So, Tytell, who had originally been sent the documents by Friedman, concluded that they were faked. He believed that because of his expertise and the mistakes that he found in them. He communicated these negative results to Friedman, but Friedman ignored them. Instead, Friedman said that four other document examiners said the documents were authentic, but provided no name or credentials for any of them. Worse still, he supplied no written report from them so that we might assess the accuracy of what they found.
This is a very truncated version of the MJ-12 arguments and I believe that those interested might want to look at the following books to improve their understanding of the whole mess:
But before we leave MJ-12, there is one other thing that I believe is important to understanding the whole affair. I remembered something that Stan Friedman had told me a long time ago. Friedman told me that Moore had told him that he, Moore, was thinking about creating a “Roswell” type document because it might shake things loose. But what if the idea for this wasn’t Moore’s? What if it came from somewhere else?
Moore was also associated with Richard Doty, a former member of AFOSI who had lost his status as a member of AFOSI and finished his Air Force career in food service. This means, simply, that he was in charge of a Dining Facility or what we used to call a Mess Hall in the Army (now they’re DFACs which stands for Dining FACility).
Moore also said that he was responsible for some of the disinformation that was leaked to Paul Bennewitz. Moore said that he played along with this, even to the point of rearranging Bennewitz’s furniture to frighten him. Moore said he did it in the misguided belief that it would take him into the inner ring of the anti-UFO government programs so that he might be able to learn more about them and then expose them.
I thought at the time it was a load of crap, but probably because I was still being accused of being a government agent (this time by Don Schmitt who was supposedly my friend) and I knew this wasn’t true. But what if the government wanted to discredit UFO research. What if the plan was to throw out so many different ideas, so many tangents, that anyone who stumbled onto the right one might be dragged onto another. Or, if that didn’t work, just discredit all of UFO research by discrediting one small aspect of it.
For about twenty years we have been arguing the reality of MJ12. Great amounts of effort, research and money have been dumped into the chase of MJ-12 and that is effort, research and money that was not available for other, possibly more productive lines of inquiry. And in that time, we haven’t uncovered anything that advances our knowledge of UFOs in any helpful way. We have not found the smoking gun documents but have found dozens, if not hundreds that are faked. In fact, some of the evidence suggests there were all faked. It even tells us who did it and why, but still the debate continues.
So, where does that leave us today? Well, Bill Moore did claim to be a government agent, he did admit to the harassment of Bennewitz for the government and he did admit to spying on researchers for the Air Force. Moore was the first to tell us of MJ12 and it was Moore who worked to prove that MJ-12 was real. Maybe there is a connection here between the government and Moore that has accomplished the mission. Twenty years later and we’re still arguing about MJ-12 and when we divert our attention to MJ-12 we can’t focus it in other directions, and maybe that is the whole point.
The Bad
While not wanting to be a dead horse, I will mention, once again, those witnesses whose testimony is no longer considered to be viable. Probably the first name should be Frank Kaufmann. He provided quite a bit of information, he spun his tales for years, but in the end, it was nothing more than his fantasies. I don’t know why we should accept anything he said given what we know now. And no, I don’t believe he was an agent of disinformation. I believe he was making it all up as he went along.
Barney Barnett, who told the story of seeing a downed flying saucer out on the Plains of San Agustin falls into this category as well. The only evidence to surface was a diary kept by his wife, Ruth, which puts Barney in Socorro on the critical days. He told the story to friends and family, but there is no evidence to suggest it as a real event.
J. Bond Johnson burst on the UFO scene after it was discovered he had taken most of the photographs of the balloon in General Ramey’s office. But after telling a story that made sense and was corroborated by the newspaper articles of the time, Johnson decided that he had photographed the real debris and that Ramey had lied to him. Johnson’s story twisted and turned so often it was impossible to follow and even more difficult to believe. Had he stayed with the original tale, he would have been a valuable witness.
Bill Moore did much to promote the original Roswell story, but after that success, he began to tell all sorts of weird tales. Suddenly he was the target of government intelligence operations, received, through his friend, the MJ-12 papers, and then said he spied on other UFO researchers. His initial work got us all involved, but since then, there hasn’t been much of value.
I guess I’ll have to throw Kent Jeffrey in here too. He once was a strong supporter of the Roswell case and created the Roswell Initiative, which a petition to President to release all classified UFO material. His research, however, convinced him that the answer to Roswell was a Mogul balloon. He did deliver the petitions, but only after writing a letter that negated any affect they might have had. If I say nothing else about Kent it would be that I believe he is honest and sincere, but he is mistaken about Roswell.
Robert Shirkey who said that he was in the operations building as debris was carried through so that he got a look at it. Not much of a story, but one that helps no one and a story that I just find illuminating.
The Good
I have, of course, detailed many of the witness stories about the Roswell crash already. There are some that, given the nature of this work, have been skipped, or mentioned almost in passing. It’s not that I find their tales any less persuasive than before, it’s just they didn’t fit into this book.
For example, I have barely mentioned Pappy Henderson, one of the pilots who flew material to Wright Field. I believe his story to be accurate, and I believe that his wife, Sappho, who shared it with me was sincere. Karl Pflock dismissed the tale as one told by a well-know practical joker. The evidence simply does not back up that suggestion. It was merely a way to dismiss Henderson without dealing with the story.
I have, in the past, written about Sheriff Wilcox’s family and I have found nothing to suggest that they are making up anything. This includes his daughters, Phyllis McGuire and Elizabeth Tulk, and his granddaughter Barbara Dugger.
Military Reaction
The skeptics are fond of saying that if anything had happened, there would be a paper trail to follow. Here they are not referring to documents about the crash itself, but to the reaction of the military to such an event. They look at the schedules, the routines, and the missions of the military and say that nothing changed. No alerts. No one moved around to counter a threat. Nothing to suggest that intelligence gathering was increased. Everything remained the same.
Except that’s not quite accurate. First, we can find newspaper articles dated July 9, 1947 in which it is reported that the Army and the Navy moved to stop th rumors of flying saucers “whizzing” through the atmosphere. Notice the date. Just one day after it was announced that the Army had found a flying saucer.
For two weeks, or from June 24 when Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine objects near Mt. Rainier sparked the interest in flying saucers, the military had remained virtually quiet. Sure, there had been comments by officers that the flying saucers did not represent any sort of military project. There were stories in which highranking military officials denied knowing anything more about the flying saucers than did the general public. But that was really all that was talked about.