from:
HERE: http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/mj12_update3.html
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Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents
by Stanton T. Friedman
April 2004
BACKGROUND
It should be no surprise that the various highly classified Operation Majestic 12 or Majic-12 or MJ-12 documents have been attacked since their existence was first made public. Equally unsurprising is the fact that a number of phony or hoax or fraudulent MJ-12 documents have been released as well. Clearly if the original documents: The Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) of November 18, 1952; the Truman-Forrestal Memo (TFM) of Sept. 24, 1947 (page 8 of the EBD); and the Cutler-Twining Memo (CTM) of July 14, 1954 (found in July, 1985, in Box 189 of Entry 267 of Record Group 341 at the National Archives by Jaime Shandera and William Moore) are genuine, then the consequences are enormous. Aliens are visiting earth; the government has recovered at least one crashed saucer and several alien bodies; and a very significant group of outstanding American scientists and military leaders has collected, reviewed, evaluated, and kept secret all kinds of information about the visitors. Man is NOT alone and the government has covered up the biggest story of the millennium at least since 1947.
Ten years after the 1984 receipt of a roll of exposed 35mm film by Jaime Shandera at his Burbank, California home and his efforts with William Moore and myself to evaluate them, a new roll of film showed up in the mailbox of aviation and science writer (and longtime ufologist) Don Berliner. This contained many pages of SOM 1-01: Majestic 12 Group SPECIAL OPERATIONS MANUAL: "Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal." Meanwhile Tim Cooper, a researcher in Big Bear Lake, California, began receiving loads of supposedly related MJ-12 documents. There would appear to be no connection between the original three documents and the SOM 1.01 (Mailed from Wisconsin rather than Albuquerque, NM) or the mass of Tim Cooper documents which were usually in the form of Xerox copies, often only legible with difficulty and received by him by mail or dropped off at his PO Box.
THE DEBUNKERS
There seem to be several distinct groups attacking the documents:
A. There are those who believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that no alien spacecraft have ever visited Earth. Therefore, any documents saying that they have must be false. No need to do a detailed investigation, to spend time in Archives, research the people involved, etc. THEY MUST BE FRAUDULENT!!
B. There are those who are convinced that some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft, but that no saucer crashed near Roswell because they haven't found any other classified documents indicating any have. Karl Pflock in his book (Ref.1) epitomizes this approach. If no saucer crashed at Roswell, then the documents must be fake.
C. There are several former military people who are convinced that the documents must be false because the style, format, details, etc. do not match what they would have expected them to be based on their military service from the 1960s onward. This ignores the many changes in office procedures (copy machines, word processors, etc.) and the fact that the White House is a civilian organization not a military one.
D. There are a lot of armchair theorists who think they can make judgements without doing any homework at all.
In much of the discussion one finds the use of the four basic rules for debunking of any controversial idea:
1. What the public doesn't know, I won't tell them.
2. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.
3. If one can't attack the data, attack the people; it is easier.
4. Do one's research by proclamation; investigation is too much trouble.
Another important rule for some of the attackers is that "Absence of Evidence is Evidence for Absence." Karl Pflock and others cite numerous documents, mostly only classified Secret, that say nothing about Roswell or MAJESTIC 12. This, of course, neglects the fact that there are still numerous documents from the Truman and Eisenhower eras 1945-1961 that are still classified, that we rarely see documents that have classification stamps of TOP SECRET Code Word (TSCW). I was told in November, 2003, by an archivist at the Ike Library that they still have about 300,000 pages of classified documents. We know that the NSA classified 156 UFO documents (found in response to a Judge's directive) as TOP SECRET UMBRA when they finally released a highly expurgated version (about two lines per page are not covered with Wite-Out), supposedly because that information is about sources and methods. Why would it be listed under UFOs if only 5% is about UFOs?
In addition, as a result of my spending a lot of time at twenty different Document Archives from coast to coast, I can say that almost never does one find TSCW documents about anything. The best documents for comparison with the EBD would be the four National Security Briefings for President-Elect Eisenhower presented by DCI Walter B. Smith in the time period between Ike's election on November 4, 1952, and January 9, 1953, when Smith informed President Truman of his security briefings for Ike before and after the election. Unfortunately, despite my FOIA request to the CIA and a subsequent appeal to their response ("We have nothing in response to your request" even though I gave the dates and times of two of the briefings), we have no such documents for comparison.
I won't try to cover all the existent literature on the documents. There is my 1990 108-page "Final Report On Operation Majestic 12" (Ref. 2) and my 272-page 1996 book "TOP SECRET/MAJIC" (Ref. 3). There are several lengthy papers (Ref. 4-8) and Kevin Randle's new book "Case MJ-12" (Ref. 9). There are also numerous statements on the Internet.
