Bill Moore and UFO Disinformation Accusations

The 1980 Cash-Landrum UFO case was plagued with problems, and a significant one came from the  false claims about it promoted by Bill Moore and Richard Doty. Their contamination of the case was briefly discussed in our article, MJ-12, The "Pratt Sensitive" Documents, Cash-Landrum, Doty and Moore, and we'll eventually document their negative influence in greater detail. The following article provides some necessary background, focusing on other maliciousness by Moore.

The Problem was His Program

On July 1, 1989 ufologist William L. Moore delivered a lecture at the MUFON Symposium in Las Vegas that has become legendary. Facing mounting controversies about the origin and authenticity of the MJ-12 UFO documents and his own credibility, Moore struck back. Along the way, he made a shocking confession that he had been recruited by the U.S. government, tasked with spreading falsehoods to Paul Bennewitz and others. 

Bennewitz on the traveling salesman road not taken from The Albuquerque Tribune April 15, 1981

James W. Moseley summarized the 1980s events in "The Paul Bennewitz Case Revisited," an article in Saucer Smear June 15, 2000. A few excerpts:

"It seems that [Paul] Bennewitz somehow got in way over his head in regard to UFO research. He acquired film of mysterious lights in the sky, he heard a strange alien code over his radio, and he saw UFOs in daylight as well as entrances to secret tunnels in the hills near his Albuquerque home [near Kirtland Air Force Base]. 

Sergeant Richard Doty of the OSI (Office of Special Investigations) comes into the picture... It was Doty's job to misdirect Bennewitz into continuing to believe the messages were actually from the aliens!

William Moore... was a friend and co-worker of Sgt. Doty's in that era. ...Moore admitted [they worked together on Bennewitz] in his famous 'mea culpa' lecture at a MUFON convention in Las Vegas, back in 1989. Moore also admitted to other ufological sins, and by doing so he effectively ended his career in ufology.

Eventually Bennewitz spent a short time in a mental hospital...We believe that he is retired, and his son now runs the family business." 

Moore responded to Moseley's article, but first let's look at a few key quotes from his MUFON lecture on two topics, disinformation, then about Paul Bennewitz's alleged means of communicating with aliens.

Moore: 1988 in UFO Cover-Up? Live and 1989 at the MUFON Symposium 

Moore spent a lot of time defending himself, essentially saying the end justifies the means. "I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough [while trying] to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why." And Moore insisted that there were other ufologists engaged in the same game, spreading bogus concepts that came to be tenets of ufology.

 On the coded alien messages Bennewitz said he was receiving:

"...Paul was intercepting some kind of low frequency electromagnetic emission or signal... convinced that he was receiving alien radio transmissions, and had even gone so far as to develop a home computer program capable of translating them into English. The problem, as I saw it, was that his program... could just as easily have been adapted to assign similar 'alien' translations to the various energy pulses found in ordinary Morse code!"

Later Moore stated: 

"I examined the computer program Paul was using to 'decode' the alleged alien radio transmissions and communications, and I had a lengthy discussion about this matter with the late Dr. Allen Hynek who had also independently examined Paul's program..." 

 

Accusing Dr. Hynek 

When Bill Moore wrote to comment on Moseley's Bennewitz article, he shifted some of the responsibility in the deception on to other ufologists. From Saucer Smear, Aug. 10, 2000, the relevant portions: 

"Regarding the Bennewitz Affair in general - two things which have never come to light and which might prove most interesting to ufoology are the roles played by doctors J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee... I personally know that Hynek was still under contract as a USAF consultant at the time, and Vallee had very close ties with the CIA and others (although what his obligations to them may have been, I do not know). For those still hoping to uncover some hidden treasure in this whole mess, here is a good place to begin... Hynek's hitherto unknown forte had to do with providing Bennewitz a carefully crafted means of 'decoding' the supposed 'alien' transmissions he was intercepting. As for Vallee, numerous clues pertaining to his particular specialty can be gleaned by a careful rereading of his book Messengers of Deception."

