Bill Moore/Documents/Partial transcript of 1989 MUFON conference speech

Document	Partial transcript of a speech given by UFOlogist Bill Moore at a Mutual UFO Network conference in 1989.
Source(s)	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsKMZKgeHY
Date	1989

---

That's absolutely the worst introduction I have ever had you can't trust the males these days.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Friends and adversaries.

Associates and colleagues.

In short fellow UFOlogists.

I had really wanted to come here tonight and kick ass but fortunately for us all wiser heads have prevailed and we're going to keep this thing professional. Before I begin, it seems appropriate to first take a few moments to personally thank Mr Walt Anders of the MUFON organization and the organizers and hosts of this symposium whose kind invitation made it possible for me to be here.

I'm also appreciative of this excellent time spot which must mean that those who arrange the schedule must think that I have something to say I'll try not to disappoint you I might also add that my talk here tonight is primarily directed at those of you who are members of the UFO community.

That's not to suggest that those of you who are here as third parties won't find it interesting, it's just that you might not be able to follow some of the in-house comments I'm going to make - as opposed to outhouse comments, which I'll try to avoid, even though some cases they may be appropriate.

Having anticipated the faltering star allow me to introduce myself.

I'm aware that you already know my name and I'm equally certain that many of you are wondering "Just who is Bill Moore and what's he up to?". Added to that, I'm sure many other questions. Is this man a government agent?

What about his rumored contacts within the intelligence community? Are the MJ-12 documents real or are they counterfeit? And if they’re counterfeit did he forge them? And isn't he really in it for the money after all? the truth about Bill Moore I'm afraid is considerably less sensational those of you out there that know me well can vouch for it.

those who don't can verify it easily enough William Moore graduated from college in 1965. between that time in 1979 I spent 14 years as a high school teacher and a concurrent 10 years as a part-time labor relations expert within the structure of the Minnesota education association in both cases I had an excellent reputation in 1979 after having successfully published the Philadelphia experiment with co-author Charles Berlitz I resigned my teaching position.

and moved with my family to Arizona in order to take up writing full-time in 1980 I co-authored a second bestseller the Roswell incident which was the preliminary account of an investigation into an alleged UFO crash in new Mexico in 1947. At that time the book was skeptically received by the UFO community and mercilessly panned by the debunkers I stood my ground broke with Berlitz weathered the storm of rocks and mud that was thrown in my direction.

and ultimately with continued high quality research and a careful skeptical journalistic approach managed to persuade many of the initial doubters that there was indeed something to the case and in so doing I earned the respect of many of you in the audience and I expected my reputation and credibility with respect to the Roswell case is at least partly responsible for my having been invited to speak here tonight I urge you to keep that in mind if you're one of those who respects my work on Roswell then I ask you to consider that I'm trying to carry carry on the same sort of quality investigation with respect to my current project it's just that the circumstances are quite different and I've not been in a position until now to properly inform others about what I've been doing this unfortunately has given rise to considerable controversy with a number of falsehoods having been spread by others in the UFO community who saw fit to jump to hasty conclusions inappropriately formed without benefit of all the facts one of the most persistent rumors about me is that I'm a rich man or that I'm somehow funded by the government to spread disinformation and dissension within the UFO community neither could be further from the truth the real Bill Moore is as poor as a church mouse I came away from a divorce in 1983 with virtually nothing I went through bankruptcy shortly thereafter I began to rebuild my life the money I make from writing royalties and the sale of mostly UFO-oriented books and publications is all plowed back into living expenses and continuing research it's a constant scrape to get by but I believe in what I'm doing and in order to preserve the freedom necessary to continue I've had to make sacrifices I'm definitely not in this business for the money I live in a rented house I drive a 1977 car and a 1979 motorcycle.

