Paul Bennewitz and Richard Doty: The UFO Cover-Up That Destroyed a Man
Sep 27, 2025
UFO history is full of names, but two stand out for how closely they are tied together. Paul Bennewitz was a businessman and engineer who became convinced he had uncovered proof of alien activity near Kirtland Air Force Base. Richard C. Doty was the Air Force officer who encouraged that belief and fed it with disinformation. One man was destroyed by the story. The other built a reputation from it.
Paul Bennewitz was not the kind of man you would expect to be at the center of a UFO controversy. A successful electrical engineer and business owner in Albuquerque, he lived near Kirtland and spent his free time building receivers and cameras to monitor the skies. In the late 1970s he began logging bursts of strange radio signals and filming lights he could not explain over the Sandias and near the base. With each notebook he filled, he became more convinced that he was tracking something real.
He believed those signals were messages between alien craft and hidden bases. His diagrams showed flight paths over Albuquerque and tunnels at Dulce under Archuleta Mesa. In his reports he linked cattle mutilations to alien experiments and abductions to the same activity. He was sure the government knew about it. To him, the signals, the lights, the mutilations and the abductions were all part of the same picture.
By 1980, Bennewitz was bringing reels of film, tapes, and typed reports to Kirtland Air Force Base and pushing for action. Being listened to by officials convinced him even more that he was right. His material reached the Office of Special Investigations, where he met Special Agent Richard C. Doty.
Doty did not dismiss him. Instead, he fed his fears. He handed over forged documents with government seals, staged briefings that hinted at secret treaties, and pointed Bennewitz toward places to watch. Each “confirmation” from an Air Force officer pulled him further in.
The change in Bennewitz was clear. He set up more cameras around his home, wrote letters to politicians, and claimed alien craft were flying over his house. The more Doty encouraged him, the worse his paranoia became. What should have been a warning from the Air Force turned into proof that he was on the right track.
Eventually his family had him hospitalised. By then, the damage was done. He believed he had uncovered a terrifying truth, and because the Air Force had supported that belief, there was no way to convince him otherwise.
Paul Bennewitz never fully recovered. He lived the rest of his life convinced he was at the center of an alien conspiracy, a belief that had been deliberately pushed on him by people who knew it was false. When he died in 2003, he left behind a legacy not of discovery, but of tragedy.
Many of today’s most persistent UFO legends, underground bases, alien treaties, government collusion, trace back to Bennewitz’s research and the disinformation that consumed him. His story is a warning about how easily curiosity can be twisted, and how quickly obsession can take over when it is encouraged by the wrong people.
But it is also about responsibility. Paul Bennewitz was not simply a man who went too far chasing UFOs. He was pushed, lied to, and taken advantage of when he was at his weakest. Richard Doty played a direct role in that, and without him the story may never have gone as far as it did. The myths that grew out of Bennewitz’s collapse still circulate today, but the cost has been forgotten. Behind the stories of Dulce and alien treaties was a man whose life was torn apart, and the officer who helped make it happen. That same officer now makes a living telling UFO stories, turning the lies that destroyed Bennewitz into his own career.