(Satiric illustration)

That was the first I'd head of these accusations, but Moore had said something similar six years earlier.  Bill Moore was interviewed on Don Ecker's radio show, UFOs Tonite! on June 11, 1994. At 14:55 into the show, Bill Moore said:

"There were a lot of other ufologists involved with this and I have never discussed this before… One of those others was J. Allen Hynek, who did covert work, who knew what he was doing. And he was very much involved in one phase of the disinformation operation that was used in Bennewitz affair… Hynek was part of this operation. He was under contract to the Air Force and I have a copy of that contract in case anybody wants to contest this."

A general discussion of the Bennewitz story followed. After a commercial break, Ecker asked him about alluding to other prominent ufologists involved in disinformation in Moore’s 1989 MUFON speech. At 35:00 into the recording Moore said: 

"Yes, there were others, and one of them I just named off-mike and that will come up in Focus. And I'm sure that's going to be very controversial, because that individual has written a number of books. … it's about time some of these other people had to answer for some of the things they were doing."

Seventeen years later, Don Ecker rebroadcast the show. Discussing what Moore told him on and off-mike, Don Ecker wrote in the Paracast forum in 2011:

"I had [Bill Moore] on my radio show... he claimed that J. A. Hynek and Jacques Vallee were government assets. (Much like he said he was.) When I challenged Moore on that he stated on the record that he could bring me proof to another show and I could verify it on the air... I agreed and invited him back... I never had another contact again with Moore." 

Printing the Legend

Bill Moore withdrew from ufology, and had virtually vanished except for his occasional letters published in Saucer Smear. But there was one notable exception, and it involved his accusation about Hynek. In Greg Bishop's 2005 book about the Paul Bennewitz story, Project Beta, Bishop said this about Moore in the acknowledgments: 

"[I] thank him for his support, assistance, and longtime friendship. This book would have been impossible without his generous cooperation and incredible patience..."

Hynek is introduced into the Bennewitz with this allegation:

"After the close of Project Bluebook  in 1969, [J. Allen Hynek] had reportedly continued to receive about $5000 a year... one of thousands of academics the government keeps on the payroll in case they might be needed—sort of like egghead sleeper agents."

Then came the story of Hynek delivering the alien message decoder:

"The sole source for the following information is Bill Moore... Moore claims that he met with Hynek at the 1982 Mutual UFO Network convention. [They took a break at a bar down the street.] As they sat down, Moore brought up the subject of Bennewitz. They had a couple of beers... then Hynek dropped the bomb: Sometime in the midsummer of 1981, he had delivered the computer program (and apparently a whole new computer) to Bennewitz at the request of the Air Force, but did not tell Bennewitz this when he delivered the setup."

Moore also told Bishop about Jacques Vallee being involved (possibly designing the alien decoder computer program). However, out of his veneration of Vallee, Bishop chose to not to publish that accusation. The book contained no mention of Vallee, except for citing Messengers of Deception in the bibliography.

Bill Moore claimed in his 1994 interview with Don Ecker that his infamous MUFON speech was intended to lay the foundation for a greater disclosures and documentation. They never came. A decade later, Moore was a prime opportunity to present his evidence with Project Beta, but we got more talk.

Since then, Bill Moore's unproven claim about Hynek has been repeated and cited in UFO articles and books, including Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington in 2010, and once again by Greg Bishop in the 2016 essay anthology, It Defies Language!

Jacques Vallee cited the Hynek anecdote from Project Beta in footnote in Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles, but did he not mention anything about Moore's accusations about his own supposed involvement in  Bennewitz-era disinformation.

Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles, 2019, page 52. 

Moore's accusation about Jacques Vallee never caught hold, but as of this writing, the rumor about Hynek as a disinformation delivery boy still continues to circulate in print. The "evidence" for both is insubstantial — stories from Bill Moore. A quote from Moore's infamous lecture seems an appropriate commentary on the situation:

"One of the problems the UFOlogy movement has with its image is that there is a significant number of people involved with it who support this sort of half-assed journalism."

. . . 

Bill Moore's 1989 MUFON Symposium Lecture

Bill Moore's lecture sounded much like sermon. He played the crowd by lauding the goals of ufology and cursed the devil debunker Phil Klass. Where Moore lost support was when he told the Bennewitz story and said that many of their cherished beliefs are government-crafted falsehoods.

