Speaker 1: Okay, get ready for this one. Imagine investigating strange lights,
maybe UFOs, and those investigations driving you, well, driving you
into a mental institution.
Speaker 2: It sounds like something out of a movie, doesn't it.
But it's a real story, it is.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a man named Paul Benowitz. He lives
right next door at Kirkland Air Force Base, and what started.
Speaker 2: His curiosity about lights in the sky it spiraled into
something truly bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is going to be quite the deep dive.
We're looking at his experiences, his supposed discoveries, and the
frankly unbelievable turn his whole investigation took.
Speaker 2: I've got some really detailed analysis on this case to
draw from. It's a complex.
Speaker 1: Story, definitely, So let's set the scene. Paul Benowitz, this
wasn't just some casual observer, No, not at all.
Speaker 2: He had a PhD in physics, right, and.
Speaker 1: He owned a successful electronics company, Thunder Scientific.
Speaker 2: Which is just a fantastic name, by the way, sounds
very powerful.
Speaker 1: It really does. And his main clients get this, the
Air Force, NASA.
Speaker 2: So he was already deeply connected to that world, you know,
military contracts, high tech stuff. Living in Albuquerque, right beside Kirtlin.
He knew about aircraft exactly.
Speaker 1: He's a scientist, a pilot himself. He understands flight technology.
So when he starts seeing these colored lights near the.
Speaker 2: Base, uh huh, doing things that normal planes just can't do,
moving way too fast, weird maneuvers.
Speaker 1: He didn't just shrug it off. He started documenting it,
filming them, trying to figure it out scientifically.
Speaker 2: And that's where his other expertise kicks in the electronic.
Speaker 1: Side, right, He wasn't just watching. He set up equipment.
Speaker 2: And he starts picking up these very unusual radio signals,
well kind of sign talking transmissions in the gigahertz range,
way higher frequency than you know, typical military comms he'd
be familiar with.
Speaker 1: So as a contractor, a pilot, he'd recognize that difference immediately.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he saw them as data bursts, structured information messages potentially.
Speaker 1: Okay, so lights signals. Meanwhile, what's the official word from
the Air Force.
Speaker 2: Well, publicly you had people like Richard Horner, assistant secretary
for R and D, saying, you know, most UFO reports
they're just natural stuff, weather balloons, meteors, the.
Speaker 1: Usual explanations neither mysterious nor dire case closed.
Speaker 2: Right, That was the public face, But behind the scenes
it's a bit different. We have hints from older internal documents. Oh,
like what well, way back in nineteen forty seven, there's
this supposed secret assessment from the Air Technical Intelligence Center
basically saying, whatever these things are, they're real.
Speaker 1: Wow. Nineteen forty seven, that's early.
Speaker 2: And it escalates by forty eight. Another adic estimate, this
one top secret, apparently went to General Vandenberg, suggesting they
could be interplanetary spaceships.
Speaker 1: Interplanetary space ships. Yeah, from Air Force intelligence.
Speaker 2: That's what these documents suggest. Then by fifty two they're
analyzing maneuvers based on radar tracking photos, really digging in.
Speaker 1: So they were taking it seriously internally, even if they
down played it publicly.
Speaker 2: Seems that way. In fifty three you even had a
special panel CIA and Air Force scientists at the Pentagon
noting a very strong circumstantial case even without absolute proof.
Speaker 1: What did they recommend get this?
Speaker 2: They apparently suggested quadrupling the investigation effort, setting up dedicated
observation posts, and maybe even releasing some info to the public.
Speaker 1: Which obviously didn't happen. Not in that way, but it
begs the question the source raises, right, if.
Speaker 2: They don't exist, why all the money, why the Intel
team's rushing to sightings. It doesn't quite add up with
the public dismissal.
Speaker 1: Okay, So back to Benowitz. He's got these signals, these
data bursts. He's not just listening, he's trying to crack them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he sees patterns. It's complex though, not something
you can just decipher by hand.
Speaker 1: So what did he do?
Speaker 2: He used an early home computer, pretty cutting edge for
the time, and actually wrote his own software to analyze
what he believed was this alien broadcast.
