Book Review: Kevin D. Randle’s
CASE MJ-12: THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE GOVERNMENT’S UFO CONSPIRACIES
[rg note: This article has been mirrored from Stanton Friedman’s now dead website, now partially accessible on archive.org.]
Part 1
January 2003
by Stanton T. Friedman
OVERVIEW
The reality of Operation Majestic 12 (MAJIC 12 or MJ-12), and the highly classified documents associated with it, has been a disputed question in ufology for more than eighteen years. Books and papers have been written. Claims have been made that everyone knows the documents were fraudulent, or that no ufologist besides me accepts that there was such an organization set up to deal with crashed saucers by President Truman and that the original three documents are genuine. These are the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) dated November 18, 1952, the Truman-Forrestal memo (TF) dated September 24, 1947, and the Cutler-Twining (CT) memo of June 14, 1954. I don’t think anybody else has spent as much effort trying to determine the legitimacy of the MJ-12 documents as I have; hence this review.
For the average person with an interest in conspiracies and UFOs, Randle’s book would at first appear to be the definitive work on the subject. He concludes that, while there was a crashed saucer retrieved near Roswell, New Mexico, in July, 1947, and that there must have been some sort of oversight committee established to deal with it, that all the MJ-12 documents are frauds and that there was no Operation Majestic 12. These findings are consistent with past articles and viewpoints that he has published. The cover gives a subtitle of “The True Story Behind the Government’s UFO Conspiracies.” There is a big “TOP SECRET” in red, and a yellow-on-black “RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED INFORMATION REVEALED FOR THE FIRST TIME!”
A much more careful review of this book, in conjunction with reading such other sources as References 1–5, leads one to a very different conclusion: namely that “Case MJ-12” is more a work of propaganda than of investigative journalism. These are strong words, but the facts seem to support the notion that Dr. Randle was guilty of very selective choice of data, sloppy research, and strong bias. Despite the cover’s claims, I could find no recently declassified information and there is much that is simply untrue.
DID IKE NEED A ROSWELL BRIEFING?
For example, Randle contends that there was no need for a briefing of President Elect Eisenhower in November, 1952, because as Army Chief of Staff when Roswell occurred in July, 1947, he would already have known about it. “There would have been no reason to prepare such a document.” I don’t argue with the notion that Ike in July, 1947, would have been made aware of the Roswell event, since the Army Air Force was then under the Army. However, it must be noted that in late spring 1947, well before Roswell, Ike had already informed the Government that he would be taking the position of President of Columbia University (obviously not a high security government job) within a year, which he did. He also completed his 200,000-word war memoirs “Crusade in Europe” published in the autumn of 1948. It became the best selling non-fiction book of the year.
However, in December, 1950, Ike was prevailed upon by President Truman to take a leave of absence from Columbia and to accept the position of Commander Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers In Europe (SHAPE). The job, to create effective military forces for NATO, was of extraordinary importance in the budding cold war with Russia. He took command in April, 1951, with the almost impossible task of organizing an effective force out of longtime enemy Germany, England, France, and the USA on the well devastated European continent. He was thus based in Europe until he returned to the USA in June of 1952 for the Republican convention, and the presidential election of November 4, 1952. It seems very doubtful, to say the least, that Ike would have been on the distribution list for any of the eight TOP SECRET EYES ONLY documents listed on page 6 “Enumeration of Attachments” of the EBD. For some reason, this page isn’t included in “Case MJ-12” though pages 1–5 and 8 are. The pages printed also do not include the 3-hole punch marks on the original prints. Each had a dot in the middle seemingly for a pin on which the pages could be quickly placed for photography purposes without having to reset the 35 mm camera. Since photographing classified documents and having a camera in a classified area are violations of law, the photographer would have understandably been in a hurry. A fraudster would have plenty of time. Page 7 just says, “Attachment ‘A’” and is also not included. Page 8 is the TF memo.
Strangely, Randle remarks, “There would be so many important things for Eisenhower to learn about the state of the world, things he needed to know as President, that the landscape wouldn’t be cluttered with what we in the Army called ‘nice to know information’ especially when he already knew about it.”
This is a very good argument for why Ike’s files, in the five years previous, would NOT have been cluttered with highly classified papers about a TOP SECRET/MAJIC project only accountable to the President, until he became President more than five years later. It should be noted that the briefing was described on page 2 as “This document has been prepared as a preliminary briefing only. It should be regarded as introductory to a full briefing intended to follow.” Ike did not become president until January 20,1953, two months later, during which time President Truman was very definitely still in charge. It should further be noted that General Walter B. Smith, named in the EBD as the 13th MJ-12 member replacing Forrestal, who had died in May, 1949, wrote to Truman on January 9, 1953, that he had briefed Ike on National Security matters four times after the election. I published this letter in Reference 2. Of course Ike needed a briefing on this very important matter, just as he would certainly have been out of the loop on this matter for five years. The CIA claimed, in response to my FOIA request for these briefings, even providing dates and times for two of them, that they couldn’t find them!!