  

Moore's speech seems to have been itself disinformation, falsehoods with a dash of the truth to help sell the story. As his own career and credibility as a ufologist was tanking, Moore's ploy seems to have been to either rehabilitate his status, or to take down the whole field with him. The lecture promised that  more revelations would follow, but instead Moore left ufology and the show went on without him

The full text of Moore's MUFON Symposium speech was published in the Nov. and Dec. MUFON Journal. On Twitter, bwp shared the link to a PDF that includes text, Moore's epilogue.  UFOs and the U.S. Government

The Lecture on Video

There is a rare (but unfortunately low-quality reproduction) video of Bill Moore's infamous speech, recently shared on YouTube by Matthew Riot. It begins at 53 minutes into this rare video, after the segment by Bill English. It runs about 2 hours long from (53:27 to 2:48).

Bill Moore's 1989 MUFON Symposium speech

Myths Die Hard

As an epilogue of sorts, in 2007, news surfaced about MJ-12 and how it came to be. MJ-12 was said to be a U.S. government cabal to control the UFO situation. At the MUFON 2007 Symposium, Brad Sparks presented a paper that he co-authored with Barry Greenwood. The researchers provided an interesting look into how Bill Moore and Rick Doty operated, and showed how the two had recruited ufologist Bob Pratt to help disseminate their ideas. 

All the characters and concepts about UFOs and the MJ-12 group were already in play and they planned to use them in a novel. After that plan failed, Moore's partner Jaime Shandera received something in his mailbox too good to be true. It was a roll of the film showing documents confirming UFO crashes and naming the members of MJ-12.  

The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12 by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood (PDF)

Jim Moseley said (in our March 27, 2012, phone conversation) that while he considered Bill Moore a friend, he had come to regard Moore as a negative influence on ufology. Jim said Moore had "invented" the Roswell story as we know it, and spread nonsense such as the Philadelphia Experiment and the MJ-12 documents and lore. Instead of genuine UFO issues, Moore caused people to focus on manufactured mysteries.

. . .

For Further Reading

Bill Moore's 1989 speech came in large part by him being cornered by the charges made from serious ufologists. See this article from March 1, 1989, by Robert Hastings for context. 

The MJ-12 Affair: Facts, Questions, Comments 

The Roswell Files site has some good resources on the MJ-12 saga, and I recommend this page on Bill Moore and his partner's involvement.

The Majestic 12 Papers - An Analysis

Don Schmitt, has himself contributed a lot of imaginative contributions to ufology, yet he casts stones at Moore in this July 23, 2014, article.

William Moore: UFO opportunist or agent of disinformation

"UFOs and the U.S. Government" from the 1989 MUFON Symposium in the original MUFON UFO Journal issues, which also carried some editorial discussion of the controversy.

MUFON Journal November, 1989

MUFON Journal December, 1989

UFO Documents: Provenance and Credibility by Barry Greenwood

Barry Greenwood's name came up during a discussion with Paul Dean. Paul recently published an article, The Fake 1961 "Special National Intelligence Estimate", and a $1000 Offer To Prove It Genuine... at his blog, UFOs - Documenting The Evidence. The alleged SNIE recently received attention when it was identified as the MJ-12 document endorsed as being authentic by Dr. Hal Puthoff of To The Stars Academy. Majestic 12, or MJ-12 is the alleged US government group in charge of covering up the UFO secrets, supported only by counterfeit documents from anonymous sources.
Talking to Paul about UFO documents (genuine and otherwise) and the role they played in UFO research, I wondered if anyone had ever done a historical overview. Paul suggested I check with an expert.

Barry Greenwood is a UFO historian, and he is currently engaged in diligent work to archive original literature and documents for posterity. He co-authored Clear Intent with Lawrence Fawcett in 1984, later reprinted as The UFO Cover-Up. 

