X Descending

by Christian Lambright

  From Paul’s vantage point he also noticed some intriguing activity around one of the vehicles on the first night. Between one and two o’clock in the morning he saw what he had to conclude was someone walking around underneath one of the vehicles with a large flashlight. He used the term “flashlight” even though he specifically described the yellowish light as more intense and much larger than a typical flashlight beam. But it was clear to him from the motion and movement of the light on the ground that someone was walking around beneath one of the objects with what amounted to a handheld flashlight!

  Having a good idea of where the vehicles were landing and being able to survey the area later in daylight gave Paul enough information to calculate their approximate sizes. Based on his calculations, three of the vehicles were approximately 18 feet in diameter. The fourth was twice that size, at approximately 36 feet across. Even though he saw them at night when it would have been difficult to gauge distances, he did know the distance to the mountains behind them, allowing him a baseline for his estimates.

  The southernmost tip of the weapons storage area is about three miles distant. If the vehicles had been directly south of his position there would not have been any mountains behind them at all. Following a line of sight to where he had seen them he determinedthat the mountainside behind where they had been was about two miles away. Based on this, drawing a two-mile radius from his home and finding the spot where the mountains would have formed a backdrop presents an intriguing situation. If, as he described, the vehicles were between one and two miles away on a straight-line distance, then there is every reason to believe that they were down inside the electrified perimeter fence (Figure 9.) This is supported by a statement made by (then) Major Ernest Edwards, who was in charge of the security guards on the mountains at the time, that Paul had initially contacted him about what he (Paul) had seen “on the mountain”.

  Though it may never be possible to say precisely where the vehicles came down, their presence clearly did not raise any alarms—at least none that Paul saw. That fact in itself is somewhat mind boggling if the vehicles were actually intruders. This was a highly secure area patrolled by trained guards responsible for protecting nuclear weapons and other classified material. Is it reasonable to believe that not one guard would notice several glowing vehicles entering the area and then pulsing in the darkness for several hours? Nevertheless, Paul apparently took the lack of alarm to mean that the guards were totally unaware of a potentially serious threat.

  Sometime in the next few weeks, he placed a call to Air Force Security Police, spoke to Ernest Edwards, and reported what he had seen. At that point it is inconceivable that others in official channels would not have quickly learned about Paul and everything he had seen and done. However confused the facts became over the next few years, Paul’s entire reason for calling the Air Force—and what led the Air Force to his door to begin with—is traceable directly to what he saw and filmed those nights in December of 1979.

  Kirtland Air Force Base, and land used by the Department of Energy, covers much of the area east of Albuquerque. This area, sometimes referred to as the Sandia Military Reservation, completely surrounds the four mountains of the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. East of the weapons storage area is a series of canyons that extend several miles into the Manzanita Mountains (Figure 11). Coyote Canyon, on the eastern side of the weapons storage area, stretches east toward Lurance Canyon, which surrounds a remote complex of buildings and structures. Lurance Canyon is the area alluded to in a controversial Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) Complaint Form describing, among other things, an August 1980 incident in which several guards allegedly saw strange lights and a disc-shaped vehicle in the area (see Attachment A). (Considering the number of bogus documents and the disinformation that is now widely believed to have originated with AFOSI during that time period, this Complaint Form and its suggestion that a disc-shaped vehicle had actually intruded into the area should probably be considered highly suspect now.)

  There has been speculation that what Paul saw might have actually been surveillance drones. The fact remains however, that his observations and descriptions—several eighteen to thirty-six foot glowing disc-shaped vehicles moving quickly into a sensitive military area and then sitting in darkness for hours while someone with a flashlight occasionally wanders around beneath them—do not suggest that as an explanation. The fact that Paul saw them enter the area from the other side of the mountains, stay for hours at a time and then leave, disappearing around the mountains again, makes it fairly easy to imagine something other than ‘intrusions’ may actually have been going on. It is also be worth noting that Paul never described seeing the vehicles he filmed dropping down out of the sky or of seeing any lights coming down or going up in the area east of the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. He saw them come in from the south around the mountains and leave heading south over the same route. Low flying vehicles approaching from the east could easily have traveled through Coyote Canyon to slip into and around the MWSA, as Paul described. Such a route would also have kept them over very secure territory the entire time. They would only have been widely visible on the west side of the weapons storage area for the few seconds it took to land and be lost in the darkness.

  Something was definitely going on in the wee hours of the morning in late 1979. The flight path of the vehicles themselves makes a compelling case that they were trying to stay out of sight of the majority of Albuquerque, and very likely under the radar of the Albuquerque airport. The time, place, and temperature could not have been better suited to it. Wherever these disc-shaped vehicles came from and whoever was controlling them, it is undeniable that they were there and that Paul saw them and caught them on film. Every indication is that something extremely sensitive had been planned for a freezing moonless night when no one would have anticipated a civilian would be sitting on his roof with a camera.

