The Myth of MJ-12: Appendix A –Pt 3

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 6-29-14

MJ-12 Operations Manual

      On March 14, 1994, Don Berliner, an aviation writer and the co-author of Crash at Corona, received a small package in the mail, which contained an exposed but undeveloped roll of Kodak Tri-X 35 mm black and white film.¹²⁶ He wrote that he took the film to local photo processor, thought nothing more about it, and left for a writing assignment. Upon his return, he picked up the film but didn’t bother to open up the envelope to examine the pictures until he was talking on the telephone to a fellow member of the Fund for UFO Research. It was only then that he saw the connection to MJ-12.¹²⁷

Berliner then had a set of prints made, made several copies, and took a set to the General Accounting Office because they were starting their research into the Roswell UFO crash for Representative Steven Schiff. ¹²⁸

Berliner wanted the existence of the manual to be restricted to a few UFO researchers. According to him, “Others were carefully brought into the picture, but I was determined to keep the document secret from the general public until much more was known about it. I was particularly concerned to have it studied by persons who were not known as strongly pro-MJ-12 or anti-MJ-12.”¹²⁹

The manual was called, “Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology Recovery and Disposal.” It was marked as “Restricted,” but also as “Top Secret/Majic Eyes Only.” Inside it was noted that “All information relating to MJ—12 has been classified MAJIC EYES ONLY and carries a security level 2 points about Top Secret.” It is labeled as “SOM 1-01 Majestic—12 Group Special Operations Manual.”¹³⁰ The manual is dated April 1954 and contains the seal of the War Department.

The Table of Contents lists six chapters and three appendices, the last being photographs. None of the photographic pages are available. The manual itself is quite short, with the photographic appendix beginning on page 31. Most of the circulated copies end on page 23.¹³¹

There are some statements and notations in the manual that seem to be anachronistic. On page 7, in chapter three, “Recovery Operations,” it suggested, “It may become necessary to issue false statements to preserve the security of the site. Meteors, downed satellites [emphasis added], weather balloons and military aircraft are all acceptable alternatives.”¹³²

Later, there is an “Extraterrestrial Technology Classification Table” that indicates where recovered material should be sent. Most of the references are to “Area 51, S—4.”

The problem with all these items is that they suggest the document is fraudulent. The War Department had ceased to exist in 1947 when it was replaced, along with the Navy Department, with the Department of Defense. A document created in 1954, if it contained a seal, would have had the DoD seal on it.

The problem with suggesting a downed satellite to a reporter in 1954 was that there had been no launches of any artificial satellites. It wouldn’t be until October 1957 that the first satellite would be placed in orbit. Had someone attempting to cover up a UFO crash suggested a downed satellite in 1954, he would have been inviting the reporters to dig deeper to find out just who had been launching these satellites, from where they had been launched, and how it had been done in such secrecy.

Finally, Area 51 didn’t exist in 1954. According to Aerospace Archaeologist Peter Merline, the place was not called Area 51 in any documentation prior to 1960. Before then it was referred to as Groom Lake and the area didn’t begin to be developed until April 1955, or one year after the manual was published.¹³³

Herbert L. Pankratz, an archivist at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, in a letter wrote:

The classification markings on the alleged MJ-12 document are not consistent with federal regulations for the marking of classified materials as of April 1954. The “Restricted” classification category was terminated by executive order in November 1953 and would not have been used on a document in April 1954. Federal regulations also require that the cover page of a document reflect the highest level of classification for any material in the document. Since “Top Secret” is a higher category than “Restricted,” only “Top Secret” should have appeared on the cover of the document.

In addition, we have seen no evidence in our files that a security classification referred to as “MAJIC EYES ONLY” ever existed. Executive Order 10501 was signed by President Eisenhower on November 5, 1953. It set up three classification categories: “Top Secret,” “Secret,” and “Confidential.” A fourth category, “Restricted Data,” (not the same as “Restricted”)’ was established by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954; and it is used only with regard to nuclear weapons matters.¹³⁴

Dr. Robert Wood and his son Ryan have taken to the defense of the MJ-12 documents in general and the Operations Manual in particular. Wood looked at the list of criticisms and responded to each. He wrote, for example:

