522: DEEP DIVE / UNREDACTED: How Paul Bennewitz and Ed Ruppelt Saved the World from Aliens and the CIA
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In August of 1988, Paul Benowitz went insane. For almost a decade, he had been researching and documenting UFO activity around Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had films of UFOs over Kirtland Air Force Base. He had archives of transmissions intercepted from alien spacecraft. He had proof of an alien incursion. He reported his findings to the Air Force. They told Paul, you're onto something. Keep going. He did, and it broke him.

Paul Benowitz was convinced aliens and the government were working together, plotting against him. He was convinced his wife was an alien. He barricaded himself in his garage with sandbags. Then he was committed to a mental hospital more than once. When the UFO world heard about Paul's case, some people were shocked. Other people took credit for Paul's declining mental health. Why?

Well, because for those people, making UFO believers go insane wasn't an unfortunate accident. It was their job. Born in 1927, Paul spent his childhood playing with radio equipment. When he was 17, he joined the Coast Guard and served in World War II as a radio electronics engineer. After the war, he worked as an engineer for television stations in San Francisco and Tucson.

In 1949, while studying at Arizona State University, he married Cindy Bunch. In 1953, they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, Paul started his own electronics lab. He called it Thunder Scientific, which you have to admit is a great name for a company.

Thunder Scientific made its initial money on contracts with NASA, Sandia National Labs, and the U.S. Air Force. Paul did so much business with the Air Force that he bought a house and set up his lab right next to Kirtland Air Force Base. If he wanted to, he could take a walk and chat with the guards on patrol. In fact, he was pretty friendly with everyone on base.

By the time he was 52 years old, he had a wife, two sons, and a thriving business. Paul had a simple life, a good life. He ran his business, he spent time with his family, he played guitar, he took walks, he enjoyed reading old Western novels. But Paul had one interest that would change his quiet life forever. Paul believed in aliens.

On a windy night in 1979, Paul and Cindy Benowitz were out on their second story deck. They had a camera and a large telephoto lens, taking pictures of the sky over the Manzano Mountains. Since September, they'd seen multicolored lights floating and swooping around the mountain range, just a mile from their home. Paul had hundreds of photographs and thousands of feet of 8mm film. He was certain this was something otherworldly, possibly even dangerous, and he might have been right.

The lights were circling over the Manzano Weapons Storage Complex. At the time, it was the largest underground repository of nuclear weapons components in the Western world. The complex was also part of Kirtland Air Force Base. Kirtland itself had long been a hotspot for these anomalies. Sightings of lights in the sky above the base went back to 1948, just one year after Roswell. But the lights weren't the only thing catching Paul's attention.

For years, cattle mutilations had occurred in the Albuquerque area. Livestock often had their vital organs removed. Their blood was drained. Their mouths would be stuffed with chaff. But predators in the area ate prey. They didn't kill an animal just to drain its blood. Predators definitely didn't stuff wheat in their mouths. Livestock on farms and ranches were usually pretty safe because there were humans nearby, keeping an eye out for trouble.

In some cattle mutilations, there were ligature marks on the cow's legs. Many of their bones were broken, implying they had been lifted, carried, and then dropped from a height.

Gas masks and tractor tread marks were found at some of the scenes. It was odd. So odd that New Mexico Senator Harrison Schmidt held a public hearing about it in the Albuquerque Public Library. One person in attendance was Paul Benowitz. After that meeting, Paul was hooked. In 1980, he began doing his own research. He eventually brought his findings to the Air Force. And there, Paul met Richard C. Doty.

It was 1980. Paul Benowitz had been filming and photographing the lights over Kirtland Air Force Base for quite some time. He had a lot of material.

Paul was concerned there might be some kind of threat to the base, so he called Kirtland and told them of his findings. Paul Benowitz was well known to Air Force staff. He was a reliable contractor and known as a good guy. So when he expressed concern, the Air Force listened. He was invited to Kirtland to give a presentation to the top base personnel. Paul didn't know what he had when he turned up at Kirtland. He thought he was just doing his job as a responsible citizen, as a former military man, and as a patriot.