Academics have found it necessary to jump into the fray as well, often without benefit of any research. For example, Carl Sagan (Ref.10) said "The Air Force says the documents are bogus. And UFO expert Philip J. Klass and others find lexicographic inconsistencies that suggest the whole thing is a hoax." He seemed to be unaware of the fact that Klass had paid me $1000.00 for providing more than fourteen documents done in exactly the same Pica typeface as the Cutler-Twining Memo though Klass, on the basis of nine Elite Typeface documents (obtained by him by mail, he had never been to the Ike Library) of the 250,000 pages of NSC material at the Ike Library, had insisted the CTM should have been done in Elite! Some lexicographic research! Our correspondence and a copy of his check to me are in Ref. 2.
Dr. Robert Alan Goldberg in the Roswell Chapter of his book "Enemies Within" (Ref. 11) stated
Evidence of malfeasance was plentiful. Critics noted that the date format did not conform to governmental style, the papers carried no top secret registration number, military titles were improperly noted and signatures appeared to be grafted on to the document. Anachronistic usages like "media" and "impacted" further betrayed the find. Goldberg is a Professor of History at the University of Utah. Anybody spending much time at the Truman and Eisenhower Archives would find many different date formats in classified, limited distribution, old documents. In Ref. 2 I published three brief cover memos from CIA Director Allen Dulles to White House Staff Secretary Colonel Andrew Goodpaster, done within a ten-day period, using these three date formats: 12 November l956... November 20, 1956... And NOV 22 1956 (Rubber stamp) and even noted one file folder that had seven date formats and found examples of both Roscoe Hillenkoetter and W.B. Smith (DCIs and MJ-12 members) using the day, month, comma, year format of the EBD. Goldberg didn't bother to check the Oxford Dictionary. Both "media" and "impacted" were in use at the time. I will discuss military titles below.
TOP SECRET CONTROL NUMBERS
The old military guys have persistently attacked the fact that the EBD, the TFM, and the CTM items all lacked a TOP SECRET CONTROL number. They vociferously insisted that all TS documents must have a TS control number.
Ed Stewart made a truly strong claim on UFO UPDATES:
For those who might not be aware, here is something that you will not hear from Stanton T. Friedman, even though he is well aware of the fact having visited the archives on many times in his own words. RG 341 is a record group with nothing but declassified Top Secret documents. All documents in the group are filed by control numbers. If a document did not have a Top Secret control number, it would not have been able to be filed in RG 341. Repeat, every document in RG 341 is a Top Secret document that has been declassified and has a control number, the entire record group.
This was a truly incredible proclamation and is totally false. One might be forgiven for thinking Ed was claiming to have reviewed all of RG 341. Record Group 341 has 9787 cubic feet of material (about 1000 4-drawer filling cabinets). I have, since 1985, had a 56-page Preliminary Inventory of the Records for RG 341 which lists various entries and how many feet of files are in each and how much of the total is TS: typically only a few percent. For example "Unclassified through Secret, Incoming and Outgoing messages 1946-Dec. 1957", 1743 ft. Entry 21 of RG 341. "Top Secret Incoming and Outgoing Messages, Oct. 1947-Jan, 1958", 51ft. Entry 23 of RG 341. In other words there were only 3% (51 of 1743) as many TS messages as those through SECRET. Furthermore many of the documents are still classified. I pointed this out on the UFO Updates Internet interest group. Ed's response after a few days of silence was
My apologies to Stanton Friedman. On attempting to verify the statements I made with the source of the information, it became apparent that much that I had posted related to RG 341 was misleading to false. I asked for clarification, which was promised, but after four days was undelivered. I felt a reply to Friedman's last message needed to be time-sensitive to be of any value. Thus my apology to Stanton Friedman and readers of this mailing list for having posted the first paragraph of my last message which is not supported by facts. Unfortunately, I will not be available for further discussion on the UFO subject. I have decided there isn't anyone in this field that I really care to associate with any longer regardless of what their opinions are.
Like the kid who takes his marbles and goes home.
Jan Aldrich who, like Ed, is quite knowledgeable about army classification procedures, later picked up the same argument even after I pointed out that I had been told by the Archivist Larry Bland at the General George Marshall holdings in Virginia, that if they had to use TS control numbers in Marshall's day, on all TS documents, we would still be fighting WW 2. I noted that an archivist at the Ike Library said that often the White House didn't use TS Control numbers. I had published two TS documents without control numbers in Ref. 2 in 1990. One would think they were relevant since they came from Robert Cutler and wound up in General Nathan Twining's papers at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Jan said it would only count if the originals at the Ike Library had no TS Control numbers. Dr. Herbert Pankratz at the Ike Library graciously supplied me with a Xerox copy of the one memo he found (It indeed had no TS control number) and noted in writing on January 9, 2003, "We have numerous documents classified as 'TOP SECRET' which do not have control numbers on them." I should stress that, of course, many TS documents do have TS control numbers -- especially when there are multiple copies of a many-page document. The EBD says "Copy One of One."