Speaker 1: He wrote his own software. That's serious dedication.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. And he used this classic cryptoanalysis trick,
contextual analysis.
Speaker 1: How does that work exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, he basically guessed that any message would likely contain
fundamental words things like ship, base, air, water, time, you know,
core concepts, and he programmed his computer to look for
pattern that might correspond to those assumed words. And the
claim is it worked.
Speaker 1: He started getting translations.
Speaker 2: Not exact word for word translations. It's more like understanding
the meaning based on context. The analogy used is like
making coffee. You might not know the exact words, but
you see patterns related to beans, water, heat, drinking. You
get the gist.
Speaker 1: So he's building a sense of the message content even
without a dictionary exactly.
Speaker 2: His first attempts were probably pretty meaningless, almost gibberish, but
over time he felt he was getting a clearer picture
the general themes, maybe even their motives.
Speaker 1: And then he does something well, maybe not advisable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he decides to send his own message back using
this rudimentary understanding. He thinks he's developed, and he claims
he got a reply.
Speaker 1: WHOA. So in his mind, this is it first contact
two way communication with aliens.
Speaker 2: That's what he believed, an absolutely monumental event, if true.
Speaker 1: What were these messages like? Were they you know, we
come in peace?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not exactly. They were often really strange, cryptic, and
sometimes pretty ominous, like give me an examp okay. One
phrase he reportedly decoded was round ground women of Earth
are needed.
Speaker 1: Flexible, needed flexible. That sounds incredibly.
Speaker 2: Creepy, right, very unsettling implications. Another one was the next
discharges our ship. Our women do not command the north
among us. You have many friends water very short. Resist
all attempts of adoration. Listen Orange, make.
Speaker 1: Peace, Listen Orange. What does that even mean? It's just
bizarre water very short. Okay, maybe that's intel, but the.
Speaker 2: Rest it's a jumble. Some bits seem potentially informative, others
completely nonsensical like that, Listen Orange. Part It highlights the
huge challenge of trying to understand something truly alien.
Speaker 1: No shared context at all, any others, Oh yeah, victory.
Our bases obtained supplies from the starship Metal. Time is yanked.
Time is yet message hitstar using rejuvenation methods got us
in trouble. Six Sky we realized, tell you all might
help you. All your base up belong to us.
Speaker 2: Time is yanked. Rejuvenation methods got us in trouble. It
sounds like snippets from a sci fi novel Almost and
another take fast portion Universe against our aggression. The number
of our crashed saucers is eight. Wherever we realize tell
the truth jump jump opposite Alien forces me no help
to you, that'll become invisible, keeping change. We will not
join sides with anyone, but our race is dying on
the home planet.
Speaker 1: Crash Saucers the dying race aggression. This paints a picture
of conflict, desperation. Not friendly visitors, definitely not.
Speaker 2: And Benowitz started to believe their intentions were hostile. He
saw this communication as a way to learn more fine weaknesses.
Speaker 1: So he's developing this whole narrative on these decoded messages.
Speaker 2: Yes, he concluded their homeworld was dying, that there wasn't
just one alien race here, but multiple. He even distinguished
between the typical Grays and another group that looked more human,
which he called the valiant aliens, almost like good guys
and bad guys.
Speaker 1: And he thought the Grays were the main threat.
Speaker 2: That seems to be his interpretation. Yeah, maybe the ones
with the dying planet. And he became utterly convinced and
invasion was coming. People had to be warned.
Speaker 1: So, armed with this terrifying conclusion, what does he do?
Speaker 2: He puts together a huge dossier, all his evidence, votos videos,
the signal data, his translations, and he goes directly to
the Air Force at Kirtland.
Speaker 1: Now, remember he's a known quantity to them, a veteran,
a trusted contractor.
Speaker 2: Right, so they don't just dismiss amount of hand. He
gets a meeting the base commander takes it seriously enough
to call in the OSI, the Office of Special Investigations.
Speaker 1: OSI, so internal affairs, counterintelligence.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing exactly. They assign an agent to
his case, a man named Richard Dody.
Speaker 1: Dody. Oh, okay, that name is going to be important.