MAKEUP OF MAJESTIC 12
It seems strange that Randle spends so little time dealing with the makeup of the MJ-12 group as listed in the EBD. Their names are listed on page 2 of the EBD in an appendix, but, because this is a paperback book, the print is very small. He doesn’t call attention to the fact that the group had six civilians and six military men: two each for the USAF, the US Army, the US Navy. There were five scientists covering a wide range of specialties and the new Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal. It was truly an all-star cast. All had been tested in the crucible of war. All also did very well after the war. Their capabilities were either known directly to MJ-12 member Dr. Vannevar Bush, who had been director of the old National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, and the war time Office of Scientific Research and Development, under which was the development and military utilization of the Atomic Bomb, the proximity fuse, radar, and many dozens of other important new technologies. Bush also headed the Joint Research and Development Board, postwar, which was named by General Twining in his famous September 23, 1947 memo about flying saucers, as one of the groups that should be kept informed.
The other scientists included Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, who succeeded Bush as head of NACA and was Chairman of The Aeronautical Sciences Dept. at MIT; Dr. Lloyd Berkner, a close associate of Dr. Bush at the Carnegie Institute; Dr. Detlev Bronk, an aviation physiologist and later head of the National Academy of Sciences and many other committees; and Dr. Donald H. Menzel, a Harvard astronomer who supposedly was a thorough UFO sceptic, but whom I discovered led a very busy Military Intelligence life.
The Military guys (Generals Vandenberg, Twining, Montague, and later Walter B. Smith; Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray; and Admirals Hillenkoetter and Souers) were all well known to General George C. Marshall who had been wartime Chief of Staff and in 1947 was serving as Secretary of State, and who even came back after a long illustrious career to serve as Secretary of Defense in 1950. Truman considered him the outstanding living American. Randle doesn’t discuss the fact that this was truly an all-star cast. George Elsey, who worked for Truman the entire time he was President, told me he could think of no reason why Truman would not have selected any of these people. Aside from on page 2 of the EBD, there is no mention by Randle of Dr. Hunsaker, Dr. Berkner, General Montague, and not much about Twining or Vandenberg. Menzel is singled out for comment as noted below.
EBD DATES
Randle also doesn’t mention the special significance of the dates in the EBD. November 18, 1952 was the date, not only of a meeting between Truman and Ike at the White House as a kind of welcoming and how to facilitate the transition. It was also the date when Ike received briefings on national security matters in the vault at the Pentagon. We do know that at least MJ-12 member Nathan F. Twining, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, was there. Interestingly in Ike’s book “Mandate for Change,” while he mentions the meeting with Truman, there is no mention of the high security briefings at the Pentagon afterwards.
The EBD notes that on August 1, 1950, deceased MJ-12 member James Forrestal was permanently replaced on MJ-12 by General Walter Bedell Smith, who later became the 4th director of Central Intelligence. He had succeeded Hillenkoetter in that post. This was the only date in a several-month period that Smith met with Truman “off the record.” The Truman Library hadn’t supplied that date to anybody else. How did the hoaxer get the date right?
The EBD mentions that “On 07 July, 1947, a secret operation was begun to assure recovery of the wreckage of this object for scientific study.” Back in December, 1984, it wasn’t known when the document was received; but according to Flight Logs for MJ-12 member General Nathan F. Twining and his pilot (obtained by me years later), that was the date Twining flew to New Mexico. He visited Alamogordo, Sandia, and Kirtland, but not Roswell. He was accompanied by five top military technologists, and left New Mexico on July 11. He was interviewed by the press during that week about flying saucers, and it was clear from his answer that he had been tasked to dig into the flying saucer question. Just a random date?
ADMIRAL HILLENKOETTER’S RANK
Randle claims that the most convincing reason for saying the EBD is a fraud is the fact that it lists “Briefing Officer: Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter.” But RHH was only a rear admiral and certainly would never have called himself Admiral, Randle claims. Randle admits that generic titles (General for Brigadier, Major or Lieutenant General; Colonel for Lt. Colonel and Colonel, etc.) are used, but surely not in this instance! However, in a group of half civilians and half military (Army and Navy and Air Force), rank would not matter. MJ-12 member Sydney Souers was listed as Admiral, but was not as a full Admiral. Generals Twining, Vandenberg, Montague and Smith were all called General, but none had four stars in 1947.
An earlier complaint by Philip Klass about Hillenkoetter was that he is listed as Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, but that he signed his letters RH Hillenkoetter (which I had supplied him) and didn’t like the name Roscoe. The Truman Library had sent me several pages from the White House Appointment Logs. The name Roscoe is very prominent. On some of the same log entries, it says Admiral, rather than Rear Admiral, Roscoe Hillenkoetter. If it is good enough for the White House, a copy one-of-one TOP SECRET/MAJIC EYES ONLY Briefing for the President Elect can also say Admiral in a rank-doesn’t-matter situation. Surely one wouldn’t single out only one man for use of real, rather than generic, ranking? Ike himself often used generic ranks in his writing. At least Kevin no longer asks for me to supply “other” instances where RHH signed his name Admiral, since there is no RHH signature in the EBD.
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
Rather surprisingly, Randle makes no mention at all of a detailed analysis performed by a world class linguistics expert, Dr. Roger Williams Westcott, to evaluate whether or not RHH had actually written the Briefing. At the suggestion of attorney Robert Bletchman, I had obtained about 27 items written by RHH from the Truman Library to provide a database. Dr. Westcott concluded, “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.” His letter and very impressive background credentials are presented in Ref. 2, which Randle has.