“The ‘downed satellite is a possible anachronism.” In the first place, the entire strategy is that of deception – it is even the title of the paragraph in question! Deceptive statements are not usually true. Furthermore, it was just one of five choices offered to keep nosy people away. The big argument, though comes from those who say, “Why would anyone be impressed by a known false statement?” Actually, most people were aware of our plans for satellites in April of 1954, as a result of enormous coverage of this new space thinking. There are prominent public references to satellites before this date, including a Time Magazine article just the previous month speculating on whether a satellite had already been covertly launched. So, satellites were on the public’s mind and “downed satellites” were a very credible concept.¹³⁵

Jan Aldrich, who had worked with Berliner as one of those selected to review the manual, wrote, on the Current-Encounters email list:

In 1954 if you told the public you had a downed satellite, when none had been launched yet, that would have caused a sensation and attracted every reporter around. They would have chartered planes to fly over the site and tried every means to get inside and have a look. There would have been demands in Congress to know what was going on. Of course, every spy would [be] in North America [to] try to find out about a downed satellite… Instead of diverting attention from the site it would have attracted much unwanted attention which could lead to additional security violations and possible total loss of all security.¹³⁶

An independent study was made of the manual by several men who had a background in working with military and classified documents or who were familiar with the military and UFOs. These included Don Berliner, Jan Aldrich who had been top secret control officer and a COMSEC custodian in the Army; Tom Deuley who was a retired lieutenant commander and who had Nuclear Power and Naval Submarine Weapons program. Seven years as a Naval Cryptologic Officer, one year as a Communications Officer in charge of a 24-hour secure communications facility and six years as a Communications Security (COMSEC) Custodian; and both Dick Hall and Mark Rodeghier. Altogether they wrote about the manual:

We believe this to be a hoax document; a deliberate fake designed to mislead the public and to plant false information in the UFO research community by person or persons whose motives are unknown. Deliberately planted false information ("disinformation") such as this forces investigators to waste their time checking on its validity rather than on more productive efforts. Our general reasons for concluding that the manual is a hoax are outlined below (for more specific details, contact the individuals):

(1) Documents and materials with high classifications have special provisions attached to them to ensure the ability to trace them at all times and to verify their integrity, until they are destroyed or declassified. The security markings on the SOM 1-01 document do not conform to required security procedures established for all agencies by presidential executive orders. In some instances they are totally contrary to established security procedures. No internal evidence exists in the document to show that proper accountability was exercised by the document's custodians.

(2) The inclusion of some accurate information has been cited as proof of authenticity, whereas it could equally well be interpreted as a cut-and-paste job to lend an air of authenticity. Partially legitimate but altered UFO-related documents are already known to exist.

(3) The content of the manual is strikingly inappropriate for its stated purpose. A field manual for dealing with crashed craft and alien bodies would have no reason to include (a) information on UFO history, (b) a chart of UFO types, (c) information concerning radar detection of UFOs, (d) a list of natural and artificial aerial phenomena which can be mistaken for UFOs.

(4) Military manuals of this type establish standards and define tasks which must be performed to accomplish the mission. The manual fails to establish such standards and is completely silent on personnel qualifications and equipment requirements. Furthermore, the methods of recovery and site security described in the manual are inadequate and tactically unsound. Regulations, materials, and training publication references cited are grossly inadequate or completely missing.

The undersigned parties take UFO reports seriously and advocate thorough scientific investigation. However, when it comes to analysis of 2nd and 3rd and nth generation copies of documents, forensic analysis is almost impossible. Content analysis already has shown serious problems with MJ-12 related documents.

The only way SOM 1-01 and other alleged "documentary proof" ofMJ-12 could conceivably be authenticated would be by locating a documentary paper trail of certifiably original documents in government archives, or in private papers of important people. Even then, allegedly authentic documents would need to be subjected to forensic examination to determine such things as the age of the paper. And document experts would need to examine them for internal accuracy and style. Given the track record of fake documents and shoddy scholarship, rigorous peer review is essential.¹³⁷

Without the slightest evidence that the document is authentic, without a clear provenance, and without finding any paper trail that could lead back to the manual, it would seem that all questions about it have been answered. While Bob and Ryan Wood play down the lack of provenance as relatively minor, the truth is that like the other MJ-12 documents, this is a major stumbling block. Unlike other leaks of documents into the public sector, these came without a pedigree, and without that, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion. There is, however, one other important piece of evidence.

