{"id":8228,"date":"2024-01-17T17:01:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T17:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/?p=8228"},"modified":"2024-01-17T17:01:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T17:01:39","slug":"update-on-operation-majestic-12-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/update-on-operation-majestic-12-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following was written by Stanton Friedman in April 2004<\/span>. It is part of The Stanton Friedman Collection<\/a> as archived here on The Black Vault.<\/p>\n

Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Stanton T. Friedman
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It should be no surprise that the various highly classified Operation Majestic 12 or Majic-12 or MJ-12 documents have been attacked since their existence was first made public. Equally unsurprising is the fact that a number of phony or hoax or fraudulent MJ-12 documents have been released as well. Clearly if the original documents: The Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) of November 18, 1952; the Truman-Forrestal Memo (TFM) of Sept. 24, 1947 (page 8 of the EBD); and the Cutler-Twining Memo (CTM) of July 14, 1954 (found in July, 1985, in Box 189 of Entry 267 of Record Group 341 at the National Archives by Jaime Shandera and William Moore) are genuine, then the consequences are enormous. Aliens are visiting earth; the government has recovered at least one crashed saucer and several alien bodies; and a very significant group of outstanding American scientists and military leaders has collected, reviewed, evaluated, and kept secret all kinds of information about the visitors. Man is NOT alone and the government has covered up the biggest story of the millennium at least since 1947.<\/p>\n

Ten years after the 1984 receipt of a roll of exposed 35mm film by Jaime Shandera at his Burbank, California home and his efforts with William Moore and myself to evaluate them, a new roll of film showed up in the mailbox of aviation and science writer (and longtime ufologist) Don Berliner. This contained many pages of SOM 1-01: Majestic 12 Group SPECIAL OPERATIONS MANUAL: “Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal.\u201d Meanwhile Tim Cooper, a researcher in Big Bear Lake, California, began receiving loads of supposedly related MJ-12 documents. There would appear to be no connection between the original three documents and the SOM 1.01 (Mailed from Wisconsin rather than Albuquerque, NM) or the mass of Tim Cooper documents which were usually in the form of Xerox copies, often only legible with difficulty and received by him by mail or dropped off at his PO\u00a0Box.<\/p>\n

THE\u00a0DEBUNKERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

There seem to be several distinct groups attacking the\u00a0documents:<\/p>\n

A. There are those who believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that no alien spacecraft have ever visited Earth. Therefore, any documents saying that they have must be false. No need to do a detailed investigation, to spend time in Archives, research the people involved, etc. THEY MUST BE\u00a0FRAUDULENT!!<\/p>\n

B. There are those who are convinced that some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft, but that no saucer crashed near Roswell because they haven\u2019t found any other classified documents indicating any have. Karl Pflock in his book (Ref.1) epitomizes this approach. If no saucer crashed at Roswell, then the documents must be\u00a0fake.<\/p>\n

C. There are several former military people who are convinced that the documents must be false because the style, format, details, etc. do not match what they would have expected them to be based on their military service from the 1960s onward. This ignores the many changes in office procedures (copy machines, word processors, etc.) and the fact that the White House is a civilian organization not a military\u00a0one.<\/p>\n

D. There are a lot of armchair theorists who think they can make judgements without doing any homework at\u00a0all.<\/p>\n

In much of the discussion one finds the use of the four basic rules for debunking of any controversial\u00a0idea:<\/p>\n

