When
I put up that short article about Truth
and MJ-12, it seemed, according to my private correspondence, that the
superscript and proportional spacing of the memos about George W. Bush and his
Air Guard service had become the main issue. Those flaws were not the only
things found. There were others, each, in and of itself not particularly
egregious, but in the aggregate, suggest that the documents are faked.*
We
see the same thing in the MJ-12 main document, that is, the Eisenhower Briefing
document. There are many little flaws from the dating format that is more
consistent with the digital age and Bill Moore, to the misspellings of words.
None of these are particularly egregious, but in the aggregate suggest the
document is a fake.
I
have pointed out that there is a fatal flaw in the Eisenhower Briefing Document
and that is the paragraph that describes the El Indio UFO crash of December 6,
1950. It is clear that this is the story invented by Robert Willingham, who
first dated it to 1948 and later to the mid-1950s. He told the story to Todd
Zechel, who told it to Bill Moore. Zechel believed that Willingham had been a
high-ranking officer and fighter pilot in the Air Force but research showed
that he had not been an Air Force officer or a fighter pilot. No evidence ever
surfaced to prove that there had been a UFO crash on December 6, 1950, and if
that story was a hoax, then the Eisenhower Briefing Document was a hoax. This
would be the fatal flaw, taking down MJ-12.
In
the documents released about George Bush there was a similar fatal flaw and it
is in the document that refers to an OETR. There is no such document. There is,
however, an OET/R. Those inside the Air Guard would have known this and not
made such the mistake of calling it an OETR. The source of the mistake, it
seems, was an anti-Bush website that had first published some of the documents
before CBS got heavily involved. Apparently CBS didn’t know this.
Here’s
what happened.
Those
of you who have served in the military know that all these things are put into
file folders and those folders have fasteners at the top. Documents are punched
with two holes so that they can be secured in the folder to keep them in a
specific order. The document, known as an Officer Effectiveness/Training Report
(OET/R), had the two holes punched in it and one of the holes obscured the
slash so that it looked as if it said, “Officer Effectiveness Training Report,”
or the OETR.
According
to William Campenni, who was a member of the Texas Air Guard at the relevant
time, “So I did a little more research on the webpage and
found that one Bush record was labeled ‘Notice of Missing or Correction Of
Officer Effectiveness / Training Report,’ a multi-use sheet for both OERs and
training reports. But Lukasiak [Paul Lukasiak, who originally put the document
on the Internet before CBS became involved] did not notice that a hole punch at the top had punched out
the ‘/’ (slash). Hence, he mistook it for “Officer Effectiveness Training
Report” and created the acronym “OETR.” At the time, I dismissed it as one of many Lukasiak
errors and misrepresentations in that blog and put it out of my mind.”
This then is a fatal flaw that was
created by a two-hole punch and a misunderstanding about these documents and
what they are. To read the whole story, written by Campenni, see:
Here’s
the point. The use of OETR in lieu of OET/R, while seemingly insignificant,
points at the fraudulent nature of that document just as the use of the El
Indio UFO crash on December 6, 1950, points to the fraudulent nature of the
Eisenhower Briefing Document. Both errors, by themselves, prove that the
documents are faked. There is simply no way around this.
Too
often we all get lost in the minutia of the situation, talking about fonts, and
spacing, and the other ancillary nonsense. We overlook the importance of some
of these errors which demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the
documents are faked. For the story about Bush, it proves only that the
documents are faked but says nothing about his service, which is, of course, a
different issue. For MJ-12, it proves that the documents are faked and it ends the
discussion about a committee named MJ-12.
While
I know this will not end the discussion of the legitimacy of MJ-12, it should.
There is no fallback position and there is nothing that has surfaced anywhere
to suggest that it ever existed. Too bad that we will continue to waste our
time on it.
*One
of the other troublesome and basically fatal flaws in the Bush documents is the
use of a serial number as opposed to a Social Security number. In the late 1960s
and the early 1970s, the military switched from using a unique serial number to
the Social Security number. By the time these Bush documents were allegedly written,
the Social Security number had replaced the serial number on all official
documents and the use of the serial number argues strongly against the validity
of the Bush documents.
74 comments:
As one who never fully bought into the MJ12 documents credibility, I now have better reason to support my disbelief after reading your post. Over breakfast with Bill Moore in early 2000 he made it amply clear to me how much he enjoyed deceiving people when he worked with Doty, smiling and laughing as he told me stories and in some cases justifying his actions by saying, "... well he deserved it for poking around in something that was none of his business." So, I have no doubt your assessment is accurate. Thanks.
"For MJ-12, it proves that the documents are faked and it ends the discussion about a committee named MJ-12."
The last statement does not logically follow from the first. The documents could be faked yet a super-secret committee like MJ-12 could still exist, whether under the name of "MJ-12" or something else. It would be like an art forgery of a long-lost masterpiece. Exposure as a forgery does NOT invalidate the existence of the original.
As most here already know, the name "MJ-12" first emerged very soon after the Wilbert Smith Canadian documents of 1950-51 came to light circa 1979. The Canadian documents revealed that a super-secret committee, under the direction of Dr. Vannevar Bush, was handling UFO matters within the DOD's Research and Development Board. Other members of the committee were not named nor the name of the committee given. It is quite conceivable the "MJ-12 documents" came out soon afterward with the aim of eventually discrediting the revelations in the Smith documents. (a counterintelligence sting)
Ignoring the MJ-12 docs entirely, the Smith/Canadians documents stand on their own as clear evidence that such a group existed within the RDB. And they were NOT General Exon's "Unholy 13", which Exon described as a UFO group of generals and admirals in the Pentagon.
Two such groups, one with a primarily science/engineering R&D (technological analysis and back-engineering) and the other primarily military (defense/national security aspects) would NOT be mutually exclusive. Both could co-exist and work together to some extent, with some members even being within the other groiup. (Since the RDB was an R&D branch of the Pentagon, this hardly seems unreasonable.) There could have been other specialized UFO study groups working on different aspects of the UFO problem, such as the CIA's OS/I (Office of Scientific Investigation) and some subcommittee of the NSC, again with some coordination and some sharing of personnel. However, the only clearly documented one is the Bush DRB group. The “Unholy 13” is based strictly on the credibility of Gen. Exon’s testimony.
I have never seen the Canadians documents exposed as fraudulent, though there have been attempts to debunk them in order to discredit the information. They seem to be absolutely genuine and do indeed point to the existence of an MJ-12 type UFO oversight committee under Bush's direction existing in 1950-51, and probably before then.
You can see hints as to the existence of this committee in Ruppert's book, such as his discussion of the 1951 Lubbock Lights being studied by a high-level government-affiliated group of "scientists – rocket experts, nuclear physicists, and intelligence experts." That is NOT a description of Exon's general/admirals Pentagon "Unholy 13" group. It would, however, be a perfect description of the composition of the RDB, plus maybe the CIA's OS/I, which we know from other documents helped out the RDB in some of their investigations.
Kevin,
In the UFO community, you are one of a handful that pays "attention to details". That term is overused at times. In your case, I have not seen anyone is as articulate to details as you are.
Thanks for teaching me and I am sure many others your eye for perfection.
David -
You said, "The last statement does not logically follow from the first. The documents could be faked yet a super-secret committee like MJ-12 could still exist, whether under the name of "MJ-12" or something else. It would be like an art forgery of a long-lost masterpiece. Exposure as a forgery does NOT invalidate the existence of the original."
Because I had said, "For MJ-12, it proves that the documents are faked and it ends the discussion about a committee named MJ-12."
But I didn't say no such committee existed, only that it wasn't named MJ-12. Has anyone, anywhere found any document that mentions MJ-12 in it's original form? This means do we have an original document? No. Here exposure of the forgery and the lack of anything other than the forgeries does prove there was no committee named MJ-12, not that a committee with a mission to coordinate the exploitation of the material did not exist.
You wrote, "And they were NOT General Exon's "Unholy 13", which Exon described as a UFO group of generals and admirals in the Pentagon."
But this is not what Exon told me, on tape about his group that he called the Unholy 13 (which was only his name for the group). He mentioned a number of civilians who were involved including Stuart Symington. So it wasn't just general and admirals, but top civilians in the military chain of command.
Actually it is not the Wilbert Smith documents [plural] which show a committee existed c. 1950. It is ONE Smith document which states this, his (in)famous memo of Nov 21, 1950 entitled "Geo-Magnetics". None of the others refer to any such committee.
It is known that Stan Friedman obtained this memo soon after it was released, c. 1979, and showed it to Bill Moore. And I have no hesitation whatever in saying the name 'Vannevar Bush' as head of MJ-12 was lifted from this very memo by the MJ-12 forger. But the point is that apart from this one mention, we have no indication that Bush was ever working on any UFO-related project, committee or whatever.
It is true that nobody has exposed or even suggested the Canadian (Smith) documents are fraudulent, but in reality they tell us very little and, as I say, only one of them refers to this "small group" looking into UFOs. Smith had been in Washington in Sept 1950 for a radio conference and by chance Scully's crashed saucer book came out at that very time (as Smith states in the memo).
Wilbert Smith's later pseudo-scientific writings, of which there are plenty, give us no confidence to trust what he wrote re UFOs in that memo and most of the said memo had nothing to do with UFOs anyway.
Kevin,
Maybe it's just semantics being debated here, but when you write that this "ends the discussion about a committee named MJ-12", it is ambiguous and could be interpreted in at least two ways 1) Such a committee NEVER existed by that name or any other name; 2) A committee by that specific name never existed but such a committee might have existed.
Regarding #2, debunking the "MJ-12 papers" still does not actually prove that such a committee with the specific name MJ-12 did not exist. Yes, we still do not have one unquestionable document with "MJ-12" or "Majestic 12" on it, but do we have even one document backing up Exon about his Pentagon "Unholy 13" group by any name? It makes sense that such a Pentagon group would exist, but there really is no documentary evidence at present to back it up.
Having civilians such as Symington in such a group still does not square with Ruppelt's statement about the secretive group of governmental rocket and atomic scientists plus intelligence experts who studied the Lubbock Lights data. That is NOT a description of Exon's Unholy 13 but of some other group. It would, in fact, be a very accurate description of scientists and intelligence experts who made up the Research and Development Board's various R&D subcommittee's, which included rocketry and atomic energy.
If you recall Dr. Robert Sarbacher's later testimony in the 1980s (whose briefing to Smith in 1950 was the origin of the Smith/Canadian documents telling us of the secretive UFO group within the RDB under Vannevar Bush's direction), as a member of the RDB's rocketry committee, he was invited to meetings on crashed saucers held at Wright-Patterson, which he said he did not attend. He did finger Dr. Eric Walker (also on the rocketry committee), who was executive secretary of the RDB in 1950, as being at those meetings.
When William Steinem first contacted Walker in 1987 by phone and asked him about "MJ-12", according to Steinem, Walker confirmed its existence for the last 40 years, or since 1947. Walker also confirmed being at the meetings, but said he needed to consult his notes. In further interviews with Walker by Dr. Armen Azadehdel, (using his English name Henry Victorian), Walker again confirmed the existence of "MJ-12" when directly asked about it, saying he had known about them for a "long time", but no longer had anything to do with them. Then asked about the MJ-12 papers, he said he doubted that they were authentic. So, for what it is worth, Walker said the group by the specific name of MJ-12 was for real, even if the MJ-12 papers themselves were not.
I do find it conceivable that a Pentagon group like the "Unholy 13" could have been the top group, while the RDB UFO group described in the Wilbert Smith/Canadian documents, which was part of the Defense Department and did the military R&D, would have operated under their direction. I also find it conceivable that the NSC could have been the top group under the President, telling the Pentagon generals what they wanted done, who told the RDB what they wanted, etc. It is possible to conceive all sorts of organizational charts to handle such a situation.
Symington, BTW, was NOT Secretary of the Air Force when Exon was at the Pentagon 1955-60, since Symington resigned as AF Secretary in 1950 and was elected to the Senate in 1952. I believe Exon only referred to Symington's involvement during the Roswell period when he WAS AF Secretary, though perhaps you have him stating otherwise. I would be very surprised if Symington would be a part of the "Unholy 13" when he was no longer AF Secretary, when Exon was stationed at the Pentagon in the late 1950s and said he first learned of their existence.