TOP SECRET RESTRICTED
Many including the US government have made a big thing about the typed security marking on the brief CTM: TOP SECRET RESTRICTED over a line saying SECURITY INFORMATION. The point is that supposedly this was never used and doesn't make sense because TOP SECRET is the highest category and RESTRICTED is the lowest. The Archives in their first version (May 9, 1988) of a commentary about the CTM stated "The Acting Director of the FOI office of the NSC informed us that TSR is a marking which did not come into use at the NSC until the Nixon Administration [1969]. The Eisenhower Presidential Library also confirms that this particular marking was not used during the Eisenhower Administration." They later corrected several false claims in response to data provided by me. I must admit that although I had found Confidential Restricted and Secret Restricted, I had not found TOP SECRET RESTRICTED. Does that mean it wasn't used? NO, since we have seen only a small amount of TS material. It should be noted that often highly classified information from one administration was carried over to the next at the White House rather than being sent to the appropriate presidential Library. The Ike Library had a number of documents from the Truman era that were not at the Truman Library.
The uncertainty was removed when the General Accounting Office in its pursuit in many archives for Roswell-related material made the following statement on page 80 of their 400-plus-page report on their Roswell Investigation:
Dec. 7, 1994, Ms. LJ and I reviewed records pertaining to the Air Force's atomic energy and certain mission and weapons requirements. These files were classified up to and including Top Secret. The period covered by these records was from 1948-1956. There was no mention of the Roswell Incident. No information pertaining to the assignment was obtained. In several instances we noticed the classification Top Secret Restricted used on several documents. This is mentioned because in past references to this classification (Majestic 12) we were told that it was not used during this period." [Italics added] I tried to obtain copies of the materials they had seen. I was told that the materials were still classified. Clearly absence of evidence was NOT evidence for absence. An obvious question is why would a clever forger use a security marking that was so uncommon rather than just a plain vanilla TOP SECRET? How did he know to place a slant red pencil mark through the marking? I was informed that this was standard practice prior to declassification. An obscure detail indeed.
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Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents
Page 2
MILITARY RANK CONFUSION
Kevin Randle's major complaint about the MJ-12 papers is that the military ranks are blatantly wrong. On page 2 of the EBD, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (DCI 1947-1950) is noted thusly: "BRIEFING OFFICER: ADM. ROSCOE H. HILLENKOETTER (MJ-1)" and is listed lower on the page with a beginning line of "Members of the Majestic 12 Group were designated [referring to establishment of the group on 24 September, 1947 -- note the same date format as on the cover page listing of 18 November, 1952] as follows: "Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Gen. Nathan F. Twining, Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Gen. Robert Montague."
The kicker here is that Hillenkoetter was not a Full Admiral but only a Rear Admiral.
However, in September, 1947, Montague was only a Brigadier General and Twining and Vandenberg were only Lieutenant Generals. (Vandenberg got his 4th star in October 1947). In short, the writer of the briefing was consistent in using generic ranks. This makes perfect sense in view of three factors:
1. In mixed groups of civilians and military people, what rank can one give the civilians?
2. The navy has only three flag ranks: Vice, Rear and Full Admirals, but the army has four: Brigadier, Major, Lieutenant, and Full (4-star) Generals.
3. The names were listed as they had been designated in 1947, but some ranks had changed prior to November 1952. Generic ranks get around that problem.
Early on Randle had asked me for other examples of Hillenkoetter signing memos as Admiral. I had to point out that there is no Hillenkoetter signature on the EBD, so the question is irrelevant.
This argument may sound weak, but General Arthur Exon, Colonel Jesse Marcel Jr. and Commander Thomas Deuley had no trouble with generic ranks. Ike himself in his books used them. Fortunately, because of the work of California researcher Brian Parks, I was able to locate a relevant example of just this same approach. Andrew Goodpaster (by this time a Brigadier General) had written a classified memo dated June 30, 1958, in which he listed the attendees at a meeting on June 27, 1958. Several were civilians and five were military. All of the latter, including himself, were listed as General or Admiral even though only one was a 4-star. However, his signature is Brigadier General. Goodpaster had been with Ike from the start of his presidency in 1953, so surely knew the right protocol for the White House. During a visit in November, 2003, I found a number of these "memcons" from General Goodpaster using generic ranks for meeting attendees including himself but signing Brigadier General.
