Let’s examine some of the enigmatic personalities behind the initial rumors about the alleged Dulce base – how it all started, i.e., 1979 through 1983.
PAUL BENNEWITZ …….owner of Thunder Scientific Corporation (contractor to Kirtland AFB), located right next to the entrance of Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, NM, presently operated by his sons……………from around 1979 Paul Bennewitz began to witness some strange lights hovering over Manzano underground nuclear storage area, not too far from his residence in the Four Hills area of Albuquerque.
Some researchers (such as Greg Bishop) theorize that he was looking at some tests of Project Starfire (laser-based optical tracking system being developed at that time by Sandia Laboratories next to Manzano) or possibly some tests of prototypes of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by Sandia Laboratories at that time…….Paul Bennewitz later became convinced that those objects were somehow related to an underground base in northern New Mexico near Dulce…..articles on Bennewitz soon began to appear in newspapers such as the Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Tribune.
Paul Bennewitz began to suffer from paranoia and was later institutionalized……he passed away in 2003….his remains are buried in Veterans Cemetery in Santa Fe……Paul Bennewitz’ sons seem to refuse to be interviewed…..the main reason being that Thunder Scientific Corporation still does business with Kirtland AFB….they sell military grade humidifiers and callibration instruments, many of which were developed,modified and improved by the late Paul Bennewitz…..Paul Bennewitz’ wife, Cindy Bennewitz, still lives at the residence, which is located close to the Manzano underground nuclear storage facility (which allegedly was closed down in 1992) in the Four Hills area of Albuquerque…..
MYRNA HANSEN……in 1980 she claimed to have been abducted near Cimarron, NM and claimed to have been taken to an unknown underground location……She was at at that time a resident of Eagle Nest, New Mexico……Paul Bennewitz interviewed her at his house, together with Leo Sprinkle who did a hypnotic regression….Paul Bennewitz later on decided that she must have been taken into the Dulce base…..this was allegedly only after Bennewitz begun to suspect that there was a base in Dulce….later on, a Richard C. Doty (who was with AFOSI Kirtland AFB at that time) suggested to her that she might have been taken to an undergound weapons storage facility.
TOM ADAMS……he was investigating cattle mutilations in the late 1970s….Tom Adams first heard about the Dulce base from reading Paul Bennewitz’ article in newspaper and other sources from around 1981….it is alleged that Tom Adams knew “Ann West”).
“ANN WEST“……her true identity is not confirmed, although Tal Levesque claims that she is on Facebook with a different name (Cherry Hinkle?)…….alleged to have been an acquaintance of Tom Adams…claimed to have drawn the initial pictures of the vats of the Dulce base in 1987, yet claims to have never heard of Paul Bennewitz before……..allegedly knew Tal Levesque….also claims to have known “Thomas Edwin Castello”…..Tal Levesque claims that she visited him and his wife and also “Thomas Edwin Castello” in Santa Fe……Tal Levesque claims that Ann West is dangerous and is part of the “invisible government”….His claim (that Ann West is part of the “invisible government”) appears to be disinformation.
JOHN LEAR…….heard about Dulce allegedly from “Ann West”…. befriended TAL through John Grace (a.k.a. Val Valerian)……according to Tal Levesque, John Lear retouched the Dulce drawings of “Ann West” that he received in 1987……he first came up with his Hypothesis in 1988 about Dulce and also about Area 51….John Lear has never been taken seriously by the UFO community….some people suspect that John Lear purposely throws in some ridiculous-sounding items as part of PSYOPS….he recently claimed that there are cities on the back side of the moon.
TAL LEVESQUE…..a.k.a., TAL or Jason Bishop…….he claimed that he worked in Santa Fe as a security person for a private company around 1980 or 1981…..he claimed to have begun contact with “Thomas E. Castello” who, Tal Levesque claims, worked in the same company in Santa Fe…….”Thomas E. Castello” allegedly revealed his secrets to Tal….(the secret was that there was an underground U.S./alien bio-lab under Archuleta Mesa, next to Dulce and that he had worked as a security person at that facility)…..but before coming out with this “Thomas Edwin Castello” story, Tal Levesque also seems to have heard initially about the Dulce base rumors from reading about Paul Bennewitz….Tal Levesque claimed that he was visited by a tall Reptoid at his home in Santa Fe in 1979.
“THOMAS EDWIN CASTELLO“…..of course, there are many persons with the same name…..however, a retired Air Force Colonel who claims that he was involved in Dulce, claims that there has never been a Thomas Edwin Castello that was ever employed as security personnel in Dulce.
