Full name: William Leonard Moore Background: High school teacher; background in Russian language; UFO researcher Key UFO publication: "The Roswell Incident" (1980; co-authored with Charles Berlitz; drew substantially on Stanton Friedman's research on the Jesse Marcel interview) AFOSI recruitment: Moore was recruited by an AFOSI officer using the code name "Falcon" to serve as a conduit for disinformation into the UFO community Confession: July 1, 1989; MUFON Symposium; Moore publicly admitted he had been feeding disinformation to Paul Bennewitz on AFOSI direction for approximately four years MJ-12 documents: Moore received the MJ-12 documents (via Jaime Shandera in December 1984); the chain of custody connecting him to the same AFOSI network that created the Bennewitz disinformation has led many researchers to doubt the documents' authenticity Moore's recruitment by "Falcon" -- identified by multiple researchers as Richard Doty -- offered him something he could not refuse: genuine access to classified UFO-related government information. Moore believed he was operating as a double agent -- using the AFOSI for information while passing their disinformation in the other direction. He described himself as "a player, not a puppet." The reality of his position was more complicated. Moore received some documents that may have been genuine along with the fabricated material -- making it impossible for him to distinguish real from false information. He was being used far more than he was using the AFOSI. Moore's specific actions against Bennewitz included: - Visiting Bennewitz and confirming elements of his increasingly paranoid theories rather than challenging them - Providing fabricated documents that "confirmed" the Dulce Base narrative - Facilitating the spread of Bennewitz's "Project Beta" material through the UFO research community under the guise of genuine leaked intelligence - Watching Bennewitz's mental deterioration and continuing his activities regardless Moore's 1989 confession acknowledged these actions. He framed his participation as a difficult compromise -- the price of access to real classified information. His critics argued that participating in the destruction of a fellow researcher's mind was not a justifiable compromise regardless of what information was obtained. The connection between Moore's AFOSI relationship and the MJ-12 documents that surfaced through him and his partner Jaime Shandera is one of the most discussed questions in Roswell research. The documents arrived anonymously in December 1984, during the period when Moore was actively working with AFOSI on the Bennewitz operation. The same infrastructure that was producing fake documents for Bennewitz was, at the same time, producing the MJ-12 briefing documents that circulated through Moore. Whether the MJ-12 documents are genuine, fabricated by AFOSI as part of the broader disinformation campaign, or fabricated by someone else entirely is debated among researchers. Moore's AFOSI connection does not prove the documents are fake -- but it does mean that their chain of custody runs directly through a person who was, at the time of their emergence, actively participating in a documented government disinformation operation. Moore's 1989 confession effectively ended his UFO research career. He largely disappeared from the field after the admission. His Roswell research -- conducted primarily through Stanton Friedman -- retained its credibility because Friedman's role was independent and documented. But Moore himself became a figure of suspicion whose prior work could not be cleanly separated from his parallel government service.