1. What the public doesn\u2019t know, I won\u2019t tell\u00a0them.<\/p>\n

2. Don\u2019t bother me with the facts, my mind is made\u00a0up.<\/p>\n

3. If one can\u2019t attack the data, attack the people; it is\u00a0easier.<\/p>\n

4. Do one\u2019s research by proclamation; investigation is too much\u00a0trouble.<\/p>\n

Another important rule for some of the attackers is that \u201cAbsence of Evidence is Evidence for Absence.\u201d Karl Pflock and others cite numerous documents, mostly only classified Secret, that say nothing about Roswell or MAJESTIC 12. This, of course, neglects the fact that there are still numerous documents from the Truman and Eisenhower eras 1945-1961 that are still classified, that we rarely see documents that have classification stamps of TOP SECRET Code Word (TSCW). I was told in November, 2003, by an archivist at the Ike Library that they still have about 300,000 pages of classified documents. We know that the NSA classified 156 UFO documents (found in response to a Judge\u2019s directive) as TOP SECRET UMBRA when they finally released a highly expurgated version (about two lines per page are not covered with Wite-Out), supposedly because that information is about sources and methods. Why would it be listed under UFOs if only 5% is about\u00a0UFOs?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In addition, as a result of my spending a lot of time at twenty different Document Archives from coast to coast, I can say that almost never does one find TSCW documents about anything. The best documents for comparison with the EBD would be the four National Security Briefings for President-Elect Eisenhower presented by DCI Walter B. Smith in the time period between Ike\u2019s election on November 4, 1952, and January 9, 1953, when Smith informed President Truman of his security briefings for Ike before and after the election. Unfortunately, despite my FOIA request to the CIA and a subsequent appeal to their response (“We have nothing in response to your request\u201d even though I gave the dates and times of two of the briefings), we have no such documents for\u00a0comparison.<\/span><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t try to cover all the existent literature on the documents. There is my 1990 108-page \u201cFinal Report On Operation Majestic 12\u201d (Ref. 2) and my 272-page 1996 book \u201cTOP SECRET\/MAJIC\u201d (Ref. 3). There are several lengthy papers (Ref. 4-8) and Kevin Randle\u2019s new book \u201cCase MJ-12\u201d (Ref. 9). There are also numerous statements on the\u00a0Internet.<\/p>\n

Academics have found it necessary to jump into the fray as well, often without benefit of any research. For example, Carl Sagan (Ref.10) said \u201cThe Air Force says the documents are bogus. And UFO expert Philip J. Klass and others find lexicographic inconsistencies that suggest the whole thing is a hoax.\u201d He seemed to be unaware of the fact that Klass had paid me $1000.00 for providing more than fourteen documents done in exactly the same Pica typeface as the Cutler-Twining Memo though Klass, on the basis of nine Elite Typeface documents (obtained by him by mail, he had never been to the Ike Library) of the 250,000 pages of NSC material at the Ike Library, had insisted the CTM should have been done in Elite! Some lexicographic research! Our correspondence and a copy of his check to me are in Ref.\u00a02.<\/p>\n

Dr. Robert Alan Goldberg in the Roswell Chapter of his book \u201cEnemies Within\u201d (Ref. 11) stated<\/p>\n

Evidence of malfeasance was plentiful. Critics noted that the date format did not conform to governmental style, the papers carried no top secret registration number, military titles were improperly noted and signatures appeared to be grafted on to the document. Anachronistic usages like \u201cmedia\u201d and “impacted\u201d further betrayed the find.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Goldberg is a Professor of History at the University of Utah. Anybody spending much time at the Truman and Eisenhower Archives would find many different date formats in classified, limited distribution, old documents. In Ref. 2 I published three brief cover memos from CIA Director Allen Dulles to White House Staff Secretary Colonel Andrew Goodpaster, done within a ten-day period, using these three date formats: 12 November l956\u2026 November 20, 1956\u2026 And NOV 22 1956 (Rubber stamp) and even noted one file folder that had seven date formats and found examples of both Roscoe Hillenkoetter and W.B. Smith (DCIs and MJ-12 members) using the day, month, comma, year format of the EBD. Goldberg didn\u2019t bother to check the Oxford Dictionary. Both \u201cmedia\u201d and \u201cimpacted\u201d were in use at the time. I will discuss military titles\u00a0below.<\/p>\n