MEMBERS OF MJ-12
Many people in ufology had serious difficulty with Dr. Donald H. Menzel being listed as a member of MJ-12. After all he was, at the time in 1952, the best known UFO sceptic. By the time of his death in 1976, he had written three very negative books and given a number of papers -- all attacking UFO reality. Often his UFO science, as has been noted by Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Brad Sparks and Dr. James E. McDonald (Ref. 12) was almost ludicrous. As I have noted elsewhere, his presence on the committee had bothered Bill Moore, Jaime Shandera and myself right from the start suggesting that the memo was a hoax. There was obviously the problem of all the others, based on readily available information, having had very high level security clearances. But surely one didn't need a clearance to teach astronomy at Harvard?
I hadn't liked Menzel, but did a lot of checking. I had viewed his UFO correspondence at the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia, found out that his papers were at the Harvard Archives with some also at the University of Denver. After getting approval from three different people to view the Harvard holdings, I paid a visit to Harvard at the expense of the Fund for UFO research. There I made a shocking discovery that Menzel was up to his ears in very highly classified work for the CIA, NSA, and more than thirty companies. He had taught cryptography before WW 2, learned a different symbolic language (Japanese) and worked on all kinds of classified problems for many years after WW 2.
He told Jack Kennedy he could tell him more about the NSA when they were properly cleared to each other. Menzel had been associated with the NSA and its navy predecessor for thirty years as of 1960! None of this was noted in an eight-page appreciation in Sky and Telescope after his death (Ref. 13). I published an article in IUR (Ref. 14) and gave more details in Ref. 2 and Ref. 3. I had early on noted correspondence between Menzel's attorney and MJ-12 member Bush thanking Bush for his support of Menzel at a terrible USAF Loyalty Hearing. The file is at the Harvard Archives. Fascinating reading.
Many in ufology claimed that Menzel couldn't have led a double life as a public debunker and a private advocate of the notion that the aliens recovered at Roswell were "beings from another solar system entirely." All admitted that they knew nothing of his clandestine postwar activities. Some, many years later, were able to obtain some government files on Menzel. None have shown that these were known prior to my discoveries in 1986. I should point out that many very bright spies led double lives for years such as Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean who were Soviet spies working for many years in British intelligence. Claus Fuchs who spied at Los Alamos certainly led a double life.
Randle says little about the other MJ-12 members, but, after misrepresenting my reasons for saying that Menzel belonged on the group, had the following comment:
Nowhere did he [Friedman] find any mention of MJ-12 [in his papers and records]. There are no marginal notes, no oblique references, no highly placed correspondence that suggests, mentions, identifies or confirms the existence of MJ-12 or Menzel's connection to it.
This is another one of those "absence of evidence" claims. Certainly I had never claimed to have found any direct evidence. But none of Menzel's files at the Harvard Archives were classified despite all his classified activities. He had already spent thirty years (as of 1960) working for the NSA and its Navy predecessors. No rational person would expect him to have left classified materials about a TOP SECRET Code Word black budget activity, whose very existence was classified, in the open.
Kal Korff claimed (Ref.15) that he had classified access to Menzel's government records. He mentions the CIA but never mentions the NSA connection which was the focus of my articles.
LINGUISTICS
None of the vocal critics including Randle even discuss the findings of world-class linguistics expert Dr. Roger Wescott. At the suggestion of attorney Bob Bletchman, I had obtained 27 examples of Hillenkoetter's various writings from the Truman Library. Dr. Wescott reviewed these and the EBD and stated in an April 7, 1988, letter to Bob
In my opinion there is no compelling reason to regard any of these communications as fraudulent or to believe that any of them were written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself. This statement holds for the controversial presidential briefing memorandum of November 18, 1952, as well as for the letters, both official and personal. (Letter is page E-2 of Ref. 2. Randle has a copy.)