CUTLER-TWINING MEMO
Kevin doesn’t approve of the CT memo either; but, unfortunately, he doesn’t include even the text, no less a copy, for the reader. His biggest complaint is the use of the security marking TOP SECRET RESTRICTED. This, indeed, is not very common. The naysayers claim that this is a combination of the highest and the lowest security markings and so is a non starter. It is strange that Kevin ignores a statement made by General Accounting Office people looking for Roswell-related information. They stated in an overview of their Roswell-related activities:
Date: December 7, 1994. Ms. Laura Jackson and I reviewed records pertaining to the Air Force’s atomic energy projects 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. In 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.
Part 2
I quoted this statement in my MUFON 2000 paper (Ref. 3, which Randle has, as he uses some items from it) which he referenced. I noted that I spoke to three different GAO people who were involved who told me they couldn’t provide copies of these documents because they are still classified. It seems very unlikely that a forger would use a quite unusual security marking when he could easily have just used TOP SECRET. Randle also doesn’t mention that the CT memo is an original sheet of onionskin paper — the only original paper MJ-12 document available. If you hold it up to the light at the National Archives, you can see a Dictation Onionskin watermark from the Fox Paper Company. Fox indicated many years ago that the paper was made in bid lots only, between 1953 and the early 1970s, and that the government bought lots of it. It was not available in stationery stores. Furthermore, the original has a slant red pencil mark through the security marking. I was told, after seeing a number of such marks at the Eisenhower Library, that it was standard practice for declassifiers to do exactly that (mark a slant red pencil mark through the security marking) when they were marking original documents for declassification. How many hoaxers would have obtained the proper paper and known about the slant red pencil mark? At first the Eisenhower library had claimed that all of Cutler’s onionskin copies were made on onionskin with an Eagle watermark. This was corrected by them when I showed copies in the files made on onion skin with either different or no watermarks.
Kevin doesn’t mention that there is no signature and no /s/ (original signed by) on the memo. This is very important since it turns out that Robert Cutler was out of the country on July 14, 1954, so a signature or /s/ would have meant the document was a fraud. We didn’t find out he was gone on that date until well after the memo was discovered in the National Archives in Box 189 of Entry 267 of USAF Record Group 341. For reasons unknown, Kevin wrongly says it was in NSC papers. Interestingly, Bill Moore had received cryptic postal cards which were one of the reasons he and Jaime Shandera went to the Archives in July, 1985, during which trip they found the CT memo. The return address on one of the cards was Box 189, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Box 189?? Just a coincidence, of course. It seems very likely that one of the reviewers slipped the memo into that box just before it was released. Reviewers, unlike researchers, had very high level security clearances and were allowed to bring brief cases into their declassification work area. Researchers had to park their notebooks, etc., outside the research area.
Randle doesn’t mention that Box 189 was first handled at the Archives about two weeks after the death of the last surviving member of MJ-12, Jerome Hunsaker, who died on September 10, 1984. There was an obituary in the NY Times on September 12. He had been the last survivor for two years and was 98 when he died. This same box was handled once again by the group doing the classification review just before it was served to Moore and Shandera. The Archives would not tell me the names of the reviewers. Randle suggests that Moore and Shandera slipped it in to the box.. an interesting scenario, having no basis in fact. The memo is aged around the edges. Randle doesn’t mention that I had determined, during a March, 1985 trip to DC, that declassification of Entry 267 was underway. I kept checking and they had finally finished their review at the end of June.
Randle doesn’t mention that the last sentence of the CT memo is “Your concurrence in the above change of arrangements is assumed” which is quite similar to the last sentence of another TOP SECRET memo from Robert Cutler, found in General Twining’s papers — not in the Archives, but in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division: “It is understood that in the absence of contrary word your concurrence in the above arrangements is assumed.” General Twining’s pilot (who was also his aide) confirmed to me that the comment was a typical one meaning no reply required, if this meets with your approval. Bill Moore and I were among the first to see this declassified box of Twining papers.
Some have suggested that since the memo (SUBJECT: NSC/MJ-12 Special Studies Project) states, “The President has decided that the MJ-12 SSP briefing should take place during the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16, rather than following it as previously intended,” and that there was no NSC meeting scheduled for July 16, that the memo must be a phoney. But the sentence refers only to “the already scheduled White House meeting.” There is no mention of an NSC meeting; it was just an already scheduled meeting. Both Ike and Twining were in DC that day and there was a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs. Twining was Chairman at the time. I did find and publish another instance when Twining was at the White House for one meeting, but took time out to meet with the President, and then went back to the original meeting.
It should further be noted that Cutler sent a detailed memo to James P. Lay, Executive Secretary of the NSC, to keep things moving out of his in-basket while he was gone to Europe. Three words are underlined for emphasis as is the word “during” in the CT memo. This Cutler to Lay memo was obtained well after the CT memo was located. In addition, although it took me more than two years to obtain it from the Eisenhower Library, I was also able to obtain Lay’s July 16, 1954 memo to Cutler while Cutler was in Europe. The last paragraph states, “Hope you will recuperate, rest, and enjoy yourself for few days before returning. Will try to have everything tidy and not too much pressure upon you when you arrive.”
Obviously Lay was taking care of things for Cutler during Cutler’s absence.
The point in bringing up these details is that I discovered that Lay had met with Ike in the early afternoon on July 14, 1954 at the White House and there had been a brief telephone conversation after 4:30. I can certainly envision Ike saying, “Jimmy, there has been a slight change in plans about that briefing we discussed earlier. Please notify General Twining that the briefing we discussed will be held during the planned meeting rather than afterward.” Lay and Cutler worked very closely together, each usually getting copies of the others memos. They sat next to each other at NSC meetings. George Elsey said that of course Lay would have notified Twining. This would account for the absence of a signature or /s/. These memos were published in Ref. 2, but, unfortunately, Randle doesn’t discuss them at all. Lay, as Executive Secretary of the NSC (having been groomed by and succeeding Admiral Souers in that post), would have had clearances, as would Cutler, for just about everything at the White House.
