• MJ-12 Revisited
• Another Gulf Breeze UFO Congress
• More Madness on the Internet
• Tidbits of Trash
• Books to Keep Your Bonfire Burning Brightly
• Missives From the Masses

The original document, which runs only 4 pages, refers to various Attachments which give more details but which are not present. The main topic of the document is the alleged saucer crash near Roswell, N.M. in early July, 1947. which is said to have included four dead and (by the time they were discovered) badly decomposed alien bodies. This alleged crash is, of course, the topic of the very first of the endless series of pro-Roswell books, and was written in 1980 by William Moore and Charles Berlitz.

Eventually this document was investigated by the FBI and other agencies, and we were amazed to learn from researcher Antonio Huneeus that this material and official letters relating to it, are now available on the FBI web site, on the Internet! We note that on our copy of the second page the words "Top Secret/Majic", "Eyes Only", and "Top Secret" are crossed out, though badly, so that they can still be read. On the copy of the second page that you see here, these words are not crossed out at all.

This reminds us of the fact that in the copies Moore passed out at the Burbank convention, which we attended, at least two whole paragraphs of text were also crossed out, in a way that could not be seen through. The copy that Moore had given us earlier, before the convention, had the main body of the text completely readable. We asked Moore about this at the time, and he said something about wanting to titillate the press. This statement made us very suspicious.

The FBI web page includes at least two declassified communications from 1991 pertaining to the Briefing Document, and one of these reads in part: "The Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Air Force, advised on Nov. 30th, 1988, that the document was fabricated. Copies of that docu- ment have been distributed to various parts of the United States. The docu ment is completely bogus." Elsewhere in this FBI material it is stated, "This investigation was closed after it was learned that the document was completely bogus."

Through the years, William Moore, Stanton Friedman and others have written long treatises encouraging belief in the Briefing Document and other related material which surfaced somewhat later. Friedman continues to "push" this positive view vigorously, whereas Moore has fallen almost silent in recent years, and seems ready to admit that the document, as well as the Rosweil Incident itself, may not be genuine after all. Pro-Roswell researcher Kevin Randle disbelieves the document, and even England's Timothy Good - a fine but gullible gentleman - has recently revised his position. In brief, among leading UFO researchers, only Friedman continues the good fight!

We contributed our bit to the investigation several years ago, by publishing in "Smear" material which would convince all but the most gullible that the late Dr. Donald Menzel of Harvard University could not have been a member of MJ-12. He is one of the twelve military and civilian leaders listed on the page reproduced here.

We interviewed Menzel's widow as well as Dr. Ernest Taves, a psychiatrist who was a very close personal friend of Menzei and co-author of two of his books. Menzel was an extreme UFO skeptic all his life, and was so intense about his disbelief as to make Phil Klass look like an open-minded person. Yet, Friedman's investigation into Menzel's surviving papers convinced him more than ever that Menzel was in MJ-12 - or so he purports to believe.

We remain convinced that the inclusion of Dr. Menzel's name on the list of twelve, is a cosmic joke on the part of whoever perpetrated this infamous ufological hoax. William Moore is a strong suspect, but there are others.

(See also Antonio Huneeus' additional information about the FBI web site, at the beginning of the letters to the editor section further along in this issue.)

Budd Hopkins was on hand, in spite of a recent mild heart attack, and he did a joint lecture with his friend Dr. David Jacobs of Temple University - shown at right holding his latest book "THE THREAT", which was reviewed in our last issue. Jacobs is a pleasant, mild-mannered man, and we would like to believe him, though we just can't!

Also on hand was Whitley Strieber. Strangely, he was not on the lecture program, but was brought in, apparently, just to boost morale and to lead a skywatch. For us, the weather at night was unbearably cold (like "Area 51" at night), so we did not skywatch.

However, an alleged UFO was videotaped from a restaurant right next to the hotel on Saturday afternoon in broad daylight, by a man named Jeff Ritemann. The video was shown several times that evening. It was a round-looking object traveling basically in a straight line and thus may well have been (eek!) an airplane! Streiber was nearby when the object was spotted, but did not see it himself. It was generally acknowledged that no conclusion can be reached about the object until the videotape is carefully studied (hopefully not by Jim Diletosso - See the story about him further along in this issue!)

