A question on the MJ-12 documents

I have been rereading some older blogs and books on the alleged MJ-12 documents and a question popped up in my mind:

Why would a person (or persons) who spent such great lengths to fake a document make so many minor yet noticeable mistakes? The dating system used by the military would have been known to most civilians as many had been in the service (or knew someone who did). Also, they would of known the correct titles of rear admiral and full admiral.

Those (and other) small mistakes seem to be made on purpose so researchers would discover them and debunk the documents as fake. If one is trying to pass off the documents as real, they would not have made such obvious mistakes. One speculation could be that the documents were done that way purposely in case they were ever leaked to the public.

Again, this is just my theory and I could be wrong. Anyone disagree or agree with the above?

I think you are going in the right direction but reaching the wrong conclusion. You are right in that the mistakes were meant to be found in order to cast doubt's on the document. But many within the research community (Stan Friedman not withstanding) believe the documents are a hoax intended to discredit the community. Moore was the first researcher to make the documents public and it is well documented Moore was working with a group within the AFOSI called the Aviary (in particular Richard Doty) to spread disinformation in the UFO community.

reply to post by DoomsdayRex


The documents are very detailed in every other way except for the small errors. While I do think disinformation is a possibility, it seems they went through a lot of trouble to do so.

BTW, Mr Friedman does not state they are all fact, just that some of the documents have not been debunked. He has found many highly classified documents with the same mistakes (and collected $1000 from Philip Klass showing such errors), so they cannot debunk the documents in themselves. Through his research, he also found out that Dr Donald Menzel also worked secretly for some alphabet agencies, information that would never have come to light if the documents had not surfaced.

I believe Stanton Friedman's take on the documents is that there are two sets; one fake and the other real. He has identified a number of documents that are fake and other corroborating evidence to support others.

I think the first batch are real and in an effort to discredit the documents, the people in the know fabricated and faked the later documents and released them to the public with the obvious errors as you point out. This way all of the MJ-12 files are discredited by association. Could you think of a better way to help mitigate the damage of the leak? I can’t.

Here is site with all the documents and comments on the suspected authenticity of them all:
www.majesticdocuments.com...

The whole MJ-12 thing is total bunk in my opinion. Too many things don't add up, not just in the documents themselves but in the story behind it.

Me, I think it was done by folks in the community. They intended to use them to trash those who found them I think. You have to remember, these guys who do this thing full time and earn a living off of it are competitive with each other, whether they seem to be or not. What better way to make someone you don't like look like a fool than to have them chasing their tale?

reply to post by bloodsearch


That is a good website on the documents. I also think some of them are faked, but I also like the fact that the research into them has uncovered many documents related to UFOs that would never have been discovered. If the idea was to debunk, the makers failed on that attempt alone.

reply to post by IgnoreTheFacts


The amount of work to create not only the documents but the book would have taken a very long time. Even the FBI could not prove the documents were fake, and they have experts in such matters (from Howard Blum's book "Out There").

Again, it is possible some group did fake them, but they would have needed some expertise in the area of old government documents to fool the FBI.

reply to post by kidflash2008
Hiya KF, these documents illustrate the tangled mess that the subject has always been. No conclusions are allowed and no consensus achieved.

Friedman and Randle are fairly reputable (IMO) and yet they can't agree on the validity of the Eisenhower Briefing doc, Twining Memo or Truman-Forrestal Memo. Randle believes Friedman is naive and Stan believes Randle has made mistakes in his analysis. Most experts demonstrate why the docs are faked yet Stan demonstrates that these three might not be.

As suggested, it's wholly possible that a 'ufologist' engineered the release of the docs to discredit a rival in the subject. It seems too elaborate a concept to me, but it's hard to understand the motivations of serious ufologists. The biases and personal conflicts that the subject is heir to, mean that little surprises me anymore.

I think that the documents can be sourced to one of two realities. Either the events in the EDD, TFM and TCM happened or they did not. If they happened, the batch of fake MJ-12 docs may have been released to add doubt to the veracity of the three mentioned. After all, if those three are real then they represent a point when history turned a corner. The source of the errors would therefore be a Pentagon Dept.

If the events never happened, the documents are simply forgeries that backfired on the creators. Has anyone benefited from MJ-12 docs? The main players are all divided on the subject and nobody has lost any dates on the UFO circuit.

I'm persuaded by Stan's arguments to the degree that I think those docs are 'possibly' real. It's not scientific or highly critical but my take on the EBE is doubtful...The language and tone of the opening paragraphs (page 3) seems anachronistic. It's just intuition, it reads like the thoughts of somebody from now trying to capture what a document from then would contain. Who's to say?!

Whatever the reasons, enough doubt has been sown that it takes a particular devotion to claim any of the docs are definitely genuine. Maybe there are several 'smoking guns' around, but we can't see them because some guys (ufologists, liars, hoaxers, 'believers,' military etc) are over at 'Stage Right' with a damn smoke machine I'm fairly convinced that the UFO phenomenon will remain a mystery to us.

My take on the 'date mistakes' in the MJ-12 papers is that it's nothing unusual.

I would say that most people who handle paperwork on a daily basis, do so in their own manner. Some people may use some date formats while others vary. I know that I fill in forms differently, sometimes I write the month name, other times I'll use a number.

