THE BATTLE BENEATH DULCE ~ The 1979 Raid, Human Captives and the Mystery of Archuleta Mesa — Then and Now
By Janet Kira Lessin & Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.
© 2026 Aquarian Media
For almost half a century, Dulce, New Mexico, has occupied one of the most provocative places in extraterrestrial-contact research, where accounts of an underground installation beneath Archuleta Mesa intersect with reports of government agreements, biological experiments, human abductions, hybridization programs, and an armed confrontation that erupted beneath the mesa in 1979.
The story that emerged from Captain Mark Richards and related sources describes a covert world in which elements of the United States military and intelligence establishment entered agreements with nonhuman groups, watched those arrangements expand beyond their original boundaries, and then divided over what happened to human beings inside a vast subterranean research complex.
The account reaches far beyond strange craft in the sky because it concerns power, human sovereignty, genetics, military secrecy, and the possibility that contact among civilizations contains the same range of alliances, conflicts, and moral choices found within human society.
Dulce remains part of that conversation in 2026, but the environment surrounding the subject has changed. Government agencies now collect UAP reports, Congress receives formal briefings, military sensors record anomalous objects, researchers have access to technologies that did not exist when the Dulce story entered public awareness, and members of the Jicarilla Apache community now welcome visitors who want to experience the land and hear local accounts surrounding Archuleta Mesa.
The old story has entered a new era.
ARCHULETA MESA AND THE UNDERGROUND BASE ACCOUNT
Archuleta Mesa rises near Dulce in northern New Mexico, within the homeland of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. The landscape became central to one of the most persistent underground-base accounts in modern UFO history when researchers began circulating reports of a deep installation associated with military operations, extraterrestrial visitors, and advanced biological research.
The account preserved in our earlier EnkiSpeaks article describes an installation that extended almost two miles beneath the mesa and served as a major center for genetic research involving human and nonhuman participants. The material also describes related facilities elsewhere, while presenting Dulce as one of the largest and most important centers in the network.
Within this body of testimony, Dulce housed laboratories devoted to reproductive research, cloning, genetic manipulation, and the creation of hybrid life forms. Witness accounts described multiple levels within the installation, each devoted to specific functions, with some sections controlled by human personnel and others occupied by nonhuman groups.
The most disturbing accounts concern human captives, with women playing a central role in reproductive experiments that experiencers and researchers have discussed for decades.
Reports of missing pregnancies, unexplained reproductive procedures, fetal removal, hybrid children, and encounters with beings who display intense interest in human genetics appear across the larger contact literature. The Dulce account connects those individual experiences to a structured program operating within a permanent installation.
THE AGREEMENTS THAT OPENED THE DOOR
The Dulce story reaches back to the years that followed World War II, when unidentified craft, military encounters, and government interest in advanced technology intensified across the United States.
The account reproduced in our original research places a critical agreement under President Harry Truman in 1947 and describes an arrangement in which human authorities gained access to extraterrestrial technology while nonhuman participants received access to human subjects for biological research.
Other accounts place later negotiations during the Eisenhower administration and describe meetings with more than one extraterrestrial group, which creates a larger picture of contact involving competing interests rather than a single civilization approaching Earth with one agenda.
Within the Dulce framework, these arrangements expanded over time as technology transfer, abduction programs, genetic research, and covert operations became intertwined. Members of the military and intelligence communities then began to question both the scale of the programs and the treatment of human participants.
That internal conflict forms the heart of the 1979 Dulce account because the confrontation did not begin as a war between humanity and every extraterrestrial civilization. It began as a revolt among humans and nonhumans who opposed what other factions had created.
CARTER ENTERS THE STORY
Jimmy Carter occupies a crucial place in the Dulce narrative because the account describes a president who received information about programs operating far outside public knowledge.
Our earlier EnkiSpeaks article recounts a June 1977 briefing in which National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski informed Carter about classified programs connected with Dulce, Area 51, and Project Aquarius. The account states that Carter then sought options through military and intelligence channels after learning the scale of the alleged operations.
Carter brought his own history with unexplained aerial phenomena into the White House after reporting a UFO sighting from his years in Georgia. His role in the Dulce narrative therefore connects a public presidential encounter to a deeper story about classified contact programs.
The Richards account describes divisions inside the national-security structure, with some personnel supporting existing arrangements while others viewed them as a threat to humanity. It names NSA components called Departments X and Z, with one assigned to examine alien operations and the other charged with countering threats.
According to that narrative, Carter authorized a force that drew personnel from Delta Force, Air Force special operations, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and intelligence units for a mission whose participants learned the full nature of their objective only as the operation approached.
Their target lay beneath Archuleta Mesa.
A PROGRAM THAT HAD CROSSED A LINE
By the end of the 1970s, intelligence reaching the resistance faction described a program that had expanded far beyond research