TOP SECRET CONTROL\u00a0NUMBERS<\/p>\n

The old military guys have persistently attacked the fact that the EBD, the TFM, and the CTM items all lacked a TOP SECRET CONTROL number. They vociferously insisted that all TS documents must have a TS control\u00a0number.<\/p>\n

Ed Stewart made a truly strong claim on UFO UPDATES:<\/p>\n

For those who might not be aware, here is something that you will not hear from Stanton T. Friedman, even though he is well aware of the fact having visited the archives on many times in his own words. RG 341 is a record group with nothing but declassified Top Secret documents. All documents in the group are filed by control numbers. If a document did not have a Top Secret control number, it would not have been able to be filed in RG 341. Repeat, every document in RG 341 is a Top Secret document that has been declassified and has a control number, the entire record group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was a truly incredible proclamation and is totally false. One might be forgiven for thinking Ed was claiming to have reviewed all of RG 341. Record Group 341 has 9787 cubic feet of material (about 1000 4-drawer filling cabinets). I have, since 1985, had a 56-page Preliminary Inventory of the Records for RG 341 which lists various entries and how many feet of files are in each and how much of the total is TS: typically only a few percent. For example “Unclassified through Secret, Incoming and Outgoing messages 1946-Dec. 1957,\u201d 1743 ft. Entry 21 of RG 341. \u201cTop Secret Incoming and Outgoing Messages, Oct. 1947-Jan, 1958,\u201d 51ft. Entry 23 of RG 341. In other words there were only 3% (51 of 1743) as many TS messages as those through SECRET. Furthermore many of the documents are still classified. I pointed this out on the UFO Updates Internet interest group. Ed\u2019s response after a few days of silence was<\/p>\n

My apologies to Stanton Friedman. On attempting to verify the statements I made with the source of the information, it became apparent that much that I had posted related to RG 341 was misleading to false. I asked for clarification, which was promised, but after four days was undelivered. I felt a reply to Friedman\u2019s last message needed to be time-sensitive to be of any value. Thus my apology to Stanton Friedman and readers of this mailing list for having posted the first paragraph of my last message which is not supported by facts. Unfortunately, I will not be available for further discussion on the UFO subject. I have decided there isn\u2019t anyone in this field that I really care to associate with any longer regardless of what their opinions are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like the kid who takes his marbles and goes\u00a0home.<\/p>\n

Jan Aldrich who, like Ed, is quite knowledgeable about army classification procedures, later picked up the same argument even after I pointed out that I had been told by the Archivist Larry Bland at the General George Marshall holdings in Virginia, that if they had to use TS control numbers in Marshall\u2019s day, on all TS documents, we would still be fighting WW 2. I noted that an archivist at the Ike Library said that often the White House didn\u2019t use TS Control numbers. I had published two TS documents without control numbers in Ref. 2 in 1990. One would think they were relevant since they came from Robert Cutler and wound up in General Nathan Twining\u2019s papers at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Jan said it would only count if the originals at the Ike Library had no TS Control numbers. Dr. Herbert Pankratz at the Ike Library graciously supplied me with a Xerox copy of the one memo he found (It indeed had no TS control number) and noted in writing on January 9, 2003, \u201cWe have numerous documents classified as ‘TOP SECRET’ which do not have control numbers on them.\u201d I should stress that, of course, many TS documents do have TS control numbers \u2014 especially when there are multiple copies of a many-page document. The EBD says \u201cCopy One of\u00a0One.\u201d<\/p>\n