Good points Kevin. If I follow you in your conclusion that the MJ-12 and Bush documents are fakes, IMO it doesn't disprove that such a comittee might exist and could had been be called MJ-12. (it could or it couldn't be, that we can't be sure of because as you said no original document naming MJ-12 had been found).
David
I said nothing about Symington being the Secretary of the Air Force when Exon was at the Pentagon. Symington, in 1947, was the Under Secretary for War for Air, which put him as the first civilian encountered in the Army Air Forces chain of command. When the Air Force became a separate service in September, 1947, Symington was the first Secretary of the Air Force... that he resigned in 1950, is irrelevant, because, in my discussions with Exon, it was clear that he was referring to 1947.
Second, with all the other information available, from Bill Moore's claims, the book he, with Bob Pratt and Richard Doty created in early 1980, the retyped documents, and a trail that ends with Moore and Shandera for the original documents, and with the fatal flaws in them, it is clear that the origin of the name, Majestic-Twelve, or the various other names that are derivative of MJ-12, that no committee by that name existed. After all these years there has not been a single document recovered with an MJ-12 designation on it. Unless you have some inside information to suggest otherwise, I am confident in saying that there was no MJ-12 committee.
Third, I have only reported what Exon said about the committee he encountered, and that he invented the name, Unholy 13 himself as a catchall for it. With MJ-12, you have some very dubious testimony about it, but with Exon, at least we have a credible source, which is not to say that he wasn't in error. Everything you suggest is extrapolation from other sources such as Wilbert Smith, Robert Sarbacher's second-hand remembrance and a lieutenant colonel who claimed he had contact with MJ-12 but who didn't realize that Blue Book was a code name and not a book. But I say again, MJ-12 was the invention of William Moore, Richard Doty and Robert Pratt (though Pratt thought they were writing a novel based on fact so that his contribution to that myth would be more in the way of creating an interesting story than an attempt to deceive.)
BTW, you is William Steinem?
Brice -
To reach the conclusion that there was no committee named MJ-12, I draw on many other facts... including the one in which Bill Moore suggested that he was going to create a document about Roswell. He mentioned that to several people and then, months later, MJ-12 is created. At this point, with no legitimate documents found, with all of those circulating that are forgeries, there is no reason to conclude there might have been something that we haven't found. After more than thirty years, with all the time and effort expended, you would think something would have surfaced.
Kevin,
I truly understand what you are saying abut MJ-12 documents. I get it and almost sick about hearing this argument on either side.
However there is one set of documents more important than MJ-12 that have never been discussed. This is what document did President Truman sign to give the any of the military command the legal ability to secure any down UFO and to do so without legal recourse. Would it be a Presidential Executive Order? A President Finding? or was it possible that it was embedded in the National Security Act of 1947 with a bunch of legalese type of language no one could figure out?
I am asking you as a long time professional military officer who have severed his country with honor more than a UFO researcher.
You do agree after Roswell and maybe even before, there was a legal document in place to waive Posse Comitatus laws? In a sense the reason why this would be the most important document is this would be the "Get out of Jail Card" for any other crash retrievals. This MU-12 is BS without these documents.
I fully understand the documents I am suggesting to exist has not appeared. But I can not think of a reason why they shouldn't. Why not recover any future UFO legally? Yes I also understand Non-Disclosure Agreements and have signed several but these don't cover the bigger issue, the legal right to recover a space craft not from earth.
Do you agree or disagree? As a former military officer, would you have broken any laws if ask to by your superiors? That's not a fair question and don't take it that way but it is goes to the heart of every single crash recovered UFO's.
Craig -
I don't believe that Posse Comitatus rears its ugly head here. We're not talking about law enforcement but protecting a secret. However, there are two exceptions to Posse Comitatus. One is drug enforcement which doesn't apply here and the other is Presidential Direction, which, if we accept Roswell as alien, and accept some of the testimony of witnesses as accurate certainly does apply. I know there were changes to Posse Comitatus in 1955 which changed the rules somewhat but the original purpose was to avoid having federal troops involved in policing polling points.
Given the circumstances of 1947, it would seem to me that the rancher (or rather his representative) who alerted the military to the debris had, in a sense, given permission for the military to recover whatever it was.
So, the recovery itself wouldn't have broken any law. The follow up, which includes threats to civilians seems to have overstepped the authority of the military, but it could be argued that Presidential Directive would have absolved them of the responsibility, especially since no one was actually injured and only Mack Brazel was held in Roswell, more or less against his will.
I like to think that I would recognize the order as unlawful and my obligation to obey it nonexistent. We were often schooled to obey the order but raise the question about it. Hard to say what I would do in these circumstances, but my gut tells me that I would attempt to avoid obeying it.
Thanks Kevin for your response.
I was thinking much the same about what happen with Brazel. However once Marcel recognized the materials were not human or earth made, then this changed everything. Once Raney changed the story to the "weather balloon", I think it would have been impossible from a legal standpoint to ever change the story to legally protect all of the military men and women involved. I also think this was a motivating factor for many of the military to talk to you.
Of the military witnesses you interviewed, were they threaten if they talked about crash? Again I understand the NDC they had to sign but what did they generally say to you?
Along this line of thinking, this is why I think US New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez I am sure was getting a lot of telephone calls from the people of Roswell and Military as well about the threats. This is why I sent over the CIA link. To Senator Chavez, the military and US Government was likely the state's biggest employer. He was also an attorney and engineer. I think the military didn't tell him anything and is why he went to the CIA. In short, he was looking for a more plausible answer for the people of New Mexico. this might be something to look at in his archives.
Last I do think the military and JCS would have gone to Truman for legal protection in the future. They didn't want their soldiers and serviceman to question a UFO retrieval as being legal or not. That's simple logic.
I also think Hoover and the FBI and Dept. of Justice was called off and to let the military handle this UFO matters. Hoover didn't want to get involved for budget reasons but he also didn't want to get in involved in the legal questions either.
This is why I think that there is a written document by Truman and likely a Presidential Executive Order.
Thoughts?
KR wrote..."To reach the conclusion that there was no committee named MJ-12, I draw on many other facts... including the one in which Bill Moore suggested that he was going to create a document about Roswell. He mentioned that to several people and then, months later, MJ-12 is created."
I can't figure out why, if Bill Moore wanted to fool the world, that he told "several" people beforehand.
It makes no sense.
Craig -
In the military, when you received a security clearance, you are briefed about what all that entails... that you may not discuss it with those not cleared to hear it and the like. When a briefing is classified, the second thing you learn in that briefing, after you learn it is classified, that discussing the contents with those not cleared, is a criminal offense. It used to be ten years and ten thousand dollars, but I think that has been upped. The point is that it really isn't necessary to remain the military of their obligations, though it is done repeatedly. Edwin Easley, for example, told me that he couldn't talk about it because he was sworn to secrecy. Say what you, but I have that statement by him on tape.
Paul -
Moore made that statement to a number of people. I think he was floating the idea to see what the reaction would be. It was a couple of years later that he appeared on the scene with MJ-12. And don't forget, he, Doty, and Bob Pratt wrote a book prior to the MJ-12 nonsense that was the basic outline for MJ-12. And, if you get the chance, ask the supporters of MJ-12 what they know about Project Aquarius.
All -
I had another thought but I didn't want to create another post about it. With the Bush documents, Burkett went to the news media with them. He shopped them around, if I remember correctly for a couple of years, along with the story about Bush, until he got CBS to bite. With MJ-12, the anonymous source, who has never been identified, didn't got to CBS or the New York Times or even Stan Friedman or the leadership at MUFON. He sent them to Jaime Shandera, Moore's pal, who had no visibility in the UFO community. That is a big difference between the two stories, but it also suggests something about the validity of MJ-12.
KR wrote... "After all these years there has not been a single document recovered with an MJ-12 designation on it."
Yep, this is a mither.
It got me thinking that maybe they weren't officially called anything at all and, like Exon, other people had other nicknames for this task force dedicated to understanding the Roswell wreckage and other incidents of that era.
Just supposing...If Vannevar Bush and Co were never collectively called anything then it might explain why nothing has come up except for daft nicknames like "Unholy 13".
I go along with David Rudiak's thinking that IF the ETH for Roswell is correct then there must have been a focus group (very much along the lines of mythical MJ-12) put together, pretty damned pronto, by Truman.
Though absolutely nailing all of the MJ-12 documents as fake (or real) is an absolute must...we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that if the ETH is correct then a group as near as damned like it, must have been created.
Kevin wrote:
"After more than thirty years, with all the time and effort expended, you would think something would have surfaced."
True and after all this time you would think if something "really special" happened at Roswell we would have had a bit more "evidence" by now as well...
But maybe you could answer this question for me please Kevin:
"If the ETH for Roswell is correct then would a "focus group" (very much along the lines of mythical MJ-12) have been put together by someone like Truman ASAP?"
Editors note - I don't need a long reply, a simple yes or no will do.
Regards
Nitram
Paul:
Indeed some committee of scientists and perhaps a few from the military WOULD have been set up to examine, re-examine and analyse everything that was gathered up from the desert debris (plus any other associated debris).
And the said committee would have produced copious analyses, reports and such, amounting to probably thousands of pages. And the President would have been kept informed.
But don't you think that by now, 69 years afterwards, the people would know the truth, and that the greatest scientific discovery of all time would have been made public long ago? Think of the prestige for the USA to have made such a discovery. Bill Moore (and whoever assisted him) put MJ-12 together fully aware that scientists and the military would dismiss it as trash, but also knowing that a large body of the UFO community would accept it as the literal truth, as they did, for a period anyway. The chief 'victim' was Moore's own colleague, one Stanton T. Friedman.
As for the 'Unholy 13', I now put this direct question to Kevin: Did General Exon, when he came up with this name, know about the MJ-12 documents, and that a 13th man, figured in them (Walter Bedell Smith)? Had Exon heard of MJ-12 BEFORE anyone interviewed him about Roswell? Should be a straight-forward yes or no answer.
cda... I speculated on an earlier thread that I think the truth is still being suppressed after such a long time because the conditions for the original cover up is still as valid today as what it was in 1947. That the US/USSR/UK...whoever...have never been in cahoots with "the aliens" and still don't know what we are up against...don't know the ramifications.
As for your comment... "Think of the prestige for the USA to have made such a discovery."... I've read similar points from you before but I can't understand why it would put USA in such high regard.
If Roswell was simply an alien hardware malfunction then it could have happened anywhere...it could as easily have crashed on North Yorkshire as on New Mexico.
Are we to pay homage to the Americans just because that's where the flying saucer happened to break down?
BTW...just my thoughts on your question to KR...is it possible the 13th man is the man who would have ordered a focus group to be created in the first place, ie Truman?
Paul:
The 13th man, according to Stanton Friedman, was Walter Bedell Smith, who took over after the death of Forrestal (see the Eisenhower document). Thus the original Majestic 12 became, after one of them died, the Majestic 13. This was to keep the number on the exclusive panel the same, i.e. 12. It was Friedman who suggested there was, in effect, a 13th man. No, Truman did not count at all.
The point of my question was whether General Exon had heard of, or knew the details of, MJ-12 before he came up with his 'Unholy 13' name and related it to Kevin.
I suspect very strongly that indeed he did. It is not normal for anyone to postulate there was a group of 13 in a secret committee. After all, it is an unlucky number and NOT the sort of number someone would invent!
What I am saying is that Exon got the whole '13' idea from a perusal of the MJ-12 papers and Friedman's commentary thereon. There was even a slight overlap of names. Big deal!
Nitram -
Have you taken the moderating duties from CDA?
The answer is that if there was a crash of an alien craft anywhere in the USA, then some sort of group, committee, organization would have been created to exploit the find.
All -
I will say again that Exon's use of the term, "Unholy Thirteen," was generic and was not a suggestion that there were 13 members... It was a name he made up that covered the existence of the group without a thought about the number of people at the top of it, so it does no good to add a name to MJ-12. Many of the names that Exon provided had not been named as members of MJ-12, an organization that was complete invention by Moore and Doty. I don't know how to make this any clearer.