  Soon after seeing the vehicles and studying the films, Paul began wondering about how they were powered and whether it might be possible to detect electromagnetic effects when they were in the area. Unusual electronic frequencies in and of themselves, especially in the area he lived, would not have been enough reason to jump to conclusions as broad as potential alien threats. Still, film footage of bizarre vehicles, by any account “flying saucers,” possibly correlated with recordings of electromagnetic disturbances that occurred only when the vehicles were present—now that would be hard data, regardless of whose vehicles they were. With his background and expertise in electronics, and the facilities at Thunder Scientific at his disposal, he was in the perfect position to build the equipment he needed.

  Though to my knowledge he never again described seeing the same vehicles he had seen in December, in short order (by May of 1980) he had a range of equipment set up in his home, including equipment intended to pick up video signals. Many of the later references to Paul’s work refer only to his detecting ‘signals’ and ‘frequencies’, both rather innocuous terms. The information I received from him indicates that he only began thinking about electronic detection in the first few months of 1980, after—and because of—those first sightings. Unfortunately, by that time he had already contacted the Air Force, and once they were aware of the situation, who can say if anything Paul saw or detected from then on was in fact “clean”.

  One piece of equipment designed to detect fluctuations in magnetic fields was producing recording strips showing unusual disturbances. What may have been causing these fluctuations has been the subject of much conjecture because, understandably, any number of sensitive projects could have been going on in the area around Kirtland Air Force Base. Fluctuations in local magnetic fields would be very suggestive if he had been able to correlate them to vehicles like those he had caught on film. Signals, on the other hand, which generally imply communication or telemetry, could have been coming from anywhere…even across the street.

  While Paul seemed convinced that what he was detecting was related to the ve
hicles he had filmed originally, just how it might have been related is a question in need of an answer. As an Air Force expert would later suggest, those frequencies could have come from any number of conventional sources in the area, and perhaps they did. Whatever Paul thought he was receiving, who or what was doing the actual transmissions remains a big mystery.

  Nevertheless, the photographs and films taken those late nights in December are proof that there were vehicles out there bright enough to send torrents of intense light to burn their images onto his film. Whatever he might have done and whatever he might have proven in the long run, Paul innocently called the Air Force and let the proverbial cat out of the bag.

  “A government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take all you have.”

  —Barry Goldwater

  In the mid-1940’s, as part of the outgrowth of the Manhattan Project, what became known as Sandia Base was formed near Albuquerque. In 1947 construction began in the foothills of the Manzanita Mountains, known locally as the “Four Hills”, on the storage site that eventually became known as the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia Base were primarily involved in weapons development and testing and, in 1963, the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) was formed at Kirtland. It was one of the most important laboratories at Kirtland AFB, becoming part of the USAF Phillips Laboratory in December of 1990. Since its inception, the AFWL has been involved in a variety of research areas including adaptive optics, laser weapons, and the effects of electromagnetic pulses (EMP).

  It may not be too surprising then that in November of 1980 the Director of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory sat in on a meeting with Paul Bennewitz. He appears to have been particularly interested in what he was hearing.

  With the end of Project Blue Book in 1969, the Air Force officially no longer investigated unidentified flying objects. Writing to the Air Force about this phenomenon almost invariably results in a form letter explaining that Blue Book is over and they no longer have any official interest. In the case of Paul Bennewitz however, there was some very serious interest. For several months after taking those late night films, Paul was in contact with individuals at Kirtland AFB as he tried to generate official interest in what he saw as a serious problem. Whether or not what Paul had filmed was actually a threat to the weapons storage area may be debatable, but one thing is clear—no one in the Air Force or anywhere else was denying that he did have something on film.

  Perhaps just as significant is the fact that they have never offered any explanation for it. Details of the Air Force interest in Paul’s evidence became public knowledge starting with several documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It was one of these documents that contained a report of a meeting that took place on the grounds of Kirtland AFB.

  In November of 1980, the Air Force invited Paul to come to Kirtland AFB and present evidence he had collected. He brought it all with him, presenting pictures from his films as well as information on the electronic recordings he had made. According to the list of those who attended, Major Ernest Edwards was not at the meeting even though he had been the first person Paul had contacted at Kirtland AFB. Neither was the now infamous Special Agent Richard Doty of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Nor was Jerry Miller, a curious figure who assisted Doty in his investigation and who, a few weeks prior to the meeting, had accompanied Doty to Paul’s home (more in Chapter 13). Several years later Ernest Edwards would comment that representatives of the Air Force Test and Evaluation Center (the branch where Miller purportedly worked) had been present at the meeting, though again, neither Edwards nor Miller are listed among the attendees.