TOP SECRET\u00a0RESTRICTED<\/strong><\/p>\n

M<\/span>any including the US government have made a big thing about the typed security marking on the brief CTM: TOP SECRET RESTRICTED over a line saying SECURITY INFORMATION. The point is that supposedly this was never used and doesn\u2019t make sense because TOP SECRET is the highest category and RESTRICTED is the lowest. The Archives in their first version (May 9, 1988) of a commentary about the CTM stated \u201cThe Acting Director of the FOI office of the NSC informed us that TSR is a marking which did not come into use at the NSC until the Nixon Administration [1969]. The Eisenhower Presidential Library also confirms that this particular marking was not used during the Eisenhower Administration.\u201d They later corrected several false claims in response to data provided by me. I must admit that although I had found Confidential Restricted and Secret Restricted, I had not found TOP SECRET RESTRICTED. Does that mean it wasn\u2019t used? NO, since we have seen only a small amount of TS material. It should be noted that often highly classified information from one administration was carried over to the next at the White House rather than being sent to the appropriate presidential Library. The Ike Library had a number of documents from the Truman era that were not at the Truman\u00a0Library.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty was removed when the General Accounting Office in its pursuit in many archives for Roswell-related material made the following statement on page 80 of their 400-plus-page report on their Roswell Investigation:<\/p>\n

Dec. 7, 1994, Ms. LJ and I reviewed records pertaining to the Air Force\u2019s atomic energy and certain mission and weapons requirements. These files were classified up to and including Top Secret. The period covered by these records was from 1948-1956. There was no mention of the Roswell Incident. No information pertaining to the assignment was obtained.\u00a0In several instances we noticed the classification Top Secret Restricted used on several documents. This is mentioned because in past references to this classification (Majestic 12) we were told that it was not used during this period.\u201d\u00a0<\/i>[Italics added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I tried to obtain copies of the materials they had seen. I was told that the materials were still classified. Clearly absence of evidence was NOT evidence for absence. An obvious question is why would a clever forger use a security marking that was so uncommon rather than just a plain vanilla TOP SECRET? How did he know to place a slant red pencil mark through the marking? I was informed that this was standard practice prior to declassification. An obscure detail\u00a0indeed.<\/p>\n

MILITARY RANK\u00a0CONFUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Gen. Nathan Twining – USAF<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kevin Randle\u2019s major complaint about the MJ-12 papers is that the military ranks are blatantly wrong. On page 2 of the EBD, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (DCI 1947-1950) is noted thusly: \u201cBRIEFING OFFICER: ADM. ROSCOE H. HILLENKOETTER (MJ-1)\u201d and is listed lower on the page with a beginning line of \u201cMembers of the Majestic 12 Group were designated [referring to establishment of the group on 24 September, 1947 \u2014 note the same date format as on the cover page listing of 18 November, 1952]as follows: \u201cAdm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Gen. Nathan F. Twining, Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Gen. Robert\u00a0Montague.\u201d<\/p>\n

The kicker here is that Hillenkoetter was not a Full Admiral but only a Rear Admiral.<\/p>\n

However, in September, 1947, Montague was only a Brigadier General and Twining and Vandenberg were only Lieutenant Generals. (Vandenberg got his 4th star in October 1947). In short, the writer of the briefing was consistent in using generic ranks. This makes perfect sense in view of three\u00a0factors:<\/p>\n

1. In mixed groups of civilians and military people, what rank can one give the civilians?<\/p>\n

2. The navy has only three flag ranks: Vice, Rear and Full Admirals, but the army has four: Brigadier, Major, Lieutenant, and Full (4-star)\u00a0Generals.<\/p>\n

3. The names were listed as they had been designated in 1947, but some ranks had changed prior to November 1952. Generic ranks get around that\u00a0problem.<\/p>\n

Early on Randle had asked me for other examples of Hillenkoetter signing memos as Admiral. I had to point out that there is no Hillenkoetter signature on the EBD, so the question is\u00a0irrelevant.<\/p>\n

