WEBVTT - The Rumor Equation 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:04.760 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:13.920 audio for full exposure listen with headphones. So many questions occurred. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.680 Do they believe in a supreme being? What's their intelligence level? 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:23.520 What's their average lifespan? It's approximately three fifty four hundred 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:29.800 earth years. It's my understanding that aliens have an IQ 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.840 of over two hundred. They have a revision, but it's 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.519 a universal revision. They believe in the universe as a 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:44.880 supreme being. The aliens enjoyed music, all types of music, 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:51.400 especially ancient Tibetan style music. We ask about their diet 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:57.320 and you eat vegetables. They like vegetables, and their favorite 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:04.840 dish or snack is ice cream, especially strawberry. On October four, 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.360 Mike Ferrell, best known as Matches B. J. Huneycutt, hosted 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.880 a very strange television show called UFO Cover Up Live. 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.080 The show purported to be a revelatory look into what 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:24.400 the US government and the Soviet Union, among others, knew 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:28.280 about UFOs. It took the form of a series of 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:34.160 apparently rehearsed sit down interviews between Ferrell and various UFO investigators, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:39.080 including Bill Moore and a couple of supposed government insiders 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.160 who were hidden in shadows and spoke with distorted voices. 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:46.920 It was the culmination of a year's long effort by 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.880 the government to introduce new narratives into the UFO community. 0:01:53.120 --> 0:02:06.360 I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. Episode eleven, 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:16.760 The Rumor Equation. In the late nineteen seventies and eighties, 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.400 the Air Force Office of Special Investigations employed Richard Doughty 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:26.560 to spread disinformation within the UFO community. The result was 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.560 not only to cause confusion at the time, but also 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:34.320 to create new aspects and strains in the developing UFO folklore. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.079 One of the striking features of the misinformation was just 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:43.720 how outlandish the stories were. In the last episode, we 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.520 heard about Paul Benowits being fed information that led him 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:51.160 to believe that hostile aliens were based around and under 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:55.520 Archiletta Mesa and that they posed a threat to humanity. 0:02:56.160 --> 0:03:00.600 During this episode, we'll learn about another bold misinformation campaign, 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.840 and it raises the question why was the government trying 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:08.880 to convince people of such outrageous stories. Wouldn't it be 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:12.760 better to spend something a little more restrained. Utah State 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:18.880 Folklore Professor Lynn McNeil. There's actually a really cool, old 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.240 old study that was done by some psychologists looking at 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:24.440 rumor and how rumor works in folk cours know that 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:27.280 rumor and legend are really similar, and they came up 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.440 with what they called the rumor equation. And no, this 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.160 is not deeply scientific, but it's pretty revealing when we 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.720 think about it. What they said was that the reach 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:40.400 of any rumor, the power of a rumor, the spread 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:46.240 of it, is equal to the topics importance multiplied by 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.760 its ambiguity. If we have a topic to us that's 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:53.920 incredibly important, but we have all the info, but we're 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:55.680 going to talk about it. There's gonna be new stories 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:57.280 about it, but we're kind of gonna rest easy. We're 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.760 gonna be like, Okay, really important, Thank goodness, we know 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.200 every thing. If we have a topic that's incredibly ambiguous 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.840 but we don't really care, then we're sort of like, whatever, 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:08.880 I don't need to know, it doesn't matter to me. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:13.960 The minute you start that multiplying, exponential growth of something 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.640 that is both unbelievably important. So of course we can 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:19.760 use this as a barometer for our culture. Right what 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.200 has always been important to us, our military security, the 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.480 lives and safety of our children, our personal health, anti violence, 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:32.320 anti crime, things like that, plus or multiplied by this 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:35.760 question of ambiguity. I don't have the answers. I don't 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.719 know the answers. It's possible someone is trying to keep 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.520 the answers from me. You put those things together, and 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:46.920 you are just asking for a wildfire spread of rumor 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:52.279 of legend of conspiracy theory. So, in fact, a story 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.680 with outsized implications would be more effective than a more 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.600 restrained one that on its face might seem more plausible. 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:02.520 And that's important to keep in mind as we look 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.599 at the effort by Richard Doughty and others to feed 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:10.360 information into the world of UFO believers through, in particular, 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.480 a man named Bill Moore. You may remember Bill Moore 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.919 from the last couple of episodes. He was one of 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:22.240 the researchers for and authors of the Roswell Incident, which 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:25.600 brought the Roswell crash story back to the public after 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:29.440 years of being ignored. He was also the person that 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.760 Doughty used to pass a memo to Paul Benewitz that 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.320 contained allusions to Project Aquarius and m J twelve, which 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.599 we will hear more about in this episode, but his 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:47.080 relationship with Doughty predates the Benewit's affair. Here's Rich you're Doughty. Well, 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.320 Bill Moore came to my attention and something that was 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:56.400 entirely different than a UFO matter. Bill wasn't providing any 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:00.279 secret or classified information. He had a contact with a 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.440 person inside the Soviet Union who worked for the Russian 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.839 Academy of Science, and the government was interested in that 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.920 particular scientists for a number of different reasons. So the 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.039 idea was to make a contact through Bill to try 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:22.000 to get this uh scientists as a cooperating person for 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.280 the United States government, and it actually worked out well 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.920 for the government. During this time, according to Doughty, Moore 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:35.080 was also telling him information about two civilian UFO research organizations, 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.880 a PRO and mouf On, and this information was apparently 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:43.720 of some interest to the government. But then in the 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:49.000 meantime Bill wrote the book about Roswell, where with Blitz. 