Tim Cooper and the New MJ-12 Documents

Since the first of the MJ-12 documents were released in 1987, there have been more than 100 different documents given to researchers that comprise more than 4000 pages of various kinds.¹³⁸ Many of these documents came from Tim Cooper, described as a UFO researcher with an interest in crashed saucers, Roswell and MJ-12.¹³⁹ Robert Wood speculated that he had received the documents because he had filed many FOIA requests for information on the Kennedy assassination and UFOs.¹⁴⁰

According to Wood, the first of these new MJ-12 documents arrived in Cooper’s post office mail box in June, 1996 and contained a note that suggested this was a “trial package” with 38 pages of other materials.¹⁴¹ Cooper would later claim that the material came from Thomas “Cy” Cantwheel, at the time an “elderly man,” but who would remain forever in the background. Cooper would meet him briefly, one time, but was unable to trace him any further.¹⁴²

Robert Wood said that they had submitted some of the material in the first batch of Cooper documents, including an important letter allegedly written by one of four people, to a number of forensic examiners whose task it was to determine authenticity. This document is known as the Einstein/Oppenheimer memo since it was supposedly signed by both men. According to Wood, the document might have been created by Einstein, Oppenheimer, a fellow named Salina who sent the material to Cooper, or Cooper himself.¹⁴³

The results of this seem to suggest that neither Cooper nor Oppenheimer wrote the document. There was one word, which Wood labeled a “zinger,” meaning a word so rare that it wasn’t in the samples of the others but did appear in the documentation that came from the Einstein collection. That word, “supra-national,” suggested that the document in question had been written by Einstein.¹⁴⁴ This, of course, doesn’t mean that one of the others hadn’t written it, or that none of them had written. It could only suggest that one of them might have written or another probably hadn’t.

Another of the documents that Wood received from Cooper was what Wood now calls the “Burn Memo.”¹⁴⁵ This, according to Wood, is the “most historic” and was saved from destruction by an officer who was cleaning out the safe of James Jesus Angleton, a “legendary CIA counterintelligence chief,” and after Angleton died.¹⁴⁶

Wood wrote that he had received the memo from Cooper. It had a McLean, Virginia post mark, and according to Wood, that post mark was traced to a meter at the CIA. It is suggested that the memo came from the Director of the CIA, sometimes said to be MJ-1, and it sent only to the first seven of the twelve. It also identifies a host of new projects including Eviro, Parasite and Parhelion. The purpose of the memo “is to establish policy with respect to UFOs and JFK.”¹⁴⁷

With this document, as with the others, there is no way to trace it back into the CIA independently. It came from Cooper, who apparently got it from Cantwheel, but Cantwheel is not available for discussion. But even with that, there is another problem. It is marked as, “Top Secret/MJ-12.” If it was part of the MJ-12, the classification should have been “Top Secret/Majic,” or Top Secret/Majic Eyes Only.”

Both Ryan and Robert Wood responded to inquiries about this. He wrote, “The burned memo, is in Angleton's' counter intelligence group at the CIA at this time. Not sure what their procedures would be in Fall of '63. We have TS/MAJIC in Sept 47. We have just TS (Operation Majestic-12) on the EBD in '52, we have TS/MAJIC on SOM1-01 in 57 (latest change on change control page) and we have TS just MJ-12 in '61 on Kennedy memo.”¹⁴⁸

Robert Wood agreed with Ryan and wrote, “I would add that if the document was fake, the question is ‘Is it more likely that the faker would have used the wrong classification, or that an overworked secretary would not have adhered to the classification guidance that existed¹⁴⁹ ...if it was ever written?’ …My impression is that the higher the classification up the chain, the less is the adherence to procedures and more to intent… There are quite a few variations known. For example, MJ Twelve as opposed to MJ-12 appears.”¹⁵⁰ This assumption is in error as the higher up the chain, the more rigidly the regulations are obeyed.

Friedman was also a recipient of new MJ-12 documents from Cooper. According to him, Cooper received the first of the documents in late 1992.¹⁵¹ Friedman launched into an investigation of the documents, including one from Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter (which Friedman called the “Hillenkoetter Memo), that seemed to be authentic as to tone and historical context. In other words, it seemed to be authentic.¹⁵²

Other documents followed and analysis seemed to suggest that they were written in the proper style of the times and included information that suggested an intimate knowledge of history that only years of specialized study could provide. One of these, a long letter from Carl Humelsine to General George Marshall on September 27, 1947, was historically accurate and did mention MJ-12. Dr. Larry Bland at the Marshall Foundation recognized it as a retyped and altered version of an actual letter from Humelsine sent to Marshall.¹⁵³ This meant that the document with its MJ-12 reference inserted was a fake.

