Linda Moulton Howe (born January 20, 1942) is an American investigative journalist and Regional Emmy award-winning documentary film maker best known for her work as a ufologist and advocate of a variety of conspiracy theories, including her investigation of cattle mutilations and conclusion that they are performed by extraterrestrials. She is also noted for her speculations that the U.S. government is colluding with aliens. She is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Howe's early work focused on environmental issues. From 1978 to 1983, Howe was Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7, Denver, Colorado. Her documentaries included Poison in the Wind and A Sun Kissed Poison which compared smog pollution in Los Angeles and Denver, Fire In The Water about hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels, and A Radioactive Water about uranium contamination of public drinking water in a Denver suburb. Howe was on staff at WCVB-TV when the station won a Institutional Peabody Award for institutional excellence in 1975. In 1980, Howe produced A Strange Harvest, a documentary that suggested unusual wounds found on cattle are the work of extraterrestrial beings who harvest body parts required for their survival or research, and that the U.S. government is complicit. The documentary received a Regional Emmy award in 1981. Howe became known as a "staunch advocate" for these ideas, and began to focus on UFO conspiracy theories and speculate about alleged connections between cattle mutilations, UFOs and supposed government conspiracies, saying "I am convinced that one or more alien intelligences are affecting this planet". Although Howe claimed she was shown secret documents after being taken into confidence by an agent of the government, author John Greer wrote that Howe presented no evidence for such claims other than "the very ambiguous evidence provided by rotting cow carcasses".
One Idaho state director of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) called her "the most preeminent UFO investigator in the world", and she's been named as one of "the gurus of American ufology", although Howe has said she regards herself as a television producer and investigative reporter. Much of Howe's work includes speculations about what she terms "unexplained" phenomena, such as cattle mutilations, crop circles, UFO sightings and alien abductions. Howe has produced numerous UFO related programming, including a two-hour special Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms in association with WATL-Fox, Atlanta, was Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator for UFO Report: Sightings financed by Paramount Studios and the Fox network in Los Angeles that was first broadcast in October 1991 and became the Sightings series on Fox.
Howe appeared on a panel at UFO Disclosure press event held at the National Press Club in 2013, saying she believed "alien technology appears so advanced" that "space and time could be bent by outer space travelers, therefore allowing extraterrestrials to visit Earth".
Howe has proposed that some photographs of crop circles show evidence of mysterious energy she terms "visible light phenomena". Joe Nickell described Howe as a "credulous journalist" in a 2002 article in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, saying that photos Howe published purporting to show mysterious energy are simply misinterpretations of photographic accidents, such as a camera's wrist strap reflecting the flash, or circular artifacts caused by floating dust, errors that Nickell calls "the stock-in-trade of ghost hunters".
Howe is a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM and has been interviewed on Larry King Live special, CNN; The O'Reilly Factor, Fox; Sightings and Strange Universe, Fox; NBC's The Other Side; Britain's Union Pictures, ITN and BBC; The Discovery Channel special Evidence On Earth; the NBC network special, Mysterious Origins of Man, and the History Channel television series Ancient Aliens.