Majestic 12, Again

I am sick and tired of having to defend my research on the Majestic 12 documents against false charges . I have had a strong interest since first hearing about 2 of the 3 (of more than 100 that have been trotted out )that I consider genuine way back at the end of 1984. The two were the Eisenhower Briefing Document of November 18, 1952, and page 8 of that document “The Truman Forrestal Memo” of Sept. 24,1947. The third genuine one is the Cutler- Twining memo of June 14, 1954,which wasn’t discovered until July 1985 at the National Archives. I believe after considerable effort that all the other so called MJ-12 documents are phony.  We must distinguish between research by investigation and research by proclamation the standard technique used by MJ-12 debunkers.

I am particularly concerned by the comments over the years by Dr. Kevin D. Randle. Dr. Randle is a very prolific author, having published at least 100 books (mostly fiction)and many articles .  He has said a lot about Roswell and is convinced  a flying saucer crashed in the New Mexico desert in July 1947.  Much of his writing about MJ-12  relies more heavily on the tools of fiction. Theoretical scenarios  are required to advance the action . Questions of facts and data and evidence don’t come into play.

I am especially peeved that in his book “Case MJ-12”, Dr. Randle misrepresents my findings and views about Dr. Donald Menzel’s appropriateness for a place on MJ-12 . When people have asked what surprised me the most in my MJ-12 research, I note I was truly shocked that UFO debunker Menzel (a few books and many articles) actually was well qualified. Here is what KDR says in his book “Case MJ-12 ”Friedman writes of Menzel’s”double Life”, 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 challenge to his loyalty”..This is a grossly misleading picture of what I have written. Dr. Randle refers to my ”Final Report on Operation Majestic 12” and my article “The Secret Life of Donald H. Menzel”. In neither nor in my TOP SECRET/MAJIC do I say anything about Menzel speaking Japanese or about knowing Kennedy well enough to call him Jack. I do quote from 1960 letters to Kennedy addressing him as Jack but providing statements to the effect that when they are properly cleared to each other he can tell him more. I  Especially focused on his post world war 2 highly classified work that isn’t even mentioned in two special issues of Sky and Telescope honoring Menzel .. after he died ( and on the 100^th anniversary of his birth). xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

About Japanese (6^th paragraph of 9  denoting why I thought he belonged on MJ-12 “Menzel had learned Japanese during his work on cryptography. He had even taught cryptography before the war and continued as head of Communications Unit No. 1 of the US Naval Reserve in Cambridge after being mustered out.He would have been an ideal person to show the symbols found at Roswell, since he already had the high level security clearance to go with his cryptographic skills and an understanding of an entirely different  symbolic language”.In short the notion that I mentioned his calling Kennedy by his first name and Menzel speaking Japanese is  entirely fictional. Not noted by Dr. Randle was my emphasis on all the statements made by people like Dr. Bush about Menzel being entirely discreet and trustworthy with regard to classified information. Bush was known as the father of compartmentalization   and was well aware of Menzel’s wartime and post war classified activities.

More misrepresentation  from Dr. Randle includes this statement “..nowhere did he (Friedman)find any mention of MJ-12. There are no marginal notes ,no oblique references, no highly placed correspondence that suggests, mention, identifies or confirms the existence of MJ-12, or Menzel’s connection to it”. This is frankly absurd. There was all kinds of testimony from people as highly placed as Dr. Vannevar Bush that Menzel was extremely discreet about classified matters, and Dr. Randle thinks he would have left classified information lying around? I talked to his secretary and some colleagues.There were no classified items left  in his files at Harvard . . Absence of evidence is not evidence for absence. Of course a number of other  MJ-12 debunkers have tried the same ploy. Karl Pflock, for example, says he couldn’t find any mention of MJ-12 in other documents. If it was as classified as claimed to be, it would have been amazing if there had been.

I wrote two final reports for a project I did for Aerojet General  Nucleonics under contract to the  USAF. One was unclassified. The other was highly classified.. It is not mentioned in the unclassified report.

