After I circulated my paper to several dozen ufologists in March 1989, Moore showed up unannounced at my front door in an obvious effort to intimidate me into publishing a retraction. I responded by personally sending him a letter in which I threatened to have a court-issued injunction brought against him, to prevent him from physically approaching me in the future. Shortly after receiving that letter, Moore lied about it in his own letter to Caveat Emptor magazine, saying that he had received a letter from my attorney, warning him to steer clear of me. I immediately challenged Moore to produce that non-existent letter.

(It's now been 20 years, Mr. Moore, but I'm still waiting for a copy of my attorney's letter to you. Maybe your dog ate it, eh? Or maybe the MJ-12 Retrieval Squad-on one of those slow days when UFOs weren't falling out of the sky all over the place-came and stole it from you. Was that it, Bill? You can come clean with us. We trust you.)

Anyway, in June 1989, The MUFON UFO Journal published my paper and, shortly thereafter, the bird poop really hit the fan. Several of the journal's readers came forward with accounts of various suspect tales being offered to them by Moore or Doty. Importantly, Barry Greenwood and Bob Todd produced even more convincing forensic evidence confirming the fraudulent nature of the MJ-12 "documents." Their findings, still stand as unimpeachable, no matter how many pro-MJ-12 wishful-thinkers tell you otherwise. A good introduction to the many problems found by Greenwood, Todd and other researchers may be found at:

By July, Moore, undoubtedly sensing the inevitable, finally relented and delivered what has naively come to be known as his "confession" speech to a stunned audience attending MUFON's International Symposium in Las Vegas. In keeping with the overall situation, Moore's mea culpa was a combination of fact, disinformation and outright lies.

True, Moore did spill the beans on the spying and disinfo op being run out of Kirtland AFB's OSI, and his willing participation in it, but he also threw in a bunch of bull-some of it relating to myself, given that my paper had effectively forced his revelations-and generally excused his own abhorrent behavior as justifiable, because it supposedly served a greater purpose.

In other words, while Moore did admit that he had agreed to act as a spy and disinformation agent, targeting other researchers on Doty's behalf, he left out a lot of relevant facts, and also twisted much of what he divulged to make him look as good as possible under such disgraceful circumstances-saying that he had merely been playing along with Doty so that he could get inside the disinfo operation, as deeply as possible, and hopefully learn the real facts about UFOs from the low-level OSI agent and those to whom he reported.

If that was actually the case, Moore's fantasy was ridiculously naïve, given the well-documented very high-level, need-to-know secrecy surrounding much of the U.S. government's handling of the UFO phenomenon. In my opinion, Moore's "explanation" for his actions was actually designed to portray his own disreputable behavior in the best possible light. (Bizarrely, on at least two occasions during Moore's speech, without even faintest hint of hypocritical self-consciousness, he urged other ufologists to be more ethical in their actions in the future.)

For those of you who haven't heard or read it, Moore's mea culpa, later published in two consecutive issues of the MUFON UFO Journal, may be found at:

So, what did UFO researcher Moore specifically confess to that was so repellant to his audience? Well, for starters, he admitted to spying on fellow researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen, the founders of the seminal Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO), and reporting on their activities to Doty back at Kirtland AFB. Further, Moore said he knew that Doty had sent a hoaxed letter to the pair, as "bait," but because he was playing along with OSI, did not tell them about it. At the time, Moore was serving as APRO's Director of Research. (All of this is of course reminiscent of the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel recommendation that professional intelligence operatives infiltrate civilian UFO organizations for the purpose of monitoring UFO-proponents' activities. Civilian Moore did his dirty work for the government voluntarily and for no pay, or so he claims.)

Click on the 'NEXT' arrow for page 3

Share this article with: