!" signal,

collected by Ohio State
radio astronomers in 1977.

This famous signal has never
been explained as a human-made

or celestial phenomena,

and it could have even been
from an ET.

[narrator] Meanwhile, to try
and make contact from Earth,

we have sent a calling card
hurtling through space at

48,000 kilometers per hour.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock] Yes,
the Voyager Golden Disk.

It describes humanity
to anyone out there

that might run into it.

So far, it's traveled nearly
24 billion kilometers.

[narrator] Our closest star,
Proxima Centauri,

is over 40 trillion
kilometers away.

Voyager is six ten-thousandths
of the way there.

It's highly unlikely that these
types of signals will ever be

received, as our attempts at
interstellar communication rely

on certain assumptions
and bases for our calculations.

[Haseltine]
The value of pi is an example.

The speed of light,
the spectrum of light that

comes out of excited hydrogen.

Those things are
true everywhere.

Those are the things we put
in our message to show

extraterrestrial civilizations
that we understand basic

elements of the universe.

[narrator]
The presumption is that any
other intelligent civilization

will also be wondering
if they're alone.

And so far, after more than
half a century of listening,

only the "Wow!" signal is
considered a candidate.

And even receiving that is
bordering on the miraculous

when you consider Milky Way
galaxy is a thousand trillion

kilometers in diameter.

And that represents just one
millionth of one percent

of the whole
of the universe.

The distances are staggering.

[narrator]
Even though the chance of alien
contact is vanishingly small,

many people believe
it has already happened.

How else to explain so many
UFO sightings, they argue,

and the government's
fervent denials?

Conspiracy theories are very
common in the UFO community.

The longer that community
goes without definitive proof,

the more convinced it becomes
that the government is

hiding evidence.

[narrator]
The campaign of denial
has lasted for decades.

[Bader] As early as 1949, Marine
Corps aviator and UFO author

Donald Keyhoe was claiming
that the Air Force

was hiding information
about UFOs.

In 1962, UFO author Albert
Bender claimed that three men

in black came to his home
and frightened him from

revealing the truth about UFOs.

[narrator]
By the time Paul Bennewitz
discovered the radio bursts

from Kirtland, he was already
displaying some signs of

paranoia and anxiety.

But just because
you're paranoid doesn't mean

they're not after you.

It's hard to know if people
become conspiracy theorists

because they are anxious,
or if they become anxious

because they believe
people are after them.

[narrator] The intelligence
community effectively exploited

Bennewitz's anxiety
to discredit him,

which suggests that Paul
Bennewitz had stumbled onto

something the government
absolutely did not want him

to know.

So they took him apart,
piece by piece.

Everything I did regarding
the Paul Bennewitz case,

Project Seven Lambs,
was controlled by headquarters,

AFOSI, or Headquarters Defense
Intelligence Agency.

I never worked independently.
I never worked as a maverick.

I did everything

dictated by headquarters.

All I had to do is say,
"You know what, Paul?

I think you're right."
That's all I had to do.

We'd never drug Paul.

We never gave him any kind of
psychotropic drugs.

We never did any of that.

We just had to reinforce what
Paul was already believing in.

Whether it was morally right
is another thing.

It's not clear how common it
was for U.S. government agents

to exploit the mental illness
of their targets.

But to me,
it seems highly unethical,

and I would have
thought illegal.

[narrator] At the very least,
it's no way to treat a friend.

I became friends with Paul.

I would go over
to his house for dinner.

His wife would invite me over
and some other agents.

[narrator]
But Doty had a job to do.

There were many times
during this operation,

Project Seven Lambs, that
I questioned what headquarters

wanted me to do.

I had this...

suspicion that,
at some point,

what the headquarters wanted us
to do would come back to haunt

the United States government.

I think,
in some respects, it has.

Mr. Grusch, do you believe that
our government is in possession

of UAPs?
-[Grusch] Absolutely.

I know the exact locations.

[narrator] In the late 1970s,
Paul Bennewitz claimed to have

intercepted signals to
and from outer space from

the Kirtland U.S.
Air Force Base in New Mexico.

His beliefs in extraterrestrial
activity were encouraged by

government agent
Richard Doty,

who subsequently revealed that
Paul, in common with many

UFO watchers, was encouraged
in his speculations to divert

attention from top-secret
Cold War programs in

a disinformation campaign known
as Project Seven Lambs.

Now, however, Doty has
further revealed that Bennewitz

may well have hit upon genuine
unexplained UFO activity,

which the U.S. intelligence
community was desperately

trying to cover up.

Either way, Bennewitz was
ultimately committed to

a psychiatric facility.

Such personal betrayals
are seen as serving

the greater good.

As a senior
intelligence officer,

I can say that
human intelligence

is absolutely essential to
our national security.

And so it's the cost of doing
business if we want to remain

safe in an unsafe world.

During the time that I was
running Project Seven Lambs,

I considered it a very valid
counterintelligence operation

that was protecting
national security.

But years later,
in present time,

I don't think it did.

[Haseltine] If the government is
concealing information related

to the UAP sightings,

then my guess would be,
it's not about whether

they're aliens or not, it would
be about the sources

and methods that were involved
in collecting the data.

So if they gather that
information from sensitive

classified instruments,
they're not gonna tell

anyone about that aspect of it.

[narrator]
Even now, as rumors swirl

and more alleged facts surface,

can we trust them?

We still don't know if the data
bursts were top secret

military tech,
ET communications,

or some combination.

There is no basis here to
conclude that there's one shred

of evidence of
alien involvement.

What we have is admitted
deception on the one hand,

and the imaginings of someone
who's acknowledged to have

mental illness on the other.

I don't think that
the Air Force was concerned

that he was
a foreign spy, necessarily.

I think it was
simpler than that.

They just didn't like
people listening to

their data transmissions.

And so they were gonna
investigate it, and then if

possible, they were gonna
assess the damage that had been

done, and then ultimately
bring it to a stop.

[narrator] It would appear
that the case is closed.

Bennewitz did uncover
secret transmissions.

A multi-agency operation was
launched to

undermine his credibility
and successfully forced people

to question his sanity.

And there the story would rest,
until the man responsible for

the operation against Bennewitz
broke cover to suggest there is

far more truth in
the UFO stories he spent

his intelligence career
derailing than the government

wants you to know.

I retired from U.S. intelligence
or U.S. government in 1988.

But after my NDA expired in
2002, I decided to come forth

with the real information about
what I knew regarding UFOs

and extraterrestrial contacts.

I want the real truth to
come out.

I don't want this made up truth
where the falsehoods are being

presented by the UFO community.
I want the real truth.

I have the real truth.

That's why I started to
present the truth.

[narrator] And even if, in light
of his past activities,

we might find it hard to
believe Doty's revised claims,

they are strikingly similar to
those made by former Air Force

intelligence officer
David Grusch in a public

congressional hearing
in July 2023.

If you believe we have
crashed craft as stated earlier,

do we have the bodies of the
pilots who piloted this craft?

As I've stated publicly already
in my News Nation interview,

biologics came with some of
these recoveries, yeah.

Were they, I guess,
human or non-human biologics?

Non-human, and that was
the assessment of people with

direct knowledge on the program
I talked to that are currently

still on the program.

[narrator] Maybe Bennewitz
wasn't so crazy after all.