Although the Gulf Breeze area has been famous sinoe at least 1987 for the frequent UFO sightings by Mr. Ed & many others, we were amused to find that our hotel maid was unaware of this, though she has lived in the Pensacola area for about four years. Previously, she had sightings of UFOs and several other strange events in her life in various places she had lived in the northeast.

Linda Moulton Howe was as feisty as ever, and is now engrossed in another MJ-12 type document, this one called SOM1-O1, written in 1954, and received by her in 1995. This reminds us of the time that Sgt. Richard Doty supposedly showed Ms. Howe a classified document that he never showed to anyone else; and he later denied having shown it to her. Could it be that some people believe Ms. Howe to be naive?

Ms. Howe also told of a man named Jim Sparks (not to be confused with Brad Sparks), who has been abducted numerous times, and has even learned the three-dimensional holographic alien alphabet. His story is of many alien races and much complication regarding their various motives and societies

The most popular lecturer was Jaime Maussan of Mexico. He was the only one who completely filled the hall that seated 350 or more people. Maussan is not without a sense of humor, and he seemed to realize that not all of the many, many videos he showed could be genuine, or even interesting. Yet there's no denying the fact that he had an awful lot of videos, and the audience loved it.

There were several newcomers on the speakers list: Dr. Scott Mandelker seems to be an etheric sort of fellow, and spoke on "From Elsewhere: ET Souls on Earth". Forest Crawford spoke on "The High Strangeness of Investigating Contactees". Jim Marrs discussed the alleged alien agenda, Bill Hamilton ranted on about "Reverse Engineering Alien Technology", and our old pal Donald Ware (not a newcomer) gave an up-to-date rehash of the Gulf Breeze sightings.

As usual we did not even try to hear everyone, preferring to hang out with Tim Brigham of "The Devil's Advocate" fame, and a small group of mutual friends. Our little group enjoyed events on the program such as "Lunch on your own" and "Dinner on your own", and even "Get drunk on your own", which was not on the program!

The next Project Awareness event will be at the Cocoa Beach Hilton Oceanfront Hotel, very near Cape Kennedy, Florida, on the weekend of October 9th-l1th. This is a beautiful locale, and we are sure that the Space People think so too. We will be there!

• Tim Brigham, editor of "The Devil's Advocate", has organized a Web Ring under the code name "OPERATION MINDPHUCK". This sounds to us like a group of subversive spiders conspiring to overthrow the government, but actually it is a group of UFO-oriented intellectuals, including the editor of England's prestigious Magonia magazine. ...

• On Feb. 23rd, Dr. Steven Greer of CSETI posted the following: "Nerve Gas Attack on ET Base Backfires on Covert Forces: A recent attack by covert forces with a deadly Sarin-like nerve gas on the ET spaceport under 14,345 foot Mount Blanca, Colorado, ended in disaster when the attacking forces were overcome by the gas and a quarter of the personnel involved had to be medically evacuated..."

  In a telephone interview, Greer told a supporter that last June, while he and his group were training in the San Luis Valley, he "remote-viewed the ETs inside the mountain". People in his group saw Greer disappear in a "gold light" which seemed to be coming from above them. Then a "semi-circle of a dozen ET elders, all different sized" surrounded Greer and told him that they were "under attack in the mountain by a covert military force".

  The amusing part is that another follower, named Steve Moreno, realized that the above was too Far Out to be believed, and tried to suppress it! He says, "While there are tangents of truth to this incredible report, it is premature at this time for Dr. Greer to release such information..."

  Yes, very premature!...

• From Paul Fuller in England (former editor of "The Crop Watcher") we learn some details about the controversial Hakui Museum in Japan. It is a brand new museum, devoted mostly to Space and partly to UFOs, and apparently there was disagreement within the Japanese government as to how much emphasis should be put on the UFO aspect.