TOP SECRET CONTROL NUMBERS
Another objection from Randle and others to legitimacy for all three TOP SECRET items is that none has a TOP SECRET control number. This was dealt with in Ref. 3. I was told by an archivist at the Eisenhower Library and another at the Marshall Archives that often the White House did not use control numbers. Obviously there is an enormous difference, from a records keeping viewpoint, between one copy of a one-page memo with no copies and easily transferred in the classified pouch from the White House to the Pentagon, and twenty copies of a twenty-page memo. Furthermore, I had already published two TOP SECRET memos from Cutler to Twining, each one-page, neither having a TS control number, in Ref. 2 (Pages B4 and B5). This issue was discussed in Ref. 3. On January 9, 2003, Eisenhower Library archivist Herbert Pankratz confirmed that “We have numerous documents classified as TOP SECRET which do not have control numbers on them.”
Thus it seems to me quite reasonable to conclude, based on a host of provable facts, that the Cutler-Twining memo is genuine. These include the watermarked onionskin paper, the typeface, the unusual (but still legitimate according to the GAO) security classification, the slant red pencil mark through the classification, the absence of a signature or /s/, the similar language to another Cutler-Twining memo, the underlined word, the communications between Lay and Cutler before and during Cutler’s trip, the communication between Ike and Lay on the day of the memo, and the fact that Twining and Ike were both in town on the day in question. Randle’s very selective choice of data, despite these all having been discussed in detail in reports which Randle has, is frankly irresponsible.
TRUMAN-FORRESTAL MEMO
Certainly Randle doesn’t approve of the Truman-Forrestal memo. He spends a lot of time playing semantic games about this one. His biggest problems seem to be the typewriter used to type it, which he claims dates from the 1960s, and the Truman signature which matches or is similar or identical to the one on a memo I dug out from the files of Dr. Vannevar Bush dated October 1, 1947, a week later. He puts a lot of weight on casual comments made years ago by a noted typewriter expert, Peter Tytell, whose father and mother were both typewriter experts before, during, and after World War II, and who has been called upon over and over again to provide assistance to the government as well as to lawyers involved in questioned legal documents evaluation.
Randle is clearly upset by my comment in one of the references that the TF doesn’t have a label on it as an executive order or as a special classified executive order — which it certainly does not. It is listed on the missing page 7 of the EBD As
ATTACHMENT “A” — Special Classified Executive Order #092447. (TS/EO)
[The number is clearly the date 09 24 47; TS/EO means TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY].
In the text appears “The Majestic 12 (Majic 12) Group which was established by special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September, 1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary James Forrestal.” Randle doesn’t mention that all attachments A-H on page 7 have all the words in the titles start with a capital letter (except the word “and” in the last one). He doesn’t mention that the 092447 is obviously the date (he does quote Barry Greenwood saying so) nor that I had discovered many documents from the state department using the date as part of a filing number. However, neglecting these facts, he tries to claim that the executive order number isn’t on a list of executive orders, so the document is a fraud! While it has all the attributes of an executive order, clearly being stamped TOP SECRET EYES ONLY, it could not be listed on an unclassified list of orders published in the Federal Register. The word “Special” would seem to assure that as well.
A copy of the EBD, the TF and the CT had been sent to Tytell many years ago. He seemed to have two major gripes. He claimed that the TF typeface was not in use until the 1960s, and also that the signature was obviously lifted. He did not prepare a formal statement, since he wanted to be paid to do a careful study. He also had done plenty of government work so might have found himself in a conflict of interest situation. Clearly, if genuine, these documents would be the most important classified US government documents ever leaked to the public. Randle quotes a number of remarks Tytell made years ago. One can judge Tytell’s familiarity with the EBD on the basis of this remark: “It 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.” The fact of the matter is there were eight pages, not twelve, and only one of them, the missing page 7, bore “APPENDIX A” and security markings.
Dr. Robert M. Wood, who has spent a great deal of money and time while he and his son Ryan have been working on the various MJ-12 documents, including the SOM1.01 Special Operating Manual (not mentioned at all by Randle) and the Tim Cooper MJ-12 documents discussed below, did pay a questioned documents examiner, James A. Black, to perform a professional examination of the TF typeface. In a letter dated November 13, 1998, Black stated, “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.” That is good enough for me.
But Black seems to agree that the signature has been transplanted, since he says, “The signature, in my opinion, is most likely to be a reproduction. I reached this opinion because the ink line is homogeneous, and feathering is absent at the ends of the lines.”
Randle talks about the signature a lot and how it is identical to a Truman signature on an October 1, 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush. Randle doesn’t give me credit for finding it in the first place. He correctly quotes me as saying, early on, “it matches the signature” after switching the comment to “Friedman reported the signature exactly matched.” Matches is not the same as saying exactly matches. There were reasons to say the two signature were not identical. Segment lengths, when compared, did not have the same length ratio. But I had long ago raised the question of where Hillenkoetter or W.B. Smith (responsible for high security briefings for the President Elect) would have obtained a copy of the memo with a signature on it.