CDA -
In case you missed it, MJ-12 had nothing to do with Exon's Unholy 13... it was the name he made up that had nothing to do with the number of members. I do know that Exon was aware of UFO activity because he talked about scheduling aircraft to take people out on investigations, and he was aware of some of the Roswell information, which came from both his personal experience but also from some of the people he knew. Apparently, long after his retirement, he became somewhat interested in UFOs. Did he know about MJ-12? I don't know, he might have, but I'm thinking that when I interviewed him, MJ-12 was not a hot topic in the world of the UFO. He might not have known about it.
But please let go of the number 13... he could have just as easily called them the Dirty Dozen and then we'd have another avenue of useless speculation... or maybe he could have called them the Chicago Seven or the Indianapolis 500.
Kevin:
You say MJ-12 was not a hot topic when you interviewed General Exon.
OH YES IT WAS.
According to "UFO Crash at Roswell", you first interviewed Exon in July 1989. At that time it certainly was a hot topic, with all manner of research, writings and announcements by Friedman and a few others, some pro, some anti. My memory of that period is that from May 1987 to 1990/91 MJ-12 was a hot debating point among Roswellologists. Therefore I surmise that Exon was indeed familiar with the topic and invented the new name 'Unholy 13' as a result. Note I said 'invented the name', not the actual committee. Yes, I agree that this does not imply that 13 persons actually served on the said committee, assuming it existed at all.
There is one thing that bothers me about this whole discussion. This is security of the group's name. If this group was the or one the most secret groups within the US government or military, I would think the name would be changed annually or whatever period of time. The reason is counterintelligences. So if the change of name to Unholy 13 did happen it might have been for security reasons.
CDA -
While you and the rest of the UFO world might have been up to your eyeballs in MJ-12 prior to my first interview with General Exon, the rest of the world wasn't quite that excited. My point was that a case could be made that Exon did not know about MJ-12, had heard nothing about it because he was in tune with what was happening inside of all of this. So even if the UFO world was aflame in MJ-12 debates, that does not translate into General Exon knowing anything about it. You can surmise all you want, but that doesn't make it so. Remember, I actually talked to General Exon and you did not. I didn't get the impression that he knew about the MJ-12 controversy. You can ask about this again, you can speculate all you want, but the fact is, I don't believe he was aware of that ongoing controversy until sometime later.
Craig -
I just can't make this any clearer... General Exon used the term "Unholy Thirteen" as a catchall for what he thought of as a control group. It was not an official name, it wasn't a classified name, it was something he dreamed up to label these people as shorthand for us...It was not an official name.
Kevin,
I understand you clearly. My point is like your, I have serious doubt about this existences of group called MJ-12 to begin with. The fact there was a series of documents with MJ-12 on them doesn't convince me that this was a real group. Do I think there was a working group? Yes, likely.
My second point is if this group was real or not, they would likely change the name on a regular basis for security reasons. Fake or real, there should have been a name change for security reason. This is the reason why I red flag the name of MJ-12.
Craig -
Sorry. I misunderstood your point. I can cite a number of examples of classified projects that had their names changed when the code name was compromised. Your point is a good one.
Kevin wrote:
"I will say again that Exon's use of the term, "Unholy Thirteen," was generic and was not a suggestion that there were 13 members... It was a name he made up that covered the existence of the group without a thought about the number of people at the top of it, so it does no good to add a name to MJ-12."
Hi Kevin, I could not let go this oportunity to correct things. Exon indeed spoke about group with numerically THIRTEEN guys.
I quote verbatim from a quote that YOU put in this blog in a past article:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.cl/2014/08/wheni-began-roswell-investigation-with.html
In there, Exon is quoted saying:
"So they decided to make it a national cover up. And that there probably wouldn’t be much released until everybody who was involved in it, including the thirteen people I’m talking about and their immediate staff who made up the, oh what was it, the twelve people who made up the investigative team had passed away."
Even admitting that the Eisenhower Briefing Document is a hoax, the name MJ-12 might still be correct by the following reasons:
1) There is correct information in the Eisenhower Briefing Document, not previously known to ufologists, as reported in Friedman's excellent book Top Secret Majic. The code word "MJ-12" might be one of these correct items.
2) Moore and Doty likely were in contact with insiders who probably supplied the correct code name for the group.
3) It is about the only candidate name we have for such a group, and this group we know should have existed according to Bush's canadian documents.
4) The name MJ-12 is mentioned in the SOM1-01, which in source is independent from the EBD, and the SOM1-01 has no fatal flaws, and in my view is real stuff.
5) The number 12 is close to number 13 as mentioned by Exon in the paragraph cited above, lending credibility to the name MJ-12.
Regards,
Don -
For crying out loud. MJ-12 is a hoax. The original documents were created by Bill Moore and Richard Doty. Yes, Exon mentioned the thirteen people he was talking about, but that isn't the whole story about that. He also talked about others as well as noted in the quote.
The Eisenhower Briefing Document contains a fatal flaw and that is the El Indio UFO crash which never happened. Moore was only in contact with Doty contrary to the rest of his tale. The SOM1-01 mentions the use of satellites to cover a downed UFO at a time when there were no artificial satellites. Nothing Exon said lends any credibility to the name MJ-12... and as I have pointed out, the code word, Majestic was used for another classified project in that time frame.
I am simply at a loss as to why anyone would believe anything about MJ-12 in today's world. Problem after problem has been pointed out and although it is claimed that each problem has been addressed, they have not. There are fatal errors in all of them, and no one has found any document with a proper provenance. Yet here we are talking about them again with such gems as 13 is close to 12...
(part 2 of 2)
When Stan Friedman asked Exon whether the Unholy 13 precluded another group like MJ-12, Exon said it did not, and admitted his knowledge was almost entirely second-hand.
[Friedman, "Top Secret/MAJIC"]: "...I interviewed General Arthur E. Exon, commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the mid-1960s. He had heard a lot of scuttlebutt about crashed saucers and aliens while stationed at Wright Field in 1947, as commander of the base in 1964 and 1965, and later while on assignment at the Pentagon. I met with him and we had several telephone conversations. He could find no reason to quarrel with the three primary MJ-12 documents or the list of original members."
Also: "He politely but firmly indicated that Randle and Schmitt had attributed considerably more to him than he had said. He had no firsthand involvement with Roswell, although he had heard lots of scuttlebutt from people he trusted. He had been at Wright Field in July 1947, when the Roswell wreckage had been brought there. He had heard stories while he was base commander... and also during a stint at the Pentagon."
I would say based on the cumulative evidence, the Bush-directed RDB secret UFO groups wins hands down as the best-documented UFO control group. I’m not saying Exon was wrong or dishonest and that his Pentagon “Unholy 13” didn’t exist, only that all we have is his testimony on this and NOTHING else. On the other hand, there is a LOT of evidence, documentary, testimonial (some first-hand), and circumstantial, that some very high-level and secret group within the RDB was dealing with saucer technology (the “modus operandi” of the saucers Sarbacher mentioned and Smith wrote about).
All that can be honestly said with the MJ-12 docs being phony is that this obviously doesn’t support the existence of such an MJ-12 group, but being phony means it ALSO doesn’t disprove it, especially when there is CLEARLY other evidence that DOES support it..
The idea of a group called “MJ-12” started about 2 years after the first Smith/Canadian documents emerged identifying the existence of such a group dealing with crashed saucers and less than a year after Bill Moore co-authored the first book on Roswell, bringing the idea of Roswell and crashed saucers back into public consciousness. I can see the alarm bells going off in the counterintelligence community.
I think the more likely scenario is that the MJ-12 papers were an AFOSI counterintelligence sting with Doty being the point man and Bill Moore the main target. (Doty had been grooming him as an asset since Sept. 1980). Plant phony documents with anomalies that eventually discredit them and any information they might contain, true or not. It’s the rotten apple that taints the barrel. (It is unclear to me whether Moore was cleverly set up by Doty or whether Moore might have been a willing participant—I suspect the former, with Doty introducing Moore to the idea of a group called MH-12 through the Aquarius document circa Jan. 1981, and Moore then beginning to run with it. Moore may actually have believed there was such a group by that name.)
Thus very much like your recent example of Dan Rather and CBS News having a phony George Bush National Guard document foisted on them. When that was discredited, the story became Rather and CBS News touting a phony document, rather than whether the charges against Bush had truth to them (and there was a great deal of OTHER evidence pointing to Bush being grounded for drug use and then going AWOL from his next assignment). That’s how such hoaxes can be used to divert attention from the main story and discredit other very solid information.
With MJ-12, the group (even by that name), STILL could have existed (other evidence says so) even with the MJ-12 papers themselves being fake. The whole purpose could have been to discredit the emerging information on Roswell and the RDB group plus any researchers involved. That distinct possibility always seems to get lost in these MJ-12 discussions.
David -
Nothing in your first part actually excludes the information provided by Exon. I could argue that it supports his contention that there was an oversight committee that had been created to deal with the Roswell UFO crash. The only problem is the names that he provided for some of the members of the committee he was talking about. Chief of Staff of the Army Air Forces (and before we get into the weeds here, in July 1947, Eisenhower was the head of the Army which was broken into two pieces, Army Ground Forces and Army Air Forces) and when the Air Force split from the Army, Spaatz was the first Chief of Staff and would certainly been a member. He was the ranking officer in the Army Air Forces, and Exon suggested that he would be a member of any committee that was created to exploit the find at Roswell.
Also missing was Stuart Symington, who was the first civilian to be encountered in the chain of command in 1947 as the Assistant Secretary for War - Air (becoming the first Secretary of the Air Force). He also hinted about other offices that would have been involved... So, again, there is nothing in your first part that disqualifies anything Exon said.
In the second part you note: "[Friedman, "Top Secret/MAJIC"]: "...I interviewed General Arthur E. Exon, commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the mid-1960s. He had heard a lot of scuttlebutt about crashed saucers and aliens while stationed at Wright Field in 1947, as commander of the base in 1964 and 1965, and later while on assignment at the Pentagon. I met with him and we had several telephone conversations. He could find no reason to quarrel with the three primary MJ-12 documents or the list of original members."
This is worthless information because Exon was not an expert on MJ-12, I don't know if Friedman had shown him the documents or merely read them to him, not that it matters. Exon looked at the names of MJ-12, and said he could find no reason to quarrel with the three primary MJ-12 documents. But Exon was unaware of the fatal flaw in the EBD, the signature in the wrong place on the Truman memo and the incorrect dating format... Exon's vague statement does not address these.
MJ-12 was not disinformation but a plan to propel certain individuals into the spotlight or reinforce their place there. There is no documentation that supports MJ-12, no provenance for them, and no one who was supposed to be a member alive to tell us about it. All speculation that should have been rejected long ago.
In response to David Rudiak, who is still desperately trying to square the circle, I would point out, referring to his numbered items:
1. Only ONE such document during the 1950-51 period refers to a "small group" operating under Vannevar Bush. This was Wilbert Smith's Nov 21, 1950 memo, addressed to "The Controller of Telecommunications". It was NOT directed to Omond Solandt. Smith's much later statement about being "loaned" crashed saucer material by some high level supersecret US agency is plain twaddle. As if Smith, a Canadian citizen with absolutely no 'need to know' would be given such privileged information!
2. Why shouldn't Bush and Solandt have perfectly normal talks about a subject (UFOs) they were both interested in? To suggest they both obviously knew some 'dark secret' re UFOs is exaggeration in the extreme. We talk about UFOs on this very blog. Therefore we too must be in on some 'dark secret'. If only!
4. Eric Walker had heard of a group named MJ-12 as far back as 1947? I do not believe a word of it. All he had done was either read, or perhaps had heard of, the MJ-12 documents when they appeared and backdated his 'knowledge' of the group to the date quoted in those documents. What was Walker really doing in 1947 anyway? What position did he hold at that time?
5. According to Brad Sparks, the group outside Blue Book that studied the Lubbock Lights was the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence. Sparks names the chief members
of it: H. Marshall Chadwell, Fred C. Durant and Dr. H.P.Robertson.
Alas DR wants it both ways, as do Don Maor and Timothy Good. They all insist that even though the MJ-12 papers may be fakes, the information contained within them may well be true. Marvellous logic isn't it?
