X Descending

by Christian Lambright

  I wondered if I could find more information on Raymond Doty, so I began to search online. The web site Namebase.org provides a search of public information and data located in many books and clippings. Through data mining, it also generates a very interesting social network diagram, useful in tracing connections to a given name. In the case of Raymond Doty’s name, it returned links to information with specific dates and locations that included Honduras, Nicaragua, and Laos from 1967-1970. Raymond Doty’s name also appears in several prominent books about CIA secret wars, and the social network diagram showed connections between him and a number of individuals involved in CIA operations during the Reagan era.76

  Raymond Doty was described as a CIA Contra coordinator during the war on Nicaragua and a former Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel.77 Years after his responsibility for CIA paramilitary training in Laos he is reported to have been the director of the Contra operations and Chief of Base in Honduras in 1983.78 In the book Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos, author Kenneth Conboy writes that in 1967 Raymond Doty was at Lima Site 165, “an ex-army NCO assigned as one of the new (CIA) case officers to the Nung...”79

  Later in his book, Conboy names several other veterans of the secret war in Laos who went on to work in CIA operations during the Reagan years. He names “Ray Doty” as one of several who went on to work in Nicaragua. But in the same sentence, in a surprising bit of synchronicity, Conboy mentions Howie Freeman, a CIA agent.80 Freeman was one of the CIA officers stationed at Phou Pha Thi…Lima Site 85…and was there in January 1968 at the very time that Richard Doty claimed to have been at the site.

  It is difficult to know what to make of Richard Doty’s claims to have been in Laos, what his true role may have been if he was there, and his vehement denials now. His apparent familiarity with CIA-related locations and incidents, and the claim that his cousin Raymond was in Laos at virtually the same time, apparently on detached duty with the CIA, only makes the picture cloudier. In another email to Col. Clayton, Doty claimed to have worked in the covert world for a number of years, using many different names and identities while carrying out his official duties during his “intelligence days.” Adding to the confusion is an email sent to Colonel Clayton (ostensibly from Roger Huffman) in which Huffman reported that after 1974, Doty had gone to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency!

  I have submitted a number of FOIA requests in an effort to determine whether Doty’s name could be found in any documentation relating to CIA matters in Laos. To date, my requests have all either been denied or otherwise unsuccessful. Despite Doty’s interest in Laos and the story of LS-85, and despite my gut feelings that the LS-20A connection exposed something far more significant, I still had no proof that he had been there. But the coincidences and connections were too suspicious to ignore. Regardless of the people Doty might have known and the places he might have been, the ultimate question in my mind was whether he and John Lear could have had any association during the Vietnam era through Laos, Long Tieng, or the CIA. If Doty had been assigned at Long Tieng, then it is not unreasonable to expect he could have come in contact with the Air America pilots who landed there.

  John Lear has talked openly about his experiences flying for the CIA in Laos. In a speech given in Las Vegas in 2004, he reported that he had moved to Cambodia in 1973 to fly for Tri-Nine Airlines.81 Tri-Nine Corporation was, according to one aircraft enthusiast, “one of those mysterious CIA-type companies.”82 Later in 1973, he moved to Vientienne, Laos to fly for CASI, delivering arms to General Vang Pao’s CIA supported troops. However, Lear has not hidden the fact that he was already flying in Laos in 1972, though how long he may have been there prior to that is unclear. Biographical details provided on another web site where Lear was interviewed state that he flew for the CIA from 1966 to 1983.83 If correct, that span of time would include the period when Doty was allegedly there.