TRUMAN FORRESTAL MEMO
Right from the start the TFM has been the target of the debunkers. Phil Klass in a fast press release after Bill Moore publicized the EBD, TFM, and CTM, had claimed it was an obvious fraud since it made all kinds of mistakes compared to real Truman letters. He used the word "letter" nine times even though it is clearly headed "Memorandum." Many have claimed that the typewriter was obviously from 1960 proving it was a fraud (no forensic document analysis was provided). Most claimed that the signature was identical to that on another memo from Truman to MJ-12 member Vannevar Bush. First measurements clearly indicated it was not an exact copy since the lengths of various segments seemed not to match. Randle provided the off-the-cuff opinion of Peter Tytell, a world-class Questioned Documents examiner. Moore, Shandera and I had sent a copy of the documents to PT who didn't want his name used anywhere, and prepared no report, but apparently claimed the typewriter typeface was not in use until the 1960s. Randle quotes him thusly "It was just perfect because the whole thing of the twelve pages or however many pages it was. Most of the pages were just blank pages with just five words written on them like Top Secret or Appendix A or something like that." In reality there were eight pages and only one, page 7, (not included by Randle) had "Appendix A." Fortunately Dr. Robert M. Wood hired an expert, James A. Black, to perform a professional examination. On November 13, 1998, Black stated
My knowledge of typewriter fonts permits me to conclude that the letter was likely to have been typed by an Underwood Standard typewriter. The portions of the type font of the letter that can be clearly visualized match those of a typewriter exemplar of an Underwood Standard typed in May 1940.
Black also added that that the disputed signature is most likely a reproduction. "I reached this opinion because the ink line is homogenous and feathering is absent at the ends of the lines." Does this prove the document is a fraud? The real question is where would there have been an original of the memo with a signature?? Forrestal's ORIGINAL would have been signed, but who else would have received a signed copy? One expects that Dr. Bush and the DCI (Hillenkoetter) noted in the memo would have had copies. Most likely unsigned. Forrestal died in May, 1949, three years earlier. Since we know that W.B. Smith was briefing Ike at this time (1952) on National Security matters, presumably Hillenkoetter, then at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, may well have had the EBD typed at the CIA. Smith (who worked very closely with Ike during WW 2) might well have said that Ike likes documents with signatures. Surely the CIA had the capability of lifting a signature from the memo from Truman to Bush (ironically I had found that in the Bush papers at the LCMD).
Of course, none of the critics of the memo note that the numerical portion of the date "24,1947." is offset from the September and done with a different typewriter. Bush's office always put a period after the date. Rarely did Truman's. George Elsey, who worked for Roosevelt at the White House and then for Truman during his entire term in office, told me that most of what a President signs is prepared by other people and sometimes the documents have to have the date typed later when it is clear which date is appropriate. He could find no reason to say the EBD, TFM, or CTM were fraudulent. Truman was very busy at that time as the New National Security apparatus was being installed, the USAF was separated from the Army, the CIA was created from the Central Intelligence Group, etc. etc. Why would a hoaxer use two different typewriters and put a period after the date? Forgers normally do as little as possible to call attention to idiosyncrasies in the forgeries -- whether paintings or documents.
Other critics of the signature claim, based on Albert S. Osborne's book "Questioned Documents", that no two signatures are alike. Actually, Osborne said that one could have identical signatures, just not consecutively. After the 1948 election Truman commented to a family member that he was signing 500 thank-you notes an hour.
Some were surely identical to others. Klass had even claimed the Osborne book was published in 1978, when it would have covered Xeroxing, when it fact it was published in 1910 and the chapter involved is entitled "Traced Forgeries."
HOW DID A HOAXER KNOW SO MUCH?
In Ref. 2 I provided a list of more than 37 facts not known to be true until after the EBD, TFM, and CTM had been received or found. A lot were trivial such as the date given, August 1, 1950, for Smith having permanently replaced the deceased Forrestal as an MJ-12 member. I obtained from the Truman Library the fact that that was the only date when Truman and Smith met during a many-month period of time before Smith succeeded Hillenkoetter as DCI. They had not provided that information to anyone else.
The CTM has neither a signature nor /s/ as do the other two memos we had from Cutler to Twining. Cutler was out of the country on that date, so could not have signed any letter. However, he left detailed instructions with James Lay, Exec. Sec. of the NSC, to keep things moving out of his basket while he was gone. I published that letter and the one from Lay to Cutler while Cutler was overseas saying he was taking care of things, in Ref. 2. It took me two years to get the latter via mandatory classification review through the Ike Library as it was still classified when I found a withdrawal sheet noting it. I had also discovered that earlier that day (July 14, 1954) Lay had met with Ike and they had a phone conversation at around 4:30 PM. George Elsey told me that Lay and Cutler worked very closely together and Lay would certainly have sent a brief note for Cutler to Twining making a trivial change in schedule. How did the forger know NOT to sign the memo nor use /s/ since it was some time after the discovery of the CTM that Robert Todd found the memo from Cutler to Lay saying he would be gone??? Todd is strongly opposed to Roswell, MJ-12, Bill Moore, Jaime Shandera, Jesse Marcel, etc. It is also interesting that the Cutler-Lay memo underlines a few words as does the CTM. This is uncommon in documents of that era, but apparently was used by Lay and Cutler about NSC matters.