Speaker 2: I suspect very Dody reviews everything Benowitz has, the photos,
the tapes, the computer analysis.
Speaker 1: And an Air Force reaction.
Speaker 2: They actually agree to fund his research further.
Speaker 1: Wait, really they fund his alien decoding project?
Speaker 2: Yes, with one condition he reports everything directly and only
to them.
Speaker 1: Wow. So for Benowitz this must have felt like total validation.
The Air Force believes him absolutely.
Speaker 2: He's convinced he's on the verge of saving humanity. He
just needs to gather more intel, figure out how to
beat these aliens.
Speaker 1: And around this time you've got movies like ET and
Close Encounters becoming huge. How did Benoit's.
Speaker 2: View those He developed this theory kind of elaborate. He
thought those films weren't just entertainment.
Speaker 1: What then he.
Speaker 2: Believed they were guided by this secret group he'd heard about, MJ.
Speaker 1: Twelve, MJ twelve, the alleged UFO control group twelve powerful figures.
Speaker 2: Right, he thought ANJ twelve was using Hollywood prep the
public for disclosure, but focusing only on benevolent aliens, softening
the blow.
Speaker 1: Maybe the kind of psychological operation that was his theory.
Speaker 2: But then as his own messages got darker, he felt
he'd been double crossed. He called it the Grand Deception.
Speaker 1: He thought the benevolent alien portrayal was a lie to
hide the real.
Speaker 2: Threat exactly, and this ties into another piece of the puzzle.
The Aquarius document.
Speaker 1: Ah, Yes, the supposed top secret file. How did he
get that?
Speaker 2: Through a UFO researcher named Bill Moore. Moore gave Benowitz
this document, Project Aquarius, which supposedly detailed US government knowledge
of aliens and mentioned MJ twelve.
Speaker 1: So for Benebitz, this document proves MG twelve is real
and the government knows everything.
Speaker 2: It absolutely cemented his beliefs. He and Moore didn't know
the full MJ twelve lore yet, it was still very obscure,
but the document seemed like confirmation from the inside.
Speaker 1: So his conviction is just growing stronger and stronger. And
then his investigation gets physical.
Speaker 2: Yes, he becomes obsessed with the the idea of an
underground alien base, specifically near Dulcee, New Mexico Archuletta.
Speaker 1: Mesa Dulce. That place has a long history in UFO
lore exactly.
Speaker 2: Benowitz starts doing his own flyovers low altitude, taking pictures.
Speaker 1: What did he claim to photograph?
Speaker 2: Things like strange domes on the surface, vents, towers, signs
of a hidden facility.
Speaker 1: And he also thought he saw evidence of a conflict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he believed the relationship between the aliens and the
US government, the secret Pact, maybe had broken down.
Speaker 1: What made him think that?
Speaker 2: On one flyover near Dulce, he claimed he saw scorched ground,
trees flattened like there'd been a battle, even down aircraft wreckage.
Speaker 1: So now it's not just an invasion, it's an active
conflict happening in secret.
Speaker 2: In his mind, yes, and this leads him to create
Project Beta.
Speaker 1: Project Beta. What was that?
Speaker 2: It was his magnum opus, basically his comprehensive report, containing
what he believed was the alien takeover plan, his counter
strategy to defeat them, and even a weapon, a.
Speaker 1: Weapon to fight aliens. He was really going all.
Speaker 2: In completely, and Project Beta contained some truly terrifying claims
That says he claimed three hundred thousand Americans had already
been abducted and implanted, implanted with what devices that acted
like cameras, microphones, but could also implant false memories, control minds,
even shut down your brain.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly paranoid.
Speaker 2: And he claimed horrific genetic experiments were happening at the
Dulce base, splicing alien and human DNA, creating hybrids.
Speaker 1: Just nightmares stuff. What happened? When he tried to warn people, senators, the.
Speaker 2: President, he sent Project Beta out. The response basically a
form letter referencing the closure of Project Blue Book, saying
the Air Force wasn't investigating UFOs anymore.
Speaker 1: Which to him must have just proven they were compromised exactly.