  In any case, a UFO convention that was to be held there in July 1996 was postponed till March of 1997; but because there was very little publicity for some reason, only about 50 people showed up in a hall that could hold 600. Among the speakers were Colin Andrews of England, Dr. Richard Haines, Jesse Marcel Jr., Bruce Maccabee, Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Derrel Sims, and Dr. Roger Leir - the podiatrist who removes UFO implants.

  Obviously the financial loss was huge, and apparently no further conventions are planned in this out-of-the-way Japanese city. (This item is very old news - but better late than never!)...

• As we have mentioned previously, although "Saucer Smear" is on the Internet, your humble editor isn't. Thus, in this increasingly Internet age, we are dependent on good friends and non-subscribers to send us this material which we otherwise would not see. We rarely give credit for information received, but we do want to issue a general "thank you" to all those who have helped out, including among others: Bill LaParl, Tim Brigham, Karl Pflock, Antonio Huneeus, Tom Benson, Steve Mansee, Larry Bryant, Max Petersen, Matt Graeber, Paul Fuller, and Jim Lippard.

• In our February 15th issue we announced that this year's National UFO Conference (NUFOC) would be held in the Los Angeles area, with famed UFO evangelist Frank Stranges as the local chairman.

  Alas, this is not to be. In a form letter dated Feb. 24th, Stranges details an alleged break-in at his office in Van Nuys, California, resulting in the theft of $15,000 in uninsured property. Stranges asks for donations, and pleads, "Please join us in believing that Almighty God will miraculously open doors for us to relocate - far from this area that has been going down hill since we moved (here) many years ago..."

  We are now negotiating with another leading ufologist regarding his sponsorship of the 1998 NUFOC, and we will keep you-all informed...

• Just as predicted by "Smear" and other sensible sources, the famous Face on Mars is apparently nothing more than a natural formation. This was learned on April 6th when the first of a new series of pictures was beamed back to Earth. However, one expert cautioned: "I see enough ambiguity in the picture for people to still say that this is the ruins of an ancient face". Another expert said: "No single image of The Face will end the controversy, because of the two dozen or so other anomalous formations in the same region".

  Barry Greenwood, formerly of CAUS, tells us: "I'm convinced that the photograph is real, but the Martians have deliberately plowed The Face under, to get rid of all evidence of their existence"...

• It seems we really missed a great show by not attending the final banquet of the 7th International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, last February. Photo analyist Jim Dilettoso played a piano duet together with a stigmata victim with a bloody cross on his forehead: Frances Barwood, the pro-UFO lady running for Arizona secretary of state, gave a rousing speech; and a good time was had by all!

  All this and much more is contained in an expose published in the March 5th issue of the Phoenix (Arizona) New Times. Called "The Hack (=Barwood) and the Quack (Dilettoso)", the article ridicules the outlandish activities of the ufological hard core.

  Dilettoso in particular is shown to be a fake, freeloading off huge donations from an eccentric millionaire. It will be recalled that Dilettoso has rarely seen a UFO photo or video that he didn't find authentic - anything from the outrageous Billy Meier pictures to the controversial "Phoenix lights" videos last year. Dilettoso also appears to have grossly misrepresented his educational background, though he is hardly the first ufologist to do so.

  Unfortunately Space does not allow us to rant further about this fascinating article...

• In a blast from the past, a fellow named Francis Ridge has revived the ancient NICAP organization, and supposedly he is officially authorized to do so. He lives in Mt. Vernon, Indiana.

• And we also hear that there is a new APRO - apparently no relationship to the original organization of that name, run many years ago by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. The new APRO, headed by Bill Heft of Ontario, Canada, will have members who wear black suits and carry official investigator badges. We kid you not!...

• William Moore has sent us a fascinating clipping about an anthropologist who made a solitary trek into "Area 51" last year, hunting only for a trail marker left behind by a group of pioneers about 150 years ago. He completely escaped detection by the sophisticated security system there, but he ran low on water and was unable to find the marker. He says he saw some strange things, but no UFOs. A spokesman for Nellis Air Force Base, where "Area 51" is located, said "it disappointed us and hurt our feelings" that this man, named Jerry Freeman, escaped detection! ...

