by Charles Lear
In last week’s blog, we introduced two people, Richard Doty, a self-professed Air Force Office of Special Investigations disinformation agent, and William Moore, a UFO researcher and co-author of the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, who had a profound influence on the UFO narrative in the 1980’s that culminated in a television presentation, UFO Cover-Up? Live!” What was discussed (scripted) on the show was the now familiar narrative of greys, crashed flying saucers, GOVERNMENT recovery of crash debris and alien bodies, and subsequent cover-up. Moore and Doty have since come forward as having been partners in what they claimed was a GOVERNMENT disinformation program targeting UFOlogists. We closed with the hypothesis that Doty was acting on his own and that Moore played along because he had a need to believe and stood to make some money from the “inside information” that Doty was feeding him and his fellow researchers. This week we’ll look at evidence to support that hypothesis.
If one was to pick a point when UFOlogy went off the rails, October 14, 1988, is one to consider. That was the date that a television show, UFO Cover-Up? Live!, aired on 130 syndicated channels throughout the United States. It was a flop, but an examination of the people who were involved in the production provides insight into how it came to be that a few dubious individuals left us with what have been convincingly argued are bogus stories and documents that support the idea that the GOVERNMENT has recovered crashed alien spaceships and bodies. A lasting belief is that this came about as the result of an organized GOVERNMENT disinformation program targeting the UFO community. A question this writer is examining is whether or not this too is bogus. 
Throughout the history of UFOs there are stories that become well known throughout the UFO community and beyond, and more often than not, their origins can be found in archives available online. Sometimes a 
Ariel Phenomenon premiere at the Academy of Music Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts October 7th and 8th. 
In 1953, there were several UFO reports throughout the year in Canada around the area of Sudbury, Ontario. 
In July of 1967, Ronnie Hill, a 14-year-old North Carolina boy, reported that he’d taken a picture of a UFO with a humanoid in front of it. According to John Keel, who wrote about the story in his article, “The Little Man of North Carolina,” published in the January-February 1969 
According to an 
Often, a UFO case can be explained as being a hoax or a misidentification of natural phenomena or a human-made object. During the early history of American UFO research, these were foremost among the possible prosaic explanations that investigators explored. Then, as the Cold War developed and the American public’s trust in in its governing bodies began to erode in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and the 
From February 17 to February 24, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in Palm Springs, California, on what was described to the public as a “vacation.” On February 20, he disappeared from public view and rumors spread to the point that the headline, “Pres. Eisenhower died tonight of a heart attack in Palm Springs.,” appeared on the Associated Press newswire. The story was removed two minutes later and the AP reported that he was still alive. UFOlogists have speculated on where he was that day, and some have come to the conclusion that Eisenhower went to Muroc Air Force Base for a secret meeting with alien visitors. 
On December 17, 1969, a press release announced the closing of the Air Force’s UFO investigation, Project Blue Book. Despite this, the UFOs didn’t go away, and once the media stopped focusing on the end of Blue Book, stories of UFO sightings again made the news and graced the pages of many newspapers throughout 1970 and 1971. Toward the end of 1971, there was a case that would become a classic that was looked into by an investigator who would become well known as a specialist in UFO trace cases over the coming years.