Speaker 1: Would that be correct? And seeing that most of the
Speaker 1: counterintelligence stuff when it comes to propaganda really revolves around
Speaker 1: the Internet.
Speaker 2: Probably today. I left counter intelligence a long time ago,
Speaker 2: but we didn't have the Internet back then. But I
Speaker 2: would imagine today there's a lot of that going on
Speaker 2: through the Internet through sources within TikTok. The way they
Speaker 2: would do it is recruit people that work for different
Speaker 2: Internet providers or even YouTube channels, and then tap into
Speaker 2: that particular YouTube channel or TikTok channel and perform some
Speaker 2: type of counter intelligence operation. Back by the day, as
Speaker 2: it was called deception operations, you didn't you didn't see
Speaker 2: anything written about disinformation UH the the UH. If you
Speaker 2: were going to UH operate a kind of intelligence operation,
Speaker 2: it would be through deception uh and and similar to
Speaker 2: what we did with with Paul Benowitz, although that really
Speaker 2: wasn't much of a task with us because Paul was
Speaker 2: already a believer in UFOs, so we didn't have to
Speaker 2: go through any great lengths to make him believe what
Speaker 2: he was seeing were UFOs and not as the secret
Speaker 2: operation that he actually tapped into. So he lived Paul
Speaker 2: lived in in what they call the area called Four Hills.
Speaker 2: UH and west eastern Albuquerque. That the Four Hills uh
Speaker 2: Housing complex was right up against the base perimeter of
Speaker 2: Kirkland Air Force Base. In fact, Paul's house. If he
Speaker 2: went out his back yard and walked up the defence
Speaker 2: his fence, there was a buffer zone of about maybe
Speaker 2: one hundred hundred feet and then the base defence was there,
Speaker 2: so Paul could look right into see Manzano. And so
Speaker 2: Paul told Colonel Edwards that he was receiving strange signals
Speaker 2: from there, and also he was filming strange objects flying
Speaker 2: next to military aircrafts. When that was reported to Colonel Edwards,
Speaker 2: he immediately contacted me. I was a counter intelligence officer
Speaker 2: for the base, and he said, hey, Rick, I got
Speaker 2: some guy here is providing information to me that you
Speaker 2: need to hear. So immediately went to Colonel Edward's office.
Speaker 2: He gave me all the information on Paul, and then
Speaker 2: I made contact with Paul. That was early in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty and that's when the operation began. Paul didn't come
Speaker 2: out and speak with the Air Force personnel until some
Speaker 2: time later.
Speaker 1: Were you kind of tasked by your superiors to give
Speaker 1: this dessumption to Paul Benowitz or was this something just
Speaker 1: like on your own accord, like just reinforcing his own
Speaker 1: preconceived thoughts and ideas he already.
Speaker 2: Had no in within the US intelligence community. You didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, you didn't walk across the street and get
Speaker 2: a drink of water without an operations plan. When my
Speaker 2: first objective was to gather all the information that Paul
Speaker 2: I had, I didn't. I didn't say or or try
Speaker 2: to trick Paul in anything until I gathered all the
Speaker 2: information that he was trying that he gave to Colonel Edwards.
Speaker 2: And so I went out and met with Paul a
Speaker 2: couple of times to get everything that he'd had and
Speaker 2: that he was reporting. I never provided anything to Paul
Speaker 2: until maybe the third or fourth time I went back
Speaker 2: out there. But when I come back came back to
Speaker 2: the office, I wrote up my report and and and
Speaker 2: or reports and sent them up to our headquarters. And
Speaker 2: then they set me down a proposed operational plan of
Speaker 2: what what I need to do. And that's I followed
Speaker 2: the plan. I did exactly what they told me to do,
Speaker 2: and that's that's how I started interfacing with Paul.
Speaker 1: Did you know that what he was captioning was advanced
Speaker 1: military technology that was being tested around Kirkland Air Force Base,
Speaker 1: and that he was getting transmissions from the base before
Speaker 1: you went to figure out what he had was that
Speaker 1: already was that already the thought in the idea behind
Speaker 1: the Air Force at that time, but that he had
Speaker 1: footage or he was recording signals from the military base.