Paul arrived on schedule and showed his findings to a room full of people. He showed them his films, his photos. He played transmissions he'd recorded. Very few people were impressed. Whatever it was that Paul was showing them didn't apply to them. During Paul's presentation, Kirtland's top scientists, researchers, and security experts, which were most of the people in the room, left.

But a few men stayed, specifically men who were part of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, or OSI. OSI is military intelligence. These people are responsible for ensuring that whatever happens on an Air Force base stays on the Air Force base. OSI agents are embedded in Air Force bases all over the world. And if something threatens the security of their facility, they have full authority to do whatever is needed to protect it.

Paul ended his presentation feeling he'd done his duty and went home. Shortly after, Paul's doorbell rang. A man introduced himself as Richard C. Doty, special agent for OSI. Doty asked Paul if they could have a private, quiet conversation off the record. Of course, Paul agreed. Doty told Paul he had stumbled onto something secret, something big, something not even the top people at Kirtland knew about.

He told Paul that alien spacecraft were hidden in a vast network of tunnels below Kirtland Air Force Base. They had alien weapons, technology, and alien corpses. They even had living, breathing extraterrestrials. Doty painted a picture. It went something like this. Hostile aliens had found their way to Earth. They had multiple bases all over the planet. Kirtland was one of them.

Using advanced weaponry, mind control technology, and deception, aliens had started to slowly take over the world, implanting regular people with brain-altering chips. Once you were chipped, you were theirs. Paul was now one of the few who knew about this. He couldn't trust anyone. He alone had to find a way to defeat the alien technology and take back Earth in secret. The problem was that none of this was true.

Doty fed this information to Paul for years. Paul believed him entirely. Why wouldn't he? Doty had served at Area 51. He'd seen alien spacecraft firsthand. He was one of a small group of people in the world who knew what was really going on. He was a soldier who loved his country. Why would Doty lie?

But it was Doty's job to lie to Paul Benowitz. Paul was his assignment. OSI had learned from Paul directly that some random radio engineer from Albuquerque had seen things over Kirtland. Seen things he wasn't supposed to. Not only that, he found a way to patch into coded Air Force transmissions. This was a problem for the Air Force.

Whoever Paul was and whatever he thought didn't matter. Dodie just needed him to stay active, to keep digging. This is a classic counterintelligence strategy. If someone finds a hole in your fence, don't fix the hole, not right away. Let them keep going through, see how they found it, see if they find others, then use that intelligence to fix the holes.

That day, Richard Doty formed a relationship with Paul Benowitz. It would last eight years, countless meetings and endless hours of intelligence sharing about the alien threat. Paul would meet with victims of alien abductions. He'd seek out other UFO enthusiasts. He'd continue his own research. He'd build his own weapons designed to take out alien craft. He went further and further into the hole Doty was digging for him.

And after a few years, Paul Benowitz was so far down the hole that he just couldn't climb out.

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In August 1988, Paul Benowitz shattered. For nearly eight years, he had been researching UFOs. He was absolutely convinced alien beings weren't just at Kirtland Air Force Base, but all over the world. They were in contact with military officials and world leaders. Some of the most powerful people on Earth were under alien influence. Others were completely under alien control.

These aliens had implanted hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people with devices that could control their minds. The aliens could wipe the memories of anyone who was implanted. They had access to advanced technology, deadly weaponry. The United States or any nation on Earth had no chance. Paul was convinced these aliens weren't just hostile, they were evil and they were using the implants to turn people to their side.

When enough people had been turned, they'd emerge and Earth would be theirs.

For years, Paul had communicated with the aliens in code through his home computer network. During this time, they'd revealed their secrets, even if they didn't know it. But Paul had a solution. He was a talented electrical engineer. He invented particle weapons designed to neutralize the alien spacecraft. Paul knew the aliens were smart, but he also knew they were weak, and he would exploit every weakness to stop them from taking control.

He wrote a detailed strategy describing the alien network of tunnels underneath Kirtland Air Force Base. He developed a detailed plan on how to take the tunnels, beat the aliens, and save the planet. But Paul was worried the aliens were watching him and would eventually learn of his plan. They were coming in through his windows at night, injecting him with drugs, and doing other unspeakable things.

