-Caveat Lector-
Excerpt from "Revelations" by Jacques Vallee
from Chapter 2, "Majestic 12"
In December 1984 an anonymously mailed package reached Los
Angeles television producer Jaime Shandera. In it was a roll of
undeveloped film that turned out to contain eight pages of
information, evidently from a November 1952 classified document.
It included a cover letter addressed to President Eisenhower and
mentioned top secret data about the crash of an unidentified
flying object at Roswell, New Mexico.
Revelation of the existence of these documents by Jaime
Shandera, Bill Moore, and Stanton Friedman elicted various
reactions among UFO enthusiasts. Most of them said, "We told you
so! The proof of the coverup is at hand at last."
Others, suspecting that the three researchers might be the
targets of a manipulation or a hoax, wisely withheld comment.
Skeptics like Phillip Klass went so far as to suggest that Bill
Moore had manufactured the documents and mailed them to his
friend.
Accusations flew back and forth, becoming increasingly
technical. Did the font of the typewriter match the machines
used at the time? Did the style of the dates correspond to the
correct military format, to the personal habits of the alleged
official authors, or more prosaically, to one of the suspected
perpetrators of a hoax?
One of the early believers, ufologist Stanton Friedman,
obtained a $16,000 grant from Dr. Bruce Maccabee's Fund for UFO
Research to study the matter in depth. Predictably, his
conclusion, released in mid-1990, was that the documents were
genuine, but he brought no new evidence to prove it.
The controversy may never be completely resolved, but it did
produce some very interesting facts and some even more
fascinating questions.
According to Stanton Friedman, there are three primary
"MJ-12" texts. The roll of film received by Shandera contained a
document entitled "Briefing for President-Elect Eisenhower,"
dated November 18, 1952, consisting of eight pages. The last
page was a memo under President Truman's signature to Secretary
of Defense James Forrestal, dated September 24, 1947. These two
items were the extent of the initial "leak."
Sensational confirmation of their validity seemed to come to
light when a third unsigned document was found in the National
Archives. Dated July 14, 1954, it was a memo from Robert Cutler,
Eisenhower's Special Assistant for National Security, to General
Nathan Twining, Air Force Chief of Staff. It read, "The
President has decided that the MJ-12 SSP briefing should take
place during the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16
rather than following it as previously intended." Cutler did not
sign the document, but his name and title are typed at the bottom
of the page. The expression "MJ-12" referred to the Majestic
Twelve, a group of experts secretly studying UFO evidence.
According to Friedman, this document could not have been
planted in the National Archives because, "it was in a classified
box in a classified vault."
This statement only makes sense if we assume that the
individual responsible for the planting did not have access to
the classified box in question. If MJ-12 is an inside job,
designed and executed by a rogue group within the intelligence
community --which is the most likely explanation
today-- then Friedman's argument is obviously flawed.
There are other reasons to believe that MJ-12 is a fake.
Queried about this particular document, the Archives issued a
memorandum, dated July 22, 1987, and signed by Jo Ann
Williamson, Chief of the Military Reference Branch, pointing out
that "this particular document poses problems" for many different
reasons. It does not bear a top secret register number, an
official government letter-head or a watermark, it is the only
document referring to MJ-12 in the folder in question; a search
for other relevant documents has located nothing; and the
marking TOP SECRET RESTRICTED INFORMATION was not used during the
Eisenhower administration (it only came into use at the National
Security Council under Nixon). Furthermore, there are no records
of an NSC meeting on July 16, 1954. Robert Cutler was visiting
military installations in Europe and North Africa on the day he
was supposed to have issued the memorandum.
In other words, the National Archives does not believe the
memorandum is genuine. This does not mean, of course, that some
project called MJ-12 does not or did not, exist. Nor does it
resolve the larger issue of the possible existence of aliens,
dead or alive. It only deepens the mystery and it raises new
questions.
Among the new questions is the identity and motivation of
the sender.
If we are dealing with a genuine Deep Throat, why does he
(or she) choose people like Shandera, Moore and Friedman, who are
obscure as far as the national media are concerned? Why not
select a well-known journalist, a reputable science writer, or an
established, credible scientist? If he has decided to work
exclusively with, people in the UFO field, he still has a wide
choice of targets, including some who have the ability to check
up and convince themselves of the genuineness of such documents.
Yet our mystery source selected a group that was likeIy to
accept the information uncritically -- people who had already
staked a definitive position on the alleged cover-up and would
find it very conveniently confirmed by the documents.
Predictably, he missed his objective of convincing the
nation that MJ-12 was genuine: only a handful of hardcore
believers have accepted Friedman's conclusions.
This is not the way the Deep Throat of Watergate proceeded.
He sought out the most influential of Washington media, selected
two aggressive investigative journalists, and encouraged them to
ask their own questions (his recommendation to "follow the money"
was a major key).
The MJ-12 source operated as the manipulator of a contrived
disinformation leak, rather than as a real whistleblower with
something at stake or as a deeply concerned person who has
decided to expose a genuine scandal once and for all.
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