Presumably the original went to Forrestal since it is addressed to him. Quite conceivably there would have been copies given to Bush, who is mentioned by name; and to Hillenkoetter who, while not named, is referred to as Director of Central Intelligence; and maybe a copy to the President’s files. But I would not expect any but the original would be signed. Forrestal died in May, 1949. So where would his original have been by November, 1952? If Smith had told Hillenkoetter that he thought Ike would have wanted a signed executive order, it would have been easy. Bush would have found his unsigned copy with the October 1 letter from Truman, the CIA would have its disinformation people transfer it. All governments according to texts on disinformation have groups for making phoney documents, visas, ID cards, etc. I had raised this point twelve years ago, but Randle doesn’t discuss it at all. Bush was still going strong; Hillenkoetter had served on active duty in Korea before coming back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1951.
A point that, as might be expected, Randle doesn’t consider, is the fact that the last portion of the date is “24,1947.” It is not in line with the “September” strongly indicating it was put in a separate typewriter to add the numbers. I was told that that often happened with documents prepared for the President’s signature which would have to be dated appropriately. The period at the end of the date is important as well. Rarely did Truman put a period after the date, but Bush’s office always did.
I asked George Elsey whether it would have been feasible for the memo to have been prepared for Truman’s signature by either Bush and/or Forrestal. He said that 90% of what a President signs is prepared by others and that he certainly would have trusted Bush or Forrestal. As it happens that was a very, very busy week for Truman: signing the new National Security Act; separating the Air Force from the Army; setting up the new Central Intelligence Agency; and catching up with world problems, having been off to Brazil for an international Conference and returning a few days earlier on the USS Missouri.
Furthermore, the record indicates that Bush and Forrestal met together for 30 minutes prior to their meeting with Truman on September 24, the only date when all three were together over a many-month period. The Truman Library had not provided this information to anybody else.
Incidentally, in a battle with Phil Klass about the Pica typeface on the CT memo, he thought it should have been elite instead of Pica (because he had all of nine Elite-type pages of the 250,000 NSC pages) but wound up paying me $1000.00 for proving him wrong as I produced more than fourteen James Lay NSC office documents using the exact same Pica typeface as used in the CT memo. I also produced some where the text was in one typeface, and the date in another — clearly establishing that sometimes the date was added later. These items and his check are shown in Ref. 2.
Part 3
DR. DONALD H. MENZEL
As noted above, while ignoring most of the MJ-12 members, their relations with each other and their outstanding suitability for the task at hand, Randle does talk about Dr. Donald H. Menzel. His name is the only shocker in the group since he was supposed to be a total UFO sceptic (based on his three books and numerous articles) and because he certainly did not need a very high level compartmentalized security clearance to teach astronomy at Harvard. All eleven others clearly had such clearances. Montague, probably the least well known of the MJ-12 list, was not only a West Point man, as were Twining and Vandenberg, but in the first week in July, 1947, was named head of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque, coming up from Fort Bliss at the western Edge of Texas and just Southeast of New Mexico. He had control of the German rocket scientists brought over under Operation Paperclip. His son, also West Point and also a general, told me that he thought the reason his father would have been involved (he was quite an expert on artillery computations) is that he had manpower to provide to Roswell, north of Ft. Bliss. General Montague (the son) not only provided me with a picture of his father for use in TOP SECRET/MAJIC, but also said nice things about the book after I sent him a copy.
Anyway, when Bill Moore first read me the MJ-12 member list in December, 1984, he left Menzel’s name until last. My response was: that was all we needed. Probably a hoax document from somebody who thinks he can get us to go public and then thumb his nose at us. I didn’t like Menzel, since I thought his UFO books were unscientific, and I’d had one run-in with him on the phone when I invited him to attend my lecture at Harvard. He said he knew all about me, having seen letters and memos (I still don’t know what he meant), though I asked if he meant my congressional testimony next to his in the “UFO Symposium of 1968,” Ref. 6. He also said, “You can’t be a scientist and believe in flying saucers.” I laughed, which he didn’t like. I invited him and he said of course he wouldn’t attend. I told the story at the lecture. Menzel’s name on the list was one reason that Moore, Shandera and I didn’t go public until 1987.
Randle repeats a very tall tale apparently from Karl Pflock with an unattributed source saying I had decided much earlier that because Menzel had spent some time in New Mexico, he must have headed a group consisting of all those people later named in the EBD. In effect, saying that probably I faked the documents. This is pure hogwash. Of course I was aware of Menzel. I had read his first book back in about 1960. After being informed of the EBD, I did do a lot of checking including with a retired employee of Engineering Research Associates in Minneapolis, headed by Menzel’s WW II boss, who told me that Menzel was a consultant there and left suddenly one summer on a special classified project. I asked what year. He said 1947.
I should note here that because so much of the stuff in the EBD made sense, I felt that I should check on Menzel. I had looked at his extensive UFO correspondence housed at the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia. Nothing stood out there. I had been checking on Vannevar Bush, later listed on MJ-12 but earlier named in a 1950 memo by Canadian Wilbert Smith as heading a group working on the Modus Operandi of Flying Saucers. I therefore was looking at Bush’s correspondence files at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and noted a letter from Menzel’s lawyer to Bush thanking him for helping during Menzel’s Loyalty Hearing. This certainly established a connection. I checked with a prestigious Boston law firm. They mentioned that more than 1000 pages of Menzel’s hearings testimony were in Menzel’s files at Harvard. I was able to get a grant from the Fund for UFO Research to look into his Harvard papers after getting permission from three different people to see his files. There, in 1986, I made a host of totally unexpected discoveries about Menzel which I reported in International UFO Reporter in detail (Ref. 7), in my “Final Report on Operation Majestic 12” (Ref.2) and in even more detail in TOP SECRET/MAJIC (Ref. 1).