His wife had been implanted. He'd seen it. She denied it. But of course she would. She couldn't remember being implanted. But Paul knew this was how the implants worked. His wife couldn't be trusted. It wasn't her fault, but she didn't understand. Paul's sons didn't understand either. No one did. Even his contacts in the UFO community were telling him he was going too far. He had to stop.

Then he got another visit from Richard Doty, the man who'd initially encouraged him. Doty told him it was over. It was time to give up on UFOs. Paul Benowitz refused. He barricaded himself in his garage, piling sandbags against the door. No one would stop him. It didn't matter if anyone believed him. The fate of the country, the fate of the world was in his hands.

The little boy from Kansas who used to play with radios would save the world. It was Paul's destiny.

Paul's family was finally able to talk him down. They put him into a car and drove to the Anna Caseman Mental Health Facility just a few miles from his lab. He was checked into the facility for nervous exhaustion. And just like that, Paul Benowitz's mission was over. He would stay at Anna Caseman for a month. After that, he'd return home. He would never pursue UFOs with the same passion again. But he never stopped believing that there was a threat.

Even though he kept his concerns to himself, he knew the aliens were out there waiting for their moment. Paul would be in and out of the hospital for the next decade. At one point, Richard Doty came to see him.

Everything was a deception. An elaborate, nearly decades-long deception. Paul was the target of a disinformation campaign. It was for the greater good.

Doty said, "I was ordered to lie to you. It was my job." Benowitz simply replied, "No, it wasn't." Paul and Doty would never speak again. Paul Benowitz died on June 23rd, 2003. In the years since, Richard Doty has expressed some regret on how things ended with Paul. It was never his intent to drive the man to madness. He was only following orders. Ruining his life was just a mission. Well, mission accomplished.

Saturday, July 19th, 1952. It's a warm night over Washington, D.C. Air traffic is minimal. For Edward Nugent, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport, that's good news. Less traffic means an easy shift. Until something shows up on his radar. Make that seven somethings. Around 1140 p.m., seven blips appeared on Nugent's scope.

There were 15 miles southwest of D.C. No known aircraft were supposed to be in that area. No flight plans had been filed. Nugent called his supervisor, Harry Barnes, to report the objects. Barnes was the head controller at Washington National. He'd seen just about everything. Nugent pointed at his radar and joked, look, a fleet of flying saucers. Barnes called over to Andrews Air Force Base, and suddenly it wasn't so funny. They checked their radar. They were seeing the same thing.

At 1:00 a.m., Capital Flight 807 was headed from Washington, D.C. to Detroit. Washington National called the pilot, Captain Casey Pierman. They asked if he was seeing any unusual objects in the sky.

Pierman, a pilot of 17 years, radioed back. There's one, and there it goes. Over the next 14 minutes, he saw six bright lights streaking across the sky at incredible speeds. He would later say they were like falling stars without the tails. The blips were clocked at speeds between 100 and 130 miles an hour.

Various witnesses described them much like Captain Pierman. Bright lights moving at tremendous speeds, like comets without tails. Harry Barnes had heard and seen enough. He called the Air Force to report unidentified craft in restricted airspace.

The Air Force was slow to respond. By the time two F-94 interceptor jets left Newcastle Air Force Base in Delaware, it was past 3 a.m. By then, the blips were gone. The F-94s patrolled Washington airspace for a bit and eventually headed back to Newcastle. When they turned around, the blips reappeared. Air traffic controllers across the D.C. area watched blips fly in and out of their radars until dawn. After the sun rose, they disappeared for good.

But air traffic controllers weren't the only ones who'd seen the lights. All over D.C., people were in a panic. Reporters were calling various Air Force personnel in Washington. They demanded to know what were those craft? Where'd they come from? Would they come back? When reporters didn't get answers, they called congressmen.

That got the Air Force's attention. If there's anything the US military hates, it's when politicians get involved. Luckily, the Air Force had a special unit to respond to UFO reports. It was a small unit and very secret, but this unit logged every UFO sighting that came across their desk. The unit was Project Blue Book.

