When the moon is in the seventh house,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars.

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
—James Rado & Gerome Ragni, Hair

In 1983, a year before Jaime Shandera received MJ-12 documents in the mail, Sgt. Richard Doty, a counterintelligence non-commissioned officer (CIC NCO) working with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), met with Linda Mouton Howe (left) in his office at Kirtland AFB (Albuquerque, NM). Unlike some retired beauty queens, Howe (Miss Idaho 1963) could boast of some rather impressive achievements, among them a Master’s Degree in communications from Stanford University and an Emmy for environmental reporting. As a journalist, her beat included coverage of the real-life carnage of animal mutilation in the US Southwest, and from there on she became interested in the subject of UFOs.

Although obviously a clever woman, Howe has the reputation both inside and outside of ufology of being (how can I say this?) quirky, and somewhat gullible. I’ve never met the woman personally. I know of her only from her writing and interviews, so I cannot comment on whether she deserves the reputation or not. If the depiction is accurate, one would normally regard her investigations with a pillar of salt. But with respect to this meeting with Doty, gullibility might ironically add credibility to her account of these events.

Howe originally contacted USAF officials to do research for a planned HBO documentary about a purported UFO landing and ET meeting at Holloman AFB in 1971. These officials put her in touch with Doty, who surprised her by flatly stating that the landing and meeting actually took place, but in 1964, not 1971. He then told her that his “superiors” wanted him to show her a stack of documents, although he forbid her to photograph, copy or take notes on them. Said Howe, “I took the papers and read the top page. It was entitled ‘Briefing for the President of the United States of America’ on the subject of unidentified and identified aerial craft or vehicles.”

Deeper down, she read papers detailing an extraterrestrial plan to genetically manipulate Earth’s primates and other intelligent species during specific points in our development: approximately 25,000, 15,000 and 2,500 years ago. Most spectacularly, the documents claimed that the space visitors created a human/alien hybrid around the year 4 B.C., who seems very Christ-like from the description.

Moreover, these documents said that the US government had considerable knowledge about ET activities around Earth, and had already begun surveillance on the visitors. British ufologist Timothy Good described the meeting in his 1993 book Alien Contact: Top-Secret UFO Files Revealed:

The briefing paper also listed a number of United States Government projects that had been established in order to study the alien question. These included Project Garnet, which had studied (and apparently resolved) all questions relating to the evolution of mankind; Project Sigma, an ongoing project, initiated in 1964 (presumably following the Holloman landing), dealing with alien communication; Project Snowbird, a continuing research effort into the development and implementation of alien spacecraft technology; and Project Aquarius, an overall project devoted to the accumulation of all available information about ‘Alien Life forms.’

In a subsequent letter to ufologist Barry Greenwood, Doty stipulated that the meeting took place (under the direct monitoring of his supervisor, a man he referred to as ‘FALCON,’) but denied that he allowed Howe to peruse secret documents:

I can tell you, without a doubt, that I never showed her any such document. First of all, I was not in a position to obtain any presidential briefing documents. Secondly, I would not allow a person without a security clearance to see any such document.... Finally, I know of no secret Government investigation of UFOs....

Howe responded to Doty’s denial by signing a notarized (but unsworn) statement reasserting her earlier characterization of the meetings.

In this particular he-said-she-said argument, I would tend to give the nod of credibility to Howe, for several reasons. First off, I’m more inclined to believe gullible people because of the old-fashioned Freudian/Horneyan concept known as ‘externalization.’ Many people develop a neurotic tendency to project their motives, beliefs, MOs onto mankind in general. A liar figures that everyone else must be dishonest too (which in a weird way, bolsters his belief that he is more honest than everyone else, for he acknowledges his deceit). Likewise, a person who is basically honest could neurotically believe that most people are honest, just like him. So, if Howe says that Doty showed her documents while at Kirtland, I’m inclined to believe that he showed her documents while at Kirtland.

Of course, I would be a piss poor researcher if I believed her based only on that reason. I would have to also point out that later incidents would underscore Sgt. Doty’s deceptiveness, most notably in his handling of Howe and another UFO researcher, Paul Bennewitz. And if you’re assuming that ufologists were the only ones questioning Doty’s credibility, then assume something else. Although he believed that there were no secret government investigations of UFOs, a very prominent UFO debunker (specifically Phil Klass) had trouble buying into Doty’s entire story (although Klass’ opinion of Howe wasn’t very good either).

Second, the statements that Doty makes here and elsewhere strike me as doublespeak stemming from plausible deniability. The language he uses in the above letter doesn’t really address Howe’s account. For example, when he says he never showed her the document, we have to wonder how he defines the word “show.” Did he shove a manila folder into her face and screech, “LOOK AT THIS!” or did he simply leave it on his desk, whereupon Howe asked what it was, and asked permission to go through it. In the latter example, did he really show the document to Howe? And even if he didn’t have permission to obtain such a document, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that someone gave it to him. After all, while I’m in DC, my sister can check out a library book for me because I don’t have a card. I’m not authorized to obtain the book, but there it is in my possession. If he wouldn’t allow her to see “such a [presumably sensitive] document,” could that mean the papers Howe reports seeing in his office might not be classified at all—especially useful if the paperwork is propaganda? And he could very well be telling the truth that he knows of no secret investigations into UFOs. After all, that would imply that these papers were formally classified, as opposed to simply government-generated documents.

Third, Doty had reached out to UFO researchers before, either as a representative of a superior officer codenamed FALCON, or as FALCON himself.