Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth (Paperback)

And what you will read, if you do, is a masterful treatise on exactly how the US intelligence agencies have historically used the UFO phenomena for their own advantage in order to plant false information in the minds of those they want to target. And why would they do this? To lead them away from black budget activities that they would rather people didn't look at.

It does mean though that as a result of the activities of AFOSI, some of the tennets of modern ufology are false. It is extremely unlikely for example that there ever was an underground base at Dulce and that means no firefight and no large jars of embryonic humans etc.. The book also strongly suggests that cattle mutilations and the way they were carried out are comfortably within the scope of human ability.

This isn't a novel, it's a factual account of historical events with the main character already passed on at the time of writing and given these circumstances and the background this all falls into, Greg has done a marvelous job in bringing the personalities to light. Bennewitz is portrayed as brilliant, nay a genius, and yet at the same time deeply flawed by naivete. Bill Moore comes over as much a victim as anyone else and even Richard Doty is portrayed as having some humanity. What may indeed surprise some folk is that Greg does not paint the intelligence agencies as disgustingly evil. He demonstrates how they did their job and what their motivations were. There is an underlying level of respect shown towards them. In the end, it came down to one man's life against the potential loss of a great many other lives and while no normal people like to play god, in this case the choice was clear.

There are unintended lighter moments in the book and these can be found in the spying activities of Doty and his colleagues. A picture is painted of Bennewitz stepping out of his front door to go somewhere while almost simultaneously the spooks are stepping in through the back. It comes over as some neo British stage farce and all that appeared to be missing was Brian Rix dropping his trousers. Furthermore, Kirtland AFB seemed at the time to be like a three ringed circus with "dozens" of different intelligence agencies stationed at the base, all carrying out their own black projects with no one knowing what the other was doing.

This is a masterful account that needed to be written and the UFO community has nothing to fear from it. It will take one hell of a book to be published this year that betters this from a Ufological perspective.

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In essence, the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction book relates the story of physicist Paul Bennewitz, who after stumbling upon Air Force and National Security Agency secrets that he believes are connected to the activities of sinister extraterrestrials and UFOs, is bombarded by the murky world of officialdom with a mass of disinformation, faked stories and outright lies in order to both divert him from his research and lead to his mental and psychological disintegration.

While anyone and everyone with an interest in UFOs should read Greg's book, it is unlikely to please some - particularly the I-want-to-believe crowd that foam at the mouth whenever the words "underground base," "cattle mutilations," and "alien abductions" surface. As Greg shows, many of the cornerstones upon which today's ufological lore are built, had their origins in the fertile minds of military intelligence and the behind-the-scenes spook-brigade.

The UFO truth might not be "out there" after all - it may all be one big con behind which a veritable plethora of classified, military projects have been hidden.

Hopefully, Project Beta will open the floodgates that lead to questions being asked at a higher, official level about the Bennewitz affair, and those who manipulated the man to the point of collapse will be made to answer for their actions.

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