In 2007, Barry co-authored a paper with Brad Sparks, “The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12.” With Paul’s prompting, I emailed Barry and asked him for his view, noting:

This recent noise about the SNIE document has me wondering about the contrast between the fakes and the genuine instances of leaked documents. …Donald Keyhoe received some leaked material, but it was contemporary, not the allegedly decades-old stuff that periodically surfaces. 

Barry Greenwood promptly replied and graciously gave me permission to share his thoughts, presented here as a guest column.

UFO Documents: Provenance and Credibility

by Barry Greenwood

With regard to Keyhoe, he received contemporary documents from known sources. Sometimes, sources were not named but the information was not sensationalized and survived the passage of time. In Flying Saucers- Top Secret, he talked of "Hidden Cases" where they were aggravatingly thin on researchable detail. I spent time over the last three years in the NICAP files looking for these reports but they are missing. Keyhoe was derelict in not having safety copies of these reports in a safe place and now they are lost to history. I asked Gordon Lore about this but he was not in the loop. I guess Keyhoe thought he could live forever!

There was always hoaxing in this subject but the transition of the usual hoaxing to deliberate falsification of government documents crossed a line in the late 1970s. We finally had achieved some sort of credibility in what the government knew about UFOs by gaining access to official inquiry and investigations that revealed they didn't quite know what it was with what they dealt. Then a few fakes appeared followed by one in the military [Richard Doty] who planted fakes in government files and had those officially released via FOIA, a nefarious act that was eventually supported by major names in UFO research. This same source continued to circulate questionable documents as real. But by then every government paper officially released had a taint of "how do you know that is real?" A more effective watering down of what we had achieved, I can't recall and it took little effort.

So now more "leaks" about the same topic [MJ-12] still appear over 40 years later and are still embraced as genuine despite this long history of hoaxing and taint. The persistence is eye-opening and has the appearance of a cult relentlessly pushing their agendas. What really astonishes me is how a very simple rule of thumb has been, and is being, ignored. I explained very clearly in Clear Intent that provenance of documents is vital to the credibility of the information. We filed FOIAs and kept cover letters to establish the sources of the information as authentic, already knowing that fakery was underway and illegitimately competing for the attention of UFO researchers. The common theme of the fakes was that the sources were mysterious and it took a leap of faith to accept the contents. A large percentage of people are gullible, even very gullible, about the sensation of information on UFOs. If the information promised to satisfy articles of belief, it was embraced before any investigation as to the authenticity of that information. I think this contributed to Stan Friedman's rabid promotion of questioned documents. Not knowing from where information came opens the door to fiction becoming fact in the minds of ones seeking quick conclusions about a mysterious topic.

With regard to the SNIE paper, Paul may have told you the details but he approached me a while back with this document. He said it came from a prominent person [affiliation redacted] who wanted input as to whether or not is was genuine. It took about ten seconds to see it was another MJ-12 hoax, again unattributed as to source and likely from the Richard Doty/Tim Cooper school of document fakery. Cooper has said he had about 4000 pages of “leaks" acquired under very suspicious circumstances, which could provide a years-long supply of continuous attention to the MJ-12 conspiracy. Cooper eventually admitted all the documents were fake. 

But what is disturbing is that despite the history of this story churning like an upset stomach, seemingly high profile people involved with the effort to get Congress to investigate UFOs appear to be giving such unattributed ”releases" a stamp of approval. I understand Hal Puthoff declared the SNIE to be genuine along with who knows who else in that group [TTSA]. It is nonsense from a long-term hoax effort but linking this to the new efforts to get the military and Congress to research will do profound damage to these efforts. The UFO subject needs to grow up and pay more attention to what has happened which provides perspective to what is happening.

. . . 

The CUFOS site hosts a nice biography of Barry Greenwood, and he also maintains his own site, Barry Greenwood UFO Archive.

Gray Barker: Rumors of NASA Suppression of UFO Evidence!

Since getting interested in the Cash-Landrum case, I’d wondered if Gray Barker had published anything about the story, and if so, what wild and wooly things he might have said about it. Barker is responsible for a lot of UFO mythology, and I was curious how he'd interpreted this one. 

I'm hoping to visit the Gray Barker Collection in Clarksburg, West Virginia, but until then, this fragment I recently came across provides some answers.