At this point Friedman realized that many of the documents that Cooper had supplied including the Hillenkoetter Memo had been faked in the same fashion. Curiously, Friedman reported, “The first document [Hillenkoetter memo] was extremely poorly reproduced, and Tim was initially reluctant to pass it on for fear he would be accused of forging it.”¹⁵⁴

As research continued into these new documents, more of them were found to be faked in the same fashion. That is, a letter or document from the proper time frame was selected, retyped on a typewriter from the era, and then presented as if it was a new discovery. It gave the appearance of being genuine, but when the original document was found, the truth was known. As it stands now, few accept the documents that came from Tim Cooper and his secret and silent friend, Cy Cantwheel.

A Final Bit of Evidence

In the early 1980s, Bill Moore began to talk about creating a Roswell document in an attempt to gather more information about the crash. He told fellow researchers that he had taken the investigation as far as he could and felt he needed something to shake new information loose and to convince reluctant witnesses to talk. He mentioned this to various UFO researchers and colleagues, most of whom warned him against such a course of action.

Philip Klass reported, “On April 16, 1983 – less than two years before William L. Moore and Jaime Shandera claim they received the “Top Secret/Eyes Only” MJ-12 documents from an unknown source – Moore reportedly sought the reaction of his friend Brad Sparks, a respected UFO researcher, to the idea of creating such counterfeit government documents. Sparks strongly recommended against it. Later, when Sparks called Stanton T. Friedman, he was shocked to discover that Friedman defended Moore’s idea.”¹⁵⁵

Klass continued, writing, “SUN [Skeptics UFO Newsletter] first learned of Sparks’ involvement in mid-1991 but he was reluctant to speak out. Subsequent events have overcome his reluctance. These include limited disclosure of Moore’s idea of creating bogus documents by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt in their 1994 book, ‘The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell.’ In a brief chapter debunking the MJ-12 papers, the book reports, ‘According to Friedman, among others, Moore had suggested as early as 1982 that he wanted to create Roswell documents thinking that it might open doors that were closed.’”¹⁵⁶

Friedman eventually responded to these revelations. He wrote:

The debunkers sit in their armchairs making false claims. I should add that Kevin [Randle], again, in the blog,¹⁵⁷ repeated the false claim that Bill Moore supposedly told me it was time to make up a false document and put it out to smoke out others who knew about MJ-12. Supposedly I agreed.

This is totally false. Perhaps it is a twist on the fact that Bill in his FOCUS publication included a heavily censored version of part of the Eisenhower briefing document. I had not been asked about doing that and didn’t give approval.¹⁵⁸

It is clear from the available data that Moore’s plan was to create a Roswell document in an effort to convince others to tell what they might know about the crash. It had nothing to do with the censored version of the Eisenhower Briefing Document that they released. It was about creating a document, mentioned in the long months prior to the alleged receipt of the film by Shandera.

Conclusions

It is astonishing that in 1981 William Moore had a document, the Aquarius Telex, which mentioned the MJ-12. There was nothing in that telex to reveal the nature of MJ-12, other than to suggest it was some kind of a highly classified project that had to do with UFOs given the overall nature of the telex. It also mentioned Project Aquarius,¹⁵⁹ which was later allegedly identified as a project that was concerned with alien visitation. In the 21st century, it is odd that these documents are ignored by those who indorse MJ-12. It bears repeating that Friedman wrote, “I am not sure what you mean by the Aquarius Telex and don’t even mention it in TOP SECRET/MAJIC or in ‘Final Report on Operation MJ-12.”¹⁶⁰

The secondary problem with the telex is that Moore said that it was a retyped version of an actual telex. Dick Hall explained that Moore had said, in a meeting at FUFOR that the telex had been retyped and that the headings had been cut from the original and pasted on the retype. On March 20, 1989, Hall wrote, “…retyping the AFOSI document [Aquarius Telex] without saying so…” would create problems for Moore. Hall would later suggest that Moore might not have retyped it himself, because he said that he had seen the original but he didn’t retype the version he have been given. Either way, the first mention of MJ-12 was in a document that was clearly faked and this is known to but ignored by the main proponents of MJ-12.

