-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. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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