Speaker 2: He became convinced the government was infiltrated, officials implanted, He
couldn't trust anyone. His frustration and paranoia just skyrocketed.
Speaker 1: This is when things really started to deteriorate for him personally.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it tragically?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Bill Moore and Richard Dody visited him later on, found
him in a terrible state, how so, extremely paranoid, convinced
he was being watched followed constantly. He'd lost a lot
of weight, smoking heavily. His house apparently had weapons stashed.
Speaker 1: Around, and he was claiming nightly encounters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, alien visits, being taken injected with things, lost time
more and Dody even said they saw what looked like
needle marks on his arms, which.
Speaker 1: Could have seemed like validation to them or just deeply
worrying both.
Speaker 2: Probably his family and friends were begging him to stop.
His business was failing, but he couldn't let it go. No,
he believed he was saving the world. His paranoia intensified.
He started distrusting everyone, even his own wife and kids.
He thought they were implanted.
Speaker 1: Oh that's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: It led to him barricading himself in his house, sandbags,
boarded windows, a complete break from reality. In evenual, his
family had him committed to a psychiatric facility. He spent
years in and out of hospitals. Paul Benowitz died in
two thousand and three, after nearly twenty five years consumed
by this intense paranoia and mental agony.
Speaker 1: An absolutely tragic end to what started as genuine scientific curiosity.
But there's a twist, isn't there a really dark one?
Speaker 2: This is where the story takes that horrifying turn. The
shocking truth, according to the sources we have, is that
almost everything Benowitz believed it was a lie.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, Alie? The signals, the base, the
invasions plus all of.
Speaker 2: It, the alien story, the secret base, the transmissions, the
genetic horrors, the abductions, the takeover plant reportedly.
Speaker 1: Fabricated, fabricated by who and why?
Speaker 2: By agent Richard Dody and the US government, specifically the
Air Force Office of Special.
Speaker 1: Investigations OSI, the people who were supposedly helping him.
Speaker 2: Yes, remember OSI does counterintelligence, and a key tool encounterintelligence
is disinformation.
Speaker 1: Why target Benoit's with disinformation?
Speaker 2: Because his initial observations were likely real, but not extraterrestrial.
He probably was detecting sensitive transmissions from Kirtland classified stuff
and the UFOs He filmed almost certainly secret experimental aircraft
being tested right near his house, stealth prototypes, maybe early drones.
Speaker 1: So he accidentally stumbled onto top secret projects exactly.
Speaker 2: And the fear was what if he wasn't just a
curious physicist, What if he was compromised or could be
what if his findings reached the Soviets?
Speaker 1: Okay, I see the national security angle, But fabricating an
entire alien invasion scenario, yeah, that seems extreme.
Speaker 2: It was extreme. Instead of just telling him to stop,
which might have tipped off adversaries if he was compromised,
they decided to actively mislead him, to discredit him by
pushing him towards aliens.
Speaker 1: So Doty wasn't validating him, he was feeding him misinformation.
Speaker 2: It seems so started subtly, maybe just hinting at UFOs,
then escalating the lies as benefits bought into it. Other
agencies apparently got involved to like the NCAA, what do
they do? Allegedly they surveiled him from a vacant house
across the street, and get this, they might have been
the ones sending the fake alien signals he was decoding.
They sent the segment and possibly even swapped out his
computer with a rigged one to control the decoded results
and make sure they fit the narrative they were feeding him.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. He was completely manipulated, a victim.
Speaker 2: He was the target of a massive counterintelligence operation. And
it wasn't just him, the CIA, the military. There's evidence
they've used UFO stories to mislead the public before. FIA
documents hint at this history.
Speaker 1: And Bill Moore, the researcher who gave him the Aquarius documents.
He was in on it.
Speaker 2: Dottie apparently recruited more the deal was more spread some
fake UFO stories feeds Doty info on other researchers.
Speaker 1: Oh, we more agree to that in exchange.
Speaker 2: For access to supposedly real government UFO documents. Dottie wanted
to map out the UFO communities, see who knew what
identified potential weeks. Remember, Kirtlin was likely testing crucial tech
like stealth or drones.