Speaker 2: Well, what Paul was doing was he was photographing these
Speaker 2: objects flying around military planes and what he was actually
Speaker 2: photographing was a highly classified experimental military drone program. They
Speaker 2: were testing different drones back in those days. And the
Speaker 2: one way that the drones were tested was the military
Speaker 2: aircraft would fly a certain flight pattern and release those
Speaker 2: drones from directly from the aircraft. And because the aircraft,
Speaker 2: the controllers inside that aircraft had to control those drones,
Speaker 2: they flew those drones flew in close proximity to these
Speaker 2: Air Force aircrafts. Well, Paul was photographing that thinking those
Speaker 2: things were UFOs And when he told us and showed us,
Speaker 2: showed me the film, there were other agents of my
Speaker 2: name is came up, Jerry Miller's, Steve Ats and some others. Uh.
Speaker 2: But uh so we gathered all that information and gave
Speaker 2: it you know, set it up. And then that's when
Speaker 2: the Air Force says, you're gonna have to convince him
Speaker 2: that those things are something else. And since Paul was
Speaker 2: a believer in UFOs, he was a muphone investigator, he's
Speaker 2: been one for a number of years. He was actually
Speaker 2: involved with Nightcap prior to MUPON and so he was
Speaker 2: a believer, and he told us those things are UFOs,
Speaker 2: those things are alien aircrafts. So it didn't it wasn't
Speaker 2: difficult for me to convince him. All I had to
Speaker 2: say was, Okay, I believe you, Paul. They probably are.
Speaker 2: That's it easy, easy job. Now. The other thing he
Speaker 2: was doing was on the base, we.
Speaker 3: Had a an NSA facility that had a two laser systems,
Speaker 3: and what they these lasers were doing were shooting a
Speaker 3: laser up in the sky every time a Soviet aircraft
Speaker 3: would pass over and point that laser into the glens
Speaker 3: of that passing Soviet satellite and blinding the satellite.
Speaker 2: We had several of them in the United States, and
Speaker 2: Paul was had tapped into those signals using to control
Speaker 2: that laser. That's how an Essay got involved in it
Speaker 2: a National Security miss agency and so that's what we
Speaker 2: did during the investigation. Now, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: other parts of the Paul Benowitz case, but that was
Speaker 2: the primary and it was directed and driven by the
Speaker 2: Defense Intelligence Agency, and they dictated what we were to
Speaker 2: do and how we were to do it.
Speaker 1: When did you figure out, I guess you personally, or
Speaker 1: maybe the Air Force. Maybe the Air Force already knew
Speaker 1: that the NSAY was involved with Paul benn Which was
Speaker 1: this further down the road or earlier when you were
Speaker 1: in contact with him.
Speaker 2: I had no idea they were. One night, I was
Speaker 2: at Paul's house with another agent and we were looking
Speaker 2: We were up in the Paul's upper patio. It was
Speaker 2: a rainy night, so we were inside upstairs and we're
Speaker 2: looking across the street. And as I looked across the
Speaker 2: street at this house drugly across the street from him,
Speaker 2: I saw a little red light in the window and
Speaker 2: I thought, Hey, Paul, who lives over there? I think
Speaker 2: they got a camera on pointing over here. And Paul says,
Speaker 2: nobody lives over there. That's a vacant house. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 2: that's odd. So we watched it for a while and
Speaker 2: I thought, with somebody's photograph in this house. So we went. Now,
Speaker 2: we were federal agents and we carried guns, and so
Speaker 2: we went down. But I called the Albuquerque Police Department
Speaker 2: and I had contacts there, and I asked for a
Speaker 2: couple officers come out. We walked across the street just
Speaker 2: as these two men were coming down the steps and
Speaker 2: getting to going to a car. Albuquerque police stopped and
Speaker 2: ask them what they were doing. They said, well, they're
Speaker 2: renting this place. And then I stepped in. I said,
Speaker 2: you're renting this place? He said yeah. I said were
Speaker 2: you guys? Where are you guys out of He said, well, no, no,
Speaker 2: your business, you know. I kind of so, I, you know,
Speaker 2: identified myself and myself and Steve AT's at the other
Speaker 2: agent with me, and that pretty much shurned the algu
Speaker 2: Please turned that over to us, and they said, well
Speaker 2: we're here. We were out of Colorado Springs. I said,
Speaker 2: what are you doing down here? Why? Why are you
Speaker 2: filming that house across the street. He said, well, I
Speaker 2: can't tell you that it's classified. So but they did
Speaker 2: identify themselves finally as an SA agent's. So the next
Speaker 2: day or a day after, I immediately went out to
Speaker 2: the NSA facility and met I had contacts out there
Speaker 2: and met with one of their supervisors and I said,
Speaker 2: why the hell are you guys involved with an investigation
Speaker 2: that we're doing. And he said, well, I can't tell
Speaker 2: you that. I have to get you know, you have
Speaker 2: to get clearances and so forth. So like a day
Speaker 2: or two later he called me up and said, you
Speaker 2: can come out and and we'll brief you on it.