Dr. Randle also makes another fictional  claim “For me, however the “smoking gun” that proved the Eisenhower briefing is a hoax was Roscoe Hillenkoetter’s rank.” After all he was only a rear admiral and would not have called himself Admiral”. Kevin even once asked me to show him some other document on which he signed himself as admiral. There is of course no signature on the EBD! Several military officers including General Exxon)told me they had no trouble with the use of generic ranks (for all the military guys not just Hillenkoetter). Brian Parks a Californian provided me with an example. so my next trip to the Eisenhower Library (The critics seem generally to avoid going to Archives so they can do their research by proclamation rather than investigation)  I found a bunch of mem coms (memorandum of Conversation) written by Ike’s Staff secretary Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster. He always used generic ranks to list the meeting attendees, including himself as General Andrew Goodpaster. But he signed them Brigadier General. Two different archivists said that was standard practice. .

Dr. Randle is particularly deceptive when he talks about Questioned Document Examiner Peter Tytell’s findings about the EBD. I had located Tytell years earlier and sent him a copy.Randle say PT said ”And it was just perfect because the whole thing of the 12 pages or however many pages it was. Most of the pages were just blank pages with just five words on them like Top Secret Memo or Appendix A or something like that. ”. Randle unfortunately some how leaves out pages 6 and 7 of the 8 page(not 12) memo. (Only 7 has just  a few words) . Tytel casually noted he thought the typewriter on the TF memo was much later than 1947. Dr. Robert Wood hired Dr. Black a Questioned document examiner who stated the typewriter was a 1940 Underwood. He agreed that the signature had been lifted. I had early on in a trip to the National Archives found a letter from Truman to Bush dated October 1947 which had a very similar signature (I don’t get credit for finding it. Phil Klass is given credit.) The real question that nobody wants to answer is where would a signed copy of the memo have been? Forrestal would have received one, but he died in 1949. Bush and Director of CIA are both mentioned. Probably would have had copies..unsigned. Ike was being briefed on High security matters by the then CIA director Walter Bedell Smith who was now on MJ-12 and probably would have had the briefing typed at CIA. I asked former CIA agent Karl Pflock if the CIA would not have lifted the signature to put it on the TF memo.. Of course.

I had asked the Truman library if anybody from the  Truman White House was still around. They noted George Elsey who was there all during Truman’s term. I called him and sent him a copy of the documents and called back to ask questions purposely avoiding asking any questions he couldn’t have answered if he had known about MJ-12. He was very helpful. He saw no reason to say the documents were fraudulent, that any of the members would not have been picked by Truman, He said  most things signed by a president are prepared elsewhere, that HST trusted Forrestal and Bush, that the slanted portion of the 24 September date probably meant being in a typewriter twice so that the final date would be appropriate. No quarrel with my notion that because of the period at the end of the date line, that it could have been Bush’s office. It always ended  dates with a period. He told me that James Lay the NSC Exec Sec. worked very closely with Robert Cutler. They sat next to each other at meetings and got copies of all the paperwork from the other. I suggested that Lay wrote the CT memo because he had met with Ike earlier that day at 2:30 and had a phone conversation at 4:30. I had a copy of instructions to Lay from Cutler to keep things moving out of his inbox while Cutler  was in Europe. It took me 2 years to get a copy of a formerly classified note from Lay to Cutler while Cutler was gone indicating he was keeping things moving. Elsey said of course Lay would have prepared a simple memo to Twining. It isn’t signed and there is no /s/ indicating original signed by. This is one of many items I have noted to which the debunkers have not responded. How did a hoaxer know when we didn’t find this out, until years later.. Randle spends little time on the CT memo saying the TOP SECRET Restricted notation on it had to be a fraud because the Ike Library and the Nat. Archives said it wasn’t in use at the time. The GAO in its 400+ page report noted that they had found a number of instances of it in use despite being told that it had not been. They had also been mistaken about the use of Dictation onionskin.I have listed many items which nobody knew.

Randle even claimed psychically that Ike wouldn’t have needed a briefing  because as Army chief of Staff in 1947 he would have known about Roswell. True ,but he was out of the loop thereafter as President of Columbia University and then in Europe as head of Allied forces trying to work with former enemy Germany to provide a bulwark against the Russians. He had his hands full with matters of great importance. Of course Randle says nothing about Phil Klass paying me 1000$ for providing 10 documents with the same pica type as used on the CT memo Klass had insisted they should have been in elite type.. A copy of his check is of course in my Final Report on Operation Majestic 12 and TOP SECRET/MAJIC which KDR had and references .I would be happy to take on any MJ-12 debunker who has done his homework and some real research instead of proclamations.

Stanton Friedman www.stantonfriedman.com  fsphys@rogers.com