This argument may sound weak, but General Arthur Exon, Colonel Jesse Marcel Jr. and Commander Thomas Deuley had no trouble with generic ranks. Ike himself in his books used them. Fortunately, because of the work of California researcher Brian Parks, I was able to locate a relevant example of just this same approach. Andrew Goodpaster (by this time a Brigadier General) had written a classified memo dated June 30, 1958, in which he listed the attendees at a meeting on June 27, 1958. Several were civilians and five were military. All of the latter, including himself, were listed as General or Admiral even though only one was a 4-star. However, his signature is Brigadier General. Goodpaster had been with Ike from the start of his presidency in 1953, so surely knew the right protocol for the White House. During a visit in November, 2003, I found a number of these “memcons\u201d from General Goodpaster using generic ranks for meeting attendees including himself but signing Brigadier\u00a0General.<\/p>\n

MEMBERS OF\u00a0MJ-12<\/p>\n

Many people in ufology had serious difficulty with Dr. Donald H. Menzel being listed as a member of MJ-12. After all he was, at the time in 1952, the best known UFO sceptic. By the time of his death in 1976, he had written three very negative books and given a number of papers \u2014 all attacking UFO reality. Often his UFO science, as has been noted by Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Brad Sparks and Dr. James E. McDonald (Ref. 12) was almost ludicrous. As I have noted elsewhere, his presence on the committee had bothered Bill Moore, Jaime Shandera and myself right from the start suggesting that the memo was a hoax. There was obviously the problem of all the others, based on readily available information, having had very high level security clearances. But surely one didn\u2019t need a clearance to teach astronomy at\u00a0Harvard?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I hadn\u2019t liked Menzel, but did a lot of checking. I had viewed his UFO correspondence at the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia, found out that his papers were at the Harvard Archives with some also at the University of Denver. After getting approval from three different people to view the Harvard holdings, I paid a visit to Harvard at the expense of the Fund for UFO research. There I made a shocking discovery that Menzel was up to his ears in very highly\u00a0classified work for the CIA, NSA, and more than thirty companies. He had taught cryptography before WW 2, learned a different symbolic language (Japanese) and worked on all kinds of classified problems for many years after WW 2. He told Jack Kennedy he could tell him more about the NSA when they were properly cleared to each other. Menzel had been associated with the NSA and its navy predecessor for thirty years as of 1960! None of this was noted in an eight-page appreciation in Sky and Telescope after his death (Ref. 13). I published an article in IUR (Ref. 14) and gave more details in Ref. 2 and Ref. 3. I had early on noted correspondence between Menzel\u2019s attorney and MJ-12 member Bush thanking Bush for his support of Menzel at a terrible USAF Loyalty Hearing. The file is at the Harvard Archives. Fascinating\u00a0reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many in ufology claimed that Menzel couldn\u2019t have led a double life as a public debunker and a private advocate of the notion that the aliens recovered at Roswell were \u201cbeings from another solar system entirely.\u201d All admitted that they knew nothing of his clandestine postwar activities. Some, many years later, were able to obtain some government files on Menzel. None have shown that these were known prior to my discoveries in 1986. I should point out that many very bright spies led double lives for years such as Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean who were Soviet spies working for many years in British intelligence. Claus Fuchs who spied at Los Alamos certainly led a double\u00a0life.<\/p>\n

Randle says little about the other MJ-12 members, but, after misrepresenting my reasons for saying that Menzel belonged on the group, had the following comment:<\/p>\n

Nowhere did he [Friedman] find any mention of MJ-12 [in his papers and records]. There are no marginal notes, no oblique references, no highly placed correspondence that suggests, mentions, identifies or confirms the existence of MJ-12 or Menzel\u2019s connection to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is another one of those \u201cabsence of evidence\u201d claims. Certainly I had never claimed to have found any direct evidence. But none of Menzel\u2019s files at the Harvard Archives were classified despite all his classified activities. He had already spent thirty years (as of 1960) working for the NSA and its Navy predecessors. No rational person would expect him to have left classified materials about a TOP SECRET Code Word black budget activity, whose very existence was classified, in the\u00a0open.<\/p>\n

Kal Korff claimed (Ref.15) that he had classified access to Menzel\u2019s government records. He mentions the CIA but never mentions the NSA connection which was the focus of my\u00a0articles.<\/p>\n