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Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was in Washington, D.C. on routine Air Force business when he decided to stop by a newsstand. He paid for a paper. The headline caught his eye. Saucers over Washington, D.C. Ruppelt was shocked by the news, not because of the flying saucers. He was shocked because he was the director of Project Blue Book. This was the first he'd heard about any kind of alien activity in Washington, D.C.,

Regarding flying saucers, Ruppelt was the best in the business. Ruppelt was a decorated World War II Air Force veteran who left active duty after the war to study aeronautical engineering. When the Korean War began, he was recalled and was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. There, he served as director for two special projects.

The first was the short-lived Project Grudge. This was the Air Force's first real attempt at actively investigating UFO activity. Ruppelt had major issues with the project. He thought it was more of a PR stunt than a scientific investigation. And he may have been right. Project Grudge only made one official report of its findings. This is the report's conclusion: "A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development.

and therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. B. All evidence and analysis indicate that reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of: 1. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects. 2. A mild form of mass hysteria and war nerves. 3.

Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or to seek publicity. Psychopathological persons.

The report concluded that UFO sightings were not strategically important enough for the United States military to take seriously. And anyone who reports a UFO sighting is either: 1. Mistaken by what they saw 2. Suffering from hysteria or PTSD 3. Lying to get famous or 4. Crazy So the Air Force was dismissing the subject of UFOs categorically without further explanation.

And anyone who wanted to know more about UFOs was, at best, mistaken, and at worst, insane. Project Grudge was dissolved in 1949 and reorganized into Project Blue Book. From its inception, the project had two goals: One, determine if UFOs threaten national security, and two, scientifically analyze UFO-related data. Unlike Grudge, Ruppelt was involved with Blue Book from the beginning.

He placed a Project Blue Book agent in every Air Force base in the country. If someone reported a UFO sighting, that agent would be one of the first people to visit a witness and take a statement. Ruppelt took UFOs seriously. So on that July day in 1952, with a headline about UFOs over Washington, D.C. in his hands, Ruppelt jumped to attention. He needed a car to investigate Andrews Air Force Base and Washington National Airport. He called the Pentagon and was told only colonels and generals could get cars.

He called two generals he knew. They were both out for the day. Ruppelt decided to take a cab, so he called the Pentagon Finance Office. They told him that he was expected back at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Project Blue Book headquarters in Ohio. If he didn't return by evening, he'd be considered AWOL. He

He asked the office if he could speak to whoever was in charge. He needed clearance to stay in D.C. to investigate, but whoever's in charge was out for the day. So Captain Ruppelt flew back to Dayton, Ohio a few hours later, defeated by one of the greatest military weapons of all, bureaucracy. But he wouldn't be gone from D.C. for long, because a week later, the UFOs were back.

On the evening of July 26, 1952, Captain Ruppelt was relaxing at his home in Dayton. The phone rang. A reporter from Washington, D.C. was on the other end. He said flying saucers had appeared over D.C. again. He wanted to know what the Air Force was doing about it. Ruppelt said, I have no idea what the Air Force is doing. In all probability, it's doing nothing. Ruppelt hung up and called the Pentagon. He was right. They weren't doing anything.

Ruppelt dispatched two Blue Book officers to Washington National's control tower. When they arrived, they saw at least a dozen blips on the radar. At first, the controllers thought the blips might be temperature inversions. A temperature inversion is a layer of hot air sandwiched between two layers of cold air. These are common in D.C. in the summer. They can bend radar signals and make objects on the ground appear like they're in the air.

The two Blue Book officers weren't convinced. They radioed Andrews Air Force Base. The blips were being seen there too. At the same time, civilian planes were reporting seeing strange glowing objects in the sky above DC, right where the blips were located on the radar. Like a week before, F-94 jets were scrambled from Newcastle Air Force Base. And just like before, the blips disappeared whenever the jets got close. When the jets left, they were seen in the sky above DC.

the blips reappeared. But this time, the jets made a hard U-turn and came back. And this time, they saw the lights. One pilot even gave chase. He pushed his jet to top speed, over 640 miles an hour. The lights easily outran him. Shortly after, they disappeared into the night. There was nothing left to do but go home.