Speaker 2: And then he briefed us on what they were doing,
Speaker 2: and they were concerned about the signals that Paul was
Speaker 2: getting from the laser systems. I knew the laser system
Speaker 2: was out there. I mean I knew everything because I
Speaker 2: was a count of Telligence officer. I knew everything that
Speaker 2: was on the base, but I didn't actually know every
Speaker 2: aspects of those things. So then I said, okay, so
Speaker 2: that's why you guys are investigating. But they went beyond,
Speaker 2: way beyond that. They actually planted listening devices and other
Speaker 2: bugs inside Paul's home without telling us, and we would
Speaker 2: find them. We had technical people that would come out
Speaker 2: in sweep Paul's house all the time because we also
Speaker 2: had an espionage investigation going against one of Paul's employees.
Speaker 2: Paul owned the Thunder Scientific laboratories right outside Kirtland. He
Speaker 2: was making parts for a Miniman missiles, warheads and and
Speaker 2: US Navy submarines. And so we we've got information on
Speaker 2: a on on somebody that might be providing data to
Speaker 2: the Chinese. That was turned over to the FBI eventually,
Speaker 2: But we would go out, our technical specialists would go
Speaker 2: out and sweep Paul's house for signals all the time,
Speaker 2: and they found these NSA bugs, which number one, were
Speaker 2: not legal. We had a contract with Paul, a written
Speaker 2: contract the Air Force had with Paul Minnewitz because Paul
Speaker 2: wanted this thing investigated, and so Paul agreed to the
Speaker 2: contract and everything that we did was in that contract.
Speaker 2: Paul allowed us to go into his home anytime we
Speaker 2: wanted to or needed to. We could collect data from
Speaker 2: his home. He knew what type of bugs we placed
Speaker 2: in his home. We knew. He knew that his phone
Speaker 2: was being monitored, and he had two different phone systems
Speaker 2: or numbers, different phone numbers, and we had both of
Speaker 2: those bugs. He knew that. That's why at the end
Speaker 2: of this investigation, people always ask me, well, why didn't
Speaker 2: Paul sue you guys, Because we had a contract with him.
Speaker 2: Everything was written down and we did everything according to
Speaker 2: that contract. So Paul, you know, agreed to it because
Speaker 2: he wanted to know exactly what these aliens were doing
Speaker 2: and he thought that we were collecting all that data.
Speaker 2: So they didn't have one with him, so they surreptitiously
Speaker 2: entered us home to place these bugs, you know, one
Speaker 2: in the computer and he had another one, a couple
Speaker 2: other ones. So we found him and we took him out,
Speaker 2: and we took him back and gave him to NSA
Speaker 2: and said, next time you do something, you need a
Speaker 2: warrant or a permission.
Speaker 1: What did Paul think about these bugs that were that
Speaker 1: you guys were finding That wasn't your guys's bugs. What
Speaker 1: did he say about that?
Speaker 2: Well, this is one of the mistakes I think I made.
Speaker 2: If i'd do it over again, I wouldn't do it
Speaker 2: this way I did. We didn't tell Paul initially we
Speaker 2: found these bugs. And number one the reason, one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why our supervisor told us not to tell
Speaker 2: Paul was we didn't know who's who placed these in
Speaker 2: there at that time. We thought they might be Soviets, Russian, Chinese,
Speaker 2: So our technical security specialists got the bugs and they
Speaker 2: analyzed them. And when they analyzed them and found out
Speaker 2: that they were NSA bugs, we didn't tell Paul initially
Speaker 2: that they were NSA bugs, but we took him back
Speaker 2: to NSA at some point later on. We did tell Paul,
Speaker 2: but not initially. And I think if I hadn't do
Speaker 2: it all over again, I would immediately tell Paul. But
Speaker 2: but that's that's a mistake I made in that investigation
Speaker 2: I did. We didn't initially when we found him tell
Speaker 2: Paul that