The next appearance of MJ-12 is in a novel that Bill Moore suggested to Bob Pratt. According to the information supplied by Bob Pratt, available in his UFO files that are now housed with MUFON, Moore had approached him with the idea of writing a book about MJ-12. Pratt feared there wasn’t enough corroborative evidence to support a nonfiction book, but they could certainly write one that dealt with the topic in a fictional world. According to Pratt, “The original idea behind the book was Project Aquarius. … I sat in a chair and took notes as he [Moore] told me about Project Aquarius, MJ-12 and a number of other things.”¹⁶¹

Pratt wrote, “My working title was MAJIK 12, but I wanted to call it I. A. C., for identified alien craft, supposedly the name government insiders use for UFOs. However, when I got the finished manuscript back from Bill, he had put The Aquarius Project on the title page.”

Ironically, Pratt wrote, “When this MJ-12 business broke in 1987 or whenever, I wrote to Bill saying that if there was anything to it, we ought to dust off our manuscript and try to sell it again. He never answered.”¹⁶²

There are now two separate cases in which MJ-12 is mentioned and they arise from a fraudulent telex which almost no one now acknowledges, and from a work of fiction created by Moore, Pratt, and a third writer who is quite likely to have been Richard Doty. Pratt even used, as his working title, “Majik 12.”

Aquarius was still in play in 1983, first when Moore claimed he made a cross country trip so that he could spend nineteen minutes looking at something that seemed to have been a presidential briefing. He took photographs but they didn’t turn out very good and are useless as evidence. He did read the material into a tape recorder so that he might be able to reproduce the documents if the pictures turned out too poor to use but his voice on the tape does little to corroborate the tale.

About a month later, Linda Moulton Howe was briefed by Richard Doty and given what is now thought of as the Carter Briefing. She was at Kirtland AFB, and was allowed to read the documents but not allowed to take notes or to have copies of the documents. These went so far as to claim that aliens, apparently the grays from Zeta Reticuli,¹⁶³ had been manipulating human DNA for tens of thousands of years, had created the image of Jesus to teach humans peace and brotherhood, and interfered with human destiny.

All that seemed to be forgotten, however, when, according to Moore and Shandera, Shandera received the Eisenhower Briefing Document anonymously in the mail. Here was the smoking gun that proved Roswell was alien, and that there had been visitation for decades, at least according to the document, which is to say the crash occurred in 1947, a second in 1950. The implication was that visitation continued.

Interestingly, the Eisenhower Briefing Document, which reflected the state of UFO research in the mid-1980s, did not mention a crash on the Plains of San Agustin,¹⁶⁴ which Friedman believed had happened, no mention of the Aztec UFO crash which has again gained some popularity,¹⁶⁵ but does mention one just over the border from Texas in Mexico in 1950 that is a demonstrated hoax.¹⁶⁶

In the mid-1980s, Bill Moore, in papers for the MUFON Symposium, offered his opinions on several other UFO crashes.¹⁶⁷ He said that after his investigation, he had concluded that Aztec was a hoax. Aztec, though mentioned by Howe as part of the Carter Briefing she saw, does not appear in the Eisenhower Briefing Document.

The Aquarius Telex had a provenance but not a good one. It was either created by Moore or Doty and Moore had said it was a retype of a real AFOSI telex. That ended its usefulness. The Carter Briefing had a provenance, which was Doty, or so Linda Howe said. Doty denied it, but Howe signed an affidavit attesting to the reality of her claims. Given what Moore had said, what Peter Gersten had said, and given what is now known, it seems that Howe is telling the truth. The Carter Briefing was as useless as the Aquarius Telex, and these documents were dropped from the discussions of MJ-12.

But the Eisenhower Briefing Document had a feel that suggested authenticity and many in the UFO community thought that it was the smoking gun. Critics said that it had no provenance. It could be traced to Moore and Shandera and no further. There wasn’t a government source behind it and searches for any sort of corroboration had failed.

Failed, that is, until the Cutler-Twining memo appeared at the National Archives, in a box of recently declassified material. This document had a provenance… until the National Archives got into the act. They said that those copies circulating were “true copies” of a document in their possession, but not that it was a legitimate document. There were things wrong with it, not the least of which was that it had been found in a box of material that had been reviewed prior to declassification, that it had required special handling which it had not received, and that it was supposed to have been reviewed by the NSA which it had not. Everyone knew where it originated, but few believed it was a real document.