The next morning, the news went national. Papers as far away as Iowa were reporting on the event. The Cedar Rapids Gazette ran a headline saying, "Saucers Swarm Over Capitol." Reporters and civilians drowned the Pentagon in questions. Even President Harry Truman was receiving telegraphs. This was the final straw. The lights had been seen over the Capitol building, over the Pentagon, and now over the White House.

Truman joined the reporters and the public demanding answers. What were these craft? Someone had to make a statement. That someone was Air Force Major General John A. Samford. On July 29, 1952, Samford convened a press conference at the Pentagon. It was the largest of its kind since World War II. In it, Samford gave a famously convoluted speech explaining the UFO sightings of the previous two weeks.

I'm here to discuss the so-called flying saucers. The Air Force interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze to the best of our ability anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States.

General Samford chalked most of them up to stars and meteors, as well as temperature inversion. Questions came up about the pilot who chased one of the strange lights. Samford gave this as an answer: "Our basic difficulty in dealing with these is that there is no measurement of them that makes it possible for us to put them in any pattern that would be profitable for a deliberate, custom sort of analysis to take the next step."

we have as of date come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage and that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency

And this actually worked. Sanford had talked for so long that when the reporters left the conference, they had to rush to meet their deadlines. A lot of their notes were nothing but the general's bureaucratic doublespeak. So they seized on the most memorable piece of his speech, temperature inversion. The next day's headlines were all variations of Washington Flying Saucers, Nothing But Hot Air.

After that, the press moved on from UFO coverage. The matter was closed. D.C. hadn't been visited by aliens, just hot summer weather. And when the press moved on, so did the public. UFO reports dropped from 50 to 10 per day in just one week. The Air Force had narrowly escaped a public relations nightmare. But they'd learned something. They'd learned that people really, really cared about UFOs. And that gave them an idea.

So what does any of this have to do with Paul Benowitz? The events of 1952 laid the groundwork for how the military, scientific and intelligence communities would deal with UFOs for the next 70 years. Following the summer of 1952, the military and intelligence communities had become worried. Their communication lines were being jammed with reports of UFOs from all over the country.

They had no way of knowing which reports were credible threats and which were essentially junk mail. Their biggest fear was a practical one. If an authentic warning about a Soviet attack came in, it could be buried under all the, quote, UFO nonsense. Something had to be done to put the UFO subject in its proper place. The military and intelligence agencies needed to move forward effectively. So, after the Washington fiasco, a special scientific committee was convened.

The Robertson Panel officially met for the first time on January 14th, 1953. The group was chaired by Howard P. Robertson, a renowned physicist and CIA consultant. He'd been instructed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to assemble a team of prominent scientists.

The team included Luis Alvarez, physicist, radar expert, and later a Nobel Prize recipient. Frederick C. Durant, CIA officer, secretary to the panel, and missile expert. Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratory's nuclear physicist. Thornton Lee Page, astrophysicist, radar expert, deputy director of Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office. And Lloyd Bergner, physicist.

The fate of Paul Benowitz and anyone else like him was decided the first time the Robertson panel convened. The panel lasted four days. In total, they met for 12 hours and reviewed 23 cases out of the 2,331 Air Force UFO cases on record, about 1% of all total cases at the time. Captain Ruppelt was actually in attendance during the panel. He gave several presentations on the findings of Project Blue Book.

The captain was an anomaly. He wanted to study UFOs from an objective scientific basis. He didn't pander to skeptics or enthusiasts. Ruppelt was famous for his objectivity and pragmatism. It's best demonstrated by one of his greatest contributions. Edward J. Ruppelt is the guy who came up with the term UFO.

Before, people used to say flying saucer or flying disc. He thought these were too colorful, so he came up with a simple term, unidentified flying object, UFO, a catch-all for anything you saw in the sky that made you go, what was that? The captain walked a fine line between imagination and empirical thought. His project and his findings were organized in the same way.

few others in the air force intelligence or scientific communities shared his point of view many scientists on the robertson panel were vocal skeptics of ufos the idea of studying them in any way was almost laughable despite this ruppelt's inclusion suggests that at least some of the people in power were open-minded throughout the four days the scientists and military leaders watched several ufo films air force personnel like ruppelt gave presentations on their findings and strategic advice

On January 18th, the panel created a report. It reached a conclusion with several parts. The first part stated, UFOs presented no, quote, direct physical threat to national security. The second part said, the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these perilous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic. So,

UFOs are harmless, and too many people calling about UFOs means the military can't tell what's a real threat and what's a false alarm. Dismissive, but practical logic. If you want to hear what's going on, especially during the Cold War, you've got to find a way to turn the volume down. You have to cut through the noise and get to the truth. The Robertson panel made a recommendation to solve the UFO problem.