Gray Barker, Saucerian

 

Gray Barker’s Newsletter Hotline (Supplement 19-B) December, 1983

 

 WILD RUMOR DEPT: That James W. Moseley has evidence of a 

terrestrial origin of the famed “Cash/Landrum” sighting, during 

which witnesses were injured by radiation-like effects. also that

Moseley is under heavy pressure from NASA to withold printing it 

in his notorious “sheet,” Saucer Smear.

What’s interesting here is that Gray Barker was known for spinning straw into gold, but here he takes a very conservative approach on describing the C-L injuries as “ radiation-like effects,” more cautious and accurate than more reputable UFO journals.

Silenced by NASA?

The part about the Moseley "evidence" is much more Barker’s style. This almost certainly is an exaggeration of the story being circulated by Richard Doty and Bill Moore that the C-L UFO was a secret test vehicle from Kirtland AFB. The APRO Bulletin printed this rumor and Moore had discussed it with Moseley, who "leaked" it to Barker.  The “heavy pressure from NASA” may even have a sliver of truth in it, as John Schuessler, the C-L case investigator was a NASA contractor employee, and he rejected the Moore story as speculation and rumor. 

This short passage shows a good demonstration of the Barker method at work. Any information is dramatically turned into a puzzle, teasing the reader with possibilities, and leaving them hungry for more.

Sadly, Gray Barker was unable to see how the Cash-Landrum story developed. He died December 6, 1984.

Some mysteries are born, others are made.

Special thanks to debunker Robert Sheaffer for posting the collection of his Gray Barker correspondence and documents.

MJ-12, The "Pratt Sensitive" Documents, Cash-Landrum, Doty and Moore

Some big UFO news broke in 2007, about MJ-12 and how it came to be. Majestic 12, or MJ 12 was said to be the secret US government cabal that controlled UFO information. At the MUFON 2007 Symposium, Brad Sparks presented a paper that he co-authored with Barry Greenwood:

The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12 by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood (PDF)

The paper was based on documents from UFO journalist, Bob Pratt, notes from his meetings and calls with William L. Moore and Richard C. Doty. The key point of interest to the authors of the paper was that Moore and Doty were discussing MJ-12 and the related concepts before any documents were known to exist, and they planned to use it as the basis for a UFO science fiction novel.

Bob Pratt

Bill Moore

Rick Doty

There's discussion of Paul Bennewitz, Roswell, abductions, alien bodies, crashed and recovered flying saucers, ETs influencing our cultural and religious history (Jesus was one of theirs), espionage, disinformation and so much more! At the site Reality Uncovered, the article, Bill Moore's Disinfo- A Vehicle for Injected Social Memes examines the concepts and how they were spread.

Immediately after the release of the Sparks/Greenwood article, there was a round of heated debate, even among the author themselves! Some of the saga is chronicled at UFO UpDates starting Aug. 13, 2007.

The Documents: "Pratt Sensitive"

Shortly after the Sparks-Greenwood article was published, James Carrion, then MUFON director, released a PDF of the original 60 pages of Pratt documents:

Bob Pratt's documents on Moore and Doty: "Pratt Sensitive" (PDF)

It's a rare opportunity to see how fraudulent information was seeded and spread into UFO lore.

 

The Doty Cash Landrum Disinformation

My particular interest in the Pratt documents are the early bogus claims Richard Doty made about the Cash-Landrum case, which are very elaborate and colorful. A sample: 

Betty Cash, Vikie Landrum and Colby Landrum, were not contacted by AFINTEL because of their involvement with civilian UFO people. It was determined that these three could be used to further the "UFO explanation" and thus provide effective cover for the real nature of the affair.

Doty's "disclosures" on the C-L case are not the only comments he's made on it, and he was central in building the legend that the UFO was a malfunctioning US military experiment. He's been spreading lies about the case ever since. While I suspect he originally began exploiting the case chiefly because it was new and a hot topic. However, Doty's bogus input influences and contaminates the way the case is discussed, even now.

An illustration similar to Doty's description of the Cash-Landrum UFO shape

Richard Doty was there when the MJ-12 legend was created, and it's just one of the many pieces of disinformation he used to pollute the UFO topic. 

