SUBJECT: E B E's FILE: UFO1035 PART 16 One leader who was not immediately alarmed was Walter H. Andrus, Jr., director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), one of the two largest UFO organizations in the United States (the other being the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies [CUFOS]). In 1987, before Lear had proposed what some wags would call the Dark Side Hypothesis, he had offered to host the 1989 MUFON conference in Las Vegas. Andrus agreed. But as Lear's true beliefs became known, leading figures within MUFON expressed concern about Lear's role in the conference. When Andrus failed to respond quickly, MUFON officials were infuriated. Facing a possible palace revolt, Andrus informed Lear that Cooper, whom Lear had invited to speak at the conference, was not an acceptable choice. But to the critics on the MUFON board and elsewhere in the organization, this was hardly enough. One of them, longtime ufologist Richard Hall, said this was "like putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage" (Hall, 1989). In a heated telephone exchange Andrus called Hall's objections to Lear "just one man's opinion" and claimed support, which turned out not to exist, from other MUFON notables. In a widely-distributed open letter to Andrus, Hall wrote, "Having Lear run the symposium and be a major speaker at it is comparable to NICAP in the 1960's having George Adamski run a NICAP conference! " (NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, of which Hall was executive secretary in the late 1950s and much of the 1960s, was a conservative UFO-research organization which attacked as fraudulent the claims of Adamski, who wrote books about his meetings with Venusians and distributed photographs of what he said were their spaceships.) Hall went on, "You seem to be going for the colorful and the spectacular rather than for the critical-minded approach of science; you even expressed the view- in effect-that having a panel to question Lear critically would be good show biz and the 'highlight' of the symposium. Maybe so, but it obviously would dominate the entire program, grab off all major news media attention, and put UFO research in the worst possible light." Hall declared, "I am hereby resigning from the MUFON Board and I request that my name be removed from all MUFON publications or papers that indicate me to be a Board Member." Fearing more resignations, Andrus moved to make Lear barely more than a guest at his own conference. He was not to lecture there, as previously planned, and hosting duties would be handled, for the most part, by others. Lear ended up arranging an "alternative conference" at which he, Cooper, English and Don Ecker presented the latest elaborations on the Dark Side Hypothesis. Meanwhile another storm was brewing. On March 1, 1989, an Albuquerque ufologist, Robert Hastings, issued a 13-page statement, with 37 pages of appended documents, and mailed it to many of ufology's most prominent individuals. Hastings opened with these remarks: "First, it has been established that 'Falcon,' one of the principle [sic] sources of the MJ-12 material, is Richard C. Doty, formerly attached to District 17 Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) at Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sgt. Doty retired from the U.S. Air Force on October 1, 1988. "How do I know that Doty is 'Falcon?' During a recent telephone conversation, Linda Moulton Howe told me that when Sgt. Doty invited her to his office at Kirtland AFB in early April 1983, and showed her a purportedly authentic U.S. government document on UFOs, he identified himself as code-name 'Falcon' and stated that it was Bill Moore who had given him that name. "Also, in early December 1988, a ranking member of the production team responsible for the 'UFO Cover Up?-Live' television documentary confirmed that Doty is 'Falcon.' This same individual also identified the second MJ-12 source who appeared on the program, 'Condor' as Robert Collins who was, until recently, a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. Like Doty, he was stationed at KAFB when he left the service late last year." (Collins, a scientist, was assigned to the plasma physics group at Sandia National Laboratories on the Kirtland Air Force Base. Following his retirement he moved to Indiana and remains actively interested in UFOs.) Hastings reviewed evidence of Doty's involvement in the concoction of various questionable documents and stories, including the Ellsworth tale and the Weitzel affair. He also noted important discrepancies between the paper Howe saw and the MJ-12 briefing document. For example, while the first mentioned the alleged Aztec crash, the second said nothing about it at all. Hastings wondered, "[I]f the briefing paper that Sgt. Doty showed to Linda Howe was genuine, what does that say about the accuracy (and authenticity) of the Eisenhower document? If, on the other hand, the former was bogus and was meant to mislead Howe for some reason, what does that say about Richard 'Falcon' Doty's reliability as a source for MJ-12 material as a whole?" (Hastings, 1989). Hastings also had much critical to say about Moore, especially about an incident in which Moore had flashed a badge in front of ufologist/cover-up investigator Lee Graham and indicated he was working with the government on a project to release UFO information. (Moore would characterize this as a misguided practical joke.) Both Moore and Doty denied that the latter was Falcon. They claimed Doty had been given that pseudonym long after the 1983 meeting with Howe. Howe, however, stuck by her account. Moore and Doty said the real Falcon, an older man than Doty had been in the studio audience as the video of his interview was being broadcast on UFO Cover-up. . . Live. Doty himself was in New Mexico training with the state police. end of part 16 ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************