The EBD says that the detailed investigation of Roswell began on July 7, 1947. Several years AFTER its receipt, in a newly declassified box of General Twining's papers, I found his flight log which shows that he indeed flew to New Mexico from Dayton on July 7, 1947. This was confirmed by his pilot's flight log as well, also found much later. How did anybody know that date fit?
Some people have complained that anybody could have found out what I did about Menzel prior to receipt of the EBD. Yes, of course, the documents were sitting at the Harvard Archives. But it took three signatures, including his wife's, for me to gain access. No evidence has been claimed or put forth that anybody else had looked at the papers before I had. Some have even falsely suggested that I noted the letters to Kennedy, etc., at the readily accessible APL Menzel UFO Correspondence file. They weren't there. No permission signatures were required for that access. I am reminded of people who claim "I could have bought that land for a song 25 years ago." -- but they hadn't.
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[QUIX NOTE: I'LL PUT THE REST OF THE DOC IMAGES AFTER HIS SUMMARY BELOW rather than try and find where in the text they'd most likely fit] PHONY DOCUMENTS
Tim Cooper of Big Bear Lake, California, had received a load of supposed MJ-12 documents over a period of time. With the exception of a lengthy piece on the history of UFOs (Bowen Document) which is on original paper but only has a magenta TOP SECRET MAJIC stamped on it, they are Xerox copies. In a number of instances the originals were very hard to read which meant much time was spent trying to decipher the words. To some this means authenticity. One had bothered me because it was supposedly a memo from Admiral Hillenkoetter to President Truman (Feb. 17, 1948) noting that President Truman wasn't getting much of the MAJIC material being received in large quantities every 24 hours. Marshall would prepare special black books for Truman (see Figure 1). This made no sense. Truman wasn't an engineer or scientist. What was the purpose of so much material going to him? It sounded to me like it would have been from Marshall to Roosevelt about the MAGIC material being processed by the ton after we broke the Japanese codes during WW 2. I was also concerned by the recently discovered "machines" and so much "product" being received every day. Sounded very much like what would have been a letter from General Marshall to President Roosevelt during WW 2 talking about the "intelligence product" of code breaking using a cipher machine.
My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered the original (see Figure 2), from Marshall to Roosevelt, about MAGIC, in the readily available book "The American MAGIC" in the University of New Brunswick Library not far from the very important book "Wedemeyer Reports" by General Albert C. Wedemeyer.
On the other hand there was one which I thought was genuine because some regulations which were noted in an item to C. Humelsine matched info turned up by Larry Bryant at the Pentagon. The signature was Humelsine's according to his wife (see Figure 3). Marshall was in New York according to the archives, hence the need for using the referenced secret telephone. (But then look carefully at Figure 4, clearly an emulation.) There were a number that were questionable. A real breakthrough came when I asked for an opinion from Archivist Larry Bland at the Marshall Archives about a letter supposedly from Marshall to Humelsine (see Figure 5). He immediately recognized it as a takeoff on a famous letter (see Figure 6, also from Lewin's book) from Marshall to Governor Thomas Dewey (the Republican Candidate for President in the election of 1944) trying to get Dewey not to make any charges that we had broken the Japanese codes since that would lead to their being changed and would cost many lives. Marshall noted that he couldn't be seen with Dewey. The emulation said he couldn't be seen with Humelsine!! But Humelsine had been his executive secretary during WW 2 and was again playing that role to Marshall as Secretary of State. They saw each other almost every day. Also it was addressed "Dear Carl:" but Marshall essentially never used first names except for contemporaries. Marshall was decades older than Humelsine.
This was a real break. I also asked Bland if he could see any reason why General Albert C. Wedemeyer (his signature is on one of the Cooper documents) should be connected with MJ-12. His field was China. He had served there during WW 2 and was sent in 1947 to make a study about what the effects would be if the US did or did not get heavily involved in fighting the communists. Bland agreed that he couldn't see the connection either. He mentioned that there was an entire book "Wedemeyer Reports" (Ref. 16). I located it at the nearby University of New Brunswick Library. Almost immediately I found three documents that were the models for three phony emulations. The technique was straightforward. Retype an existing document with an old typewriter, making a few changes (dates etc.) to conceal the chicanery, scan or Xerox the handwritten portions of documents, combine, and voila, a genuine-looking phony. I checked other books at the library and sure enough the book "The American Magic" had both the original of the Dewey letter (Figure 6) and the original Marshall Magic letter (Figure 2). Bob Wood had located the original (Figure 4) of the letter supposedly from Marshall to Truman via Humelsine letter. It was from Marshall to Truman about Wedemeyer, not Twining. (Figure 4). I hadn't paid attention to the fact that I knew from Twining's pilot log that he flew to DC on Sept. 26, not Sept. 25.