Randle spends all of two pages discussing Menzel and lists the supposed basis for my conclusions that he belonged on MJ-12: “… that Menzel spoke Japanese, for example, was a Navy cryptologist during the Second World War, knew John F. Kennedy well enough to call him by his first name, was a consultant to the NSA, and that he was nearly chased from government work during a McCarthy era challenge to his loyalty. Menzel was friends with MJ-12 members Vannevar Bush and Detlev Bronk.” This is a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote about Menzel’s involvement. He was a world class cryptographer before, during and after the war. He wrote JFK in 1960 saying he had the longest continuous association with the NSA and its Navy predecessor, 30 years as of 1960, of anybody in the country; he did classified consulting work for 30 companies after the war; he had a TOP SECRET ULTRA clearance with the CIA; and he was head of the US Navy Reserve Communications Unit №1 after the war.
I noted that Menzel had written science fiction and was well placed to provide disinformation. His first UFO book was translated into Russian. I said nothing about knowing Kennedy well enough to call him by his first name (JFK was on the board of Overseers at Harvard and picked Astronomy, Menzel’s domain, as his area of interest). I quoted from Menzel’s letters to JFK offering to brief him on the NSA once they were properly cleared to each other and stressing his long connection with them. I noted that Bush (who had known Menzel since 1934) was Menzel’s staunchest defender at the Loyalty Hearing. None of Menzel’s many post-war intelligence work activities were noted in an eight-page appreciation of him in Sky and Telescope (Ref. 8) after his death.
Randle claims, apparently thinking to put the end to any possible connection between Menzel and the oversight group, that “nowhere did he [Friedman] find any mention of MJ12 [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’s connection to it.” Half a page later Randle claims, “After examining Menzel’s papers at Harvard, at the APSL [American Philosophical Society Library] and the University of Denver archives, Friedman found nothing that referenced MJ-12.” This is certainly true, but completely irrelevant, since at none of these places were there any classified Menzel papers or documents. There is no question — based upon Menzel’s letters to Kennedy, his unpublished autobiography, and other details — that he was up to his ears in classified consulting work long after World War II was over. I talked to people who worked for him. He was certainly security conscious. Of course, I didn’t find any mention of any black budget programs he worked on and no formerly classified documents. Thirty-plus years with the NSA and Randle thinks Menzel would have left smoking guns around?
We must remember that absence of evidence is NOT evidence for absence. From reading Bush’s statement to the Loyalty Committee (and statements from others as well) it is perfectly clear that he was well aware of Menzel’s classified work. I am reminded of the fact that there are no classified documents at the General George C. Marshall Library. His files were carefully reviewed for declassification by Dr. Forrest Pogue, a military historian, scholar, etc. The classified Marshall files are elsewhere. So are the classified Menzel files. His contract with ERA was worth $18,000 per year in the immediate post-war period for consulting work. None of those papers are at Harvard or APSL or the U of D.
In short, then, Randle’s treatment of Menzel is a splendid example of the standard tool of the Propagandist: selective choice of data, serious errors of both omission and commission, false reasoning.
RANDLE’S OVERSIGHT GROUP
Randle’s discussions of those people he thinks would have been on an oversight group are also seriously flawed. They are based on the supposed testimony of two very different people: the late Frank Kaufmann of Roswell and Retired USAF General Arthur Exon.
Kaufmann’s many and varied claims about the whole Roswell incident were backed up by nothing. However, he was Randle’s big important witness. He is heavily touted in Randle’s “The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell,” “The Roswell Encyclopedia,” and the first part of “Case MJ-12.” Kaufmann, though a civilian in Roswell after being discharged as a sergeant from the Army Air Force at the Roswell Army Air Force Base in October, 1945, was supposedly part of an all-powerful group of nine who could go anywhere, talk to anybody. He knew everything!
He was over in White Sands watching radar on assignment from General Martin Scanlon of the Air Defense Command in early July, 1947, because there had been many radar sightings of unknowns. They observed one “exploding on the screen” north of Roswell. Somebody from Roswell told Kaufmann that there was something causing a glow in the sky west of the highway north of town. Then Kaufmann rushed back to the base (over 100 miles over a mountain pass), woke Colonel Blanchard, Base Commander, and Major Jesse Marcel, Base Intelligence Officer, in the middle of the night. They then drove north, turned off the highway, covered many miles off the road despite gulleys, gates and snakes, and discovered a crashed saucer with several alien bodies. They called back to the base and a flat bed truck came out, also miles cross-country to the site. The saucer which looked, according to Frank’s drawings, much like the triangular TR3 reconnaissance craft pictured in Popular Mechanics in 1990, was lifted on board the flat bed and was back to base by morning. Frank is a fine artist. Neither the craft nor the bodies looked anything like anybody else had described.