LINGUISTICS<\/strong><\/p>\n

None of the vocal critics including Randle even discuss the findings of world-class linguistics expert Dr. Roger Wescott. At the suggestion of attorney Bob Bletchman, I had obtained 27 examples of Hillenkoetter\u2019s various writings from the Truman Library. Dr. Wescott reviewed these and the EBD and stated in an April 7, 1988, letter to Bob<\/p>\n

In my opinion there is no compelling reason to regard any of these communications as fraudulent or to believe that any of them were written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself. This statement holds for the controversial presidential briefing memorandum of November 18, 1952, as well as for the letters, both official and personal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Letter is page E-2 of Ref. 2. Randle has a\u00a0copy.)<\/p>\n

TRUMAN FORRESTAL\u00a0MEMO<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Right from the start the TFM has been the target of the debunkers. Phil Klass in a fast press release after Bill Moore publicized the EBD, TFM, and CTM, had claimed it was an obvious fraud since it made all kinds of mistakes compared to real Truman letters. He used the word \u201cletter\u201d nine times even though it is clearly headed \u201cMemorandum.\u201d Many have claimed that the typewriter was obviously from 1960 proving it was a fraud (no forensic document analysis was provided). Most claimed that the signature was identical to that on another memo from Truman to MJ-12 member Vannevar Bush. First measurements clearly indicated it was\u00a0not<\/b>\u00a0an exact copy since the lengths of various segments seemed not to match. Randle provided the off-the-cuff opinion of Peter Tytell, a world-class Questioned Documents examiner. Moore, Shandera and I had sent a copy of the documents to PT who didn\u2019t want his name used anywhere, and prepared no report, but apparently claimed the typewriter typeface was not in use until the 1960s. Randle quotes him thusly \u201cIt was just perfect because the whole thing of the twelve pages or however many pages it was. Most of the pages were just blank pages with just five words written on them like Top Secret or Appendix A or something like that.\u201d In reality there were eight pages and only one, page 7, (not included by Randle) had \u201cAppendix A.\u201d Fortunately Dr. Robert M. Wood hired an expert, James A. Black, to perform a professional examination. On November 13, 1998, Black stated<\/p>\n

My knowledge of typewriter fonts permits me to conclude that the letter was likely to have been typed by an Underwood Standard typewriter. The portions of the type font of the letter that can be clearly visualized match those of a typewriter exemplar of an Underwood Standard typed in May 1940.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Black also added that that the disputed signature is most likely a reproduction. “I reached this opinion because the ink line is homogenous and feathering is absent at the ends of the lines.\u201d Does this prove the document is a fraud? The real question is where would there have been an original of the memo with a signature?? Forrestal\u2019s ORIGINAL would have been signed, but who else would have received a signed copy? One expects that Dr. Bush and the DCI (Hillenkoetter) noted in the memo would have had copies. Most likely unsigned. Forrestal died in May, 1949, three years earlier. Since we know that W.B. Smith was briefing Ike at this time (1952) on National Security matters, presumably Hillenkoetter, then at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, may well have had the EBD typed at the CIA. Smith (who worked very closely with Ike during WW 2) might well have said that Ike likes documents with signatures. Surely the CIA had the capability of lifting a signature from the memo from Truman to Bush (ironically I had found that in the Bush papers at the\u00a0LCMD).<\/p>\n

Of course, none of the critics of the memo note that the numerical portion of the date \u201c24,1947.\u201d is offset from the September and done with a different typewriter. Bush\u2019s office always put a period after the date. Rarely did Truman\u2019s. George Elsey, who worked for Roosevelt at the White House and then for Truman during his entire term in office, told me that most of what a President signs is prepared by other people and sometimes the documents have to have the date typed later when it is clear which date is appropriate. He could find no reason to say the EBD, TFM, or CTM were fraudulent. Truman was very busy at that time as the New National Security apparatus was being installed, the USAF was separated from the Army, the CIA was created from the Central Intelligence Group, etc. etc. Why would a hoaxer use two different typewriters and put a period after the date? Forgers normally do as little as possible to call attention to idiosyncrasies in the forgeries \u2014 whether paintings or\u00a0documents.<\/p>\n