Almost all of the phony documents not only had word-for-word portions of the original, but the handwritten items fit right on top. Even though there was a Truman signature, a handwritten date (July 9, 1947) and "I approve." Spacing was perfect. See the emulation (Figure 7) of a supposed July 9 Directive to General Twining. Compare it to the Genuine item from Wedemeyer's book (Figure 8). A number of the non-emulation documents had direct quotes from the phony ones establishing that they were phony as well. One of the phony documents (Figure 9) had some handwritten portions from two documents that I had copied at the Marshall Archives with Truman saying "I approve" or "holding for further study" etc. I had sent off copies of the 23 sign offs I had collected to some people including Tim Cooper. Also, all had mistakes in the text that made no sense such as "when finished in New Mexico go to Sandia." This was to Twining, an emulation of a real directive to Wedemeyer in which it was said "when finished in China go to Korea." Korea is not in China, but Sandia is in New Mexico. The handwritten date on the Wedemeyer directive (which according to Ref. 16, he wrote) is July 9. But Twining went to New Mexico on July 7. It makes sense for Wedmeyer to take along specialists from State, Treasury, the Navy because he had to look at the total Chinese picture. Not only would those people make no sense as a part of the Twining expedition, but we know who went with Twining from an article in the Alamogordo paper saying Twining had made a routine inspection of Alomogordo Army Air Field (later Holloman AFB).
The fraudulence is further noted by the supposed letter from Twining to the President dated Sept. 19 (see Figure 10) about presenting his findings. Compare the almost identical wording to that of the real items from Wedemeyer to the President's Office. (Figure 11). Twining's flight log proves he was only gone from July 7 - July 11 (hardly 2 months). Could Twining's small group really have generated the same exact number of documents -- 1200 -- as Wedemeyer's?
Note also the big paragraph on the first page of the supposed First Annual Report from Twining (Figure 12). It is clearly lifted from the emulation of the Wedemeyer "... In consonance..." (see Figure 11). Repeating a phony portion of a document in another document doesn't make it genuine.
Bob and Ryan Wood have suggested that General Marshall must have prepared both directives. Not only did General Wedemeyer (an expert on China) say he had prepared his own directive, but he was based in Baltimore in the Army, knew many of the key figures in China, and was reporting to Secretary of State Marshall who had spent most of 1946 in China. Twining was based in Dayton, was head of the Air Material Command, had been head of the 15th and 20th Air Forces and served on The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics with a very strong technical background. The two situations (China in a political upheaval) and an alien saucer in New Mexico were drastically different. Wedemeyer needed presidential authority to speak for the US in China. How could Marshall have used almost identical language and why would he be instructing Twining??
There is a detailed discussion in Ref. 7. This phony boloney stuff clearly established almost all of the documents were phony and is discussed in Ref. 7. Some people insist that if I can't provide the identity of the forger and the reason for forging, that they must be real. I can't follow the logic. My concern is if they are genuine. I can't find a motive for serial killers, for grown men who sexually attack small children, for parents who abuse their children. But it happens. One quite obvious motivation would be to cast doubts on the legitimate documents, a sort of guilt by association. Another might be to waste the time and money of researchers. Ryan Wood of Majesticdocuments.com claims that all the Cooper documents are genuine. However, in his paper (Ref. 17) he talks at length about the various versions of the Truman to Wedemeyer Directive but never shows the full page from Wedemeyer's book next to the Twining one so that one can't see the identity in placement and handwriting of the three handwritten comments. This same problem holds on the Humelsine documents. He shows several different versions of the directive to Wedemeyer, but never shows all the other pairs of original and emulation documents as noted here. He also seems to feel that Marshall was in charge of both Wedemeyer, based in Baltimore, and Twining; though Marshall was Secretary of State and not in the War [soon to be Defense] Department. Twining was Head of the Air Materiel Department in Ohio -- definitely in the chain of command of the Army.
It also makes perfect sense for the Wedemeyer directive to say "In presenting the findings of your mission you should endeavor to state as concisely as possible your estimate of the character, extent and probable consequences of assistance which you may recommend, and the probable consequences in the event that assistance is not given." China was a major foreign policy headache with the communists taking over. But what sense does this comment make in the Twining Directive "In presenting the findings of your mission you should endeavor to state as concisely as possible your estimate of the character, extent and probable consequences in the event that assistance is not given"? Assistance to whom for what? Makes no sense at all. One document claims that Air Force General Carl Spaatz met with Twining in New Mexico on July 7, 1947. I was able to show via Spaatz's flight log, his desk calendar, and a newspaper article, that he was fishing in Port Aransas, Texas, several hundred miles away.