  The CIA is a recurring factor in this apparent connection between Lear and Doty. In his message on the History Channel web site, Doty makes references to obscure details about CIA sites and incidents as if he has had firsthand experience with them. The secret CIA site at Long Tieng, though not the only site where Lear and Doty could have met, is certainly a location both men have named. A writer who interviewed Lear in his home in 2001, referred to the same panoramic photo of "Long-Tien" that others have seen, quoting Lear as saying, “That base was the CIA’s biggest secret for years. I didn’t think it would ever come out.”84

  It is important to reemphasize that, as of this writing, I still have found no firm evidence placing Doty at Long Tieng, or even in Laos, before or after 1970. Neither have I seen firm evidence placing Lear in Laos earlier than 1972. Doty has strongly denied writing the message I found in the Vietnam war forum on the History Channel web site, even despite his name and email address being there, and despite the amazing correlations with information he has provided elsewhere. I had known where Laos was, but that messages was the first place I had ever seen mention of Lima Sites, Phongsali, Long Tieng, or NKP—and, it was also the only place online I have ever seen any reference to a “Site 5”. That fact became very significant because, in a 2008 email, Doty actually told Col. Clayton about having been at Site 5, and gave far more detail about the incident than was in the message I had found. It was one more bit of evidence supporting that Doty had written the message on the History Channel web site.

  Nevertheless, I still wonder whether Richard Doty and John Lear crossed paths during the secret war in Laos. Given the locations named and the time frame, and with so much of the U.S. operations in Laos still shrouded in secrecy, it is not outside the realm of possibility. The fact that one of the locations named by both men was the CIA headquarters at Long Tieng, “the most secret place on earth,” should only have increased the probability of them meeting at some point in time. Even so, what are the odds that two men who had been at the same CIA base in a far corner of the world—at close to the same time—would, a dozen or so years later, become prominent figures in the same bizarre UFO case in Albuquerque, New Mexico? If it had been suspected, in the 1980s, that Doty and Lear may not only have both been involved in CIA operations in Laos, but at the very same base, the suspicion alone might have completely changed the influence they had on the Bennewitz case, and on Paul Bennewitz himself. I think anyone knowledgeable of the players in the Bennewitz case should find these connections very troubling, if not downright suspicious.

  Appendix B

  Paul Bennewitz and Directed Energy Beams

  The many strange experiences described by Paul Bennewitz can be sorted into a number of subsets. There were his experiences on the Archuleta Mesa, those on the roof of his house, his attempts to interpret unusual signals and frequencies he had detected, his contacts at Kirtland AFB, and others. One of these subsets however, was altogether different, if only because in the midst of all the strange experiences he described, this one is perhaps the most difficult to fathom. When it first started is not clear, but Paul claimed that on occasion, he had been “scanned” with some type of energy or beam—scans that he later claimed he could detect with equipment he had built. Other times, he mentioned being hit with a beam of energy that would sting painfully, and even stranger were descriptions of balls of light that appeared inside his home. These bizarre descriptions did not seem to fit with anything else of which I was aware—much like odd pieces thrown into a jigsaw puzzle.

  The fact that Paul described having had these experiences is no secret, it has been known for some time. In the beginning, Paul seems to have been firmly convinced that unseen "aliens" were behind these strange occurrences. Understandably, it was difficult for me to know what to think, especially without having experienced any of it firsthand. When he first told me about these occurrences, I could only imagine that they were aberrations brought on or exacerbated by the years of misinformation and manipulation to which he had been subjected. Perhaps his mind had become too confused to tell fantasy from reality. Popular culture is r
eplete with tales of people claiming that aliens are projecting beams at them for mind control or other nefarious purposes. Saying such things often leads to being labeled paranoid or delusional. Still, I was not in a position to say what Paul had or had not experienced, though at the time, to be frank, I had no idea how these experiences could have any basis in reality. Whenever he mentioned these types of incidents, I typically listened and asked a few questions and then casually moved the conversation on to other topics. Bizarre as his claims were, because I knew nothing that could possibly account for such strange things happening inside his home, I had not planned to delve into them in this book.

  However, beginning in 2004, as a number of interesting news reports began to appear, Paul’s experiences began to weigh on my mind. I found myself wondering whether I should have dismissed his concerns as easily as I did. In the context of his claims that "aliens" were scanning him and hitting him with painful beams, and knowing now that a counterintelligence operation had been onging to make him look unstable, a specific type of weaponry reported to have been secretly developed at Kirtland AFB began to sound very familiar.