Stan Friedman, the man who has defended MJ-12 for decades, thinks it is real, but it is disinformation. He believes the Cutler-Twining memo was planted at the National Archives to be found by UFO researchers.¹⁶⁸ It seems more likely that it was planted there, not by insiders as Friedman believes, but by those attempting to create an MJ-12 document that had a provenance. And if there had been other documents found in similar fashion, this might be the case, but none have surfaced.¹⁶⁹ Several UFO researchers have sorted through boxes and boxes of records, many from those who are alleged to have been members of MJ-12, but not a single reference has been found in all this time.

It is safe to say that all attempts to validate MJ-12 have failed. Proponents overlook some startling evidence that suggests MJ-12 is a hoax. It is clear from Friedman’s comments about Project Aquarius and the Aquarius Telex that he is ignoring the circumstances of its appearance. Here are the first mentions of MJ-12. That would seem to taint the entire body of MJ-12 documents. Instead, they are ignored as if they don’t exist.

The novel that Bob Pratt talked about, and the name of that novel, created before the 35 mm film showed up at the home of Jaime Shandera, tells all that is needed to know. Moore was describing MJ-12 to Pratt prior to learning anything about it, or so it would seem given the timing of various events. Their novel was the blueprint for MJ-12 and supporters ignore that at their peril.

The timing here was suspect as well. Moore is telling Pratt about a secret committee to exploit the Roswell crash, gives it a name, but Pratt refers to it in the book title as Majik 12. No one seems overly concerned that Moore was talking about this prior to the appearance of the Eisenhower Briefing Document. Just where did he get this information, or was he just making it up as he went along.

There is also Moore’s reporting on what he learned in 1984 from a source that he refused to identify. He did write, “The reliability of the source of this information is believed to be good; but since the man is unwilling to go on the record and since his testimony remains almost totally uncorroborated, his testimony, at best can only be regarded as very interesting hearsay. It is reported here for purposes of information only.”¹⁷⁰

Regardless of the reliability of the source, the point is that Moore was publishing information that had been contained in the EBD before he had received it. It could be suggested that the EBD provided a second source for the information, but since the EBD has no provenance, it can’t be used in that fashion. In other words, Moore knew what would be in it before he received it, yet claimed to be unaware of that information until it arrived.

This confusing little episode does nothing to validate MJ-12 or the EBD, but does throw up another cloud of suspicion, pointing the finger at Moore as the ultimate source of MJ-12. He had the Aquarius documents with their early mentions of MJ-12, he was writing a novel with Bob Pratt and one other (probably Doty) about all these mysterious activities, which was going to be called Majic 12, and then we have Moore providing information about the bodies found near the Brazel debris field months, if not years, before the EBD arrived.

This doesn’t even address the problems with the El Indio – Guererro UFO crash as described by Robert Willingham and Todd Zechel. It is now clear that Willingham was inventing his tale of witnessing a UFO crash,¹⁷¹ but in the mid-1980s, many inside the UFO community believed that Willingham was reliable. As demonstrated, Zechel, who had interviewed Willingham, was in communication with Moore and because many accepted the 1950 crash as real, it had to be included in the MJ-12 document.

Even with all that, there are those who suspect that MJ-12, while a hoax, was disinformation, meaning it came from a government source. That has never been established, and given what it known today, it seems that the sources of MJ-12 are some of those who released it into the public arena in the first place. Now we have dozens of MJ-12 documents making up more than 4000 pages, but the problem here, as it always has been, there is no provenance for them. They appear, almost magically, in mail boxes. Many of the new ones are from Tim Cooper, who was originally concerned that Friedman might think that he, Cooper, had forged them.

These new documents, at first, seemed to suggest that the forger, if such was the case, was an incredible historian. Obscure references to events were found to be accurate. Names attached to some of the documents, nearly unknown outside of government circles, were real. The historical context of the documents was accurate. These were the proof that was needed for MJ-12.

It was Friedman’s research that proved many of those documents were, in fact forgeries. He learned from Dr. Bland that one of the first of the Cooper documents was a retyped letter that had been slightly altered. Friedman wrote, “With this unambiguous fraud as background, I became convinced that several other items were retyped and slightly changed versions of old memos or letters.”¹⁷²

What this discovery did was explain how someone could replicate, with such accuracy, the style of the time, the style of the various authors of those memos and letters, and why it did not take years to learn the proper history. All that was needed was a copy of the earlier document and a typewriter that featured an old font.