None of this made sense when Frank described this scenario in July, 1995, to Kevin, Don Schmitt, and me. I asked if Blanchard wouldn’t have waited until a spotter plane could check things out in the morning. He said they didn’t have any spotter planes. They certainly did. The notion that all kinds of daylight photographs would not have been taken is absurd. People who owned the land at the time, the McKnight family, said there was no way to get to the site, except on horseback, until years later. The story made no sense as I wrote in my notes. Don tended to agree with me. The radar range was also too little; an explosion filling the screen could only be very close to the radar. They used primarily tracking radar — not search radar — at White Sands. To his credit, when I asked Frank at his home (by invitation in December, 1999, with three other witnesses) if Blanchard had gone out with him, he said, “No.” Did Marcel go out with you? “No.” Certainly Marcel, if he had been at the crash site, would have responded altogether differently when called by the Sheriff after being visited by rancher Brazel, on Sunday, July 6, 1947.
I discussed this in detail in my MUFON 2000 paper (Ref. 3). Finally after Frank’s death in 2001, Don Schmitt was able to get permission to view Frank’s papers and discovered that Frank had forged some documents and apparently had made up lots of stories. It was always strange that Frank claimed he could talk about the vehicles and the bodies, but couldn’t talk about who was running the show. He said that they didn’t stamp government documents that were classified with Security markings because everybody would know on the base very quickly, which is just plain crazy. He was a civilian clerk at the base for a couple of years until getting involved with the Chamber of Commerce. He showed me pictures of him with some military big shots, but with no indication whether he was present as a guard or as a tour guide. I think he is laughing his head off that he was able to get Randle to believe just about every phoney story. Randle even went so far as to attribute to Major Easley, base Provost Marshall, words that were actually Frank’s. Finally in late 2002, Randle (“Frank Kaufmann: Roswell Witness”) and Mark Rodeghier (“Frank Kaufmann: Roswell Hoaxer”) who had worked with Don on some of Frank’s papers, suddenly published long articles in the International UFO Reporter indicating that Frank’s claims could not be substantiated and that certain documents had been faked. No credit was given to Schmitt. Randle made the foolish claim that “Challenges from the outside seemed born more of politics inside the UFO field than of investigative analysis.” This would appear to be projecting onto other Roswell investigators his own politics about Roswell and the absence of investigative analysis on his part.
Unfortunately, “Case MJ-12” was completed before Frank’s denouement. He claimed that several people were part of this oversight group. Most have never even been shown to exist such as a General Thomas. The one who did exist was General Martin Scanlon who supposedly ordered Frank to White Sands. General Scanlon had been involved in Intelligence work for Army Air Force General Henry “Hap” Arnold in the 1930s, had been based in Roswell heading a training group in the early 1940s, and had headed several other training groups over the next few years. There seems to be no indication of intelligence activities. In addition, his last post in 1947 before he left the military in early 1948 was as Public Affairs man for the Air Defense Command in Mitchell Field in New York. The notion that he could order a civilian at Roswell with no radar training, over to White Sands where the ADC had no radar in 1947, seems frankly ridiculous. Roswell was a SAC base.
General Exon, unlike Frank who was basically a clerk while he was in the service and for a couple of years afterward, was a pilot during WW II, spent more than year in a German Prisoner of War Camp, was at Wright Field in 1947, and went on to be Commander of Wright Patterson Air Force Base from August 1, 1964, until December 20, 1965. I was very impressed with him when we went to lunch near his home in California. Randle had claimed that Exon had firsthand knowledge of the Roswell crash from his time at WPAF and from contacts when he served in the Pentagon. Randle claimed that Exon knew who was on the oversight committee naming such people as Secretary of Air Stuart Symington, Secretary of Defense Forrestal and several others. As I described in Ref. 1, when I checked with Exon after first hearing about him and sending a copy of what was written in “The Truth” (Ref. 9), he indicated that he was repeating probably reliable scuttlebutt about the crash and that he was speaking of those who would have known about the crash — NOT those who would have been on the committee. I sent him a copy of “My Final Report” and relevant portions of “The Truth,” then contacted him again. He immediately picked up on the split between military and civilian and Army, Navy, Air Force, and scientists and had no problems at all with the makeup of the MJ-12 group. He also had no objection to the use of generic ranks for the MJ-12 members.
Part 4
TIM COOPER MJ-12 DOCUMENTS
Randle also attacks a few of the supposed MJ-12 Documents received by Tim Cooper of California. I went into gory detail on several of these in my MUFON 2000 paper, Ref. 3. I agree that I can find no good reason to believe any of these are genuine and very good reasons to say they are frauds. I had found in such books as “Wedemeyer Reports” (Ref. 10) original documents which were retyped in the Cooper documents with a few changes with the hand written items scanned or Xeroxed to create what I have referred to as emulations. These, at first blush, without access to the originals, look genuine as to signatures, etc. He gives one example: a July 9, 1947 directive to General Twining from President Truman which is clearly an emulation of a real one from President Truman to General Wedemeyer on the same date. But then apparently in a rush, he gives a wrong reason! He states, “But the final, and devastating, blow comes from a handwritten note at the bottom of the authentic document. Truman noted, ‘I am keeping for further study.’ The Twining memo contains the exact same message and the handwriting matches, exactly, that on the authentic memo.” WRONG.
The reasons the Twining directive is an emulation are that the three handwritten items at the bottom (Truman’s signature, July 9, 1947, and “Approved”) match exactly in the location on the page and in the handwriting, and the fact that the Twining directive has essentially identical language even though Wedemeyer’s mission to China was very different from Twining’s supposed mission to New Mexico. Also the Twining one says, “When your mission in New Mexico is completed you will proceed on a brief trip to the Sandia AEC facility.” As it happens, Sandia is in New Mexico. To Wedemeyer it was “When your mission to China is completed you will proceed on a brief trip to Korea.” Korea, of course, is NOT in China.