  I have decided to include this short section as an appendix, but with the stipulation that it is being included only in the interest of completeness and on the off chance that someone may have new information that will shed light on the subject. I admit to still being uncomfortable with this whole issue, but the implications are especially troubling if Paul’s claims were even partly true and directed energy developments had anything to do with them. First however, some background on the incidents that Paul and others described.

  The first I heard of what could be independent confirmation of Paul having been “scanned” came in an unusual story told by Bill Moore. In 2005, during an online interview with author Greg Bishop following the release of Bishop’s book Project Beta, Moore described a peculiar sequence of events that had taken place on one occasion when he was visiting Paul’s home. They were in Paul’s upstairs lab when Paul suddenly announced that “they” knew Moore was there and had just scanned him. Moore was not sure what to think and asked Paul how he knew this.

  According to Moore, Paul had a piece of electronic equipment running at the time that produced a graph on a paper strip chart, similar to a seismogram. At the moment of the supposed scan, Moore said that the recording pen “went off the scale,” going clear off the edge of the paper. Moore was told that the scanning beam was what had caused the reaction shown on the paper graph, and that if he was scanned again he might actually be able to feel it. At that point, Moore said he suddenly became lightheaded and, for a few seconds, felt very dizzy and very hot. Paul immediately announced that Moore had just been scanned again and asked him if he had felt it. Moore was understandably at a loss to explain what he had felt, though he was adamant that something had happened.

  If true, Moore’s account not only supports Paul’s claim that these scans were happening, but suggests that anyone present and paying attention could feel them when they occurred. Moore also described seeing a corresponding track print out on a paper graph—exactly as Paul said would happen. Perhaps most significant however, was Moore’s description of the effects he attributed to the scan: heating and dizziness. What type of energy might penetrate walls and cause those sensations?

  Stranger still, in Project Beta is an account, also by Moore, describing an occasion when he and Richard Doty had visited Paul in his upstairs lab (members of Paul’s family may also have been present.) Moore said that he noticed a mysterious ball of light near the ceiling and brought it to Paul’s attention. Moore described it as a transparent, softball-sized light, that wobbled slightly, and finally vanished. Apparently seen by everyone present, Paul did not seem at all surprised by its appearance.

  The description is very similar to another report of a strange ball of light described in Project Beta. In a story credited to Richard Doty, during one surreptitious entry into Paul’s home by Doty and two representatives of the NSA, the three men noticed a small orange ball of light hovering beneath a stairway. Doty claimed they tried to determine if it was being generated from somewhere outside, but in the end they had no idea what it was. If Doty’s account is also true, then these strange manifestations were not only clearly visible to others, but did not rely on Paul’s presence.

  Though Paul and I only spoke about these balls of light in a few of our telephone conversations, he did say that if one of them touched exposed skin it could produce a stinging sensation. It may not have happened every time, but I presumed it had happened at least once. What made this interesting was that he also claimed he had occasionally been hit by some type of beam that caused the same painful sting. I do not know if this beam was visible or detectable with his equipment, but it was apparently very narrow and focused, and there were times that I think Paul felt its sole purpose was to irritate him.

  The idea of “aliens” going to the trouble of stinging people with invisible beams merely to irritate them, is so unbelievable that for most people it would be much easier to believe Paul was unstable. Belief, once again, becomes a real issue. Paul’s belief that all of this was happening—and the matter-of-fact way he could talk about it—would compel almost anyone to believe he was paranoid and delusional. What stable person would believe it? The possibility that such a thing may actually be true becomes blocked by the perceived improbability of it and, perhaps, by our own subconscious desire for it not to be true. With Paul claiming that “aliens” were behind these strange occurrences, and with few people aware of the extent of the counterintelligence operation to “defuse” him, would anyone have suspected that he may not be deluded, but merely mistaken?