In the world today, it is strange that MJ-12 still has any following at all. Those who understand the problems with it, but want to retain something of it, say that it is disinformation. There is a grain of truth in the EBD, the Truman memo and the Cutler-Twining memo here and there, they suggest. But reality suggests that the best course of action is to set MJ-12 aside, stop wasting time, effort and money on research to verify it and begin to follow paths that will provide some useful information. Reduce MJ-12 to a footnote, which is all that it deserves. After more than three decades without any independent corroboration of it, it is time to give it up. MJ-12 has led nowhere and will lead nowhere in the future. It was a hoax that begin in 1980 and that’s all it is.

¹²⁶Don Berliner, letter to the editor of the International UFO Reporter, dated March 12, 1996. The letter was printed in the Summer IUR, p. 29

¹²⁷ Ibid

¹²⁸ Schiff, a New Mexico representative, had asked the GAO to investigate the Roswell case after a number of inquiries from his constituents. That report, released later suggested they could find no records or documents relating to the crash.

¹²⁹ Berliner letter, March 12, 1996, p. 2

¹³⁰ This information is derived from the manual as it was released into the public arena. It has also been stamped as “Not an Official USAF Document, Not Classified, Suspected Forgery or Bogus Document,” be a reviewing committee of the Air Force and other government agencies.

¹³¹ SOM 1-01 Majestic—12 Group Special Operations Manual, cover and Table of Contents.

¹³² Ibid. p. 7

¹³³ Email from Tom Printy, downloaded on October 22, 1998.

¹³⁴ Letter from Herbert L. Pankratz to Kevin Randle, dated February 9, 1995. See also, Kevin Randle, “The MJ-12 Operations Manual: Another Forgery?”, International UFO Reporter, Spring 1996, pp. 9 – 10.

¹³⁵ Wood, Majic Eyes Only, pp. 264 – 266.

¹³⁶ Jan Aldrich, Current Encounters Email, downloaded April 2, 1999.

¹³⁷ The full Joint Statement is available on the CUFOS.org website. Last accessed on August 13, 2012.

¹³⁸ Robert Wood, “Forensic Linguistics and the Majestic Documents,” in 6th Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference, 2008, p. 98.

¹³⁹ Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, p. 144

¹⁴⁰ Wood, Linguistics, pp. 98 – 99.

¹⁴¹ Wood said that the first words were illegible and it was assumed that these were “trial package.”

¹⁴² Ryan Wood, Majic Eyes Only, p. 37

¹⁴³ Robert Wood, Linguistics, pp. 99 – 100. This is a rather confusing report on these new documents given that it is based on a slide presentation. It seems that the Einstein/Oppenheimer memo is a response to a question about how to handle the presence of aliens. There is little to suggest who the original author is, so Wood supplied the document to forensic linguistics to see if the syntax, sentence structure, vocabulary and style suggested a specific author.

¹⁴⁴ Robert Wood, Linguistics, pp. 100 – 103.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid. pp. 103 – 106.

¹⁴⁶ Ryan Wood, Majic Eyes Only, pp. 246 – 247.

¹⁴⁷ Robert Wood, Linguistics, pp. 103 – 104.

¹⁴⁸ Ryan Wood email to Kevin Randle, January 11, 2012.

¹⁴⁹ It seems that as you move up in the secretarial pool, your level of competence increases and those at the top are the very best. To type a document that is classified as “Top Secret,” the secretary must hold the proper security clearances. They also follow the rules and regulations in effect at the time, often ensuring their bosses follow the proper procedures as well. Errors such as those found in these MJ-12 related documents would not be tolerated at that level.

¹⁵⁰ Robert Wood, email to Kevin Randle, January 11, 2012. It should be noted here that using questioned documents to attempt to validate another questioned document is improper. That Wood has seen a mixture of code words on the MJ-12 documents does not suggest various code words were used, but that someone who did not understand security classifications had attempted to create documents to validate MJ-12. Unfortunately, and contrary to what Dr. Wood has suggested, this is more in line with fraud than authenticity.

¹⁵¹ Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, p. 144. This probably refers to the first communication Friedman had with Cooper while that of Robert Wood came later.

¹⁵² Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, pp. 145 – 146.

¹⁵³ Ibid., pp. 158 – 159

¹⁵⁴ Ibid, p. 145

¹⁵⁵ Philip J. Klass, Skeptics UFO Newsletters, #44, March 1997, p. 1

¹⁵⁶ Ibid.

