SPECIAL RELEASE:
CSICOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES
GANG UP AGAINST 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 docu-
ments."
      The  documents,  in  the form of a purported briefing given to Presi-
dent-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 re-
ceived  the documents from an anonymous source in 1984, and to have discov-
ered  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 docu-
ment available through a public source that talked about MJ-12." 
      Klass, relying heavily on a letter from the National Archives regard-
ing  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 extend-
ed  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 contain-
ing  the  controversial  Cutler  memo after they were declassified in 1985. 
"It  may  be  no more than coincidence," says Klass, "that this Cutler/Twi-
ning  memo was first discovered at the National Archives by Moore and Shan-
dera."  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.UFOParaNet maintains a rating of S5/P2 on the 
Majestic-12 documents: Highly Strange, Probable Hoax.
--- msgedsq 2.0.5
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