i have no savings accounts no stops no bonds and I recently dropped my health insurance because I couldn't afford it any longer. I'm not looking for a handout, nor do I expect any sympathy. I simply tell you this because I want it on the record those who are spreading rumors that I live in wealth and comfort are invited to come and verify the situation any time they wish my door is open those who allege that I have counterfeited documents and concocted a hoax on the MJ-12 matter had better take the same facts into account. rest assured I know myself well enough if I was trying to perpetrate a hoax I would have played it for all the cash I could get a long time ago and taken the money and run as some are doing even now in the UFO community and as for my being on the government's payroll I can only say that I wish I was. the government pays well and it provides excellent benefits. so why should you believe anything Bill Moore has to say the fact is that I have information that will add to your knowledge of the UFO phenomenon I will report it to you in as reliable a fashion as I can and in as objective a manner as possible those of you who have numbered among my friends and supporters will perhaps find it comforting in light of some of the more outrageous rumors that have been circulating throughout the UFO community recently others of you who have who have chosen to cast aspersions and throw rocks in my directions out of fear that I might uncover something which will upstage your own efforts will undoubtedly take great great pains to dissect what I have to say here in an effort to find more reasons to question my integrity no matter in the final analysis I'm not asking you to believe only to listen what you do from that point is entirely up to you two years ago at the mufon symposium in Washington DC I stood before a similar audience and presented preliminary information on the so-called MJ-12 papers. I also alluded at that time to a series of ongoing contacts between myself and a number of well-placed individuals within the government and the intelligence community American UFOlogy has been in a turmoil over the MJ-12 matter ever since with charges and counter charges being thrown back and forth so fast that it's almost impossible to keep up with them worse the rumor mill fueled by speculation disinformation and increasingly gross exaggerations on the part of those who ought to know better has emerged as a major force which it sometimes seems from this vantage point has all but replaced common sense and sound judgment. in some circles what ought to have been a sane and concerted effort to get it the truth is taken on virtually all the trappings of a three-ring circus and American UFOlogy as I see it now stands at the edge of a severe crisis which has already shaken it to its very core. I have every confidence that UFOlogy will survive. whether it will emerge from this present state of flux with its much as much credibility as it had going in I don't know. I for one am somewhat ashamed and embarrassed by the mudslinging that I have witnessed much of it directed at me these past two years and by the incessant and increasing rumor mongering which has tantalized us all by its highly sensational nature and yet in the final analysis has offered us so very little in the way of tangible evidence I hope what I have to say here tonight will have the positive effect of laying some of it to rest but speaking in all candour I certainly won't count on it. throughout our history mankind has witnessed many quests and in every case those who study history tell us that there was the inevitable clack of narrow-minded fools who believing that such quests waste time and energy better spent on useful endeavors did everything they could to discourage the process and discredit the individuals involved pardon my observations but so it is with our present quest for knowledge about UFOs.

whether UFOs are or are not extraterrestrial is really only a part of the picture in the final analysis the process of studying this phenomenon and the people involved with it of assessing the claims and the counterclaims and of dealing with the question of how we as earthlings will react to the discovery of a race of extraterrestrial visitors and how they will react to us all of this and more when finally looked at in perspective leads us to the inescapable recognition that in studying the UFO phenomenon we are at the same time becoming more aware of ourselves as individuals and learning something about the society that we are a part of the recognition as noted by my friend Stan Friedman many years ago that any alien spending 10 minutes looking at planet earth must come away with the conclusion that we are in the eyes of that alien nothing more than a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare is it once both revealing and powerful it is through the mirror of UFOs as alien visitors that we ultimately come to look at ourselves and to recognize what and who we really are such a process can only prove beneficial to mankind in the long term regardless of what the true nature of UFOs turns out to be and those who would stand in its way by attempting to keep derision or ridicule upon the subject do us a grave disservice had mankind's greatest inventors scientists explorers builders painters musicians composers physicians surgeons the list goes on the point is had these people throughout our history heeded the mindless blusterings and ravings of the skeptics the scoffers and the debunkers who were present in each and every case there would have been no progress and mankind would still be in the stone age moreover in every case where a breakthrough was achieved and progress was made it is the achiever who is remembered and honored by history and not the debunker and the skeptic who said it could not be done the bottom line here is that the UFO phenomenon is a legitimate study by anyone in our free society who chooses to do so and those who have elected to participate in such a quest should not be held up to derision and ridicule because of it those debunkers and UFO bashers who have nothing positive to contribute are advised to go and massage their egos somewhere else in my opinion those people have no right whatsoever to dictate to others what is fit for study and what is not or what people should believe and what they shouldn't which brings me to my next point I've been accumulating information on the UFO phenomenon for more than 25 years.