  In their 2003 article, Beliefs About Delusions, Bell, Halligan, and Ellis describe in clear terms the difficulty, even in clinical psychiatry, in establishing the two criteria generally considered significant in confirming delusion: falsifiability and bizarreness.85Proving a claim is actually false may not only be beyond the scope of the clinicians’ job, it may be beyond his capability, even if he was motivated to try. Deciding whether a belief is bizarre may come down to a judgment call based on whether the belief is normally held by others. In Paul’s case, his belief that “aliens” were around and would sting him with invisible beams was certainly not a commonly held belief, and to most people would no doubt be considered very bizarre. But whether it was falsifiable would have required someone to try to document its veracity—and Paul was apparently the only one trying to do so!

  The balls of light, scans, and stinging beams may not have been the catalyst for Paul’s belief in “aliens”, but they certainly reinforced it in some ongoing way. If his belief was a delusion, these odd manifestations and their physical effects appear to have been real enough considering the descriptions by others of what they saw and felt. With Doty and Moore having since admitted that an operation was underway for some time to “defuse” Paul, and the claims in Project Beta of photographs being taken of the inside of Paul’s home, perhaps it is prudent to ask whether the scans or beams he complained about might have been attributable to some other source in his vicinity. In fact, there is reason to believe that Paul himself may have begun to suspect a decidedly non-alien source for what he was being subjected to. The uncomfortable fact is that these accounts and the perceived effects, particularly the beams and heating, have all the hallmarks of research now known to have been going on virtually in Paul’s backyard. This research, beginning under the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, today falls under the auspices of the AFRL Directed Energy Directorate.

  Details of classified research and development projects generally do not become publically known until years after the work began. In a television interview I saw years ago, an Air Force officer, referring to development of stealth aircraft technology, put it very succinctly when he smiled and said that by the time he could speak about a highly classified project, the work had probably been going on for twenty years. In this case, that time frame would be just about right.<
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  The past few years have seen many news reports on the research and development that has gone into directed-energy weapons, conducted primarily by the Air Force Research Labs and Sandia National Laboratories. In September of 2001, Air Force Research Laboratory scientists announced the existence of what would be called Active Denial Technology (ADT). This technology, sometimes called a “pain beam” in the media, is a millimeter wavelength microwave beam that heats the water in the surface layer of the skin where the pain-sensing nerves are, and can do so from a considerable distance. By all accounts, the sudden and intense pain is enough to cause virtual panic as people desperately try to get away from the beam. Research into such “non-lethal” weapons has reportedly been going on since the mid-1980’s, though it is an outgrowth of research into radar and electromagnetic pulse technology stretching back to the late 1930s.86

  The first public announcements that an Active Denial System (ADS) was ready for use were accompanied by pictures of a large octagonal antenna mounted atop a military transport vehicle. An interesting first-person account of what it felt like being on the receiving end of an ADS beam was given in 2003 by Eric Adams, Popular Science’s associate editor for aviation and military affairs. To accurately describe the effect of the Active Denial System created by the Air Force, he volunteered as a test subject. He had the system fired at him from a half mile away with the directed-energy beam controlled to hit him only in the middle of his back. In less that two seconds, he experienced a warm sensation that quickly grew to feel like an “electric burner”.87 Though in this demonstration the purpose was to show that the ADS could generate only enough pain to motivate someone to leave the area, in a 2007 accident at Moody AFB, Georgia, an exposure of four seconds at 100% power injured one person seriously enough to require being flown to a local burn center. However, at lower power levels the beam can produce only a mild feeling of warmth and, as the above demonstration showed, it can be focused on a relatively small area even over a substantial distance. Considering that this type of directed energy research was being conducted by the Air Force and others in the area around Kirtland AFB, it does not take a great stretch of the imagination to note the similarity to what Bill Moore reported experiencing at Paul’s home.