The Secret History of Extraterrestrials: Advanced Technology and the Coming New Race (14 page)

Secrets of the pharaohs (art by Jim Nichols)

Atlantis (art by Jim Nichols)

Pleiadian starbase (art by Jim Nichols)

There is no record that Shandera and Moore ever made their movie, but for Friedman, this providential “package from heaven” was a life-changing event and launched him on a twelve-year research and writing project that culminated in the publication of the definitive book on the subject of MJ-12,
Top Secret/Majic.
Friedman’s interest in UFOs is unusual. He’s a nuclear physicist, and ufology does not usually attract scientists, probably for the same reason that physicians, who are also scientists, have such difficulty accepting alternative medicine. Friedman presents an interesting contrast with Carl Sagan, his classmate at the University of Chicago, where both were majoring in physics from 1953 to 1956. Sagan, as Friedman discusses in his book and as everyone knows, was an outspoken debunker of ufology. Sagan says in his classic book,
Cosmos,
“We maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth being visited, now or ever.”
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But Friedman always kept an open mind.

After getting his master’s degree in 1956, Friedman went to work on the development of compact nuclear reactor engines for advanced aircraft. That became his specialty, and he worked on various aspects of this cutting-edge technology for several large aerospace companies, including General Electric Aircraft, Aerojet General Nucleonics, General Motors’ Allison Division, Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory, McDonnell Douglas, and TRW. Since this research was always carried out in secret, often with money from “black budgets,” Friedman usually carried a top-secret clearance. The media and the public were never made aware that we were trying to develop aircraft powered by nuclear reactors.

“SPECIAL REPORT 14”

Friedman’s classified work took him to places where UFO-related activities were tantalizingly close but just out of his scope. One such place was the Air Force’s Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Base in Dayton, Ohio. This was where Project Blue Book was administered and where alien craft propulsion systems were being studied. Project Blue Book, initiated by the Air Force in early 1952, was the follow-on operation to Project Sign and Project Grudge, both designated to receive and analyze UFO reports. Blue Book was directed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was very conscientious and thorough. It was Ruppelt who retained the analytical services of the Battelle Memorial Institute.
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Ruppelt left the project in September 1953, replaced by Airman First Class Max Futch, who was replaced by Captain Charles Hardin in 1956. Evidently Hardin was replaced later by Major Friend.

Friedman met Major Friend, the head of Project Blue Book, who allowed him into the “vault inside a vault” at the Battelle, but only with an escort. The Battelle had in its archives all of the thousands of reports and evaluations of UFO sightings that were turned over to Blue Book. This was Friedman’s first introduction to UFO literature, and he was astounded and fascinated.

After reading about a dozen more books on UFOs from his local library, Friedman happened on a privately published version of Project Blue Book’s “Special Report 14” in the library at the University of California, Berkeley. This was the report that sifted through all the Blue Book data and summed it up. With more than 240 charts, tables, graphs, and maps to review, Friedman’s scientific mind was “in data heaven.” The bottom line was that six hundred sightings out of three thousand could not be identified. It was an epiphany for Friedman when he realized that the Air Force knew that a large number of the UFO sightings were probably alien craft. On the original version of his web-site, he said, “I . . . recognized that the Air Force, in its October 1955 press release about the study, flat-out lied.” The website now includes an entire section devoted to “Government Lies.”

In 1967, while working for Westinghouse, Friedman met Frank Edwards, the author of the now-famous book
Flying Saucers—Serious Business
. After reading Edwards’s book, Friedman decided he wanted to help spread the word about UFOs and asked Edwards for advice. Edwards hooked him up with a media contact who helped Friedman get on a radio talk show on KDKA in Pittsburgh, which allowed him to promote his public lectures. At first, Friedman’s talks were limited to small groups on what he calls “the chicken-and-peas circuit.” These were organizations and book clubs interested in UFOs, few of which were able to pay him a fee.

A breakthrough came when Friedman addressed a crowd of over four hundred at a joint meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh. His lecture that night, titled “Flying Saucers ARE Real,” was a big success and subsequently became a staple in his repertoire. Shortly thereafter, he joined a speaker’s bureau and was immediately booked to speak to the Engineering Society of Detroit. This drew a crowd of over one thousand and was sold out three weeks in advance. For this appearance, he earned the princely sum of three hundred dollars plus travel expenses. He was now officially launched on his speaking career and was subsequently booked all over the country by the bureau. About a year later, funding for the development of nuclear reactor propulsion systems started to dry up, and Friedman found himself out of work. He decided to devote himself full-time to the lecture circuit. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he became well known worldwide as a leading advocate of the UFO reality. As a scientist, he brought a tremendous amount of much-needed respect and believability to ufology.