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.560 The book contained about six of what Bill had gathered. 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:59.880 There's a large portion of his research that was never published. Well, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.599 we were interested in what he didn't publish, and Bill 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:07.440 was open to us, and he provided that information to 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:12.480 us and a lot of that information pertained to secretive 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.760 things that Bill had learned during his time researching it. 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.960 So here things get a little tricky because the account 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.560 we have of how More got involved in the business 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.960 of passing what he believed to be secret government information 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:30.760 back to the UFO community doesn't quite square with what 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.640 we just heard from Doughty. Author Greg Bishop is a 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.520 friend of Moore's. He wrote the book Project Beta about 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:43.520 Doughty's operations involving Bennewitz and More. Here he talks about 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.360 how More came to be recruited into this effort. He 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.640 got involved because he wrote the Roswell Incident. Him and 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.760 Charles Burretts actually did most of the research, and Charles 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.080 Burletts form a triangle guy, did most of the writing. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.480 And anyway, so More was doing interviews about the book. 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:05.880 He was on a book tour and somebody called him 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:07.920 at one of the radio stations and said, you're the 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:09.880 only person that seems to know what they're talking about. 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:11.920 We'd like to meet with you. And this this is 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:13.640 the second time it happened. The first time he said, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:15.560 I can't meet with anybody. I'm going to my next 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.960 book stop. And this time he was an Albuquerque. He 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.480 said he did have a day so he met this 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.480 person turned out to be Falcon, as he's known in 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:29.240 the book. Um. That was a name that More and 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.959 his partner gave to these people. More in his partner, 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.680 a man named Jamie Shanderay, gave code names based on 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.240 birds to the different people from the government that they 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.400 dealt with. This will become a little complicated later when 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.480 more than one person will be known as Falcon. But 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.359 at this point, the guy named Falcon is not Richard Dody. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.240 We don't, in fact know for sure who it was. 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:56.000 They just called at the aviary and gave all the 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.520 people they had contacts with bird names so that they 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:00.320 could talk about them on the phone to People wouldn't 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.280 know who they were talking about if they were listening 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:06.120 in on the phone. Here's Bill Moore on the show 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:12.880 UFO Cover Up Live talking about his recruitment. I got 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.559 a phone call after appearing on a radio show from 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:17.800 a man who said, you're the only person we've heard 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.000 talk about this subject who seems to know what he's 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.199 talking about. He convinced me that he was a government 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:27.079 intelligence agent and wanted to begin disseminating some information about 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:29.760 UFOs to the public and the man Bill is referring 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.080 to his Falcon whom we've seen in shadow to protect 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.440 his identity. That's right. I didn't think that I could 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.120 handle it all alone. The volume of material I was 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:40.840 getting from Falcon was rather mind boggling. So I got 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:47.439 together with Jamie. Jamie is fellow UFO researcher Jamie Shandray. 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:54.079 This government intelligence agent offered More an arrangement. Other UFO 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:58.000 researchers were interested in things around military basis. So what 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.960 they told More was, if you could a tab on 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.200 what people are talking about and what information is going 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.640 through the uf OL community, so we know who knows what, 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:12.000 then we will give you information basically what everybody says. 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.280 It's disclosure. They said they'd give him official government documents 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:19.160 on UFOs, so he said, yeah, sure, I'll do it. 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:22.720 It's not entirely clear who first met with More, but 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:27.120 Richard Doughty became his handler. More was valuable because he 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.720 was a respected UFO investigator who had worked with the 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:36.520 two main civilian UFO groups, a Pro and Moufon. Bill 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.400 had a both feet right in in with these groups. 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:44.400 He was trusted and so Bill agreed to provide us 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:49.160 information that the UFO groups were gathering. And I would 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.439 say most of the information that was provided to us 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.800 with mundane stuff that we weren't really interested in. But 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.240 there was some information that was being gathered by the 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.480 new Found groups, a new Found or appro group that 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:07.200 was of interest to the government, and it pertained to sightings. 