Speaker 1: Then, so the the Aquarious document morgab Benowitz was faked altered.
Speaker 2: Yes, Dody allegedly pressured More to give Benowitz a version
specifically tailored to confirm his delusions, dismissing morres concerns about
it being different.
Speaker 1: And the stuff near Dulcy. The domes, the.
Speaker 2: Vents also likely part of the staging props, fake wreckage,
Even black helicopters flown at specific times to reinforce the
illusion of a secret base, all orchestrated by Osi.
Speaker 1: Allegedly, the scale of this deception is just mind boggling.
Dode's goal wasn't just Benowitz, was it.
Speaker 2: It seems his larger goal was to infiltrate the entire
UFO field with disinformation, create noise, identify real security risks,
and neutralize them by burying them in nonsense.
Speaker 1: But eventually the truth started to leak out. More confessed
right big time.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty nine, at a huge m UFON conference,
Moore gets up on stage and confesses everything.
Speaker 1: Wow, what did he say?
Speaker 2: Admit if he'd been spreading government lies about UFOs for
years working with Dody at Kirtland said he fed disinformation
to Beneitz and spied on other researchers for the government.
Speaker 1: How did the audience react terribly?
Speaker 2: He was basically booed off stage. It ruined his career
in ufology. He also claimed other prominent researchers made similar deals,
and that Dody fed stories to tabloids too.
Speaker 1: So the goal was achieved in a way. Muddy the
waters makes serious research impossible.
Speaker 2: You could argue it was very effective. It marginalized believers,
made the topic toxic for mainstream investigation, created total confusion.
Speaker 1: But what about Dody himself after orchestrating all this, what's
his story now?
Speaker 2: Well, that's where it gets even weirder. Dody, after leaving OSI,
starts showing up at UFO.
Speaker 1: Conventions saying what that it was all fake?
Speaker 2: No, quite the opposite. Sometimes he's claimed that maybe eighty
percent of UFO info is real Roswell crashed saucers, recovered bodies.
Speaker 1: Wait, the guy who ran the disinformation campaign now says
it's mostly true.
Speaker 2: Yep. He even told a story about a live alien
held at Los Alamos who liked get this, Tibetan music
and strawberry ice cream?
Speaker 1: How berry ice cream? Seriously? How can anyone trust a word?
Speaker 2: He says, exactly, that's the problem. He's a known disinformant.
His stories have changed over time. And there's another wrinkle.
He spent ten years working as a contractor for how.
Speaker 1: Putoff, Putoff, founder of to the Stars Academy, the recent
UAP investigation group, the very same.
Speaker 2: And look who else has been involved with to the Stars.
Christopher Mellon from CIDO, Steve Justice from Lockheed skunk Works,
Lewis Alizondo from the Pentagon's a Tip program.
Speaker 1: High level intelligence and military aerospace people.
Speaker 2: Right, So the question is have these guys genuinely changed
their minds about UAPs or is this potentially just a
more sophisticated phase of information management, a continuation of the game.
Speaker 1: It makes you question everything, even the recent government releases
the hearings. How much is real? How much is spin?
Speaker 2: And that's the legacy of decades of government disinformation. It's
created a situation where it's almost impossible to know what
to believe, which the source concludes might have been the
goal all all along.
Speaker 1: The sheer calculation is chilling testing secret planes next to
this guy's house than weaving this elaborate, destructive fantasy to
cover it.
Speaker 2: Up, DOTY inspecting the equipment just before the signals start,
the NSA sending fake messages. It feels orchestrated. Benowitz more
others just pawns in a bigger.
Speaker 1: Game, victims of their own government, sacrificing individuals for national security.
It makes you wonder how many others. Isn't it time
we actually got some straight answers?
Speaker 2: It really forces you to think, doesn't it consider a
government capable of that level of intricate, long term deception
against its own people. What other accepted truths might be
built on similar shaky ground. What's our responsibility yours and
mind to question what we're told, especially by authority. Paul
Benowitz's story is just one deeply disturbing example. Of a
quest for answers manipulated by the very institutions meant to protect.
What does that tell us about secrecy power, and the
real cost of trying to find truth in the shadows