George Adamski once predicted the forthcoming pollution of our atmosphere and even (via his space contacts) predicted the van Allen radiation belts surrounding the earth. These came from his Venusian and Saturnian contacts. You see, Adamski's contactee stories may be phony but some of the information given to him could well be, and apparently was, true.
Hello David & Kevin
Let me, help you both, with a bit of "moderation"...
The MJ-12 documents were created by Bill Moore and Richard Doty.
If Roswell was ET then a group was almost certainly setup (it could have been named just about anything from MJ12 to the All Black starting 15) - unfortunately we have no authentic documents to verify the name of this group - if it indeed ever existed.
We are simply at a loss as to why anyone would believe anything about the fake MJ-12 documents currently in the public domain. Problem after problem has been pointed out with these documents and although it is claimed that each problem has been addressed, they have not.
It is possible that a lot of information obtained within the fake documents is true however, depending on how good a "researcher" Bill Moore really was! However the documents themselves are not genuine.
In conclusion, such a group may have existed - but we have no authentic documents to prove it. Moore's chances of getting the name of the group correct are about as likely as both Kevin and David correctly agreeing on the number of bodies recovered.
So glad to be able to help you both out on this occasion.
Regards
Nitram
Kevin said:
"The SOM1-01 mentions the use of satellites to cover a downed UFO at a time when there were no artificial satellites"
This concern has been put to rest in this article:
http://specialoperationsmanual.com/2015/01/05/downed-satellites-anachronism-as-cover-story-for-crashed-ufos/
I would like to find really fatal flaws in the SOM1-01 but there are not.
CDA said:
"Alas DR wants it both ways, as do Don Maor and Timothy Good. They all insist that even though the MJ-12 papers may be fakes, the information contained within them may well be true. Marvellous logic isn't it?"
You have too much confidence in your own logic CDA.
In logical grounds a fake paper might contain true or false information. I can make a fake copy of my identification card, containing my real name and real data in it, with a photo of me, etc. Yes, it is fake card, but every information in it might would be accurate.
We know Moore loved to retype documents. A theory of mine is that Moore probably retyped a real EBD document, and to make it more interesting he decided to add the El Indio Guerrero event. In his book Top Secret / Majic, Friedman shows that there were previously unkonwn and true facts in the EBD. So yes, fake papers can contain true information. As well as real authentic document might contain false information.
As for the SOM1-01, it is a superb document, has no fatal flaws, was most probably written by many people possibly during a large time period, so we can not blame Moore or Doty for that. We don't even have the evidence or the admision by Moore or Doty that they faked the SOM1-01 (nor the EBD for that matter).
Don wrote:
"You have too much confidence in your own logic CDA.
In logical grounds a fake paper might contain true or false information. I can make a fake copy of my identification card, containing my real name and real data in it, with a photo of me, etc. Yes, it is fake card, but every information in it might would be accurate."
Agree entirely with what you wrote - and I kinda said the same thing in my earlier post.
You are taking a bit of a leap however in saying that "Moore probably retyped a real EBD document"...
Care to explain (offer another theory) how Moore got his hands on such a document?
Regards
Nitram
(1 of 2) Nitram,
The MJ-12 documents were created by Bill Moore and Richard Doty.
That's actually speculation, NOT proven fact. If anything, many people agree that there are so many subtle historical details in the MJ-12 documents that they were most likely created by some intelligence agency who would have most ready access to such details. When the FBI investigated in 1989 (as a possible security breach), they gave up hope of ever discovering who was really behind it.
The following is not speculation, but a chronology of what happened that provides some context:
1978: Canadian researcher Arthur Bray uncovers the first of the Wilbert Smith/Canadian 1950/51 DOT/embassy documents stating such a group existed headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush within the U.S. DOD Research and Development Board. Smith made inquiries in Washington through the Canadian embassy because of the just-published "Behind the Flying Saucers" by Frank Scully about crashed saucers and Keyhoe's "The Flying Saucers Are Real". Main briefer Dr. Robert Sarbacher (a rocketry consultant to the RDB) states that the facts in Scully's book were "substantially correct" (i.e. there were crashed saucers) and the subject was the highest classified in the U.S. government.
1979: Bray starts disclosing this information in his book "The UFO Connection". This is the first time anybody seriously considers anything like a control committee because there is documentation to back it up.
1980: Bill Moore coauthors "The Roswell Incident", reintroducing the idea of crashed saucers to the public.
Sept., 1980: Richard Doty, Albuquerque AFOSI agent, approaches Moore about acting as a disinformation agent and spying on fellow researchers in exchange for later promised high-level genuine UFO information. Moore agrees.
Jan., 1981: Doty first shows Moore the faked "Aquarius" telex, first time the name "MJ Twelve" is used. Thus Doty introduced Moore to the term. Moore did NOT invent it on his own.
1984: Moore (through colleague Shandera) gets the first MJ-12 docs on roll of film.
The point here is that there is a logical progression. First disclosure by Bray about the super-secret RDB UFO control group under Bush, followed by Roswell disclosure by Moore, followed by AFOSI using Doty to groom Moore as an asset, followed by first use of MJ-12 by Doty/AFOSI, followed by Moore getting MJ-12 docs. This is why I strongly suspect counterintelligence sting at work to discredit control group information in Bray documents and Roswell event.
For all we know, the name could have been genuine, with only the various documents using it faked. What better way to discredit the idea of such a group than by creating such documents, later to be dismissed as hoaxes? If a genuine document using that name somehow leaked out, would anybody now believe it? Sometimes the best way to protect information is to hide it in plain sight inside a hoax.
As to the name, when Dr. Eric Walker was asked by William Steinem in 1987 if he knew specifically of "MJ-12", Walker said he had known about them for the last 40 years, or since 1947. A follow-up interview 2 years later had Walker again affirming that MJ-12 existed and still existed (though under another name), but had undergone a big change in composition, now including foreigners. Walker had been the RDB Executive Secretary in 1950 and Sarbacher said Walker would have attended all the RDB crashed saucer meetings at Wright-Patterson that Sarbacher said he had turned down. Walker confirmed with Steinem being at those meetings, but said he would have to consult his notes before commenting further. (Never happened—Walker mostly clammed up after that initial interview.)
(2 0f 2)
In conclusion, such a group may have existed - but we have no authentic documents to prove it.
No, the Wilbert Smith/Canadian embassy documents ARE authentic and DO describe such a group under the direction of Dr. Vannevar Bush within the RDB. However, they don’t provide a name for it, so maybe this is just semantics. Such a group existed, but not by that name.
Moore's chances of getting the name of the group correct are about as likely as both Kevin and David correctly agreeing on the number of bodies recovered.
Except Doty showed Moore the name in the Aquarius document. Moore did not invent it. And later asked about it, Dr. Walker confirmed the name as genuine.
So in the end, whether there was an actual “MJ-12” group by that specific name all comes down to one’s personal theory of what happened and the credibility of various people.
Back check info:
Robert Hastings wrote the following about SOM1-01:
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2015/06/hangar-1-strikes-again-pushing-yet.html
Mr. Hastings claims 50 mistakes.
I personal have some minor issues with the Woods and their connections to MJ-12 and this SOM1-01 documents. They seem to make a lot of money on these documents and now more and more are being called fake or put in question.
Don Maor writes:
"As for the SOM1-01, it is a superb document, has no fatal flaws". Here is one possible 'fatal flaw'. Every page has at the bottom the text "REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM IS FORBIDDEN BY FEDERAL LAW".
Stanton Friedman is a highly intelligent man with a degree in nuclear physics. (The description 'nuclear physicist' appears in every article and on the cover of every UFO book he writes). He had assistance from colleagues who were likewise highly qualified: Dr Robert Wood and Dr Bruce Maccabee.
Does Don seriously believe that people of the calibre of Friedman, Wood and Maccabee would risk being prosecuted (with severe penalities likely to ensue) if they dared to reproduce the said SOM1-01 document in a book, as they did?
Look again Don: It says "Forbidden by Federal Law". Got it? No book publisher or printer would ever dare accept such a 'reproduction' if the said document was genuine, would they?
Maybe Friedman, his gang, together with those at Marlowe & Company were all hoping to serve many years behind bars.
Don -
Have you ever wondered why the base in Nevada is identified as Area 51 in this manual and not by its actual name in use in 1954 or 1955?
And do you really think that even in 1955, if reporters were told the crashed object was an artificial satellite, that wouldn't have generated many more questions and a desire to learn a great deal more? Do you think they would have nodded and said, "Thanks," and walked away. The problem isn't that people were talking about artificial satellites at the time but that no one had actually launched one at the time. Using that as an explanation isn't going to send reporters home, it's going to create a feeding frenzy. It is a bad idea and one that suggests the manual was written much later than 1954.
Oh, and if you wish a fatal flaw, please give me the source of the manual... who sent it to Don Berliner... and why has no one ever found, from a reliable, independent source, another copy of the manual or a reference to it.
Response to Nitram (2 of 2)--Forgot to send second part yesterday:
In conclusion, such a group may have existed - but we have no authentic documents to prove it.
No, the Wilbert Smith/Canadian embassy documents ARE authentic and DO describe such a group under the direction of Dr. Vannevar Bush within the RDB. However, they don’t provide a name for it, so maybe this is just semantics. Such a group existed, but not by that name.
Moore's chances of getting the name of the group correct are about as likely as both Kevin and David correctly agreeing on the number of bodies recovered.
Except Doty showed Moore the name in the Aquarius document. Moore did not invent it. And later asked about it, Dr. Walker confirmed the name as genuine.
So in the end, whether there was an actual “MJ-12” group by that specific name all comes down to one’s personal theory of what happened and personal opinion as to the credibility of various people.
I repeat: What was Dr Eric Walker's position at the time of the examination of the Roswell alien bodies in 1947?
The little about him in Wikipedia describes him as an electrical engineer who later became President of Pennsylvania State University. And does this qualify him to attend highly secret meetings about a UFO crash and about ET bodies? And did he ever possess a top secret clearance anyway?
What on earth was a guy born in the UK doing with such a secret? (I assume he never divulged all his secret knowledge to his students at Penn State!)
My conclusion is that this whole tittle-tattle about Eric Walker belongs in the trash can.
Kevin wrote:
"And do you really think that even in 1955, if reporters were told the crashed object was an artificial satellite, that wouldn't have generated many more questions and a desire to learn a great deal more?"
I don't think reporters can count as very smart guys regarding ufological matters. With a few exceptions, reporters have shown an historical ability to be inept, showing also willingness to be fed with garbage by the government agencies, regarding UFO cases. So that is what you have in the SOM1-01, satellites, who were already in people's minds (and military people's minds) and were proposed as semi-credible garbage to be fed to lay people (not just reporters), among other deceptive and clever ideas proposed in the SOM1-01.
Kevin wrote:
Have you ever wondered why the base in Nevada is identified as Area 51 in this manual and not by its actual name in use in 1954 or 1955?
Area 51 is an approximately rectangular area in the Nevada desert approximately of size 11 x 14 miles. Around 1955, facilities were constructed by CIA near the Groom Lake (inside the rectangular Area 51) for the Lockheed aircraft development. The facilities were known as "The Ranch" or "Site II".
Now, the key point is that SOM1-01 mentions the "Area 51 - S4" facility. Therefore it seems to be that there was another facility in the Area 51 rectangle, named (or located in) S-4 or Site 4. Boy, if there indeed was a Site II, then there should have been a Site 1, and possibly a Site 3 and 4. I tend to believe that S-1, S-2, S-3 and S-4 might have been other small rectangular areas inside the Area 51 big rectangle. According to their website, The Woods believe that the facility "Area 51 S-4" was constructed around 1951, because they have found newspaper articles from a Nevada newspaper informing in 1951 about a massive construction being made in the Nevada desert at that date.
Kevin wrote:
Oh, and if you wish a fatal flaw, please give me the source of the manual... who sent it to Don Berliner... and why has no one ever found, from a reliable, independent source, another copy of the manual or a reference to it.
Kevin, I am really not a psychic, but maybe the label "REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM IS FORBIDDEN BY FEDERAL LAW" may have something to do with making the owner to be so cautious.