The panel recommends: a that the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the unidentified flying objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.

b that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent;

or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomenon, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures.

These three paragraphs determine the course of the study of UFOs from then on. In other words, they would have to convince the public that there are no such things as UFOs. Elsewhere in the panel's official report, they explain in detail how an integrated program would succeed.

There must be a reduction in public interest of "flying saucers", which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media, such as television, motion pictures and popular articles.

So, use the media to re-educate the public. Because if Americans believe in UFOs, they're likely to believe in anything, specifically Soviet propaganda. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public, and consequently, their susceptibility to clever, hostile propaganda.

The panel mentioned that someone like Arthur Godfrey could be a valuable channel of communication considering his large audience and influence. He was like Joe Rogan back then. The panel considered hiring Disney to create cartoons to dissuade the public from believing in UFOs. After all, it was the duty of the government to protect the American people. It was all hands on deck.

Business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary-type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. They should first show the mystery and then the explanation, but the explanation must be forceful. On its face, this integrated program makes sense, maybe even patriotic.

In order to cut down on disinformation that could obscure foreign threats, the military and intelligence agencies will create a program of "educational material"

They'll do this by working with experts in the fields of mass psychology, university professors, think tanks, advertising companies. Once the program is designed, military intelligence will partner with private companies and individuals, movie studios, television networks, newspapers, magazines, the hosts of popular radio and television shows, children's cartoons.

This way, their program can reach a national audience. They'll also get in at the small town level, business associations, high schools, universities, local television stations. Everyone gets a copy of the program. It's educational. It's been designed for mass appeal. It might be a documentary or a slideshow or a book.

It walks people through situations they might find confusing, and then it helps them debunk those situations. It gives them the facts they need to know. At the Y-Files, I do the exact same thing. I tell the stories, then tell you the facts. Mystery, then explanation. There's a crucial difference, though. My job is not to debunk a story. My job is to get you asking why. My explanations are not the end of the story. They're just part of the question.

The Robertson Panels program does something else. It doesn't ask you why, it tells you why. Everything ends with an explanation. There is no more question. You were curious and now you're not. And if you are still curious, well, you're the problem. Why would you ask any more questions if you were already given the answer?

The Robertson panel took the idea of UFOs, something that captured the American popular imagination, and turned it into a psychological trigger. Believe in UFOs? Why? Don't you know how ridiculous that sounds? Maybe you've been watching too many movies. Captain Ruppelt's perspective, trying to remain imaginative while staying close to observe facts, was no longer official policy. The panel moved the line of acceptable imagination ever so slightly back, for everyone.

This is what's reasonable to think. Anything past the line is the realm of the unreasonable. The only people who care about UFOs are unsociable, losers, conspiracy theorists, or just plain nuts. In other words, you're just another Paul Benowitz. And remember what the government did to him. They rewarded his curiosity and patriotism with lies and betrayal and ultimately destroyed the man's life.

The government used the subject of UFOs as a Trojan horse for a simple, insidious formula. Mystery plus explanation equals answer. It might sound reductive, and that's because it is. It should also sound familiar. When you were a kid, did your parents ever tell you to do something, and when they did, you at one point asked, why? And what was their usual answer? Because I said so.

Mystery plus explanation equals answer. There is no more question. It's been answered. I said so. Move on. End of story. That was the Robertson panel solution to UFOs. The American people looked up to the sky and for a moment asked, why? And the Robertson panel's answer was, forget about it. People asked, why? And the Robertson panel said, because I said so. And they put because I said so in every movie, television set, book, school, and billboard they could.

a short-sighted solution to a serious intellectual curiosity. Whether or not you think UFOs are real isn't the point. Real freedom is based on real choice. Being able to choose something for yourself, that's free will.