Who's Who in the Cash-Landrum UFO Case

 Cash-Landrum UFO Case: Mini Bios of the Witnesses & Key Players

This is intended as an aid to identifying the chief participants in the Cash-Landrum case, with a special effort to include people that might have been called as witnesses in the courtroom.

This preliminary list groups the players in broad categories. Photos are not always contemporary to the events; some cannot be located, so place holders or illustrations are used instead.

Primary Witnesses

Betty J. Cash  (Feb. 10, 1929 - Dec. 29, 1998) 
Betty J. Collins from Jefferson (near Birmingham),  Alabama
Mother of two (known) children Mickey Joyce and Toby Howard. 
Married James F. Cash 10/4/1958, divorced 9/12/1980, received sole ownership of truck stop restaurant and attached grocery store.
Betty had heart surgery in 1977, recovered but was treated for heart pains in 1979 and continued to take medication. Betty received her new Cutlass Supreme as a Christmas present in 1979.

Betty’s family most involved in the case:
Jesse L. Collins, brother BC stayed with him after leaving hospital
Pauline Collins, mother, carried BC to Alabama to care for her.
Toby Howard, son. First to examine BC’s symptoms,
Mickey Joyce Foster, daughter. Could not recognize mother in hospital.

Vickie Landrum (Sept. 19, 1923 - Sept. 12, 2007)
Vicie Marzelia Holifield originally from Laurel, Mississippi.
Husband: Ernest Wilson Landrum Sr., children, Ernest Jr., Gloria Jean, David, Paul, and Jayne. 
Employed as a clerk, school meals assistant and waitress, also did work for neighbor Martha Thompson.

Colby Lee Landrum (Jan. 29, 1974 - )
From Dayton, Texas, son of Paul A. Landrum and ex-wife Peggy Sue.
After their divorce in 7/29/1976, Vickie became Colby’s his legal custodian.
At the time of the encounter, he was a month shy of his 7th birthday.
Grade school student at time of incident, active in sports.

Secondary Witnesses

There is much uncertainty concerning the number and quality of the secondary witnesses. 

Nellie Zedick (possibly Zitick), son John and his wife Toni were reported in the WWN as witnessing a UFO. By April 1981, they refused to talk about it, effectively retracting the report. Not included in VISIT/MUFON case reporting.

MUFON arranged for media announcements pleading for additional witnesses to come forward to help the victims. Several people responded, though some had UFO stories of other times and places. The key respondents in the case literature:

Jerry McDonald first witness to respond, reported seeing a large triangle shaped craft over Dayton earlier in the evening of the Huffman encounter.

L.L. Walker (off duty Dayton policeman), and his wife Marie claimed seeing a group of military helicopters in the Huffman area several hours after the incident.


  
Several others responded, most of whom only claimed to see helicopters, some unsure of the date. Several of these witnesses wished to remain anonymous. Some of them do not appear in later case reports. 
Link to witness map with names and approximate locations.

Medical Treatment and Analysis

Parkway General Hospital in Houston, Texas was where Betty Cash was treated after the incident.

Dr. V. B. Shenoy, Betty’s cardiologist whom she regularly visited for care. He was called in to see her  her hospitalization, and he was the first one to hear about the UFO story.




Dr. Steve Chandler, Liberty, TX optometrist, treated Vickie Landrum at his office. She and Colby received no other professional medical care after the incident.

Dr. Peter Rank, Chief of Radiology at the Methodist Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. MUFON medical consultant. Offered opinions on the case based on photographs and medical records. He did not examine the witnesses. Rank also participated in the DAIG investigation.

Richard C. Niemtzow, MD, Radiologist, Ex-VISIT member, medical consultant to APRO and MUFON. Participated in the DAIG investigation by offering opinions on the medical claims (and also MUFON article with his analysis). He did not examine the witnesses.

Bryan A. McClelland, MD, became Betty Cash’s doctor in Alabama around 1983. He practices family and geriatric medicine, but is often misrepresented in the media as an original caregiver and radiologist. 