during that time I have watched UFOlogy trying to grow up trying to achieve respectability with the public the news media and the scientific community in that process I am sorry to say it's been my observation that we have been our own worst enemy no skeptic no debunker could possibly do that we have done to ourselves not once but time and time again we say we want respectability yet we have made little effort to construct the foundations necessary to achieve it sadly we have no uniform standards no professional ethics no peers no qualifications no uniform goals and few credible spokespersons nobody speaks for UFOlogy or rather perhaps more correctly everybody speaks for UFOlogy all at the same time and each with a different voice anybody can be a UFOlogist all they need to do is tack the title of the end of their name and publish yes even self-publish a book start a newsletter or get themselves on television and should their material be pure unsubstantiated clap trap or broken crockery that's cracked pottery for those of you that don't get that one no matter there's always some other self-styled UFOlogist who will come along see it as the ultimate wisdom of the universe and endorse it wholeheartedly thus adding further to the confusion is it any wonder we have degenerated into a host of political camps each one of which throws rocks at as many of the others as possible while at the same time loudly proclaiming to all who will listen that they are the only true religion meanwhile the debunkers who are essentially united under a single banner throw rocks at all of us and the public as hapless observer to the entire process emerges more confused than ever with that in mind I would like to take a moment and ask each and every member of this audience to reach down inside yourself and come up with a true answer to a very important and difficult question what you say publicly has no meaning in this process it's what you know inside of yourself to be truth that matters I want you to ask yourself why are you involved with the UFO phenomenon do you truly desire answers no matter what those answers may be and no matter how much those answers may be at variance with what you presently believe or are you one of those people who thrives on a continuing mystery whose very position in the field of UFOlogy requires that the mystery of UFOs be perpetuated rather than solved so that you can continue in your self-styled role of importance let's suppose you were the head of an organization devoted to the study of UFOs and there are several such here including myself what happens to your organization and ultimately do you yourself if the UFO mystery is suddenly solved do you truly want to see that happen or is it more palatable and convenient to keep the pot simmering for as long as possible only you and you alone know what it is that motivates you if you're one who's sincerely interested in finding answers and if you can proceed with an open mind and maybe I can offer you some inspiration if on the other hand you are one who prefers to inflate your own image through the spreading of unsubstantiated often alarming and increasingly sensationalistic disinformation hearsay and rumor then I urge you to reassess your position and channel your energies along more acceptable lines if you haven't thought about that I urge you to do so it's important that we all know where we stand as for myself I made my decision a number of years ago as a result of suddenly having found myself face to face with an opportunity to learn more about what our government knows about UFOs I believe then and I continue to believe now that it is possible to uncover answers by searching carefully and competently for them in the right places finding those answers and thus ending my so-called career as a UFOlogist poses no problems at all for me as a writer I'm interested in a variety of subjects many of them non-UFO related should I go as far as I feel I can with a UFO question I have plenty of other fish to fry many of which are just as interesting and every bit is challenging the truth fellow UFOlogists is that I have known precisely what I was doing all along it's just that very few other people knew what I was doing and it was this lack of information on the part of other researchers that has given rise to so much controversy consequently I harbor no grudge against others who have attacked me sometimes bitterly because they disagreed with my methods or because they mistook my refusal to answer their often legitimate questions as a display of arrogance and contempt I counsel patience then and I counsel it now a rush to judgment is a dangerous and a divisive thing. those who engage in such practices may sound high-minded and well-informed at first blush but in the long run they do nothing to enhance their own stature or credibility and they certainly contribute nothing to our quest for answers consider the strange case of Mr smith Mr Jones and the jury you the audience or the jury Mr smith is dead Mr Jones is being tried for the murder the prosecutor stands before you and gives you these facts when the police arrived in response to a complaint that a fight was in progress he says Mr smith was found lying dead on the floor of his apartment the cause of death was strangulation and the body was still warm Mr Jones was found bending over the body with his hands still around the victim's throat neighbors and others who knew both men have testified that there was considerable animosity between the two of them and that on more than one occasion Mr Jones was heard to threaten Mr smith's safety and well-being obviously Jones had gone to see smith and a violent argument ensued during which Jones strangled smith unfortunately for Jones the police arrived before he was able to affect and escape from the scene hear the jury is this sufficient evidence to condemn Mr Jones for murder I tried out this scenario during conversations with a number of people over the past few months and I was amazed at how many people agreed that it is one of whom was my good friend Walt Andrews who recently saw fit to publish an outrageously lopsided piece of trash in his newsletter written by a man I've never met spoken to or corresponded with and who could have easily obtained answers to his questions simply by taking the trouble to ask a significant minority who listened to my smith and Jones scenario however hesitated before passing judgment what is Mr jones's defense they wanted to know and of course that's really what it's all about in the case of smith and Jones the truth is that it was smith who invited Jones to his apartment with the intention of quietly doing him in and disposing of the body before anyone was the wiser Jones however turned the tables on smith and accidentally killed him in the process of self-defense and so it is in the case of more the government than MJ-12 those who have already decided that I'm one of the bad guys in this controversial case have done so on the basis of only half a story they have rushed to judgment without hearing the defense.

