MAJIC documents, page 1

In December 1984, television producer Jaime Shandera allegedly received an anonymous package containg an undeveloped roll of 35mm film. Pictures on the film showed two documents, one dated 24 September 1947 and another dated 18 November 1952. They were purportedly briefing documents regarding recovery of a crashed flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. The documents were stamed SECRET/MAJIC/EYES ONLY and had references ot a group called MJ-12.

Shandera, along with William Moore and Stanton Friedman, made the documents public in May 1987 because British UFOlogist Timothy Good had announced that he, too, had copies and was about to publish them. To some researchers these documents appeared to be the proverbial "smoking gun", but to others they were highly suspect. It is perhaps most unfortunate that there were no original documnets, only photos purported to be of such documents. The originals were not available for examination.

One document, known as the "Cutler memo" was apparently classified TOP SECRET but lacked a TS register number. It was stamped "Top Secret - Restricted Information," a classification not used by the National Security Coucil (NSC) until the Nixon administration, decades after if was supposedly written. The paper appeared to lack a government watermark. The memo referred to a NSC meeting on 16 July 1954, but NSC records show no meeting on that date, nor did president Eisenhower's appointment books indicate any special meetings on that date.

The MJ-12 documents contained numerous other inconsistencies, factual errors and stylistic problems, as well as anachronistic terminology. These tended to indicate the documents might be a hoax. The final blow apparently came in 1990 when Phil Klass found the "Truman memo" of 1947 was a forgery. It bore a signature photocopied from a genuine document. A document examiner also stated the body of the memo was typed on a Smith-Corona typerwriter model that was not produced until 1963.

Eventually, even Stanton Friedman condemned many of the supposed MJ-12 documents as fraudulent. He found that some documents were "emulations of real documents" that were available to the public and that some things had been retyped, combined with other material, and then photocopied. He also noted numerous factual errors.

In 1994, another alleged MJ-12 document surfaced in the form of an undeveloped roll of 35mm film. The "Special Operations Manual (SOM1-01)" was a how-to instruction book for recovering crashed UFOs. It was dated 1954. Again, what a tragedy there was no original document to examine. That leaves us with content and style.

Some analysts found as many as 50 inconsistencies and errors. Again there were problems with classification markings. There was a War Department seal on the cover where a Department of Defense seal should have been for the alleged date of publication. Most egregiously, there were references to Area 51 (which did not exist in 1954;the base was built in 1955 and named Area 51 no earlier than 1958) and S-4 (a fictional creation of Bob Lazar, circa 1990s).

This sort of hoax does a great disservice to UFOlogy.