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.559 People who were reported sightings, sightings that were never publicized, 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.400 people who would report a sighting or a close encounter 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.640 that occurred at a certain place, and we were interested 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:24.800 in those cases because of connections with research, whether it 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:29.160 was maybe one of our craft's highly classified craft that 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:34.480 was being seen at certain locations, or just keeping track 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:37.679 of what the et s are doing. This is an 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:42.160 interesting comment from Dodi. The first part seems reasonable that 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.839 the government was trying to determine whether UFO researchers were 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:51.040 observing secret military projects, and then at the end he 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.640 suggests that they were also trying to keep tabs on 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.120 what aliens were up to. At the risk of stating 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.760 the obvious, the two reasons for government is given here 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.920 range wildly in terms of plausibility, and this is where 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.440 again I'll remind everyone that Richard Doughty is a former 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:15.120 professional counterintelligence agent. He spread misinformation for a living, and 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:19.120 I feel pretty sure he did during our conversations. I 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.280 don't think it makes sense to put much stock in 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.400 anything he says. But what he says is interesting, even 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:30.800 if it's not literally true. George Mason University Professor Deborah L. 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:36.720 Tanzi Shutika, even if a story, even if you're conmpletely 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.440 convinced that someone is lying to you, when someone tells 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:43.280 you a story, I think that the important thing to 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.080 consider is, you know, like, why are they telling this 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:51.720 particular story? What does this communicate about them? Their community, um, 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:56.760 their belief system, et cetera. Our job is to analyze, 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.240 like their ability as a storyteller. You know, are they 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.520 a good story toller? Are they engaging? You know, are 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.880 they able to hold their audience? Folkloreists are here to 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:12.120 judge the quality, context, and content of a story, more 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.080 and more interested in the event itself as an event 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:21.880 and what it communicates about the people and their community. 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:25.600 When you're part of a community, you're going to have 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:30.120 developed a repertoire of stories that are part of that 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.600 communal folklore. Right. It's like almost like when Christians have 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:40.040 conversion experiences. All those stories kind of have similar elements 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.080 that have been refined by the experience of being in 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.520 the community. So what's interesting to think about as we 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:51.240 listen to Richard Doughty is this we know that he 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.040 was spreading stories to make UFO researchers believe that they 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:58.600 were on the trail of actual aliens rather than secret 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:03.200 defense projects. Why tell the particular stories that he did. 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.600 What does that tell us about the beliefs of the 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:10.360 UFO community and what they were willing to accept into 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:15.480 the developing UFO folklore. With add in mind, here's Richard 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:20.840 Doughty again. The government knew, at least at the briefing 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.440 I was given in Night, that Earth has been visited. 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.440 I mean, we had two crafts, we had alien bodies. 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.280 We had one alien that was alive telling us different things, 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:37.080 briefing us about his society, his planet. So we knew. 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.840 The government knew that Earth has been had been visited. 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.600 Now since seventy eight, I had received knowledge of other 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.480 e t races that had been visiting Earth that didn't 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:53.600 come until later. So that wasn't a surprise to the 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.000 government in the military and intelligence community, because we knew it. 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.800 That information just never got out to the public, I 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:06.000 mean officially. The reason is that a lot of the 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:10.600 information that was coming through the UFO community pertained to 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:15.720 classified projects that we were working on. Some might have 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.960 been reverse engineering of an alien craft, or some might 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:24.240 be our own craft that we developed. Doty says he 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:28.360 wasn't briefed on the technological origins of these projects. He 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:33.480 also says he witnessed some strange things. I saw some 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.040 things fly at Area fifty ones that were probably not 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.960 from this Earth, but that wasn't the information that they 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.840 wanted to get back from more. But what Bill was 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:51.560 reporting to us were mostly incidents involving our crafts, highly 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:55.280 classified crafts such as the F one seventeen, the Aurora, 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.480 some highly classified drones that we had back then, and 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.720 people were seeing these things and reporting of and as UFOs, 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.280 which in fact they were post of the Skeptoid podcast 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.720 Brian Dunning. Back in the days of the Cold War, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.200 the U S was developing things like the U two, 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.840 the S R seventy one, and then the most significantly, 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:23.320 the F one seventeen, a stealth fighter, and the Air 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:28.600 Force had very legitimate security concerns about not letting the 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.760 Soviets find out about these programs. And yet on the 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:37.440 mountaintops around every Air Force base in the US were 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.240 these groups of UFO researchers with their telescopes trained at 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.400 the base who believed, for whatever reason, that the UFOs 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.640 hiding aliens or or whatever it was, here's these UFO 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.640 researchers watching the Air Force. The Air Force had, I 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:57.920 believe a legitimate concern that these UFO researchers might get 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.480 a real photo of an F one seventen, which then might, 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.560 by being published wherever, fall into the hands of the 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:08.320 Soviet Union. And what we had to do was we 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:12.040 had to convince through Bill that what they were seeing 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:17.159 was hey UFOs and not some highly classified government craft. 