  A Brigadier General, William Brooksher of the Air Force Office of Security Police, was in attendance. Brooksher may have felt a unique sense of déjà vu at this meeting. Exactly five years earlier, in November of 1975, he had been Commander of the 341st Strategic Missile Wing at Malmstrom AFB, Montana1 when there was a very notable UFO intrusion over a Minuteman missile silo2. In 1980, at the Kirtland AFB meeting, Brooksher was accompanied by six other ranking Air Force officers from the base. Major Thomas A. Cseh, Commander of the Base Investigative Detachment, and whose signature is on the document detailing this meeting, was among those present. These Air Force officers are listed first in the document, including their rank and current assignment. Then, two other individuals are listed…a Dr. Lehmann, director of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, and Ed Breen, an AFWL Instrumentation Specialist.

  Before this meeting took place several people already had seen some of Paul’s evidence. Based on conversations I later had with Ernest Edwards it was clear to me that he, and likely others, believed that this meeting was warranted. It was also clear that Paul’s allegations were supported by more than mere signals out of the ether or ink trails on linear recorder strips. One look at what was in those nighttime films would have made that obvious to anyone. After decades of official denial, what could have motivated the Air Force to risk the potential public relations uproar of an official meeting on base simply to view one man’s evidence of “flying saucers”? That fact itself speaks volumes about what Paul had to show. Even more curious, though I did not think much about it when I first read about this meeting, was the fact that the Director of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory had shown particular interest in Paul Bennewitz’s research. The Weapons Lab was a connection that would reappear years later.

  Despite all the disinformation and misinformation that would surround this case in later years, what appeared in those original nighttime films has never been refuted. The Air Force did not address it and to this day has never offered any explanation for, or investigation of, the vehicles Paul Bennewitz filmed. It has always been my contention that those films are the crux of the matter. If you approach this case the way an arson investigator would approach a suspicious fire, and you begin by looking for the point of origin, it was Paul approaching the Air Force and revealing what he had filmed over the MWSA that set things in motion. While the events that came later are now legend in the annals of Ufology (see Greg Bishop’s Project Beta for an intriguing account), the films in question had been taken before anyone, including the Air Force, knew Paul Bennewitz was stationed on his rooftop filming it all.

  The more I looked into this case the more it became clear to me that there were things going on behind the scenes that I, a civilian, had little chance of ever finding out. I wanted to know, but I had reached the edge of a dark abyss, that shadowy rabbit hole that virtually all researchers come to when confronting government secrecy. You reach a point where any questions you have may never be satisfactorily answered. Often you have virtually no chance of getting answers at all. Add to that the fact that lying is permitted in the interest of national security (though it is more politically correct to call it misinformation or disinformation) and you can never be sure if what you learn—or think you have learned—is the truth, or the real truth, or the whole real truth, as some put it. Consider the following stark example of an attempt to withhold information from the public

  In 1981, well-known researcher and author Stanton Friedman had been using the Freedom of Information Act to request UFO related information from AFOSI headquarters in Washington, D.C. After dealing with Noah Lawrence, the AFOSI FOIA officer at the time, and getting nowhere, Friedman learned that such reports were usually kept only at the District offices level. Headquarters was a central hub that information passed through on its way to and from various agencies or locations, but no records were actually maintained at Headquarters itself. So Friedman then wrote to Lawrence asking for a list of the addresses of all the local District offices so that he could write to them directly—effectively warning Lawrence of what he intended to do.

  Up to that time, whenever a District office received a request for information the standard procedure had been for the local office to locate any responsive material and forward it AFOSI Headquarters for review and declassification. The requester was also advised
that the information was being sent for review and would be forwarded to him if it was deemed releasable. The problem with this, at least from AFOSI’s perspective, was that it alerted the requester to the fact that information had been found, even if it was not ultimately released.

  In this instance, as soon as Lawrence realized what Friedman was planning to do he took steps to block the possibility of Friedman learning anything at all.

  Lawrence stalled in sending back the list of District office addresses that Friedman has requested. In the meantime he issued a revision to the existing procedures that the local offices followed. He warned them that they might receive a request from Friedman, and instructed them to simply advise any requester that all requests had to be processed by AFOSI Headquarters. The District offices were not to respond to Friedman in any way other than telling him that requests had to be sent, effectively, to Lawrence himself. Since Friedman would never be told if the District offices actually had any information he was after, and since Lawrence’s office at Headquarters never maintained the information to begin with, Lawrence could honestly respond that a search of his files found no information responsive to Friedman’s request.3