indeed some of the most vocal of my critics have never once bothered to contact me and ask me if I had a defense hasty pudding as one recent track put it quite humorously attract which by the way I did not write but which I found to be most appropriate unfortunately I can't provide you with the entire case for the defense this evening the reason is the defense is still in process of completing its investigation but I can provide you with a significant part of it enough so that at least you can begin to understand what I've been doing and where it's all going for some of you it may not be what you want to hear but it's nonetheless true and it should provide you with a good sense of perspective concerning a lot of other things that have been going on in UFOlogical circles recently. it all began more than ten years ago with a man named Paul Bennewitz. Let me preface my remarks by offering the sincere and candid statement that what I'm going to say is to the best of my knowledge entirely true. It is offered without malice or prejudice in any way. It is under no circumstances intended to be libelous or defamatory. I genuinely like Mr Bennewitz continue to regard him as a friend and have a great deal of sympathy for the difficulties he's been through it is not my intention to upset him with these revelations but rather to add a few facts to a record that's been out of balance for a lot of years. I had moved from Minnesota to Arizona during the late summer of 1979 and as a result had become somewhat closer to Jim and Coral Lorenzen of the old aerial phenomena research organization or apro in Tucson. Ultimately they invited me to become a member of the apro board of directors and I accepted.

It was in this capacity that I first became acquainted with the work being done by Paul Bennewitz and Dr Leo sprinkle regarding an alleged UFO abduction involving a young woman and several others which had occurred sometime earlier. the woman had been hypnotically regressed by Dr sprinkle and had provided a strange account of having witnessed a cattle mutilation in process and subsequently having been taken by her alien abductors into some sort of craft or facility where these aliens were actively engaged in processing fluids and sever severed body parts obtained from these cattle during the course of the hypnosis sessions which began as near as I can recall in august of 1979 Bennewitz had become convinced that the aliens had implanted some sort of communication device in the woman's head and that they were using this device to control her actions his theory was that they could actually see what she saw and hear what she heard by means of this device in any case Bennewitz being a physicist by profession and having a certain amount of electronics equipment at his disposal and the wherewithal to purchase more as needed set out to determine whether it might be possible to detect the electromagnetic signals he believed these aliens must be using to exercise their control over their alleged victims and to try to devise a way to shield the victim from the control of the signals he dubbed his effort project beta and communicated to apro in late 1979 that he believed he had succeeded in detecting signals from UFOs and had begun to make calculations about the sort of electronic and propulsion technology employed by these aliens. It was also at about this time that Paul began to take both moving and still pictures of strange lights maneuvering in the vicinity of the Manzano nuclear weapons storage facility which is located on the east of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque and of which Bennewitz had a perfect view from his residence. Bennewitz was convinced that these lights were UFOs and that for some reason they were actively interested in both the Manzano complex and the coyote canyon test area located directly south of Manzano on the other side of the hills during this time the only awareness I had of Bennewitz in his work was what I was obtaining through April I still had not met the man and in fact was only mildly interested in the case this based largely upon both Jim and Coral lorenzon's assessment of Bennewitz as a dedicated researcher but unfortunately one who was as Jim put it prone to make great leaps of logic on the basis of incomplete data both Jim and Coral felt that Bennewitz had already decided what he was going to find before he went looking for it.