¹⁵⁷ See “A Different Perspective,” April 2007 for a report on this incident. Randle, while in California with Friedman to interview other Roswell witnesses was told by Friedman about Moore’s idea. Don Schmitt had heard similar claims earlier.

¹⁵⁸ Stan Friedman, “More Attacks on MJ-12,” UFO issue 147, p. 19

¹⁵⁹ Several FOIA requests to the NSA eventually resulted in responses that confirmed there was a highly classified project named Aquarius, but no other information about it could be released. However, not much later, NSA retracted the statement, saying that its confirmation had been based on a false assumption. There is no confirmation of any project named Aquarius. Greenwood, “MJ-12 Magic, Act,” MUFON UFO Journal, Sep 1987.

¹⁶⁰ Friedman letter to Randle, February 2001: Randle, Case MJ-12, p. 184

¹⁶¹ Letter from Pratt to Robert Todd, February 20, 1989, copy in Randle’s files. See also, Sparks, “The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12,” MUFON UFO Journal, September 2007, p 6.

¹⁶² Ibid.

¹⁶³ This is a reference to the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and the star map that Betty Hill said she saw on the alien craft. Marjorie Fish, in a herculean effort found a match to the pattern of the stars which suggested that the alien creatures were from the Zeta Reticuli star system. Better astronomical data, including the types and distances to some of the stars suggest that this information is now out of date and may be inaccurate.

¹⁶⁴ This is the Barney Barnett tale that was loosely linked to the Roswell UFO case by Barney Barnett. He told friends and family about finding a crashed UFO. His boss, “Fleck” Danley told Moore that it had been in the summer of 1947, but a diary kept by Ruth Barnett did not support this conclusion. If Barnett had seen anything, it was not in 1947 and was not on the Plains of San Agustin.

¹⁶⁵ A new book by Scott Ramsey, UFO Crash at Aztec, suggests that this event, in March 1948, is real but his evidence is thin, nearly nonexistent. Although Friedman now endorses this story, it is not mentioned in the MJ-12 papers. Had it been real, and if the EBD is real, then Aztec should have been mentioned. That it was not suggests that either Aztec is a hoax or the EBD is a hoax. The only logical conclusion is that both are a hoax, but in 1984, when the Eisenhower Briefing Document surfaced, the best information was that Aztec was a hoax, a position endorsed by Moore. See Moore, “UFOs and the U.S. Government: Part II,” MUFON UFO Journal, December 1989, p. 9; Moore, “Crashed UFOs,” 1985 MUFON Symposium Proceedings.”

¹⁶⁶ This is the Willingham story that has been thoroughly debunked. Willingham never served as an Air Force officer, and if he did not, then his whole story collapses. In mid-1980s, many inside the UFO community, including Bill Moore believed the story. See also, Greenwood, “The MJ-12 Magic Act,” MUFON UFO Journal, December, 1987 p, 13.

¹⁶⁷ William Moore, “Crashed saucers: Evidence in Search of Proof,” MUFON Symposium Proceedings, 1985.

¹⁶⁸ It bears repeating here. Friedman has said, repeatedly, that he believes the Cutler-Twining memo is disinformation planted at the National Archives for Moore and Shandera to find. Letter to Randle, February 2001; see also Randle, Case MJ-12, pp 183 – 189 for additional discussion.

¹⁶⁹ This includes the infamous MJ-5, CIA memo which was published in Moore’s newsletter, Focus, but has not surfaced anywhere else. According to Greenwood, “The MJ-12 Magic Act,” MUFON UFO Journal, December 1987, “Type style [of the memo], placement of security markings, use of CIA letter[head] stationery instead of internal forms is atypical of CIA standards.” In other words, it is a fake and its disappearance from the MJ-12 discussion seems to be proof of that.

¹⁷⁰ Moore, “Crashed Saucers,”

¹⁷¹ The whole sad tale of Robert Willingham is laid out in Randle, Crash, 138 – 145, including the documentation from both NARA in St. Louis, which houses the military records of those no longer on active duty for any reason, and the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which houses records for the Air Force. Zechel selected the December 1950 because it corresponded to some documentation from the FBI that had nothing to do with UFOs but seemed to corroborate Willingham’s tale.

¹⁷²Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, p. 159

See Also:

The Myth of MJ-12: Appendix A –Pt 1

The Myth of MJ-12: Appendix A –Pt 2

"Appendix A: The Myth of MJ-12" An Annotated Commentary By Barry Greenwood

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