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There may be some question as to where Moore was when the first call came in. Most accounts have placed the call coming into the radio station as Moore was leaving, but author Jerome Clark reported a somewhat different version in a 1991 speech
⁶⁷
. Clark, who was on friendly terms with Moore at the time, reported that the mysterious caller had reached Moore as he was leaving his hotel. I checked with Clark but, since a number of years had passed, he could only surmise that he must have gotten the information from Moore sometime after Clark's book,
UFO’s in the 1980s
, was released. If Clark's later version is correct however, it leads to other questions—among them, how the caller knew what hotel Moore was using.

Moore's story of receiving the first telephone call in Omaha may be the most widely accepted version of events, but a different version appears in Howard Blum's 1990 book
Out There
. Blum, who interviewed Moore personally, reported that the first telephone call had reached Moore at a radio station in Washington, D.C. The content of the call is described similarly to Moore's version, but Blum identified the radio station as W.O.W., a rather specific detail. Furthermore, he went on to say that Moore got the call as he was leaving the station to meet with Stanton Friedman and visit the National Archives,
⁶⁸
again very specific details.

Then, on September 8th, during the return trip from Washington, D.C., Moore was in Albuquerque giving another radio interview when a second telephone call came in. This time the call was from someone saying they were at nearby Kirtland AFB, but Moore said the wording was very similar to what he had heard previously. Moore was not in such a rush this time and the phone call resulted in his first meeting with a mysterious figure he has cryptically named “Falcon”. This meeting was the first step in his recruitment to inform on Paul Bennewitz, and assist in other ways he has never revealed.

For these calls to begin with the words "We think" suggests that the caller was not acting alone and there had been some discussion about Moore (if not simply feeding Moore's ego.) How the first caller knew Moore was in Omaha, and possibly in which hotel he was staying, is curious to say the least. A call made on the spur of the moment would likely have gone to the radio station. Someone could have learned Moore's travel schedule; if Moore was on a promotional tour then it might have been as simple as calling his publisher and asking his itinerary. But determining the hotel in which Moore was staying, if the caller did reach him there, would have required at least some time and effort. Nevertheless, it is hard to reconcile a caller from Omaha tracking him to Albuquerque to try again to recruit him unless Moore had shown some interest. Any way you look at it, the implication is clear that Moore was the target from the outset. And yet, why not simply call him at home and avoid a cloak-and-dagger chase around the country? As plausible as the Omaha scenario might sound, there is another curious and perhaps far more credible version of how Moore was approached.

In 1988, Lawrence Fenwick, a noted Canadian researcher and co-founder of the Canadian UFO Research Network, was interviewed by Tom Mickus, a System Operator for the computer bulletin board service, Paranet
⁶⁹
. The interview, which covered topics ranging from the interesting to the bizarre, touched on Bill Moore and his recent activities. Fenwick described a lengthy conversation with Tracy Tormé, a highly respected television and film writer and producer, and friend of Bill Moore, who was working in Canada at the time. Tormé revealed some rather secretive details he had learned directly from Moore, including a brief mention of how Moore had first been approached. Fenwick recalled Tormé saying that Moore got a telephone call that led to a meeting
at a McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona
. No dates were given for the meeting, and this version depends, of course, on whether what Tormé was told by Moore was actually true. But having met and spoken with Tormé in the past, I believe him to be extremely credible. I also spoke with Lawrence Fenwick once years ago, and he did have access to some very unique information. It was Fenwick who told me that he had personally heard Bill Moore admit to changing portions of the Aquarius Telex…a fact, and changes, that few people would be aware of until much later.