CHRISTA TILTON…….some researchers seem to say that she came to the scene slightly after “Ann West”…..they say that Christa Tilton and Tom Adams were initially partners…..and that she was in touch with Myrna Hansen……according to Tim Beckley, Christa Tilton later on got together with Wendell Stevens…..Christa Tilton was said to have distributed her manuscript, “The Bennewitz Papers” in 1987……She claimed that she was in touch with a Richard C. Doty (formerly with AFOSI at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque)……Christa Tilton was featured on a Japanese TV program about the Dulce base back in 1989 and 1990…..Christa Tilton flew over Archuleta Mesa and over Soldier Canyon with Junichi Yaoi of Nippon TV in 1989….she appeared on Japanese TV a couple of times….and claimed to have taken a photo of a circular structure over Soldier Canyon, which is slightly SW of Dulce….Tilton, in her manuscript “The Bennewitz Papers” expressed her belief that the whole “Thomas E. Castello” story was a fabrication……”Ann West”, in turn, reportedly claimed that Christa Tilton’s information was not credible.
BRANTON…….a.k.a., Bruce Walton……beginning in the early 1990s, he compiled a book called the DULCE BOOK….and aslo DULCE WARS…..Walton allegedly got most of the information from TAL…some from John Lear, some from Val Valerian (John Grace)….Tal Levesque claimed that Bruce Walton was incarcerated in 2009 in Utah for felony charges.
GABE VALDEZ…….retired New Mexico State Patrol Officer who was in charge of the Dulce area for many years (from the early 1970s to the late 1980s)……presently lives in Albuquerque….Valdez claims that the government was most likely responsible for the cattle mutilations which started happening from around 1975…….he claims that the government may have begun to periodically monitor the radiation levels of certain cattle some years later, after the 1967 underground nuclear explosion (Project Gasbuggy) which took place about 22 miles southwest of Dulce…..Valdez also states that the government “staged” several UFO incidents in the Dulce area (Archuleta Mesa, etc.) by use of high tech equipment such as prototypes of holographic image projections as well as unmanned aerial vehicles or remotely-controlled platforms that were made to resemble “flying saucers”….Valdez believes that bio-warfare experiments were conducted at Dulce and that “UFO/alien” stories were concocted by the government as cover stories to conceal various Black Projects in the area.
WILLIAM “BILL” MOORE…..who first propagated (or “revived”) the story about Roswell in 1980 when he (together with Charles Berlitz) published the book INCIDENT AT ROSWELL (until this book came out, most Americans had no interest or knowledge about the Roswell incident since it was long forgotten and dismissed as misidentification by the U.S. Army in 1947)……he claims that around the same time that he began to propagate the Roswell story, he was working with Richard Doty of Kirtland AFB and participated in a disinformation ploy to saturate Paul Bennewitz (who was pursuing his independent investigations on Dulce) with false information on the Dulce base…..so he claimed in a 1989 MUFON Conference that took place in Las Vegas, NV….however there is no verifiable documentation whatsoever that Moore participated in such disinformation ploy in any official capacity…..except for his verbal “confession” that he made at a 1989 MUFON conference in Las Vegas, Nevada).
RICHARD C. DOTY…..initially with Kirtland AFB AFOSI around 1979, 1980 and 1981……he was not a high-ranking officer…..he claims he participated in disinformation, along with Moore…..again, there is no documentation that he participated in such disinformation ploy at Kirtland AFB AFOSI in any official capacity…..even though Paul Bennewitz’ name and Doty’s name appear on one or two Kirtland OSI documents because Kirtland AFB invited Bennewitz to testify to what he allegedly was seeing over Manzano storage areas…..later on Richard C. Doty became a promoter of the SERPO PROJECT (which some researchers seem to describe as being a total fabrication)…Project Camelot seems to have bought Doty’s story hook, line and sinker……presently he is working as New Mexico Highway Patrol Officer….about to retire in a couple of months.
P.S. 1
The most sane person, surprisingly, may have been Paul Bennewitz himself and Gabe Valdez.
It is quite possible that Paul Bennewitz had long only pretended that he had been “brainwashed” by some within the AFOSI, while he continued to conduct his own investigations into Dulce. But, nevertheless, he couldn’t himself overcome his growing paranoia. Another possible scenario may have been that there was a dissension among the AFOSI and an element among the group may have provided Bennewitz with some crucial information on Dulce.
P.S. 2
Phil Schneider was never a part of the initial Dulce base rumors.
He only came to the scene in 1995.
It was only in 1989 that Bob Lazar first came out with the story that there was an altercation between the U.S. military and “alien entities” in an underground installation. Lazar never specified any location.