MJ-12

ParaNet Alpha 0825 -- The Majestic-12 documents recently released by a team of researchers led by William L. Moore, have come under considerable fire from UFO skeptic Philip Klass of CSICOP.

In a dramatic press release issued August 20, CSICOP chairman Paul Kurtz stated that "The evidence clearly shows that these are hoax documents."

The documents, in the form of a purported briefing given to President-Elect Dwight Eisenhower prior to his taking office in 1952, tell of a special panel set up to advise the President on matters of crashed saucers and recovered alien corpses. Moore and his associates claim to have received the documents from an anonymous source in 1984, and to have discovered an independent corroborative document in the National Archives, a memo from Ike's special assistant Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining. The document makes reference to the "NSC/MJ-12 Special Studies Project."

"For the first time," according to Moore, "we had an official document available through a public source that talked about MJ-12."

Klass, relying heavily on a letter from the National Archives regarding this memo, proceeds to sow considerable doubt as to its authenticity. "Cutler could not possibly have written this July 14 [1952] memo," says Klass, "because Cutler had departed Washington 11 days earlier on an extended trip to visit military facilities in Europe and North Africa and did not return to Washington until July 15."

Other inconsistencies in the document, pointed out by Archivist Jo Ann Williamson, include the lack of a proper register number as assigned by the Archives, the lack of a watermark in use at the time, and the use of a security classification that did not exist until the Nixon Administration. Moore and his associate, TV producer Jaime Shandera, had claimed that they were the first to have access to the group of documents containing the controversial Cutler memo after they were declassified in 1985. "It may be no more than coincidence," says Klass, "that this Cutler/Twining memo was first discovered at the National Archives by Moore and Shandera." In a previous interview with Klass, he noted that it would be a "simple task" to sneak a document into a folder at the archives. While in Washington attending the MUFON conference, this reporter made a cursory search at the National Archives Maryland Facility, and was given access to newly declassified materials of the same record group as the purported Cutler memo (RG 341) without being searched beforehand.

Another document included with the package received by Moore was a letter marked TOP SECRET from Pres. Truman to James Forrestal, authorizing the MJ-12 group to "proceed with all due speed and caution..." and makes reference to "Operation Majestic Twelve." But Klass claims this, too, is a forgery, "created by superimposing a spurious message on a photocopy of an authentic Truman letter."

"Fabrication of counterfeit US Government documents is illegal," the press release continues, "and [Klass] believes that those who concocted the MJ-12 documents to dupe the public and fool the news media should be brought to justice."

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END SPECIAL RELEASE
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ParaNet Alpha Library References:
MJ12DOCn.UFO where n=1 to 6
MJ12-1.UFO
MJ12-2.UFO
MJ12QA.UFO

ParaNet maintains a rating of S5/P2 on the Majestic-12 documents: Highly Strange, Probable Hoax.

EID:1072 0257fdf0
MSGID: 1:114/37 cd176de7

As Robert Sheaffer reported here earlier, one of the MJ-12 documents has finally been shown - CONCLUSIVELY - to have been hoaxed. Included with the package of documents received in photographic form by Jaime Shandera was a letter from Harry Truman to James Forrestal giving his formal approval to the MJ-12 project. The signature on that letter is an EXACT duplicate of one found on a real Truman document, reports Phil Klass in the latest Skeptical Inquirer. The MJ-12 signature is 3.6% larger than the legitimate one, which is exactly 3 times the enlargement factor of a standard Xerox machine (1.2%, in order to cover up the "framing" effect produced if a document isn't quite as large as the copying glass). Klass theorizes that it would take three Xeroxing procedures to transfer the real signature onto the bogus document.

I have to hand it to Phil on this one...the evidence is plain. The Forrestal letter is a hoax.

[Deletia]

Jim

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* Origin: -==- (As of 1/1/90: SWAMP GAS) 602-951-3431 HST (1:114/37)

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