The UFO PSYOP

A note on American UFOlogy

By guest contributor T.R. Hudson.

UFOs are about as American as apple pie. The phenomenon, while not uniquely American in origin, took on an American bent after the 1942 “Battle of Los Angeles” and, more definitively, after the Roswell Incident of 1947. Immediately after World War II, America had a kind of fever for UFOs that was otherwise reserved for rock stars and suspicions of Communist infiltration. Kenneth Arnold, an American, coined the term “flying saucer” months before Roswell, while flying in his plane in Washington State. Our film industry pumped out classics based on the idea that we humans were not alone in the universe and that even a small, little-discussed aspect of the Space Race could be attributed to the discovery of “little green men” on the Moon and Mars.

Our government has had an equally piqued interest in UFOs, though stranger than the straightforward fascination of your average stargazer and poorly named “UFOlogist.” Our government is more Janus-faced about the ordeal. One side has been totally dedicated (at least until around the turn of the century) to debunking the phenomenon through a variety of well-worn tropes such as swamp gas, airplane lights, and weather balloons. This face looks a lot like J. Allen Hynek, head of the government task force on UFOs in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s known by several names, but most famously as “Project Blue Book.”

Hynek and his military attaché would go from place to place, giving a reasoned and scientific answer to your average town of yokels, airbases full of seasoned pilots and crews, and the United States Congress. Like most government projects, this was a dog and pony show. The Air Force “knew” that the phenomenon was bunk, and went into their investigations with that bias well in hand. Their research, according to Hynek, was shoddy. They imagined that the best way to discover the truth about flying saucers was to pretend to be ostriches. Hynek, meanwhile, had a true transformation, going from skeptic to true believer in the phenomenon, citing the Air Force’s indifference as one of the reasons he changed his mind.

The other face of the government’s UFO studies is a bit more obscure and somewhat twisted. There is no one man who can represent them, but imagine, if you will, a Caucasian man of average height and build, wearing a black suit, a black tie, a black hat, and black sunglasses. His most remarkable feature is that he has no discernable features. If you saw him in public, you’d just as soon forget he ever existed. This “Man in Black” does not sing in Folsom Prison or with The Highwaymen, however. No, he is a ghost, a spook, a mirage man. Over the years, we get stories of UFO encounters and the people at the center of them later being visited by these mysterious Men in Black. The term became so ubiquitous that we got a hit film series based on the premise and one of television’s most beloved shows of all time, The X-Files.

The X-Files was a cultural landmark, describing a battle between truth-seekers in our government pitted against the men in black who, for whatever reason, refuse to let the public get any whiff of the truth. Unfortunately, fiction gives too much credit to the honor and fidelity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is indeed a place where the FBI stores its inconvenient truths, but unlike in the show, there is no Agent Fox Mulder to try to get to the bottom of them.

That job has been left in the hands of the independent researcher. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of clubs, societies, networks, and guilds dedicated to the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Then there are your gumshoe types, independent, striking out on their own because they believe that the larger networks and groups are compromised by the federal government. The sad irony of this, however, is that these men are equally compromised.

Paul Bennewitz is a legendary name in the UFO community, at first for his “groundbreaking” discoveries and later for his tragic end. Bennewitz was fascinated by the UFO phenomenon for most of his life, dedicating a large portion of his time to uncovering the truth about the government’s role in UFOs as well as recording strange lights and radio broadcasts coming from an Air Force base near his home. An American patriot, Bennewitz reported his findings to the Air Force, starting his descent into a web of lies that would end in a loss of his sanity.

He was fed (dis)information by several government sources to the point that he believed there was an “Alien-Human Military Base” in the middle of New Mexico, that there had been a fight between the government and our alien guests, and that the advanced technology traded for by the aliens to humanity would be sufficient if the aliens returned. This theory, known as the “Dulce War,” was picked up and disseminated by theorists like Bill Cooper and John Lear (more on them later).

Bennewitz, whose handlers Richard Doty and Bill Moore fed him falsified government documents for decades, would become so completely paranoid to the point that he believed either that his wife had been replaced by an alien or that she had been “gotten to” and convinced to work with E.T.s to discredit and silence him. These behaviors culminated in his barricading his home, and he was later admitted to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital for one month. The full extent of the government’s lies was not made public until 2005, two years after his death.

Everything we think we know about the government’s role in UFOs leads back to two men: Bill Moore and John Lear. The government program to control and deal with extraterrestrial life — known as Majestic 12, Majesty 12, MJ 12, and so on — was first released by Lear and Moore, who both backed one another up on having “independent” sources from one another. The stereotypical “grey alien” was released by Lear. The theory of a crash between two crafts at Roswell was forwarded by Moore. Part of the reason that Bennewitz’s claims about the “Dulce War” were taken with any seriousness is that Lear spoke about it independently of Bennewitz.