Still, although I didn't come to know about it until a few months later, there apparently was something going on involving UFOs near Manzano particularly during august September and October of 1980 and several agencies of the us government including the air force office of special investigations seem more than just casually interested in it. In early September 1980 I was approached by a well-placed individual within the intelligence community who claimed to be directly connected to a high-level government project dealing with UFOs. this individual, who subsequently came to be known as the Falcon, told me that he spoke for a small group of similar individuals who were uncomfortable with the government's continuing cover-up of the truth and indicated that he and his group would like to help me with my research into the subject in the hope that I might be able to help them find a way to change their prevailing policy and get the facts out without breaking any laws in the process. I knew I was being recruited but at that point I had no idea for what. In any case I was told that if I was interested in cooperating with their group I would further be contacted by a liaison man and that future meetings between me and the Falcon would be arranged by this person. the liaison person who subsequently made contact with me was afosi agent Richard Doty a man who has since become quite controversial in his own right and who many people have mistakenly assumed is the Falcon himself. the story of my contacts with the Falcon, Doty and subsequently a number of others is something I will have considerably more to say about at a later date. I'm fully aware that such a course of action will undoubtedly prompt the goss - gossip mongers to begin circulating an entirely new array of outrageous and unsubstantiated rumors but so be it. my purpose here is to deal only with that part of the story which is directly connected to the Bennewitz affair. to those of you who want to know more after hearing what I had to say tonight I counsel continued patience, you have my assurance that the rest of the story will ultimately be told as well, but before going back to the Bennewitz affair let me make several points which seem appropriate at this juncture. first of all on the question of Richard Doty and the Falcon it's important to note that the name Falcon was invented by my partner Jaime Shandera and I in 1984. strictly as a way of facilitating our talking to each other about this person particularly on the telephone without having to use a name.

Richard Doty who continued to be liaison man was similarly referred to us or by us as the Sparrow. Neither Sparrow nor Falcon were aware that we were using these terms in reference to them nor was anyone else to the best of my knowledge prior to about mid 1985 it was in mid 1987 just after we went public with the MJ-12 papers that, at Falcon's suggestion, and with the concurrence of Richard Doty, we began dropping subtle hints that Falcon might in fact be Doty. Falcon felt that such a ploy would be useful to him in continuing to protect his identity while Doty for his part said that if anybody asked he could simply deny it and that would be that we agreed and as many of you are painfully aware it turned out to be an excellent diversion particularly with respect to the effect it had following the UFO cover-up live show which was broadcast nationally in October 1988 in all fairness to Mr Doty here I should also like to comment that in my assessment rick is much better at following orders and implementing the schemes of others than he is at coming up with ideas of his own those of you that have devoted time and energy to constantly badgering this man for more information should be aware that all you are doing is making nuisances of yourself rick is not the man you're after.