Still, the story Moore has asserted is that the first telephone call came in Omaha. Then, a second call, which may have come from the same individual, occurred several days later when Moore was in Albuquerque. If Moore's story of receiving these calls is true, it is hard not to get the sense that whatever plan was being enacted, it was designed with Moore in mind from the beginning. The callers were apparently confident that Moore would be amenable since they seem to have gone to whichever city he would be in to meet with him. And, a face to face meeting suggests they were not overly concerned about the exposure. However, if Moore was first contacted in Phoenix and he met with someone there, it would be interesting to know when that meeting took place. Was it before he took the position in charge of APRO Special Investigations? The only things certain are that Moore was a willing participant in the AFOSI operation, and in Albuquerque he worked closely with Richard Doty.

Whatever the circumstances, the odds of the Weitzel Letter being sent to APRO, only to be handed by sheer random chance directly to the same person who, within a few weeks, would be recruited in Albuquerque to work with Doty, are too great to be purely coincidental. In Moore's own 1990 analytical report,
The MJ-12 Documents
, he actually states that Doty wrote the Weitzel Letter, making it even more difficult not to see Moore as the intended target all along, if “target” is the operative word. The fact that the Weitzel Letter arrived at APRO just at the time when it would be put into Moore’s hands raises even more questions. The fact that the Weitzel Letter arrived at APRO just at the time when it would be put into Moore's hands raises even more questions.

Since Moore had just moved to Arizona in 1979, and it was not until mid-1980 that he was put in charge of APRO's Special Investigations—how could Doty have sent the letter and been sure Moore would receive it, unless he already knew Moore's APRO position? How might he have known that? Did Moore really decide the Weitzel letter was hogwash (it did contain the name of his future AFOSI contact?) How much did AFOSI know about Moore, and when did they know it. Was he actually recruited later in Albuquerque, or was he recruited at all?

The Weitzel Letter notwithstanding, the question remains whether there is any evidence that the mysterious telephone calls actually took place? In my experience, there is none. We only have Moore's word for it, just as we have only his word that informing on Paul Bennewitz and helping AFOSI in other ways was a purely practical decision. The only thing that appears certain is that Moore worked with AFOSI and/or DIA, and with Doty, "Falcon", and perhaps others, in an operation to destroy Paul's credibility and control any problems caused by his activities.

I have no doubt that many researchers have suspected Moore of being an "inside man" all along. I am certainly convinced there was more to his role than I initially suspected. And yet, if he had been a paid agent acting under cover for one of the intelligence services, why make any of the admissions he did in his 1989 Las Vegas speech? It is a fair question and not easily answered. But as a tactical move, there may be some counterintuitive logic to it. Moore's 1989 admission that he had worked with AFOSI, appearing as a confession and perhaps atonement for any mistakes, may have been a brilliant way to allay suspicions of any deeper role he had. Appearing to have made poor choices, he emerged as a civilian author/UFO-investigator once again, and though his reputation was sullied, no one was the wiser.

Nevertheless, by his own admission, Moore did assist AFOSI, even though he tried to present himself as a stalwart investigator out to uncover the real truth? There were instances when he actually helped others who were pursuing information. It was Moore who told Stanton Friedman to send his FOIA requests directly to the various AFOSI District Offices rather than AFOSI Headquarters. It was also Moore who subsequently sent the request to AFOSI HQ that ultimately exposed the effort by Noah Lawrence to undermine Friedman's FOIA requests. Of course, since Moore was working with Doty at the time, one could argue that telling Friedman to submit a request directly to the local Kirtland AFOSI office was a ruse to ensure Friedman would obtain the documents revealing the 1980 Kirtland AFB UFO sightings (Attachments A and C.) A FOIA request submitted directly to the Kirtland AFOSI office would have been, and perhaps was, a clever way for the documents to be "found" and put into circulation. Perhaps Lawrence's interference, blocking access to local files, created a situation that made it necessary for the documents to turn up some other way.

Whatever Moore's true role and participation was, it is highly unlikely he would have been privy to the full extent of the operation against Paul Bennewitz. And, though Moore probably did not know everything, he still has not told all he does know. To this day he has only named Richard Doty as a person he knew had some connection inside—Doty, whose name was already well known by then from the Weitzel Letter and the later Kirtland documents.