A PERSONAL MISSION

At the time the MJ-12 document came to Shandera in 1984, Friedman had been lecturing all over the world about UFOs for almost twenty years. Since it was the seminal event of the UFO era, Friedman had devoted years of investigation and research to the crash at Roswell, and he had no doubt that it had happened, but the tracks were well covered, and proof was hard to come by. When this piece of hard evidence dropped into his lap, it had an electrifying effect. It rejuvenated his efforts, and it shifted his career as a UFO investigator and spokesman into high gear. Friedman immediately realized the importance of the briefing document. He says in
Top Secret/Majic,
“I was very excited about this discovery . . . There was no question that if the . . . document . . . was genuine, it was one of the most important classified government documents ever leaked to the public.” Consequently, he made it his personal mission to determine whether the “Eisenhower Briefing Document” was genuine.

Stanton T. Friedman

For the next ten years, Friedman laboriously tracked down every piece of evidence he could find to validate the authenticity of the briefing document. One of the apparent glaring inconsistencies was the inclusion of Dr. Donald Menzel in the ranks of MJ-12. Menzel, a noted professor of astronomy at Harvard, was a notorious UFO skeptic who frequently publicly ridiculed believers. Friedman’s research turned up the facts that Menzel had a top-secret ultra security clearance with the Navy and a top-secret clearance with the Air Force and did highly classified consulting work for the CIA, the National Security Agency, and more than thirty corporations “on such matters as radio wave propagation, cryptography, and apparently, alien interstellar spacecraft.” Furthermore, he was an old friend of Vannevar Bush and was acquainted with two other members of MJ-12. Friedman concluded that Menzel had led a double life. He had secretly been in the inner circle of government UFO activity while publicly appearing to be a very conservative Harvard scientist.

Friedman also determined that President-elect Eisenhower had definitely been briefed on the date of the document, November 18, 1952. On that date, the records show that the president-elect had a forty-threeminute, high-security meeting with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. The last page of the briefing document contained a copy of a memorandum from Truman to Forrestal dated September 24, 1947, authorizing Forrestal to proceed with Operation Majestic-12 and notifying Forrestal that he (Truman) would remain in charge but would seek advice from Forrestal, Dr. Bush, and the director of the CIA. This memo was included with the briefing document to inform Eisenhower of the authority under which they operated. Documents in the Truman Library attested to the fact that Truman met with Forrestal and Bush on the date of the memo, and it was the only time he met with Bush between May and December of that year. Friedman also tracked down the minutiae of the document such as the date format, Truman’s signature, the typewriter used, and Hillenkoetter’s customary writing style. All these details checked out or proved to be acceptable. Friedman was ultimately convinced that the briefing document was the real thing and that therefore MJ-12 did, in fact, exist.

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Friedman has now spent almost fifty years in his personal crusade to reveal the truth of the extraterrestrial presence, against tremendous opposition. He has had to take on not only government and military opponents but also many high-level scientists and other researchers, some of whose connections are highly suspect. He has dealt with every challenge with a measured response backed up with methodical, careful, and exhaustive research and has emerged victorious in every case. He has crisscrossed the world with his message.

On his website,
www.stantonfriedman.com
, Friedman says, “Since 1967 I have lectured on the subject ‘Flying Saucers ARE Real’ at more than 600 colleges and over 100 professional groups in all fifty US states, nine Canadian Provinces, twelve cities in England and nine in other countries, with only eleven hecklers. I have also appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows. Overall, I have probably answered about 35,000 questions about UFOs and secrecy.” He has flung down the gauntlet to the Air Force, challenging two of the Air Force officers who wrote Roswell reports to a public debate. He has effectively demolished the arguments of everyone and anyone who has questioned the reality of Roswell and the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents, and it was he who coined the rallying cry “cosmic Watergate.” If and when the dam is finally breached and the truth does indeed make us free, we will certainly owe much of that freedom to this Don Quixote of ufology who has now been tilting at government windmills for half a century.

Since the appearance of the briefing document in 1984, many new documents have surfaced, virtually all of which support the existence of MJ-12. For those interested, I highly recommend a visit to the website
www.majesticdocuments.com
to view the documents, along with some startling photos. The investigative team maintaining this site comprises some of the leading lights of UFO research and reporting: Robert M. Wood, Ryan S. Wood, Nick Redfern, Timothy S. Cooper, Jim Marrs, Jim Clarkson, and, as you would expect, Stanton T. Friedman.