(Part 1/3)
As to the whole satellite issue, I admit I too was bothered by the SOM manual mentioning this as a possible cover story for crashed UFOs since no such satellites existed until 1957. HOWEVER, stories of a RUMORED U.S. secret satellite WERE in fact floated TWICE in 1955 in Popular Mechanics magazine in response to the stories that came out in 1954 of two "natural" satellites discovered by astronomers Clyde Tombaugh and Lincoln La Paz. P.M. said the rumor came from multiple unnamed sources.
Thus 2-1/2 years before the first artificial satellite was launched by Russia and a year after the SOM manual mentioning using satellites as cover stories, it seems somebody DID use “satellites” as a cover story, but for the never-explained orbiting satellites reported the year before (i.e. in 1954).
The point is, you don’t need a REAL satellite to use “satellites” as a cover story for UFOs. All you need is a RUMORED one leaked by anonymous sources, maintaining plausible deniability in case the story is taken seriously and the media attempts to uncover more.
Thus the 1954 SOM manual satellite cover story turns out NOT to be anachronistic since such a story WAS being used BEFORE there were real satellites, and thus certainly is NOT a “fatal flaw” in the SOM, as suggested by some in this thread.
I have summarized some of this complicated story here:
www.roswellproof.com/ramey_and_ufos.html#anchor_3625
Basic progression of the story providing context:
Aug. 6, 1952 (right after highly-publicized UFOs over Washington): Alan Hynek sends a letter to Blue Book summarizing his survey of fellow astronomers on UFO sightings. About 10% report having sightings, including La Paz and Tombaugh (discoverer of Pluto), who offers to put his telescopes at the military's disposal to search for UFOs.
1953: According to Donald Keyhoe in “The Flying Saucer Conspiracy” (Chapt. 2), in Sept. 1953 a Pentagon officer carelessly told him that new long range radar in early summer picked up two large orbiting satellites in unpredictable orbits (thus could not be natural), prompting an optical search for these satellites by Tombaugh commissioned by the Army.
Feb. 15, 1954: Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen writes: "Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of world military heads next summer." (thus a possible connection to the MJ-12 Cutler-Twining memo of Aug. 14)
Feb. 1954: In a paper in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, La Paz first mentions the search for “natural satellites” sponsored by the US Army Office of Ordance Research (OOR).
March 3, 1954: More detailed public announcement that Tombaugh and La Paz were engaged in a search for “natural” orbiting satellites financed by the Army, allegedly the purpose being to use any such satellites as natural space stations (the cover story—note change of story by Tombaugh in December).
April, 1954: Date of the SOM manual listing cover stories of “meteors, downed satellites, weather balloons, and military aircraft” as “acceptable alternatives” to the truth of a crashed UFO.
April/May 1954: Mrs. Frances Swann story, about meeting an alien named AFFA, soon after going into trances and doing automatic writing with communications from AFFA, AFFA telling her he was in charge of one of two satellites orbiting Earth, Swann contacting neighbor/friend Rear Adm. Herbert Knowles, who writes the head of Naval Intelligence and Pres. Eisenhower about Swann and her story. Naval intelligence known to continue to take story seriously for years afterward. See my recent summary on Kevin’s blog: http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/05/howard-mccoy-and-roswell.html
(part 2/3)
May 6, 7, and 13, 1954: Keyhoe would later write that on these dates, large objects had descended on Washington D.C., had been picked up on radar, and were thought to have been in orbit. (Keyhoe said the story was briefly printed in the Washington Post and reporters questioned the Pentagon about it.)
May 13, 1954: Keyhoe goes on radio commentator Frank Edward's program stating that Earth was being circled by one or two artificial satellites and this information was being withheld from the public. Keyhoe added that U.S. Government scientists at White Sands, N.M. (i.e. La Paz and Tombaugh), were making an intensive effort to locate and chart the course of the satellites in an attempt to determine what they were and where they came from.
May 15, 1954: Questioned about UFOs at a press conference, AF C/S Gen. Nathan Twining says 10% of reports were highly credible, they were taken seriously, and the AF had their best minds investigating. If they were an ET civilization, he doubted we had anything to fear from them.
July 14, 1954: Date of the Cutler/Twining carbon-copy memo found by Moore/Shandera in National Archives mentioning MJ-12/NSC meeting at the White House July 16. (If a fake, in sure fits nicely into this chronology with all the stories of orbiting satellites. If that story was true, there would have been enormous concern at the highest levels of government and certainly would have prompted such a meeting.)
Aug. 23, 1954: Aviation Week magazine breaks story that two satellites had been found by La Paz only 400 and 600 miles out, termed "natural satellites", implying that they had been recently captured. The reported satellites had created a Pentagon scare until IDed as “natural”, because the Pentagon feared the Russians had beaten them into space (another lame cover story IMHO). The next day, La Paz issued a denial that he was in any way involved but not that satellites had been found. However, I suggest you read the follow-up NY Times story about their interview with the head of Army OOR, suggesting that the story might indeed be true: www.roswellproof.com/Satellites_NYTIMES_1954.html Admits if anything found, it might well be classified because of “military security”. Claims no connection between search and flying saucers.
Oct. 10, 1954: Follow-up NY Times article interviewing La Paz, again denying being involved in the search and now denies that anything has been found. Says the search for “natural satellites” was no secret.
Dec. 1, 1954: Wall Street Journal article about Tombaugh announcing search for natural satellites by the “government” at the annual convention of the American Rocketry Society in New York. Tombaugh said “security restrictions” prevented him from disclosing whether any such satellites had been found. The primary purpose “of the Government project in which he was assisting” was supposedly for devising a technique for observing the flight of satellites far above the earth. [Note, the original stated purpose of searching for natural satellites as space stations has disappeared.]
(part 3/3)
May 1955: Popular Mechanics magazine publishes first article suggesting the U.S. has secretly launched a satellite: “Has the United States launched the first artificial satellite? Persistently, that report has reached Popular Mechanics from various independent sources. As yet, it lacks any official confirmation, but the recurrence of the report is significant. The story goes that the event took place months ago... The manmade object is said to be some 800 miles out in space... If the rumor cannot be vouched for as true, neither can it be rejected as preposterous...”
May 25, 1955: Conservative columnist Stewart Alsop writes, "...the possibility that the Soviets will launch a satellite is taken so seriously that a satellite-detection program has been established at White Sands, N.M. and Mt. Wilson, Calif. A tremendous flap was caused not along ago in the Pentagon when the project identified not, one but two satellites. It turned out that both were natural satellites, never before detected." Note that Alsop repeats Keyhoe’s allegation a year earlier that the Pentagon was enormously concerned. This column on the Pentagon's lack of urgency about a satellite program was one of a number of columns by Stewart and brother Joseph Alsop critical of the Eisenhower administration's defense posture. At a NSC meeting the next day, NSC head Robert Cutler was reported so livid with the column that he ordered two members of the NSC, close personal friends of Joseph Alsop, to cut all contact with him. In follow-up columns, the Alsop’s complained bitterly about Cutler’s pettiness, vindictiveness, and efforts to censor the press. NSC minutes from May 26 have first item, “NSC 5520 (Implications of the Soviet Earth Satellite for U.S. Security).” Item two was “Unauthorized disclosure of CLASSIFIED NSC information (NSC Action No. 969)”, both apparently referencing the Alsop column the previous day.
Oct. 1955: Popular Mechanics repeats story, titled “He [Tombaugh] Spies on Satellites”. Starts discussing telescopes/cameras at Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, called “Headquarters, Outer Space Patrol”, being used searching for satellites and was: “already maintaining a surveillance of the space that surrounds the earth, all the way out to the moon. From here, presumably, regular observations are being made of the earth’s first artificial satellite that is rumored to have been launched into space a year ago. Exclusively reported in the May 1955 issue of Popular Mechanics, the existence of this manmade moon has not yet been officially confirmed. But unofficially it is understood that our first artificial satellite is still sweeping around the earth...” Later: "Professor Tombaugh is closemouthed about his results. He won't say whether or not any small natural satellites have been discovered. He does say, however, that newspaper reports of 18 months ago announcing the discovery of natural satellites at 400 and 600 miles out are not correct. He adds that there is no connection between the search program and the reports of so-called flying saucers."
Craig McDaniel wrote:
"Robert Hastings wrote the following about SOM1-01:
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2015/06/hangar-1-strikes-again-pushing-yet.html
Mr. Hastings claims 50 mistakes."
Hello Craig,
Hastings cites a number of irrelevant "errors" mentioned by Jan Aldrich. A seemingly important fatal flaw is proposed: it is a claim that the Helvetica sans serif font is present in the document, mentioning that the Helvetica sans serif font was created in 1957 and the document was purportedly created in 1954. However, I could not find the original source, research, analysis or researcher supporting this claim. So I am considering it BS(bullshit).
Kevin wrote:
"And do you really think that even in 1955, if reporters were told the crashed object was an artificial satellite, that wouldn't have generated many more questions and a desire to learn a great deal more?"
Please see my most recent posts. A story about a rumored secret U.S. satellite placed into orbit 800 miles up WAS in fact put out by Popular Mechanics twice in their May 1955 and October 1955 magazines. The first PM story was a year after the SOM manual was supposedly first published suggesting satellites as one of several possible cover stories for crashed UFOs (along with meteors, weather balloons, and military aircraft), and 2-1/2 years before the first real satellite by Russia.
The Oct. 1955 article detailed the search for satellites by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. The rumored U.S. satellite was supposed to explain the story the year before, first put out by Keyhoe of artificial, maneuvering satellites found on radar in 1953 that triggered an optical search for them by Tombaugh and Lincoln La Paz for the Army, who indeed had found them. This was soon followed by the mainstream press in August 1954 reporting that two "natural" satellites had indeed been discovered 400 and 600 miles up after the search (followed by denials).
At the same time as the May 1955 PM story, columnist Joseph Alsop on May 25 repeated the previous year's story that two satellites had indeed been found, causing a Pentagon "flap" supposedly fearing they were Russian, until they were supposedly IDed as being "natural". Apparently the story was leaked by two NSC members who were friends of Alsop, because the next day NSC director Robert Cutler had them cut off all contact with Alsop, sparking further columns from the Alsop brothers about what had happened and the Administration's censorship of the press. NSC minutes from May 26 mention the "Unauthorized disclosure of classified NSC information" right after discussions about the national security implications of Russian satellites.
By keeping the "satellites" either "rumored" by unnamed sources or "natural" (then issuing denials anything had been found), you get around the problem of no U.S. (or Russian) artificial satellites actually existing at the time or any connections to UFOs. That leaves any press who might want to ask more questions very little to work with. So far, I can find no follow-up on the rumored U.S. satellite in the PM articles.
CDA wrote: (1 of 2)
1. Only ONE such document during the 1950-51 period refers to a "small group" operating under Vannevar Bush.
True, but followup Wilbert Smith/Canadian embassy docs mention an article being written by Donald Keyhoe on Smith's saucer propulsion theories requiringclearance from Bush, the U.S. Research and Development Board and the Canadian counterparts to Bush and the RDB, the Defence Research Board headed by Dr. Omand Solandt.
This was Wilbert Smith's Nov 21, 1950 memo, addressed to "The Controller of Telecommunications". It was NOT directed to Omond Solandt.
CDA is correct here (my error in rush to post), but also leaves out that the same memo has 1) Smith saying that the DRB liason officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington was anxious that Smith contact Solandt, and 2) Smith had "Discussed this matter fully with Dr. Solandt... on November 20th and placed before him as much information as I have been able to gather to date..."
Thus Smith wrote that he had discussed everything with Solandt only the DAY BEFORE he wrote the DOT memo, the one saying he found out from his embassy inquiries in Washington that flying saucers were real, they were the most highly classified matter in the U.S. government, and that a small group under Bush were looking into the "modus operandi" of the saucers, thus back-engineering.
I can only presume Smith conveyed the SAME information to Solandt, thus my point that this proves Solandt would have been informed about Bush's "small group", what 30+ years later he denied.
2. Smith's much later statement about being "loaned" crashed saucer material by some high level supersecret US agency is plain twaddle.
The usual CDA statement that he doesn't believe it, therefore it can't be true. But it doesn't take much reading between the lines that Smith was very likely referring to Bush's RDB group.