The panel did all they could to scrub that choice from every place they could. One year, the country was talking about how something had happened in the skies over Washington, D.C. The next year, they wouldn't talk about it at all. Nobody wants to be labeled a kook by their friends, their family, or their neighbors. Better to just keep quiet and forget about it.

The Robertson panel was supposed to be a group of some of the smartest men in the world. Nuclear physicists, future Nobel Prize laureates, military golden boys, open minds, genuine intellects, the best and the brightest. And yet maybe the brightest guy of all wasn't even on the roster. The one man who had no emotional attachment to UFOs. The one man who just wanted the truth. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.

After the Robertson panel adjourned, Captain Ruppelt requested to be reassigned from Project Blue Book. The program had been cut by 80%. He was down to just three employees, including himself. Ruppelt retired from the Air Force shortly after.

During his retirement, Ruppelt published a book called The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. One of the former Robertson panel members, J. Allen Hynek, said Ruppelt's book should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in the history of this subject. In the book, Ruppelt was openly critical of the Air Force's apparent change in position on UFOs. Everything was being evaluated on the premise UFOs couldn't exist. No matter what you see or hear, don't believe it.

This change in the operating policy of the UFO project was so pronounced that I, like so many other people, wondered if there was a hidden reason for the change. Was it actually an attempt to go underground? To make the project more...

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt died of a sudden heart attack on September 15th, 1960 at the age of 37. 37 is kind of young to die of a heart attack, no? And if you think that's suspicious, how about this? Just before he died, he released an updated version of his book. This new version removed his criticism of the Air Force UFO policy. And in this new version, Ruppelt called UFOs a space age myth.

Something or someone changed Ruppelt's mind. Three weeks later, he was dead. Maybe that's the lesson. Asking too many questions can be very, very dangerous.

Anyone who's done any amount of research into UFOs knows one thing. It's almost impossible to prove or disprove anything. Audio, video, film, photographs, memory regression, it could all be faked. Looking for evidence of implants, they disappear. Looking for weapons, parts of a ship, good luck proving they're authentic and not just scrap metal. This doesn't even cover half the stories. In some way, whatever the Robertson panel set out to do in 1953 worked.

Read any number of personal UFO accounts. Look up conferences. Read declassified documents.

Chances are, along the way, you're going to find someone like Richard Doty, an intelligence agent, an informant, a specialist, an interested private citizen. Whatever they call themselves, wherever they are, it usually means the same thing. You can barely trust a single word that comes out of their mouth. The whole thing is a mess. A huge tangle of decades of people, stories, places, and unexplainable events. Which begs the question, why?

Why go to all this trouble? Whether or not UFOs are real, something is clearly being hidden from public view. Otherwise, this mess wouldn't need to exist in the first place. This is 70 years, hundreds of thousands of people, countless billions of dollars. All of it as what? A massive counterintelligence operation? A cover for genuine extraterrestrials? Again, why?

Maybe we can take a page from Paul Benowitz and Captain Ruppelt's book. When we're faced with the unexplainable and the machine that guards it, it's easy to lose heart and hard to stay grounded.

Paul Benowitz never lost heart. He was a man who believed what he believed until the very end. He found what he thought was something that threatened his country, his family, his home. And then he built science fiction weapons in his garage. He communicated with an alien race. He wrote a whole plan to save the world. Was he crazy or was he a hero? Well, he wasn't crazy before he started working with the Air Force. But to me, he was a hero the whole time.

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt did his best to stay level. He stared impossibilities in the face and told them to sit down and take a number. He suffered professional setbacks, ridicule. He spent years building a real case, the only real case of the history of UFOs. Then he watched a group of his peers throw it all away. So what did he do? Well, he retired.

Then he went on to write maybe the most influential book in the history of American UFO study. The only book on UFOs written by a man whose official real-life job was to study them.

Paul Benowitz and Captain Edward J. Ruppelt were good men. They explored the unknown. They faced real danger, but they never wavered in their beliefs. Through all the questions and the answers and the wins and the losses, they kept going. Powerful people tried to stop them. An entire government destroyed their lives and possibly ended their lives. These men knew that asking questions was dangerous, but still, they looked danger right in the face and asked, why?

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