Retired AFOSI special agent who conducted admitted disinformation operations against civilian UFO researchers in the 1980s, most notably driving physicist Paul Bennewitz to a psychiatric breakdown. Known under the code name 'Falcon' within the intelligence community's UFO-adjacent network called 'The Aviary.' Central figure in the fabrication and dissemination of the controversial Majestic 12 documents.
Richard C. Doty is a retired special agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) whose career became inseparably linked to the U.S. government's management of UFO information and the civilian researchers who pursued it. Stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico in the early 1980s, Doty was tasked with a counterintelligence operation targeting physicist Paul Bennewitz, who had been monitoring what he believed were alien-related electromagnetic signals near the base — in reality, a classified terrestrial program. Doty's key contribution to UAP history is simultaneously its most damaging: he ran a sustained psychological operation against Bennewitz, feeding him fabricated documents, photographs, and testimony about underground alien bases, alien abductions, and a secret government treaty with extraterrestrials, until Bennewitz suffered a total mental breakdown in 1988 and was institutionalized. The operation also bled into the broader UFO research community through Doty's collaboration with researcher Bill Moore, who knowingly helped disseminate disinformation in exchange for access to official UAP intelligence. Doty is widely believed to be 'Falcon,' one of the primary sources who anonymously fed classified-seeming UAP material to television producers behind the 1988 broadcast UFO Cover-Up? Live!, and is linked to the circulation of the Majestic 12 documents — alleged top-secret papers describing U.S. government contact with extraterrestrials — which most document analysts now regard as fabrications. In 1983, he showed documentary filmmaker Linda Moulton Howe a purported classified briefing document describing extraterrestrial contact and government cooperation, then rescinded access — an act widely interpreted as another disinformation play. Since his retirement from the Air Force in 1988 and a subsequent stint with the New Mexico State Police, Doty has become a recurring public figure in the UAP disclosure space, appearing in documentaries, conferences, and interviews where he alternately confirms and obfuscates his past activities. His 2013 appearance in the documentary Mirage Men brought his role in the Bennewitz affair to a wide audience. He spoke at the Real Disclosure Conference in 2025 and gave a detailed interview to The Debrief in March 2025 discussing his role in the Bennewitz psychological operation. His dual legacy — as a confessed architect of disinformation and a self-described insider with genuine knowledge — makes him one of the most contested and consequential figures in the history of UAP research.