What is funny here is that indeed a Cooper document included the handwritten “I am keeping for further study” on an entirely different phoney document. I had spotted the identicality after reviewing 23 different sign offs from Truman on various items that I had copied (and distributed to some people including Tim Cooper) at the Marshall Archives. This was noted in my MUFON paper. I gather Randle did not want to give me credit for debunking this batch of supposed MJ-12 documents.
Randle is sloppy in other places as well in “Case MJ-12.” For example, he refers to the Billy Mitchell affair and his court-martial for his advocacy of the possibility of sinking ships with bombs dropped from aircraft as happening “back in the 30s.” It happened in the early 1920s. In his reference to my “Operation Majestic 12? YES!” he lists it as being published by the Fund for UFO Research. It was not. It was published by my UFO Research Institute. It rebuts his anti-MJ-12 arguments in Ref. 11, “Conclusions on Operation Majestic Twelve” which was indeed published by FUFOR. He attributes my “Crashed Saucers, Majestic 12, and the Debunkers” (Ref. 5) to the MUFON Journal. It was actually presented at the MUFON Conference for 1992 and included in the Proceedings. He in one place says the roll of film containing the EBD and TF items was received in 1982. It was actually 1984. He talks at length about testimony from unnamed officers, a colonel and lieutenant. There is no way to evaluate anything from them, so what is the point in the inclusion?
FINAL COMMENTS
Some final comments are in order. If the EBD, TF and CT Items are genuine, as I believe they are, one would certainly expect the intelligence community to flood the market with garbage, relatively easily seen as such, and causing many careless researchers to make the original ones sort of phoney-by-association. Colonel Richard Weaver, who wrote the USAF’s “The Roswell Report: Truth versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert” (he supplied the fiction) wrote Nick Redfern, an excellent UFO Researcher, that the MJ-12 documents were bogus, and everybody knew they were bogus, etc. He included a copy to Nick (living in the UK at the time) of the eight pages with a hand written Large Print BOGUS on each page.
I filed an FOIA request for all documentation leading to this statement made by a serving officer to a foreign national on official stationery. The response was there was nothing in response to my request. I appealed. There was still nothing. However, if one looks at the discussion about MJ-12 on the FBI site, one finds the same copy of the MJ-12 docs with the same handwritten BOGUS on each page. Colonel Weaver lied about a number of other items in his report (see Ref. 12). I guess lying about the MJ-12 documents isn’t very surprising for an expert in disinformation. People want provenance. I would like it, too. But it is clear that the person who supplied the documents, if they are indeed genuine, is the one at risk, not the recipients. If it is a hoax, why has the hoaxer not come forward to say Gotcha? He wasn’t breaking the law and could really thumb his nose at ufologists. On balance, Randle has not achieved his purpose of disgracing the original MJ-12 documents. They would still seem to stand as the most important classified government documents ever leaked to the public.
Stanton Friedman
REFERENCES
1. Friedman, Stanton T. “TOP SECRET/MAJIC” 1996, Marlowe and Co, New York, 272 pp. Hard cover; List $22.95. 10-page bibliography, autographed. From UFORI, POB 958, Houlton, ME 04730–0958. SPECIAL $15.00 including S & H.
2. Friedman, Stanton T. “Final Report on Operation Majestic 12” 108 pp., done for FUND For UFO Research, $10.00 including S & H from UFORI, autographed.
3. Friedman, Stanton T. “Roswell and the MJ-12 Documents in the New Millennium” presented MUFON 2000, St. Louis, MO; July, 2000. 29 pp., 20 references. $4.00. From UFORI, autographed.
4. Friedman, Stanton T. “Operation Majestic 12? YES!” August 5, 1994, 35 pp. $4.00. From UFORI, autographed.
5. Friedman, Stanton T. “Crashed Saucers, Majestic-12, and the Debunkers” Presented MUFON 1992, Albuquerque, NM. 19 pp., 48 references. $4.00. From UFORI, autographed.
6. “Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects” Congressional Hearings, July 29, 1968, Testimony from 12 Scientists; 247 pp., From NTIS, 5285 Port Royal Rd. Springfield, VA 22151. Item No. PB179541 Testimony from MacDonald, Menzel, Hynek, Sagan, Harder, Friedman, etc.
7. Friedman, Stanton T. “The Secret Life of Donald H. Menzel” International UFO Reporter, Jan/Feb 1988, pp. 20–24.
8. Goldberg, Leo “Sky and Telescope” April, 1977 appreciation of D.H. Menzel.
9. Randle, Kevin D. and Schmitt, Donald R. “The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell,” M. Evans, 1994, 251 pp. (Avon Paperback, 1994, 314 pp.).
10. Wedemeyer, General Albert C. “Wedemeyer Reports!” 1958, 496 pp., Henry Holt & Co., New York.
11. Randle, Kevin D. “Conclusions on Operation Majestic 12” June, 1994. 30 pp., Fund For UFO Research, POB 277, Mt. Rainier, MD 20712.
12. Friedman, Stanton T. “The Roswell Incident, The USAF, and the New York Times,” 28 pp., September 26, 1994, $4.00. From UFORI, autographed.
