William Leonard Moore (born October 31, 1943?) is an author and former UFO researcher. Prominent from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, he co-authored two books with Charles Berlitz, including The Roswell Incident - the first book written about the alleged Roswell UFO crash/retrieval. Bill Moore later became a controversial figure within UFOlogy due to his involvement with a group of intelligence contacts known as ‘The Aviary’. He played a role in The Bennewitz Affair, and was a central figure in the release of the controversial Majestic 12 documents.
Bill Moore has a background in the liberal arts, history, teaching and English. He speaks fluent French and holds a degree in Russian. Moore attended Thiel College, located in Greenville, Pennsylvania graduating in 1965. Before deciding to concentrate on his writing career he taught language and humanities at various high schools. Bill Moore was a subscriber to NICAP and during the mid to late 1960s he was asked to investigate a couple of UFO cases for the group. He was later on the board of directors of APRO, based in Arizona.
Moore wrote The Philadelphia Experiment with Charles Berlitz. Published in 1979, it details the alleged 1943 US Navy cloaking experiment of the destroyer escort USS Eldridge at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
Whilst Bill Moore was based in Minnesota and still publicising The Philadelphia Experiment he met with fellow UFO researcher Stanton T. Friedman who he knew, to compare notes. Friedman stated to Moore that he had recently travelled to Louisiana and spoken to a retired Major Jesse Marcel, after following up on an earlier lead he received from a radio station manager whilst he was waiting for an interview. Jesse Marcel detailed to Friedman his involvement in an incident that had occurred almost 30 years previously - the handling of wreckage from an alleged crash of a craft during July 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico.
Moore also had some information pertaining to a UFO crash and when they thought it could be connected to the same story, they began to research the case further. Moore later raised the idea of a book with his writing partner Charles Berlitz who liked the idea. Within a relatively short period of time Moore conducted the field work, interviewed eyewitnesses, prepared reports and sent them to Berlitz in New York who wrote up the chapters of the book. The Roswell Incident was published in 1980 and was the first book written about the alleged Roswell UFO crash/retrieval.
In late 1980 after the release of The Roswell Incident, Moore received a phone call after appearing on a radio show where he was promoting the new book. In October 1988 on the nationally televised UFO Cover-Up?: Live! broadcast Bill Moore described:
"I got a phone call after appearing on a radio show from a man who said 'you're the only person we've heard talk about this subject, who seems to know what he’s talking about'. He convinced me that he was a government intelligence agent and wanted to begin disseminating some information about UFOs to the public".
The original contact Moore later met was to be known as 'Falcon'. In exchange for information received Moore would keep tabs on sections of the UFO research community. This also included taking part in disinformation activities against Paul Bennewitz with AFOSI agent Richard C. Doty, as Moore would later admit at the 1989 Las Vegas MUFON conference. Throughout the 80s the group of intelligence contacts grew in number, each given a bird name - hence they became known as 'The Aviary'.
In June 1982 television producer Jaime Shandera joined forces with Moore to attend the meetings and collaborate on the research, including the discovery of the existence of MJ-12 - the purported high-level policy making group overseeing the UFO and extraterrestrial issue. In 1984 Moore and Shandera received the now infamous MJ-12 documents as a 35mm black and white film that was mailed to Jaime Shandera in a plain brown envelope. Their contacts with The Aviary continued until the 1990s when Moore and Shandera eventually left the UFO research field.
In the last few years William Moore has been interviewed several times by researcher Greg Bishop on his radio show Radio Mysterioso regarding his past involvement in UFOlogy. In one of the interviews Bill Moore reveals he still writes, though not about about UFOs - he carries out editorial work for a newspaper, and has been acting as an historian researching and writing about The Book of Mormon.
William Moore was also a central figure in Greg Bishop's 2005 book detailing the Bennewitz Affair Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth. Some of Moore's activities and interactions with The Aviary have also been detailed in the 2006 book Exempt from Disclosure: The Black World of UFOs by Aviary members Robert M. Collins aka 'Condor' and Richard C. Doty - the surrogate 'Falcon' (see references below).