Bob Lazar was introduced to the world thanks to Lear.

It’s difficult to ascribe motive for these actions, but when you look into Lear’s history, it is no surprise that he would continue to further these stories given to him by his lifelong employer, the CIA. John Lear was an accomplished pilot in his lifetime and had worked for various government agencies and CIA fronts for a number of years. He had worked in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and had been involved in cargo runs during the Iran-Contra Affair. That he was so upfront about these ties should have caused red flags to go up, but perhaps it was his openness regarding his past that disarmed those around him. When you think about it, who else would know about the government’s various black-budget extraterrestrial projects other than a government insider?

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, we have Bill Cooper. Milton William Cooper was the “conspiracy theorist’s theorist.” His best-selling 1991 book, Behold a Pale Horse, can be read as the capstone document of the world of conspiracy theories. Within are a number of theories and ideas most of which we can say, with 30-plus years of distance, either never came to pass or were totally bunk from the get-go. (It is worth noting, however, that Cooper predicted that a 2001 terrorist attack on the United States would be blamed on Osama bin Laden.)

Cooper came to prominence first on a proto-Internet message board “ParaNet,” where he documented his UFO encounter while aboard the USS Tiru during the Vietnam War. He was told never to speak of the incident. He then was transferred to “Naval Intelligence,” where he learned much of what he later revealed to the world on his radio broadcast and in Pale Horse. His first contact and confidant on ParaNet? John Lear. It is notable that Cooper later claimed that Lear was a government agent after the two had a falling out. One can imagine that Cooper was poised by Lear to be another Bennewitz — this time, however, with more deadly results. Before his death, Cooper was reported to have recanted on what he’d written in Pale Horse, believing that he’d been taken for a ride in order to discredit those who questioned the government. Cooper was killed on his property by federal marshals who had come to arrest him for tax evasion. Cooper shot one deputy in the head, starting the firefight, vowing never to be taken alive.

On the materialist side of the UFO question, it is tough to lend credibility or trust, but what of the transcendental UFO researchers? Our friend over at Unmasking the Phenomenon has shown the dangers of UFO cults such as “Love Has Won.” Also, if you want to “summon” a UFO, you can pay Steven Greer, and he will guide you and a select few guests to meditate in the desert until flying lights in the sky travel to and fro in ways that human aircraft simply cannot operate. I have little doubt that these phenomena are happening, but I do doubt their intentions are above board. There’s a reason why Tucker Carlson is “scared” of UFOs: “There are parts of that story that I do not understand at all that are really, really, really dark.”

Father Spyridon Bailey is an Orthodox priest from the U.K. whose 2021 book The UFO Deception has informed my opinion of UFOs. I am not Orthodox, but I am a Christian, and while I used to consider Greer’s mysticism around UFOs mere farcical parlor tricks and a money grift, I now treat such occult ceremonies with the intense disgust that all Christians should feel when encountering the demonic.

Fr. Bailey’s book details the Orthodox perspective on UFOs, citing: St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians where he describes the principalities of this world (demons) occupying the space under Heaven; a long line of Church Fathers; and modern UFO researchers. What Fr. Bailey does so effectively in this work is combine the documented events of UFOlogy with what Scripture has told us.

We are told in Scripture that Satan twists what is real and true, distorting what is beautiful and lying to mankind, tempting them to sin and venture away from God. I won’t delve deep into any eschatology because it’s beyond the scope of this piece and I am by no means the right man to talk about such things, but I do find that discussions about Project Blue Beam (a supposed government plan to fake an alien invasion in order to form a unified world government, as well as to destroy all organized religion, replacing them with a more blended New Age Spirituality) remind me of some details that various pastors and Christian scholars have written in terms of the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ.

This tracks with the predictions of Fr. Seraphim Rose in his 1975 book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. Fr. Rose believed that the New Age would become the dominant spirituality in the 21st century. When Steven Greer creates a documentary, or demands that Congress “disclose” what is known about UFOs to the public, he is doing the work of beings more powerful and pernicious than the Holden Bloodfeasts that we send to Washington every few years.

I believe we are being prepared for the arrival of the Antichrist, who will descend from a flying saucer and be hailed as the Savior of Mankind. I believe that there are elements of our government that are either aware of this and helping it along or are naïve enough to think that by engaging in skullduggery, they are protecting government secrets and therefore the public at large. Why else would Richard Doty be featured in Steven Greer’s films, touted as an expert on Roswell, without mentioning his past with Paul Bennewitz? Why else would J. Allen Hynek again and again mention the “psychic components of UFOs” that have no explanation?

FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder was right: the truth is out there. But it just so happens that he is the way and the life as well.

Recommended Reading

• Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington

• Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh by Wendy S. Painting

• Unmasking the Phenomenon Substack

• Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr. Seraphim Rose

• The UFO Deception: An Orthodox Christian Perspective by Fr. Spyridon Bailey