UFO Cover-Up Live

"UFO Cover-Up? Live!" was a two-hour prime-time television special syndicated by LBS Communications and broadcast on October 14, 1988, although it was recorded earlier. Timothy Good, in a foreword dated April 1989, wrote that on October 14, 1988 the two-hour documentary was shown in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with live participation from Washington, D.C., Gulf Breeze, Florida and Moscow, that it was produced by Michael Seligman and distributed by Lexington Broadcast Service, and that a telephone poll during and after the program reported 30,835 viewers who had experienced a close encounter of the first kind and 2,969 who claimed to have been abducted.¹³ The Staten Island Advance listed the special for 8 p.m. on October 14, 1988 on Channel 11 (WPIX, New York) as "UFO Cover-Up?...Live," described as a two-hour telecast from LBS Communications hosted by Mike Farrell that included "startling testimony by government officials regarding UFO phenomena and alien contacts."¹⁶ Barry Taff, its original writer, gave the date in his account (undated in the BBS copy), as did Linda Moulton Howe and the person who uploaded a recording to the Internet Archive; Mark Pilkington gave October 18.¹²³⁴ In it two men, their faces in shadow and their voices electronically altered, were identified as "Falcon, Government Intelligence Official" and, as "a scientist," "Condor."² Robert Hastings reported in 1989 that a member of the production team identified them as Richard Doty and Robert M. Collins; Doty and Collins denied it then, and Collins wrote in Exempt from Disclosure that he was Condor and that Doty was "the surrogate Falcon."⁵⁶⁷ William L. Moore said on July 1, 1989 that the name Falcon was his and Jaime Shandera's invention of 1984, that hints in 1987 that Falcon was Doty were a diversion suggested by Falcon and agreed to by Doty, and that the program was where that diversion took effect.¹⁴

Production

Taff wrote that the staff included Tracy Tormé, Curt Brubaker, Robert Emenegger and Marty (J. R.) Pasetta Jr., and that William L. Moore, Jaime Shandera and Stanton Friedman were consultants. He was told the budget was about $1,250,000 and later learned it was closer to $825,000, and wrote that the producer, whom he did not name, was friendly at first and, "after having several meetings during production with 'Condor' and 'Falcon,'" became paranoid and dictatorial; that he then demanded to see every page and rejected the treatment as "too serious," saying "I want copy, schlock, camp"; and that Emenegger, Brubaker and Tormé withdrew.⁴ Collins and Pilkington each named the producer: Collins wrote of "Executive Producer Seligman," and Pilkington of Michael Seligman, a former colleague of Emenegger at Grey Advertising who had produced Academy Awards ceremonies and who, Emenegger told him, "was too interested in making money to be part of the UFO conspiracy."⁷⁸ Taff wrote that the cooperation of "several government intelligence sources" included Emenegger's offer to ask his sources for never-before-seen footage of a supposed landing at Holloman Air Force Base and tracking-camera footage of a missile launch with a UFO beside it, and that both were withheld.⁴

Collins described the arrangements in detail. In August 1988 Moore, Shandera, Seligman, Doty, Collins and the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Ernie Kellerstrass met at a state park near Dayton, Ohio, each at a separate contact point from a map Kellerstrass drew; a man in a speedboat said "You guys with Bill Moore? We are here for you." The storm changed the plan. Collins wrote that Kellerstrass brought a companion from "DET 22," that Seligman asked to see picture identification and hired a congressional investigator to check the men's affiliations, and that "they all checked out." In September 1988 in Albuquerque, Moore and Shandera filmed Doty as Falcon, Collins as Condor, and Doty unmasked as "Special OSI Agent Rick Doty," which was cut for time.⁷ Taff wrote that the creative staff made up cards numbered "MJ 1" to "MJ 12" for their desks as a joke about rumors that the show was controlled by insiders.⁴

Content

Howe transcribed Falcon as saying that elected officials including the President and Vice President, and the Director of Central Intelligence and the Director of the National Security Agency, are briefed on MJ-12 activities; that MJ-12 policy is headquartered at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington with the United States Navy responsible for field operations; that as of 1988 one extraterrestrial lived as a guest of the government, after a first captured in New Mexico and held for three years and a second, part of an exchange program; that a "Yellow Book" was written by the second; and that an octagonal crystal in an extraterrestrial's hand displays pictures. After Falcon, a flow chart of authority "created by William Moore and Jaime Shandera" was shown.² Howe transcribed Condor as saying that an agreement had been signed under which "we won't disclose your (ET) existence if you do not interfere in our (Earth human) society," and that the base was at Area 51, "Dreamland."² Pilkington wrote that the guests also included Emenegger, who told the Holloman story, and Paul Shartle, who confirmed having seen the Holloman footage, and that the informants described extraterrestrials who liked vegetables, strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music.⁸

Sequence, September 1988 to December 1988

On September 15, 1988 an AFOSI special agent, name redacted, contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Dallas about a possible classified document concerning Operation Majestic-12; the Dallas airtel of October 25, 1988 reported two radio talk-show appearances on the subject in the previous six weeks and the document's receipt from a person who said an individual "at the school" had given it to him.⁹ Doty retired from the U.S. Air Force on September 30, 1988.¹⁰ The program aired on October 14. On November 30 AFOSI advised the FBI that the document was fabricated, and on December 2, 1988 FBI headquarters told Dallas the document was "completely bogus" and the case was to be closed.⁹ In early December 1988, according to Hastings, a member of the production team identified Falcon and Condor to him.⁵ Moore said on July 1, 1989 that after the broadcast "the FBI showed up and began asking questions about it," arranged a private showing in the office of the producer, Michael Seligman, and interviewed ufologists on both coasts including Shandera, but avoided him; he added that a Freedom of Information Act response of July 1988 had acknowledged nearly sixty pages of classified material on him.¹⁴ Taff wrote that the producer was later visited by a local FBI agent, a visit Taff described as confirmed, apparently to discuss the show and its contents, for reasons unknown to the staff, and that this visit and the repeated visits by Falcon and Condor may have contributed to the rumors; Taff gave no date for the visit.⁴ Doty wrote on March 3, 1989 that he was not "the Falcon mentioned in the Television program last October" and that he had "been exonerated by Government Investigative Agencies regarding that matter."¹¹ Collins wrote that after the broadcast, "as we found out later, the phones were burning off the hook in Washington D.C." and that two high-level contacts approached Moore and Shandera, adding "two new birds" to the group.⁷

Reception and later statements

Taff wrote that the final program was "an amateurish attempt," with "a set of horrid glowing pyramids" and in-studio guests, except for the skeptics, reading from teleprompters.⁴ Moore said in the speech that "at least some of that information falls under the category of disinformation" and that he was "equally convinced that some of it is true," and that Falcon and Condor knew they would be identified on the show as confidential government informants.¹⁴ Barry Greenwood of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy wrote after the speech to the Mutual UFO Network that "a fair portion of the last hour [was] wasted in presenting what Moore admits to be false data."¹² A recording of the broadcast with its commercials was uploaded to the Internet Archive in 2024 and runs about two hours; a shorter copy of about eighty-six minutes was uploaded in 2022. Neither soundtrack was transcribed for this page.³¹⁵