The more significant “Falcon”, and any other notables Moore might have come in contact with, have never been named. (According to Greg Bishop, “Falcon” died circa 2001, though no substantiation or source is provided.
⁷⁰
) Add to all the above the claim by researcher Lee Graham that Bill Moore once identified himself as a government agent—complete with a government ID card—and Moore’s involvement continues to raise suspicions.

NSA and Project Aquarius

The search for evidence of a Project Aquarius was something on which I spent a good deal of time during the late 1980s and 1990s. In retrospect, it was another tantalizing name that led to a relatively fruitless effort to determine whether such a project existed. Presuming a Project Aquarius did exist, there was also the problem of proving whether it actually had anything to do with the UFO phenomenon.

In the course of searching for material relating to Paul Bennewitz, I came across the document that has come to be known as the "Aquarius Telex" (sometimes the "NASA Telex" or "MJ-12 Telex"). Though its questionable origins are far more obvious now, back in the 1980s it created something of a firestorm among researchers because of the implications of the information in it. It not only made reference to an analysis of some of Paul Bennewitz's films, but included the first tantalizing hint of a Project Aquarius. Paul would later tell me that he had never given out any of his films, though he realized it was possible someone could have copied them or taken them without his knowledge. Though most researchers were well aware that this document could be disinformation, it was intriguing and needed to be investigated. It is widely known that the term “MJ Twelve” was also first seen in this telex. Even now, it is not at all certain what the term means, and “MJ-12” and “Majestic 12” are today accepted as variations of the term, though neither was in the original telex. Nevertheless, despite its questionable provenance, entire books are available on this topic and information is available to anyone who looks, so I will not go into that subject here.

Sometime after I first saw the Aquarius Telex, I began to hear rumors that Bill Moore had modified it in several ways. Checking further, I eventually spoke with Lawrence Fenwick who had been told by Bill himself that the reference in the document to “NASA” had originally been spelled “NSA”. This news brought an entirely different dimension to this document, especially for the many people who have long suspected the NSA of having some involvement with the subject of UFO’s.

To anyone not familiar with the National Security Agency I strongly recommend the book,
The Puzzle Palace
, by James Bamford, as well as his other books on the subject. He describes the NSA as "the largest, most secretive, and potentially most intrusive American intelligence agency." With the job of intercepting and analyzing virtually all types of communications, signals, and electronics intelligence, the NSA is in a prime position to collect invaluable data, on any subject, from all over the world. It has already been the target of several lawsuits, by CAUS and others, attempting to gain access to information the NSA was maintaining on UFO's. Nevertheless, despite the Aquarius Telex's suggestion of NSA involvement, no real evidence of the existence of a NSA Project Aquarius had been found by the mid 1980s.

When a request for information under FOIA is filed, it is not uncommon to receive a reply stating there is no information “responsive to the request,” or that the search will entail “search and manpower fees” that the requester has to pay, sometimes in advance. Paying fees can be a gamble because, even after paying the fees, if it is determined that the documents found are properly classified then the requester might get nothing for his money! Paying for nothing is not a situation most hard-working people are comfortable with, so quite often the request simply dies there, conveniently perhaps, for the responding agency. By the mid-1980s, I had written enough FOIA requests to be familiar with the usual responses.

In 1985 I wrote a series of requests to a number of agencies but, for no particular reason, this time I requested "any and all information" on three separate projects all at once, in the same letter. Asking about these three projects in the same request resulted in an interesting discovery. The NSA response to my request stated they had "no records" pertaining to the first two of the three projects. The response went on to say that the fees for a search for records on Project Aquarius would be approximately
fifteen thousand dollars
($15,000.00), and that they would not proceed with the search unless I sent them half of that amount. Clearly they recognized that project name, but the very stiff fee to fully search their records was either a hint that there was a lot of information, or maybe they thought I had the money...