(Taped interview by C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch, Nov, 1961): “Q: You say that you had to return it [loaned debris suspected of UFO origin] -- did you return it to the Air Force? SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that. Q: The Central Intelligence Agency? SMITH: I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem -- their identity -- for yourselves.”
As if Smith, a Canadian citizen with absolutely no 'need to know' would be given such privileged information!
You can get “need to know” clearance if you can be of use. If U.S. authorities deemed Smith's theories on saucer propulsion could be useful, he might be given clearance. (This is the usual debunker argument that no foreign national would be told anything about any top secret U.S. project, ignoring well- known counterexamples, such as the Manhattan Project, with numerous foreign nationals being involved. First radiation fatality at Los Alamos was Canadian physicist Louis Slotin.)
3. Why shouldn't Bush and Solandt have perfectly normal talks about a subject (UFOs) they were both interested in? To suggest they both obviously knew some 'dark secret' re UFOs is exaggeration in the extreme. We talk about UFOs on this very blog...
I don't believe anybody here headed their government's scientific establishment, as did Bush and Solandt. If they held regular meetings, as Solandt later admitted, it wasn't out of hobbyist enthusiasm. It was business.
4. Eric Walker had heard of a group named MJ-12 as far back as 1947? I do not believe a word of it. All he had done was either read, or perhaps had heard of, the MJ-12 documents when they appeared and backdated his 'knowledge' of the group to the date quoted in those documents.
Again he can’t believe it, therefore it couldn’t be true. Usual argument of a witness NECESSARILY being contaminated when they say something inconvenient to his personal belief system.
(2 of 2)
What was Walker really doing in 1947 anyway? What position did he hold at that time?
Actually a very fair CDA question for a change. According to profile in 1959 “Current Biography”, in 1942 Walker was at Harvard in the Underwater Sound Laboratory (sonar and acoustic detection of submarines). Promoted to assistant director, he was put in charge of development of ordnance weapons, including the homing torpedo (basically underwater missiles). In 1944 Walker worked in Vannevar Bush’s OSRD, probably in his specialties of sonar/acoustics and torpedos. In 1945, Walker joined Penn State as a professor and head of the dept. of electrical engineering. (Walker became President of Penn State in 1956, replacing Pres. Eisenhower’s brother Milton). There he joined with the Dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture to establish the “Ordnance Research Lab” “engaged in the development of new weapons for the Navy.”
From 1949 to 1950 he was a consultant to the National Research Council. From 1950 to 1951 he became Executive Secretary of the Research and Development Board. This is when Dr. Robert Sarbacher, a RDB consultant in missiles and electronics (also Walker’s specialties), said he knew Walker attended meetings at Wright-Patterson on crashed saucers and should know everything. Walker initially confirmed this when first contacted by William Steinem in 1987, though gave no details. Then he mostly clammed up.
When he returned to Penn State in 1951, he became Dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture. From 1951-53 he was on the National Science Foundations advisory committee on engineering. He was also a member of the Naval Research Advisory Commitee and the U.S. Army’s Scientific Advisory Board.
I can’t specifically place him with the RDB in 1947 when MJ-12 was allegedly created. So point taken. However, as Exec. Secretary of the RDB 1950-51 and if Walker did attend those crashed saucer meetings, as he said he did, he necessarily would have known all about Bush’s secret RDB UFO group, if not before, then from 1950 on, including their history.
5. According to Brad Sparks, the group outside Blue Book that studied the Lubbock Lights was the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence. Sparks names the chief members of it: H. Marshall Chadwell, Fred C. Durant and Dr. H.P.Robertson.
But also according to Brad Sparks, the CIA’s OS/I office became the primary investigative group for the RDB starting in January 1949. So again, the RDB UFO group under Bush could have easily tasked OS/I to do some of the field investigation of the Lubbock Lights on their behalf, along with members of RDB’s rocketry and atomic energy subcommittees. (Knowing of Spark’s research, this is why I wrote BOTH the RDB and CIA’s OS/I would likely have been involved, but Ruppelt’s description of this high-level unnamed investigative group sounded exactly like the composition of an MJ-12-type group.)
This was the way Bush always operated as a chief scientific administrator, such as directors of OSRD during WWII and the JRDB and RDB post-war, providing executive direction and assigning R&D tasks for others to carry out without getting his own hands dirty, much like the CEO of a corporation operates.
Chadwell, Durant, and Robertson come up again in regards to future CIA UFO investigations, with Robertson chairing the CIA debunking committee in Jan. 1953 named for him with Durant as a secretary, and Durant and Chadwell helping to set it up. A Chadwell memo to the NSC from Dec. 2, 1952 further implicates the RDB, stating: “This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate.”
As an exercise I looked up the 4 telephone interviews involving Dr Eric Walker on Grant Cameron's website. The transcripts are all there: 3 are from calls between Walker and Dr Henry Azadehdel and one between Walker and William Steinman. I invite anyone interested to read these transcripts. They are about the most useless and uninformative phone transcripts imaginable.
Far from confirming that Walker ever looked in on any MJ-12 committee meetings he merely skirts around the topic, evades any coherent answers and at one point even denies that such a committee existed. He also contradicts himself at times. He considers the whole matter (of ETs and crashed UFOs) to be of very minor importance!
How he got involved in this rigmarole (for that is all it amounts to) we cannot say, but how anyone can use these Walker transcripts as evidence for the existence of MJ-12 (or any other such group) back in 1947 is beyond me.
It seems Walker's name was supplied by Sarbacher to Steinman, and things followed from this. And yes, Walker did know, or know of, Vannevar Bush in the late 40s and early 50s. Big deal.
Anyway, I repeat what I said before: The idea that Dr Eric Walker has, or had, anything useful to contribute to the MJ-12 debate, is fatuous in the extreme, and can be safely ignored.
However, at one point he said he had written a book. Does anyone know the title and what it contains? Any pictures of ETs, maybe (real ones for a change)?
I wrote:
At the same time as the May 1955 PM story, columnist Joseph Alsop on May 25 repeated the previous year's story that two satellites had indeed been found, causing a Pentagon "flap" supposedly fearing they were Russian, until they were supposedly IDed as being "natural". Apparently the story was leaked by two NSC members who were friends of Alsop,
CORRECTIONS:
It was Stewart Alsop, not brother Joseph who wrote the column. They often authored columns together. Hard to keep Tweedledum separate from Tweedledee.
Also the 2 friends of Stewart Alsop who leaked him information were not on the NSC per se. Their boss was, of some agency that Alsop wouldn't name, possibly the CIA. Alsop wrote in a later column they were forbidden to socialize with him in the future. Alsop complained the administration's censorship of the press was counterproductive.
NSC minutes the day after the column DID record that there had been an unauthorized release of classified information. I think it was again Keyhoe who mentioned the Alsop column and that it made NSC head/Eisenhower National Security Advisor Robert Cutler furious.
According to the NASA website chronicling the development of the U.S. satellite program, "...on 26 May the Security Council endorsed a satellite program, the recommendation carried two conditions: the peaceful purposes of the undertaking must be stressed, and it must not interrupt work on intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles." So maybe Alsop's column about the lackadaisical U.S. satellite program stung a little bit and moved the NSC into action promoting it.
David -
No one was saying that there was no discussion about artificial satellites in the early 1950s, but nothing you have presented actually addresses the problem with using that as an excuse for some sort of crash. Prior to 1957, if you suggested that this was the recovery of a downed artificial satellite, you have opened the door to all sorts of questions that couldn't be answered. At the time the manual was written, there were no artificial satellites in orbit and when we get to 1957, those satellites are extremely small. Put yourself into 1954 and ask yourself if this is a plausible cover story, or does it simply create a greater mystery. And if you have created a greater mystery, do you believe the reporters would have let go without some sort of better explanation. Using an artificial satellite as the excuse would expose the real answer at some point.
Don -
You reject the idea of Helvetica sans serif because you could find no source for the idea it was created in 1957. Did you look at Wikipedia, which states, clearly, that it was created in 1957? Do you reject that as a source? If so, why?
Do you find it ironic that you reject the idea of Helvetica sans serif because you can find no provenance for the claim but you accept the SOM 1-01 manual for which you have no provenance? I mean, both are a matter of provenance, though we do have that with the Wikipedia entry for which you have provided no reason to reject.
Do you find it ironic to argue that you claim "the label 'REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM IS FORBIDDEN BY FEDERAL LAW' may have something to do with making the owner to be so cautious," but that is exactly what he did, that is, reproduce it. When we deal with leaks from the government, even those of high classified information, there is a provenance, except here, with MJ-12. You have nothing but a copy of a document that can't be verified in the way that questioned documents are vetted. You can argue until you are blue int he face and your head explodes, but you have nothing other than opinion, some of which is not very informed.
Oh, yes, no one is saying there were no plans to build the base at Groomlake, and in fact, during WW II, there were a couple of runways there, and the area was used as a bombing and gunnery range. The question is, "Why, in 1954, did they not use the real name of the base rather than a name that seems to have been created in the 1960s?" I can find no reference to Area 51 in the 1950s. I can, however, find the real name of the base, though the facilities were somewhat primitive in the early 1950s.
Don,
Mr. Hastings, who has a history of quality research, gave 50 points about SOM1-01. You questioned several which Kevin gave a very convince argument that I believe is correct. You still have 47 additional points of Mr. Hastings to discuss. Maybe Kevin will take the time to further discuss any of your concerns.
Last on SOM1-01. I am not convinced this was real for other reasons. First, just one only photo copy? Common sense suggest that military NEVER issue just one booklet on something like UFO retrieval operations. I would believe that because the US is three thousand miles wide, there would have been multiple teams. Example like the Navy SEALS in San Diego and Virginia.
The important point here is time would have been critical if a UFO did go down. No one in the government or military would want a team of press people with cameras and people picking up wreckage.
In reading Dave Rudiak's comment about the NCS, clearly there were a series of improvements, changes in security methods in dealing with the press. Deception and misinformation was clearly a part of this. However, I don't recall anything in SOM1-01 in dealing with creating an immediate cover or cover-up story. After any down craft's location was found, the craft was retrieved, then a cover story would have been a very important part of SOM1-01 I would think.
Second, with nearly every part of the government or military, nothing is done perfect the first time. Simply go back 4,000 years and the Egyptians. They made 4 ore more different types of pyramids before the final three at Giza. The point is that if there was a crash retrieval booklet, there would have likely been several previous versions by the mid 1950's.
Kevin and Don:
Is not one over-riding reason why the SOM1-01 instruction manual is a fake the fact that there is no provision for the action to be taken should a UFO crash take place in a foreign country. Suppose that a crash occurred in India, China or Russia, for example. Are we to believe that a genuine 'instruction manual' would omit this very real possibility?
So, Don: Please fill in this omission and tell us what would the recovery team do in such an event? I am particularly interested in how the US agencies and military would be able to follow the procedures in paragraphs 12 and 13, were the crash to take place in a hostile country such as China or Russia. (i.e. hostile in 1954)
I'd love to see Mao or Stalin's reactions!
Kevin wrote: (part 1 of 2)
No one was saying that there was no discussion about artificial satellites in the early 1950s, but nothing you have presented actually addresses the problem with using that as an excuse for some sort of crash. Prior to 1957, if you suggested that this was the recovery of a downed artificial satellite, you have opened the door to all sorts of questions that couldn't be answered. At the time the manual was written, there were no artificial satellites in orbit and when we get to 1957, those satellites are extremely small. Put yourself into 1954 and ask yourself if this is a plausible cover story, or does it simply create a greater mystery. And if you have created a greater mystery, do you believe the reporters would have let go without some sort of better explanation. Using an artificial satellite as the excuse would expose the real answer at some point.
However, the fact remains that a nonexistent artificial U.S. satellite story WAS being put out by Popular Mechanics magazine in 1955 in response to the orbiting satellite stories printed in the press the year before, which were then called "natural" and recently acquired. Of course, denials then followed that anything had been found.
