Editing UFO conspiracy theories (section)

====Doty deceives mutiliation researchers====
{{main|Mirage Men|Paul Bennewitz}}

The late 1970s also saw the beginning of controversy centered on [[Paul Bennewitz]].<ref name="Barkun2006"/>{{rp|111}}<ref name="MirageMen"/>
On April 20, 1979,  U.S. Attorney R. E. Thompson and US Senator [[Harrison Schmidt]] held a public meeting about cattle mutilations. The meeting was attended by about 80, one attendee was Paul Bennewitz, an amateur UFO investigator.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|87–88}} Bennewitz was befriended by Richard Doty, an Air Force Sergeant, who fed him false stories of a UFO conspiracy, government treaties with extraterrestrials, and alien harvesting of cattle.<ref name="MirageMen"/>  This material inspired much of the post-1980 UFO mythology.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|x|quote=Doty and Bennewitz were the conduits, if not the source, for much of the UFO mythology that had emerged since the early 1980s. Stories about crashed UFOs, US government pacts with nasty ETs, alien harvesting of cattle and manipulation of human DNA, which had gained in potency and authenticity as they were retold through countless books, articles, films and TV documentaries.}}   The earliest known reference to "MJ Twelve" comes from a 1981 document used in disinformation targeting Paul Bennewitz.<ref name="Peebles"/>{{rp|258–259}}

Paul Bennewitz was ultimately hospitalized for paranoia.<ref name="Peebles"/>{{rp|258|quote=Bennewitz himself was becoming increasingly erratic—he claimed the aliens were coming through the walls at night and injecting him with chemicals. Finally, he suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized.}}  Doty would appear in the 2013 documentary ''[[Mirage Men]]'' to discuss his role in deceiving Bennewitz. While Doty claims Bennewitz was targeted for inadvertently recording classified technology at Kirtland Air Force Base, Pilkington argues that government agents likely targeted Bennewitz due to his participation in the 1979 meeting on cattle mutilations around Dulce.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch. 11}}<ref>Greenwood, Barry and Brad Sparks, ‘The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12’, MUFON Symposium Proceedings 2007, as quoted in Mirage Men Ch. 11 p.88</ref>

[[File:Linda1981EmmyStrangeHarvest300dpi.jpg|150px|thumb|right|Linda Moulton Howe in 1981]]
In 1979, [[Linda Moulton Howe]] was a documentarian exploring cattle mutilations.<ref name="Barkun2006"/>{{rp|86|quote="In 1979, Linda Moulton Howe, a Denver filmmaker, began work on a documentary that alleged a mutilation-UFO connection. The film, A Strange Harvest, was broadcast in 1980. She later stated that “I am convinced that one or more alien intelligences are affecting this planet. I would like to know who they are, what they want and why the government is silent.” Howe and others, influenced by her film and subsequent publications, began to speculate that aliens mutilated cattle in order to secure body parts or biological substances they needed for their own survival, and that the U.S. government was complicit in these efforts. The idea that aliens were engaged in some obscure effort to “harvest” or otherwise retrieve biological substances from the earth has
turned out to be a fertile subject for speculation, which eventually came
to include such suggestions as the breeding of alien-human hybrids"}}<ref name="Peebles"/>{{rp|218}}<ref name="MirageMen"/>  In 1980, Moulton Howe's documentary "A Strange Harvest" alleged that cattle mutilations were connected to UFOs.<ref name="Barkun2006"/>{{rp|86}} In April 1983,  Moulton Howe travelled to visit Richard Doty and Kirtland Air Force Base.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|x|quote=In April 1983, Howe was invited out to Kirtland by Doty}}

At Kirtland, Doty showed Moulton Howe fabricated documents purporting to be presidential briefing papers. The documents told of UFOs crashes at Roswell, surviving aliens, MJ-12, and a UFO coverup. For decades, Doty denied Moulton Howe's retelling of these events, but in the late 2000s, he would acknowledge the exchange took place, admitting "We gave Linda [...] some bad information."<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|x|quote=We may not know exactly why, but we know they did it and, twenty-four years later, Doty admits that the exchange took place, much as Linda Howe described it. Its purpose was connected to AFOSI’s disinformation programme against Bennewitz. As Doty  put it: ‘We gave Linda some good information, and some bad information. She chose the bad information.’ }}  Howe became a "staunch advocate" for these 'dark' conspiracy theories that the U.S. government is working with aliens.<ref name="Knight2003">{{cite book|author=Peter Knight|title=Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qMIDrggs8TsC&pg=PA125|access-date=18 October 2012|year=2003|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-812-9|pages=125–}}</ref><ref name="Barkun2006" />  She would later be called one of "the gurus of American ufology".<ref name="Schultz1999">{{cite book|author=Nancy Lusignan Schultz|title=Fear Itself: Enemies Real & Imagined in American Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/fearitselfenemie00schu|url-access=registration|year=1999|publisher=Purdue University Press|isbn=978-1-55753-115-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/fearitselfenemie00schu/page/415 415]–}}</ref>