Other critics of the signature claim, based on Albert S. Osborne\u2019s book “Questioned Documents,\u201d that no two signatures are alike. Actually, Osborne said that one\u00a0could<\/b>\u00a0have identical signatures, just not\u00a0consecutively<\/b>. After the 1948 election Truman commented to a family member that he was signing 500 thank-you notes an\u00a0hour.<\/p>\n

Some were surely identical to others. Klass had even claimed the Osborne book was published in 1978, when it would have covered Xeroxing, when it fact it was published in 1910 and the chapter involved is entitled \u201cTraced\u00a0Forgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOW DID A HOAXER KNOW SO\u00a0MUCH?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Ref. 2 I provided a list of more than 37 facts not known to be true until after the EBD, TFM, and CTM had been received or found. A lot were trivial such as the date given, August 1, 1950, for Smith having permanently replaced the deceased Forrestal as an MJ-12 member. I obtained from the Truman Library the fact that that was the only date when Truman and Smith met during a many-month period of time before Smith succeeded Hillenkoetter as DCI. They had not provided that information to anyone\u00a0else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The CTM has neither a signature nor \/s\/ as do the other two memos we had from Cutler to Twining. Cutler was out of the country on that date, so could not have signed any letter. However, he left detailed instructions with James Lay, Exec. Sec. of the NSC, to keep things moving out of his basket while he was gone. I published that letter and the one from Lay to Cutler while Cutler was overseas saying he was taking care of things, in Ref. 2. It took me two years to get the\u00a0latter via mandatory classification review through the Ike Library as it was still classified when I found a withdrawal sheet noting it. I had also discovered that earlier that day (July 14, 1954) Lay had met with Ike and they had a phone conversation at around 4:30 PM. George Elsey told me that Lay and Cutler worked very closely together and Lay would certainly have sent a brief note for Cutler to Twining making a trivial change in schedule. How did the forger know NOT to sign the memo nor use \/s\/ since it was some time after the discovery of the CTM that Robert Todd found the memo from Cutler to Lay saying he would be gone??? Todd is strongly opposed to Roswell, MJ-12, Bill Moore, Jaime Shandera, Jesse Marcel, etc. It is also interesting that the Cutler-Lay memo underlines a few words as does the CTM. This is uncommon in documents of that era, but apparently was used by Lay and Cutler about NSC matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The EBD says that the detailed investigation of Roswell began on July 7, 1947. Several years AFTER its receipt, in a newly declassified box of General Twining\u2019s papers, I found his flight log which shows that he indeed flew to New Mexico from Dayton on July 7, 1947. This was confirmed by his pilot\u2019s flight log as well, also found much later. How did anybody know that date\u00a0fit?<\/p>\n

Some people have complained that anybody could have found out what I did about Menzel prior to receipt of the EBD. Yes, of course, the documents were sitting at the Harvard Archives. But it took three signatures, including his wife\u2019s, for me to gain access. No evidence has been claimed or put forth that anybody else had looked at the papers before I had. Some have even falsely suggested that I noted the letters to Kennedy, etc., at the readily accessible APL Menzel UFO Correspondence file. They weren\u2019t there. No permission signatures were required for that access. I am reminded of people who claim \u201cI could have bought that land for a song 25 years ago.\u201d \u2014 but they\u00a0hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

PHONY\u00a0DOCUMENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Note from The Black Vault: This section had very small thumbnail size versions of the document. Although\u00a0 readable, it is difficult. Stanton did not publish higher resolution copies when this this article was first written.<\/em><\/p>\n