• Representative Steven Schiff of New Mexico, who played a key role in the Air Force's recent release of information about the Rosweli Incident, died of skin cancer on Maroh 25th at the age of only 51. Interestingly, Schiff's Chief of Staff (= Office Manager) was Mary Martinek, wife of ufologist Karl Pflock. Ms. Martinek will presumably continue in the same capacity under Schiff's successor...

• March brought forth another widely-publicized story about a UFO-oriented religious cult. A Taiwanese guru named Heng-ming Chen and about 150 of his followers moved to Garland, Texas (partly because "Garland" sounds almost like "God-land"), and awaited midnight of March 24th, when God's voice was supposed to emanate from every TV set in America - irregardless of whether the set was turned on or off! This did not happen. Thereafter Chen admitted, "Because we did not see God's message on television tonight, my predictions of God arriving (in person, to Garland) can be considered nonsense. But don't call us liars. Keep watching!"

  Had all gone correctly, Chen, his followers, and a few others were to have been picked up by flying saucers one year later and taken first to Mars, and then to Heaven....

• With great fanfare, the International UFO Museum at Roswell has accepted two very large collections of UFO research material donated by two veteran researchers - George Fawcett of Lincolnton, N.C., and Bob Sabo of St. Petersburg, Florida. According to the Museum's press release, "the Mayflower Transit Co. (which transported the items to the Museum) valued the collections at $50,000, but first estimates by UFO researchers are upwards of $250,000. Many of the items are priceless one-of-a-kind documents, photos, and publications". Someone (or some two) is/are going to get a great big legal tax break out of this, we believe. ...

• An unusually weird convention, co-sponsored by the Program for Extraordinary Experience Researeh (PEER), will take place in Newton, Mass., near Boston, on May 8th and 9th. Speakers will include famed Harvard psychiatrist John Mack; former astronaut Edgar Mitchell; Sequoyah Trueblood, a native Indian elder; and Bernardo Peyxoto-Uru-wau-wau, a tribesman and healer from the Amazon basin. The blurb states: "This fascinating and unique conference brings together the scientific and clinical community with Native Americans who describe contact with `star people' and Westerners who describe `alien abduction' experiences"...

To quote the blurb, there are "floating aliens, jelly creatures, the aurora `martian', tin can beings, blue flashes, blue darts, blue globs, mystery foam, sticky foam, human burnings from UFOs, cloud phenomena, gelatinous something, three inch saucers, objects with tails, roads on fire, folding UFOs, bee hive UFOs, and many more weird encounters".

Strange illustrations too, by Benita ("Bunny") Owens. Send $7.95 to UAPA, P.O. Box 347032, Cleveland, Ohio 44134.

• Long-time researcher & lecturer ANTONIO HUNEEUS writes:

  Since writing the article about the FBI's real UFO X Files published last month in Fate, I've discovered that you can now download and read the whole dossier from the FBI's own FOlA web site (http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/ufo.htm). The Bureau has posted its real files under the general category of "Unusual Phenomena" divided in the sub-categories: "Animal/Cattle Mutilation," "Majestic 12," "Project Blue Book," "Roswell," and "Unidentified Flying Objects." The Roswell file contains only one page, the famous July 8, 1947 FBI telex from Dallas referring to an object resembling a "weather balloon with a radar reflector" being flown to Wright Field,

  The infamous, Roswell-related "Majestic 12" or MJ-12 documents (22 pages) fare even worse. The capsule description notes: "This file relates to an FBI inquiry into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information when a document marked `Top Secret' was made public. This investigation was closed after it was learned that the document was completely bogus." The UFO sub-category, on the other hand, is huge (1600 pages), consisting of all the historical stuff summarized in my article. Check the documents by yourself. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader (also freely available on the net) to download the documents. Finally, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who obtained the original documents under the FOJA, has recently updated his earlier work in his new book "The UFO/FBI Connection" (Maccabee Publishing).