WELL BEFORE the Tombaugh/La Paz search for so-called "natural satellites" was publicly announced, Keyhoe said he was already aware that military radar had picked up two such objects in irregular orbits, thus were artificial. This is what prompted the Tombaugh/La Paz optical search paid for by the Army Office of Ordnance Research, though the public was never told this. Keyhoe only learned because some Pentagon officer he knew improperly told him about it.
Thus the "natural satellite" story for the search and eventual announcement that two such "natural satellites" had been found, appears to be a cover story for the artificial orbiting objects initially picked up on radar, or UFOs. Tombaugh was already a "believer" because of his own multiple UFO sightings, and Hynek documented that in 1952 Tombaugh offered the military use of his telescopes to hunt for UFOs. A year later he was obviously searching for them with his telescopes, paid for by the Army.
This was followed yet another year later by the equally bogus Popular Mechanics stories of a rumored U.S. secret orbiting satellite, i.e. classified, citing multiple unnamed sources. To me this sounds like a second cover story for the reported orbiting satellites the year before. Tombaugh then admitted at the end of 1955 that if he ever found anything with his search, security regulations would prevent him from announcing anything.
Admittedly, using "satellite" as an actual crash object instead of a remote orbiting one becomes more problematical, and what cover story gets chosen depends on location and control of the scene. (Remember, the SOM suggests four possibilities, and I'm sure even more could be dreamed up depending on the circumstances.)
In a very isolated area, you could still use a story that a classified, unannounced U.S. artificial satellite had crashed (like the P.M. orbiting U.S. satellite story). We can't tell you any more, because, well, it's classified, and we don't want to disclose anything more to the Russians. This also circumvents any size discrepancies between an actual crash object and early satellites because you don't need to report anything. If you did, you can lie, and what would the average person back in the early 1950s know about artificial satellite size in any case?
(continued next post)
(part 2 of 2)
In a less controlled situation, you could say it was one of those "natural satellites" mentioned in the press recently, or basically a meteor, another of the SOM-suggested cover stories. You could add that the military was keeping it and studying it because it might assist them in future artificial satellite tracking and recovery. This would be BS, but again, what would the average person know?
We know of instances 1947-1949 where La Paz was involved with the Army in tracking down bright fireballs as potential crashed saucers. As I wrote on your blog in 2010:
The first of these I know about was the large fireball seen in the Four Corners area near Shiprock, N.M. in Nov. 1948. La Paz, assisted by his student Boyd Wettlaufer and the CIC were looking for it. Allan Grant of LIFE Magazine was flown in to cover it. (However, Grant later insisted this was a distinctly different incident from Roswell, which he was also flown in for.) Wettlaufer would later talk about LaPaz discussing with him the extraterrestrial probe origins of the Roswell object.
The second instance was the famous Kansas/Nebraska fireball of Feb. 1948. Again the CIC assisted La Paz, until La Paz figured out it really WAS a meteor fireball, at which point the CIC wasn't interested anymore. But what were they interested in initially? La Paz eventually recovered a ton of valuable meteorite fragments that August...
And then, starting in Dec. 1948, La Paz was hired by the military to go chasing after the mysterious green fireballs. The most notable of these early incidents was the great green fireball of Jan. 30, 1949, in which CIC, AFOSI, and the FBI assisted La Paz in interviewing hundreds of eyewitnesses from northern N.M. and west Texas. It is also notable that there is a CIC document stating they were looking for a possible crashed saucer. As far as we know, they never found the remains of a green fireball, but they were definitely looking. La Paz was also on record saying the green fireballs were almost definitely artificial objects.
I might add that La Paz also publicly said the green fireballs might be Russian probes. Call them anything. Say they're Russian, or secret U.S. satellites, or "natural" ones, or meteor fireballs. Just don't call them flying saucers. (E.g., Tombaugh and the sponsoring Army OOR made sure to deny the "natural satellite" search had anything to do with flying saucers.)
David,
Thanks for the informative information about the downed "natural satellites" stories. Have you ever tried to match up the dates of the so-called stories with the dates of possible suspected down UFO crafts?
I guess we could say Roswell was the first government "balloon" instead of satellite story with downed UFO. What would be next?
Craig McDaniel:
"However, I don't recall anything in SOM1-01 in dealing with creating an immediate cover or cover-up story."
Four were suggested: Meteor, satellite, weather balloon, or military aircraft. What cover story would get chosen would obviously depend on circumstances, with details filled as the situation demanded.
Possible UFO crashes:
1947 Roswell: initially called a "flying disc", quickly changed to weather balloon. 1949- Green fireballs: either unusual meteor fireballs or Russian probes. April 18, 1962 fireball explosion Utah/Nevada: Meteor fireball + U-2 spy plane. 1965 Kecksburg: First meteor being searched for, then allegedly nothing found. 1967 Shag Harbour: Internally actually labeled a "UFO" by Canadian documents (but not publicly revealed); allegedly nothing found; story also put out in Canadian press it was a secret U.S. craft.
Actual secret aircraft crashes:
1960 CIA U-2 crash Russia: errant NASA U-2 high-altitude "weather" plane. 1963 CIA A-12 spy plane prototype crash out of Area 51: A conventional F-105 crash out of Nellis AFB, Las Vegas; locals told plane carried a nuke to keep them away. (The cover F-105 crash STILL remains the official story on the books.) July 11, 1986 F-117A stealth crash near Bakersfield: public not told anything about what crashed, just stay away, or else. Area heavily cordoned off and carefully cleansed of crash debris, then remains of F-101A Voodoo were scattered over area to confuse curiosity seekers after military departed area.
Cover stories like these have been used for conventional secret aircraft crashes like the U-2, A-12, or F-117, or recovered space debris of our or Russian origin, but can equally well be extended to unconventional aircraft not of our making, or UFOs. The secret program Project Moon Dust for recovery of space debris (ours, or you know, the other guys) dealt with the latter two situations.
I have other issues with the SOM. E.g., stylistically the language doesn't sound military or bureaucratic enough to my "ear." It is a bit TOO informal and clearly written. But that alone doesn't prove anything.
It also occurs to me that "satellites" might be included in a document like the 1954 SOM as a cover story for a crashed UFO in anticipation of FUTURE U.S. satellites, then projected to be launched in 1958. Use something else until then, then role in "satellites" cover story once real satellites were being sent up. If reporters ask which satellite, tell them secret military one, classified, no further comment.
There may be actual "fatal flaws" in the SOM document, but I don't consider use of "satellite" cover stories to be one of them.
Kevin wrote:
"You reject the idea of Helvetica sans serif because you could find no source for the idea it was created in 1957. Did you look at Wikipedia, which states, clearly, that it was created in 1957? Do you reject that as a source? If so, why?"
No Kevin, I did not reject that, I easily saw the same just by one click in Wikipedia. I rejected the primary claim, i.e. that the font in the SOM1-01 was helvetica sans serif. The argument tries to establish the difference between two very similar fonts, claiming that some very subtle details seem to point that the font is 1957's Helvetica. My request is knowing who is the researcher claiming that, what is his name, what are the details and the images and comparissons he made, etc. We have nothing on that, no name of researcher who reached such conclusion, no analysis, nothing. It is garbage, it is not even in wikipedia anymore. It was probably made by a clownish debunker.
Kevin wrote:
Do you find it ironic to argue that you claim "the label 'REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM IS FORBIDDEN BY FEDERAL LAW' may have something to do with making the owner to be so cautious," but that is exactly what he did, that is, reproduce it
Sorry Kevin, I am not a psychic nor a psychologist. I do not know why the owner made just one copy and never another one or did not send the original. Many people do things one time and then go on to to other things. Maybe he thought that he should have done it, regreted and decided to shut-up for ever. People have parents, kids, jobs. He maybe had the courage to reproduce it just one time, as a favor because he liked Don Berliner's persona, but was not thinking to keep making such favors for ever. Heck Kevin, I don't know that, sorry but I am not a psychic.
Kevin asked:
"The question is, "Why, in 1954, did they not use the real name of the base rather than a name that seems to have been created in the 1960s?" I can find no reference to Area 51 in the 1950s."
What is was the real name Kevin? There were various. Acording to wikipedia: "Groom lake test site" "Paradise Ranch", "The Ranch", "Site II".
The AEC used a numeric designation of areas starting from year 1950, for a grid of rectangles ranging from Area 1 to Area 30; all of them included inside the Nevada Test Site zone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site
So the designation of the Area 51, which is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site, might have been used just a little later than year 1950. We don't know when this rectangular land started to be designated as Area 51, but it was at LEAST in year 1955, according to this link:
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/docs/U2%20-%20Chapter%202.pdf
Therefore the designation "Area 51" for the rectangular land might have started in any moment between 1950 and 1955. We know that CIA's facility "The Ranch", inside Area 51, was established in April 1955 in order to develop the Lockheed's U-2. And, acording to the book Shadow Flights by Curtis Peebles (2000), "The Ranch" was also called "Site II".
The SOM1-01 mentions the place to send technological remains of flying saucers as "Area 51 - S4", which means a facility named S4 or probably Site 4, whithin the "Area 51" rectangle. Probably a different place than Site II.
We have to keep in mind that the history of the Area 51 is extremely secret, and most probably the origins of the facilities inside Area 51 are still classified.
CDA asked:
So, Don: Please fill in this omission and tell us what would the recovery team do in such an event? I am particularly interested in how the US agencies and military would be able to follow the procedures in paragraphs 12 and 13, were the crash to take place in a hostile country such as China or Russia. (i.e. hostile in 1954)
The SOM1-01, for your surprise, CLEARLY mentions this concern, in Section 5, page 3:
"The greatest threat at this time arises from the acquisition and study of such advanced technology by foreign powers unfriendly to the United States. It is for this reason that the recovery and study of this type of material by the United States has been given such a high priority."
Or even worst for CDA, in Section 3, letter (e)
e. Establishment and administration of covert operations to be carried out in concert with Central Intelligence to effect the recovery for the United States of extraterrestrial technology and entities which may come down inside the territory of or fall into the possession of foreign powers.
So, CDA, when you will come to admit the SOM1-01 is the real thing? Never I guess.
Craig wrote:
"However, I don't recall anything in SOM1-01 in dealing with creating an immediate cover or cover-up story. After any down craft's location was found, the craft was retrieved, then a cover story would have been a very important part of SOM1-01 I would think."
Craig, you are both right and wrong. You are Right in the sense that there should be inside the SOM1-01 a section dedicated to cover-up stories for UFO retrievals, but you are wrong when you believe that the SOM1-01 does not have such section, because it HAS such sections, and they, I think, are the most important parts of the manual (see the SOM1-01 in sections 12 and 13 in Chapter 3, page 8).
Your other concerns seem to be either irrelevant or based on your own speculation.
The paragraphs Don quotes about the US recovery teams' ability to retrieve & recover UFOs and 'bodies' that have crashed in enemy foreign countries tell us absolutely zilch about EXACTLY HOW they are to carry out such a task. Sure, "the recovery and study by the US has been given high priority" sounds great, and the "Establishment and administration of covert operations" is another piece of marvellous English prose, i.e. both are simply C--P.
The truth is that the forger of this document (SOM1-01) hadn't a clue what to write, so he invented a vague, meaningless paragraph (or two paragrapns) containing pure high-sounding waffle. There is nothing in this waffle about the real actions to be taken, nothing at all.
And I'd love to see the US recovery teams travel to Siberia or China in the 1950s and dare to try and recover ET material that had fallen on enemy ground. By the time they got there (assuming they were ever allowed to) the dreaded secret would be out and the whole mission rendered useless. Of course in those days it may be that the US military thought themselves so powerful that the recovery of a crashed ET craft in another country would be a piece of cake.
Think of the U-2 affair if you want a comparison.
Admit it, Don. That SOM1-01 'instruction manual' can be summed up in one four letter word, C--P.
Fill in the missing letters yourself!
DR wrote:
"Wettlaufer would later talk about LaPaz discussing with him the extraterrestrial probe origins of the Roswell object."
Which 'Roswell object'?
La Paz was referring to the great green fireball of Jan 30, 1949 which was seen by many in and around Roswell. He was not talking about the July 1947 affair.
Rickett was certainly involved in the Jan '49 case, and is mentioned in a report on it (written by La Paz) which I have.