There are a whole host of false claims in others of the Cooper documents including a number of technical errors such as referring to "deuterium, light hydrogen." But Deuterium is HEAVY hydrogen. Other errors are noted in Ref. 7, p. 207.
OVERALL SUMMARY
The Majestic 12 documents problem is complex and extensive. On balance it appears that the EBD, TFM and CTM are almost certainly genuine, the SOM 1.01 memo is very likely genuine (see Dr. Robert Woods paper (Ref. 18)) and the Tim Cooper Documents are emulations and fictional. It is perhaps not surprising that a documentary movie "Do you Believe in Majic?" is being prepared by Paul Kimball of Redstar films who had dug into a great deal of UFO material in preparation for the documentary "Stanton T. Friedman IS Real!" (Ref. 19) first broadcast on the Canadian Space TV channel in June 2002. Critics have been interviewed. One strange criticsm was made by Karl Pflock when he claimed twice that because Menzel was famous for doodling small cartoon Martians that the statement in the EBD that Menzel was saying the aliens were from Mars was an inside joke. I am afraid the joke is on Karl. The EBD (p. 4) says exactly the opposite:
... considerable speculation has centered around what their point of origin might be and how they get here. Mars was and remains a possibility, although some scientists, most notably Dr. Menzel, consider it more likely that we are dealing with beings from another solar system entirely.
[QUIX BOLD EMPHASIS]
[DOC IMAGES FROM PAGE 3 in roughly order they appeared in]
Stan Friedman
fsphys@rogers.com
HERE: http://www.stantonfriedman.com
REFERENCES
1. Pflock, Karl T. "Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe" 2001, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 331 pages, Hardcover.
2. Friedman, Stanton T. "Final Report on Operation Majestic 12" 15th Printing 2003, 108 pages, $10.00 Including Shipping and Handling from UFORI, POB 958, Houlton, ME 04730-0958
3. Friedman, Stanton T. "TOP SECRET/MAJIC" 272 pages, Marlowe and Co., 10-page Bibliography, 1996 HC List $22.95. Autographed, 0nly $15.00 Incl. S & H, UFORI
4. Friedman, Stanton T. "Crashed Saucers, Majestic 12 and the Debunkers" July 1992, MUFON Conf., 21 pages. 48 Refs. $4.00 From UFORI
5. Randle, Kevin D. "Conclusions on Operation Majestic 12" August 1994. 30 pages. FUND For UFO Research
6. Friedman, Stanton T. "Operation Majestic 12? YES!!" 1994, 37 pages 50 Ref. $4.00 UFORI
7. Friedman, Stanton T. "Roswell and the MJ-12 Documents in the New Millennium" MUFON July 2000, 28 pages 20 Ref., $4.00 UFORI
8. Friedman, Stanton T. "Review of Case MJ-12" January 2003, at website www.stantonfriedman.com; 9000 words, 27 pages Also $4.00, UFORI
9. Randle, Kevin D. "Case MJ-12:The True Story Behind the Government's UFO Conspiracies" Dec. 2002, Harper Torch, Paperback, 311 pages. $7.50
10. Sagan, Carl "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" Random House, 1995, 475 pages.
11. Goldberg, Robert Alan "Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America" Yale University Press, 2001, 368 pages. Chapter 6, "The Roswell Incident"
12. McDonald, James E. "Statement on UFOs" to Congressional Hearings, July 1968. 71 pages. Data on 41 cases. $10.00 From UFORI
13. Goldberg, Leo "An Appreciation of Donald Howard Menzel" Sky and Telescope, April 1977.
14. Friedman, Stanton T. "The Secret Life of Donald H. Menzel" International UFO Reporter, Jan./Feb. 1988 pp. 20-24.
15. Korff, Kal "The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know" Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 1997 264 pages.
16. Wedemeyer, Albert C. "Wedemeyer Reports!" Henry Holt and Co. 1958, 496 pages.
17. Wood, Ryan "Resolving the Emulation in Directives Between Twining and Wedemeyer" pp. 199-240, UFO Crash Retrieval Conference Proceedings, Nov.14-16, Las Vegas, NV, 240 pages, $25.00 From Ryan Wood, 14004 Quail Ridge Dr., Broomfield, CO 80020 rswood@majesticdocuments.com
18. Wood, Robert M. "Authenticating the Special Operations Manual" pp. 165-184 See item 17.
19. Video "Stanton T. Friedman IS Real!" by Redstar Films, 2002, 48 minutes, TV Documentary, $20.00 From UFORI.