The only time that I would be strict with attention to formatting details would be if I was intending to professionally publish the documents. Considering that the MJ-12 documents were never meant to be published, is it all that much of a problem to have dates and formats differ slightly? I think not.

Imagine the few people who would probably have access to these documents - do you think that they would fire a secretary for not typing a date correctly? I doubt it. The fewer people in the loop, means that the information will be easier to contain. You're not going to fire someone for screwing up - with a typewriter - are you?

My opinion assumes that the papers are real, of course. Whether they actually are real - I don't know.

Although I don't doubt that there was an MJ-12,I doubt very much if they had top secret information they would be dumb enough to print memos of it,kind of does away with the top secret idea,best way to get caught is to leave a paper trail,and I don't think they were that foolish

Most of the disclosed information by Dr. Robert M. Wood and son seems of genuine origin. Documents from 1940s to the 1960s are real information goldmines. Starting with the battle above Los Angeles, what was that all about. A prelude to Roswell so-to-speak.

Content collection during the first decades of the cover up was not fullproof, first steps to control information were rather endearing. They show the cradle of the cover-up, in some way: early debunking by sights of weather balloons, propaganda through the press and cinema screenplays.

I disagree.

Given the huge number of hoaxes which propagate in the UFO field, we have to approach all sources which do not come directly from government files with appropriate skepticism. And we should probably treat government sources with a degree of skepticism too -- how much depends on how much you trust the government lol.

Second-guessing the reasons why a person would include silly errors is unhelpful in my opinion. They may be planted there for the very reason that they look 'too dumb to be faked'.

An interesting perspective on the MJ-12 docs is that they are drafts-- and this is why they have silly typos and formatting errors.

I've never examined them myself-- I should really make the effort, I know -- so that's all I have to contribute.

this is very interesting, as looking through other sites and a bit on ats, there have been many people who have claimed that these are deliberate mistakes made the government and some have even suggested that these documents may be some sort of disinformation project that the goverment of other agencies created to try and conceal the truth, whilst still giving the conspiracy theorist something to keep busy on, in other words this could have been made deliberatly to slow down the movement and the finding out of the truth.
just an idea by the way, i have no proof of this!

reply to post by tezzajw


Wait a minute, tezza!!

Where's the 'chain of custody' on those MJ-12 papers??

Oh, that's right. YOU, as do I and many others, happen to think that there is sufficient corroborating evidence from other, disparate sources to lend some credibility to the papers, regardless of their minor inconsistencies....

Human fallibility, personal techniques in writing, etc, etc. None of those are ample enough reason to immediately cry 'faked! when it comes to the MJ-12 stuff -- in fact, they seem even more realistic because of those small details.....a truly 'faked' conspiracy would have been much better presented, n'est pas??

reply to post by kidflash2008


Hi kidflash, interesting thread.

I'm inclined to agree with Kandinsky, it's just almost impossible to determine if even a few of these MJ-12 docs were real. My opinion is that there were a few real ones leaked, then the well crafted pieces of disinformation like som-101 started to get released. Although personally, I'm still reserving judgment on som.

Whoever made these docs, was not an average joe doing typos, if it is all the work of fakery; then I'd say it wreaks of intel.

Regards,

reply to post by kidflash2008


Personally, I think someone wanted to spread some disinfo, so they put together a believable but flawed document and leaked it, voila, the perfect disinformation tactic.

Hypothetical conversation:

"Sir, a lot of people have been reporting sightings of our advanced aircraft, and are demanding disclosure."

"How bad is it?"

"It'd be pretty hard to tell them they're seeing things at this point, but they seem to think it's aliens, not us."

"Well then leak something that says we're working with aliens."

Thank all of you for your replies. As I have stated, the FBI closely examined the documents because Philip Klass stated if they were real, someone broke the law (which would be correct). According to the sources who told journalist Howard Blum, the FBI could not prove the documents were faked.

If the documents were faked, someone did an awful lot of work and knew quite a bit about what is going on.

I also enjoy the back and forth banter between Stanton Friedman and Kevin Randle as both sides bring up good points.

I am with Stanton as I believe some of the documents are real.

To those that say the government would not have any highly classified memos, that has been proven time and time again that they do by Mr Friedman's tireless research into government documents.

Originally posted by kidflash2008
To those that say the government would not have any highly classified memos, that has been proven time and time again that they do by Mr Friedman's tireless research into government documents.

Could you give me the reference for that, which of Stan's books covers this area of research?.. wouldn't be -Flying Saucers And Science- by any chance? .. Probably one of his earlier works.

Thanks.

reply to post by Majorion
Hiya Majorion,

Try here Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents and Stan's review of the Randle book about MJ-12 documents Review of Kevin D. Randle's Case MJ-12

Originally posted by weedwhacker
Wait a minute, tezza!!
Where's the 'chain of custody' on those MJ-12 papers??

Here's why I don't need it, weedwhacker:

Originally posted by tezzajw
Whether they actually are real - I don't know.

Do you want to read that again? I'm not claiming the MJ-12 docs are either real or fake. I don't need chain of custody to have a neutral opinion about them.

If I was claiming that they were real, then I would be required to show chain of custody.

It's kind of an obvious answer when you think about it, but thanks for taking your precious time to ask.