La Paz certainly had a very open mind on UFOs, fireballs and possible ETs, but there is no way of knowing for certain which 'Roswell incident' he was talking about here. The evidence points to the fireball case. Can you prove otherwise, or that he was ever involved in the July 1947 affair? You are probably relying too much on the distant memories of Wettlaufer.
CDA spoke with certainity:
"The truth is that the forger of this document (SOM1-01) hadn't a clue what to write, so he invented a vague, meaningless paragraph (or two paragrapns) containing pure high-sounding waffle. There is nothing in this waffle about the real actions to be taken, nothing at all."
Mentioned paragraphs are not meaningless, they clearly seem to be serious concerns and seeds for future trials.
But CDA wants specific actions to be taken by USA militaries in another countries to retrieve UFOs? Sorry CDA, but that is a difficult topic and probably those guys in 1954 did not know at that time how to exactly do that. Probably there WAS NOT ((and there is not today) a single or simple procedure to enter into a foreign territory to retrieve a crashed UFO, and even today USA cannot enter any country they want. Moreover, those were the first years of cold war so probably USA was not so confident about sniffing with their nose in every place they wanted to. They were just learning at that time how to interfere with another countries and make spy ops, etc, so much that in 1962 they did an incredibly stupid thing such as the Bahia Pigs invasion(!) in Cuba. Of course, CDA has a cristall ball and knows what must be included in an instruction manual and what not. Pfffff.
David Rudiak wrote:
"I have other issues with the SOM. E.g., stylistically the language doesn't sound military or bureaucratic enough to my "ear." It is a bit TOO informal and clearly written. But that alone doesn't prove anything."
David, first thanks for your chronological account of the satellite development in the news around 1954. I always enjoy your informative posts.
I see the SOM as a manual of important ideas and guidelines, prepared by very high ranking officers and government leaders/top scientists, to be used by other high ranking officers in charge of operations for recovery of crashed UFOs. In this regard, the important messages carried by the SOM are: UFOs are real, they are ET, extreme secrecy must be applied, the matter is extremely serious, cover-ups must be performed at any costs, etc. Given that the SOM was presumably prepared by very high ranking officers, government leaders and top scientists, one can expect the bureaucratic and military minutia to be basically by-passed. Those guys were interested in big ideas.
All,
I went through the document again. The original one on this file:
http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/som101_part1.pdf
There was a couple of things that stood out to me about how the booklet was produced. First off, I was looking at the "how" SOM1-01 was either copied or photographed. This appears strongly that the booklet was photograph.
I double checked if this could have possibly been a "Xerox" copy? Not impossible but not likely. Here is the Wiki page about the history of Photocopiers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier
The timeline when the Xerox suggest that it's possible for the mid 1950's but was introduced in 1959. Interestingly, the Battelle Memorial Institute, was involved in it's ownership.
With that said, I believe it was photographed with a camera. Here's why, the focus was off on a handful of pages. This alone is not a major problem. However the worse of the pages was sign-in or type-in forms. For this to be a real sign-in or type-in booklet, each time there was an entry, it would have to be disassembled, typed, then reassembled. This would have created some noticeable page crease wear. I am not seeing this. This was also the beginning the book which the page crease wear would be more likely seen because the whole booklet wouldn't have been disassembled.
However there are two thing that stand out to me. First, is the margins. Most if nearly all secret rated documents had far wider margins. Especially on the inside margins where the two ring binding system was. This being the case, the security on the warning on the left hand side or the backside pages were over by over half inch.
There are two very big question marks to me. Page 7 has no footer or page number. This same page 7 looks photocopied and not photograph. There are no fingers holding down the page and the shadowing is inconsistent on this page.
Then on the front page with the Woods:
http://specialoperationsmanual.com/the-manual/
This has the obviously specially created header with the oversize double printed letters. This would have had to be been created on printing press. The same goes with the round emblem in the footer. There is not logical reason to go through a long process of creating photo print plates just for just a header and footer. However this could have been made years later on a computer far easier. Think about it... Why risk another potential security risk for just a single header and footer?
Last, I have had questions about the Woods' and the amount of money they have made off all of the UFO documents they offered for sale. Yet, we are suppose to believe all of them just showed up. Maybe they will come up with documents telling us about the tooth fairy.
Take my thoughts apart. But the people I would love to read from is the Woods to defend all of the comments.
To raise a point I mentioned before:
Does anyone know the origin of the term EBE, i.e. Extraterrestrial Biological Entities?
Don Maor will presumably tell us it was suggested by Dr Detlev Bronk in 1947, or thereabouts, after his group had examined the Roswell ETs, as revealed in the main MJ-12 document.
However, I distinctly recall someone (forget who) saying the term was in fact invented by Paul Bennewitz of Albuquerque, in one of his weird UFO writings c. 1980 - 81.
A final answer on this would settle once and for all the question of SOM1-01. Is the term EBE used anywhere at all, outside the realms of ufology? Presumably not.
What became of the 'Bennewitz papers' anyway?
Don -
Did you actually read the reference you sent?
I could argue that this a docuament created after 1980 because footnotes make reference to documents written in the 1980s, and that the use of Area 51 was for the ease of communicating. It doesn't prove that the term was being used in the early 1950s. This is an argument of semantics and we'd never agree on the interpretation. That doesn't really matter because the reference gives away the store. I'll even concede the point because it becomes irrelevant... but will note that they do call it Groom Lake...
They're talking about the development of the U-2 and tell us "On 12 April 1955 Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland... flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson in small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. After debating about landing on the old strip, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip. The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been fashioned from compacted earth that had turned to ankle-deep dust after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had attempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would probably had nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key figures in the U-2 project.
Bissel and his colleagues all agreed that Groom Lake would make an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots. Upon returning to Washington, Bissell discovered that Groom Lake was not part of the AEC proving ground. After consulting with Dulles, Bissell and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm. Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51 to the Nevada Test Site."
So, while the name does surface here, you seemed to have missed the description of the site as abandoned with an airstrip that had not been used in a decade. There were no facilities there and the projected use, at that time, was for testing the U-2 and training the pilots. In 1955, there was nothing there to house any recovered alien spacecraft or alien creatures meaning that a manual created in 1954 and updated in 1955 would have no reason to suggest the recovered material, whatever it might be, should be transported to this abandoned airstrip in the middle of Nevada.
That makes it an anachronism and a fatal flaw... You might argue that later, much later, as the facility was actually build and other secret projects were housed there, it might make sense... you could even argue that materials recovered in the late 1940s would be taken there for security reasons, but you can't make the argument that this would have been the policy in 1955 (which is the latest date in the manual) because the facility didn't exist.
Kevin,
The more I read from you and everyone regarding the MJ-12 and SOM1-01, the more I question the Wood's involvement. There are flaws in the contents as you mentioned and there have been others including myself about the creation and production of the documents.
All of this goes back to Robert Woods and son. Before I say that they are part scam (selling their copies of the documents), I would like to read their comments here on our turf.
Could you invited the Wood's to respond to our comments?
Kevin, I think the problem is your obsession with always looking at the half empty glass.
Let us look at the filled half of the glass. First, The SOM1-01 mentions Area 51 - S4, this is, it is specifying a location with more references than just Area 51. This is notable because another reference I gave mentioned that the site at the Groom Lake was known as Site II, possibly a different place than S4. (Notice the SOM's mention of S4 predates by 6 years the book by Curtis Peebles (2000) which mentions Site II as a synonym to the Groom Lake test site.)
Second. It seems to me that the word "known", in the quote you brought here, is clearly stating that the designation "Area 51" was ALREADY in use in maps during the Eisenhower Era.
Third and most important, the Woods have some reasons to believe that the place mentioned in the SOM was constructed in 1951. One reason they found is a costly and discreet construction in the Nevada Desert announced in a Nevada Newspaper in 1951. I am sure they have more reasons if you ask them directly.
Regarding the quoted story that the land was abandoned when Bissel and Ritland flew above it in aircraft, yes I have read it, but it seems to me like more or less a cover-up story. If there was an AEC very secret base in there before 1955, let's say 1951, the CIA historian in charge would have been obliged to invent a different story. We might be reading now a sanitized version of the history of the Area 51 facilities. The other possibility is that the Site 4 was located in a different place of the Area 51, possibly camouflaged (as Bob Lazar described it), and Bissel and Ritland simply did not see it when they flew near to it in 1955.
Don -
I think the problem is your obsession with ignoring the facts that do not fit into your world view. BTW, what color is the sky in your world?
The Area 51 reference on the maps and aeronautical charts refers to a restricted area and not a ground-based facility. We have statements from reliable men who were on the ground at Groom Lake in April 1955 who describe what they saw, which was an abandoned airstrip. You postulate, with absolutely no evidence an AEC very secret base before 1955 and then, with no evidence that a CIA historian was obligated to invent a different story. We have a document that was previously classified, with an actual provenance, that tells us there was nothing there, but you'd rather belief in secret bases and a document with no provenance whatsoever. You twist yourself into a pretzel to explain away evidence you do not like and invent reasons that will allow you to continue to believe in nonsense.
What you have is a requirement in a document created in 1954 and updated in 1955 requiring that debris and alien creatures be transported to a base that did not exist in that time frame. You seem unable to grasp this simple fact and would rather suggest that I see the glass as half empty when, in fact, there is no glass at all.
I will quote a line from The Great Escape... this is close to insanity.
Kevin said:
"The Area 51 reference on the maps and aeronautical charts refers to a restricted area and not a ground-based facility."
I already mentioned it in this thread, I estimated the Area 51 to be a rectangle of about 11 miles x 14 miles based on those old maps . Such a large area could have had various unconnected (or connected) facilities inside, among them the S-4.
" We have statements from reliable men who were on the ground at Groom Lake in April 1955 who describe what they saw, which was an abandoned airstrip. You postulate, with absolutely no evidence an AEC very secret base before 1955 and then, with no evidence that a CIA historian was obligated to invent a different story."
Although one can always doubt about the reliability of guys connected to CIA, this is not about how reliable were the guys there at 1955 or how honest are the CIA historians. It is their jobs to protect secrets of other agencies or national secrets, it is their job to lie or tell half-truths.
"You twist yourself into a pretzel to explain away evidence you do not like and invent reasons that will allow you to continue to believe in nonsense."
Kevin, look, you are doing a fine job analyzing this key point about the origins of Area 51. This topic is not nonsense. At worst, the SOM1-01 is an elaborate and very good hoax, and at best the SOM1-01 document is authentic. In any case, it definitely IS NOT "nonsense".
"What you have is a requirement in a document created in 1954 and updated in 1955 requiring that debris and alien creatures be transported to a base that did not exist in that time frame. You seem unable to grasp this simple fact and would rather suggest that I see the glass as half empty when, in fact, there is no glass at all."
Kevin, this is not to fight. According to the change control page of the SOM1-01, the specific page mentioning Area 51 S-4 was not updated in 1955, so this specific page would just be from 1954. Another important point, the SOM1-01 does NOT mention at all that the recovered bodies should go to S-4 base. That is claptrap by people who does not care to read the SOM1-01 carefully. The SOM1-1 is pretty clear and consistent on that: only technological remains were to be sent to S-4, everything related to biological remains or dead bodies were to be sent to blue lab in Wright-Patterson. This is another VERY consistent point with what we currently know about facilities in Area 51. We currently know that the whole area was used in 1955 for secret technological developments and tests, and that is pretty close to what the SOM1-01 is telling us, technological analysis of extraterrestrial crafts and technological stuff. This consistent trend is very far of being "nonsense" as you usually claim.
I asked about the term EBE (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities). Upon reading Kevin's latest book "Roswell in the 21st Century" I see a footnote on p.252 which states:
"It is in this document [The MJ-12/Aquarius Hoax, published 1989 by W. Todd Zechel] that Zechel claims that Paul Bennewitz came up with the term Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE), which would figure prominently later in the Eisenhower Briefing Document".
However, we still do not know exactly when Bennewitz "came up" with the term EBE. It may have been his own invention, in which case I would expect it to have first turned up in the early 1980s. But unfortunately this is unknown.
If this matter could be definitely resolved, it would demolish the SOM1-01 document forever.
What does Kevin have to say about this Zechel paper, and is the original Bennewitz paper still extant? I suspect not.
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