• Budding anthropologist CHRIS ROTH writes as follows:

  "I was most interested, in the latest `Smear', to read that Martin Gardner is an author of Oz books. I devoured `The Wizard of Oz' and its sequels as a child, and have been intermittently in my adult life tickled to note that the series is being continued in hundreds of additional sequels by many different hands, some of them authorized sequel-writers and some of them not. I wonder whether Gardner is one of those Oz authors approved by L. Frank Baum's estate. Baum himself, remember, was either a Rosicrucian or a Theosophist or both, which sheds light on his 1907 book `Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz', fourth or fifth in the series, which relates a trip to the Hollow Earth.

  "It's intriguing that Gardner, who as a premier skeptic of the paranormal has an astonishingly and depressingly un-fantastic and un-mystified view of the universe, should seek his artistic thrills in such a way. However, these high-level Ozophiles are like academics: They write not for children or for the general public but for other hardcore Ozophiles.

• TIM CRAWFORD of UFO Central Home Video writes:

  "For the Cydonia Mars crowd: During the month of February, UFO Central released `Hoagland's Mars: The NASA Briefing' on Direct TV, Pay Per View. Richard Hoagland, who is fascinated by the symbolism in numbers, called to inform us that (to our surprise) the program was available on channel 195 (as in 19.5 degrees from the equator - a cornerstone of Hoagland's theory that suggests, if you put a tetrahedrabtriangle inside a planetary sphere, the points line up at 19.5 degrees from the equator, revealing insights into planetary physics as interpreted by the mathematical incoding discovered in the Cydonia region on the surface of Mars).

  "Whether or not this was planned or just bwind luck is unknown. Representatives for Direct TV were unavailable for comment. Hoagland believes that the number 195 may have symbolic meaning to an elite international secret society. The motivations of this secret society, which may have connections to Free Masonry, remain a mystery...

  "For those following the on-going Corso Saga: It turns out that Bill Birnes, Corso's book partner and writer, has engineered a deal with an unnamed motion picture company to purchase controlling interest in `UFO Magazine', formerly published by Vicki Cooper and Don Ecker. This is a classic example of how corporate America is beginning to recognize the potential for profit when it comes to UFOs!..."

• Long-time researcher GEORGE EARLEY writes:

  "I don't think the `semi-mysterious' John Alexander knows as much about the military as he would have `Smear' readers believe. If we `did not mobilize' for Korea as he says, then what was I doing there in 1952 as adjutant of a light bomber squadron on a base with many hundreds of officers and enlisted men called up to active duty from their USAF reserve status?

  "As for Corso's book, I spotted a hatful of errors in it that I'll share with John Alexander if he sends me a SASE..."

• Our good friend "BOB" WILSON writes:

  "...You wrote in your letter that despite the madness in Ufology, you continue to find the field fascinating. So do I. I agree with your view that UFOs remain a great unsolved mystery. I can't accept the arguments for either Sex Fiends from Outer Space or `it's all mass hallucination', so I remain curious - and the Clown Show provided by the various True Believers at least keeps the issue alive and provokes the rest of us to try to come up with more plausible alternatives.

  "The so-called Skeptics seem to me the least likely to come up with such new ideas. They look to me like another gang of True Believers, with their own cult and their own dogmas. The trouble with True Believers of all sorts, including the ones who call themselves Skeptics, is they're one logic circuit short of a Hard Drive..."

  Wilson's latest book, "Everything is Under Control - Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-ups", has just arrived at our humble headquarters, and we will review it in our next glorious issue. - Editor.

• DICK FREEMAN, editor of "Batteries Not Included", writes as follows about the Laughlin UFO conference lecturer who finds meaning in tapes played backwards:

  "David Oates might be onto something: I took a novel by his namesake, J.C. Oates, and read it into my tape recorder. Played backwards, what came out was Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, though strangely enough, with the accent of Joseph Stalin. Further research is called for, and I am beginning to read my considerable collection of `Saucer Smears' into my Sony."

• Peaceful MAX PETERSEN writes:

  "I'm glad I got to see you in Laughlin and hear about your standup comic (with a straight face) routine. Even the event's official photographer, George Kruse, told me how much he enjoyed your `roast' of Wendelle Stevens. Maybe you missed your calling, and should have replaced Jack Parr when he left his TV show. Who knows?"

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