Saucers, Spooks and Kooks

UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius

Adam Gorightly

Daily Grail Publishing 2021

Pb, 314pp, £12.95, ISBN 9780994617682

We enter the worlds of the strange at our peril, Adam Gorightly notes at the end of Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, his exploration of the role official disinformation has played in shaping modern American UFO lore. Even the most intelligent and sincere of researchers can be vulnerable to tricksters of all kinds – especially those in uniform. Gorightly explores the manipulation of American ufology from the 1970s to the 1990s, a period when the research community became less optimistic about what the phenomenon might signify. The dream that UFOs were personal transport for all-powerful space brothers, come to save humanity, had receded, with cattle mutilations and claimed abductions suggesting a more frightening agenda.

He covers all the major controversies of this period, such as Bob Lazar’s claims of reverseengineered UFOs at Area 51, but focuses most on New Mexico scientist and businessman Paul Bennewitz, who believed that UFOs were operating at Kirtland Air Force Base near his home and claimed in 1979 that aliens and the US military were running a joint underground laboratory for genetic experiments in Dulce, a remote area of New Mexico.

Gorightly demonstrates how Bennewitz came to this belief, manipulated by intelligence operatives from Kirtland who needed to obfuscate weapon testing taking place at the base. Confronted by “alien” computer messages, false information from researcher (and Air Force informant) Bill Moore and personal testimony from Air Force operatives such as Richard Doty, Bennewitz came to believe and promote an ostensibly outlandish story, before succumbing to a breakdown.

The Bennewitz story has been told before, not least by Greg Bishop’s fine Project Beta. However, Gorightly succeeds in bringing something new, showing how the Dulce allegations lived on, recycled by conspiracy theorists such as Bill Cooper, one of the spiritual ancestors of the current QAnon cult. The author also sets the story against a broader canvas, noting the parallels between past military “disclosures” and the recent releases of military videos showing “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs). Gorightly thinks we might be being misled again, and although this reviewer thinks not, the precedents should give us pause.

Matthew Redhead

★★★★