The UFO Investigation

National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) was a national UFO hotline run by Robert Gribble. He took the initial report from Vickie Landrum and passed it along to UFO groups to investigate.

APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization based in Tucson, Arizona was  started in 1952 by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. Once the most prominent UFO organization, they suffered a serious blow when members withdrew to form the rival organization, MUFON. APRO was the first group to be contacted about the case. APRO dissolved in 1988.

William S. English, APRO member (banished) First UFO investigator to contact the witnesses, shortly thereafter, he sold the story to tabloid, The Weekly World News.

William L. Moore, APRO chief investigator. Known for his Roswell work and his 1989 MUFON speech claiming to have worked as a double agent in a US government sponsored disinformation operation. Moore promoted C-L UFO as a US government secret experiment gone wrong.

Richard C. Doty former AFOSI officer. Bill Moore associate and source. Had previously sent hoaxed material to APRO, the “Weitzel” letter. Background of the Moore-Doty "disinformation" activities.

The Weekly World News was the first to break the story, based on a tip from Bill English. Dick Donovan wrote the story based in part on taped statements made by the witnesses.

Cathy Gordon was the first mainstream newspaper reporter to cover the story for the Courier in Conroe, TX. She had the first detailed interviews with the witnesses, perhaps presenting the earliest, purest account of the story. She also covered developments in the case throughout the legal struggle.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network was founded in by an APRO splinter group in 1969, dedicated to “the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education.”

John Schuessler, aerospace engineer, founding member and deputy director of MUFON, and also leader of a small independent UFO research group, VISIT.

Project VISIT (Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team) was a group of select individuals, primarily Aerospace professionals contracting for NASA. Other members participated in the original VISIT investigation, chiefly, Dave Kissinger, Don Tucker and Bill Eatwell.

Alan Holt M.S. Physical Science (astrophysics) joined in the initial interviews of Vickie and Colby Landrum and the first trip to the event location. He went on to write an analysis of Extraterrestrial space ship propulsion, which included his theory on the Cash-Landrum UFO.




Allan Hendry investigated case in April 1981, contracted by FUFOR (the Fund for UFO Research) to search for the origin of the military helicopters. He also conducted probing interviews of the adult witnesses by phone.

Dr. Ronald Leo Sprinkle  Professor specializing in using hypnotic regression to investigate alien abduction cases. MUFON & APRO consultant. (Hypnotized Vickie Landrum for That’s Incredible! & National Enquirer)

That’s Incredible! filmed a recreation of the incident and interviews with the witnesses in July 1981. In November, they broadcast a studio appearance of Vickie telling the story under hypnotic regression. The publicity from this broadcast led to the DAIG investigation. 

Bergstrom Air Force Base, near Austin Texas. At the suggestion of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the witnesses traveled to meet with Air Force officers, gave a detailed interview about the incident and were given damage claims forms. The transcript from this interview is a valuable case record.

The Texas Department of Health and their Radiation Control Bureau investigated the possibility of trace radiation at the encounter scene. The investigation was led by Charles R. (Russ) Meyer. The results were negative, and their offer to examine the medical records were denied.

DAIG Investigation. (Department of the Army Inspector General)  In 1982, after it was determined that the Air Force did not own for the helicopters in the incident, it became an Army investigation, led by Lt. Colonel George C. Sarran. His report stated that there was no evidence of military helicopters being involved. 

The Legal Case

Peter Gersten, the flamboyant “UFO Lawyer” accepted the case pro-bono, primary duty was preparing the legal documents. Most court filings or appearances were handled by Houston attorneys


 

Bill Shead and Rhonda S. Ross, Co-counsels in Civil Action No. H-84-3488 

Frank A. Conforti, Assistant United States Attorney, for the Defendant (United States Government) in the civil suit.

Judge Ross Sterling dismissed the case Aug. 21, 1986 without it going to trial. Two key factors: lack of evidence, and statements by the US military stating they did not operate a vehicle resembling the UFO, figured largely in his decision.


This takes us through 1985, which effectively ended the legal struggle. No further witnesses or evidence after that date have been shown to be solid. As John Schuessler said in 1986,

 "The case is closed! Unless……."