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:21.600 You might call that disinformation. We call it counterintelligence, and 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:25.200 that's part of it what Bill was doing. They were 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:30.919 giving information about the government's dealings with alien races in 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.800 exchange for information about the movements of these UFO groups 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:42.080 and whether there might be any Soviet agents infiltrating them, 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.679 because realistically, it does make sense that Soviet agents would 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:50.440 infiltrate UFO groups if they were doing things like getting 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.159 on mountaintops and actually getting footage of F one S 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:59.240 stealth fighters right that that actually makes sense. It was very, 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:02.760 very very easy. I gotta remember every member or most 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:06.479 members of the UFO community, where if you wanted to 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.120 try to convince them of something, you did just had 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.480 to plant an idea to with him because they were 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.760 already believers. It wasn't very difficult to do that. And 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.920 that was a type of information that we wanted the 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:24.119 UFO group to spread within to keep away from the 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.000 fact that that craft was really a highly classified US 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:32.120 government craft and it's it's a form of counterintelligence. I mean, 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:34.840 it wasn't difficult to do. I mean we didn't have 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.840 to go through any elaborate means to do it. We 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.280 had just had to tell somebody that was a UFO 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.240 and they would believe it. In addition to the exchange 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:49.480 of information and disinformation, a second strange effort was undertaken 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.879 that created a narrative of incredible scope, an effort that 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.120 would bring more and Shanda Ray deeper into the government's 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:20.159 campaign against the UFO community after the break. Remember in 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.920 the last episode, Bill Moore passed Paul Benowit's a doctored 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:28.280 memo that included references to Project Aquarius and a group 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:31.959 called m J twelve. That was the first known mention 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.800 of these two elements of what would become a much 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:39.359 larger narrative. The second part came with the delivery of 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:44.800 a package to Jamie Schanderrey Greg Bishop. He was set 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.560 this package with the Eisenhower briefing document in which everybody 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:53.960 knows about now Brian Dunning. The background on that is 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:58.560 the m J twelve, Majestic twelve the full name. It's 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.879 a document, it's about three page is long. What it 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:05.200 purports to be is a letter. It's a memo written 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.560 by the Director of the CIA in nineteen fifty two 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.320 and addressed to President Eisenhower, and what it's doing is 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:17.560 advising him of the existence of this group called Majestic twelve, 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:23.560 which is twelve scientists and military officials who were assembled 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:28.760 in ninety seven after the Roswell landing crash from the 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.840 TV special UFO cover Up Live. This is the man 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:37.080 code named Falcon. He is presenting this information about m 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:41.080 J twelve as facts that he knows. As an intelligence operative. 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.840 M J twelve was a group of people with the government. 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:53.760 MJ TWOB was created by President Truman, then their job 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:58.240 was to investigate the track of information pretending to UFOs. 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:03.159 Part of their job was scientific a maanscements, but the 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:07.400 primary purpose was to keep track of the information coming 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:10.760 in on the UFOs and to analyze the information, both 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:15.440 scientifically and in a way that would advance our technology. 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:21.920 There are government officials and elected officials that are thematically 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:27.160 brief in the existence of the m J twelve activities. 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:34.040 These officials include the President, the Vice President, as elected officials, 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.199 the Director of Central Intelligence, and the director of their 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:43.840 national security agency. The m j Twealth Policy is headquartered 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:49.360 the Naval Observatory in Washington, d C. The United States 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:59.320 Navy has the primary operational responsibilities of field activities relating 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:04.520 to the end AH world policies. All information gathering in 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:10.520 the field, not necessarily by Navy personnel, is transmitted to 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:18.520 the Navy for analysis. Other known government agencies feed information 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.400 to m J twelve through a top secret cover project 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:26.639 known to US his Project Aquarius. That was Bill Moore 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.960 on the same program. Chandore wasn't the only person to 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:35.000 receive those documents more and at least one other researcher 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:40.280 did as well, but Shandera was the first to publicize them. 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:42.600 That original memo that came out and was sent out 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.000 both to a. Bill Moore and Jamie Schanderrey and Toothy 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.359 Good in Britain. In fact, they were forced to release 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.200 it because they said, if you sit on this any longer, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:53.760 Tim Good is going to release it and you won't 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.600 get any credit. So I think at the national UOFO 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.600 conference in Burbank here in El l a and the 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:06.120 early eighties, they introduced the MJ twelve documents and said 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:07.680 they didn't know if they're real or not, but the 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:11.960 thought that probably they were. So somebody was sending this 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:17.280 to UFO authors, not to scientists, not to reporters, not 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:20.200 to anyone with any kind of mainstream credibility, but to 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:24.639 UFO authors. They were hoping that someone would publish this 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:28.880 in the UFO literature. So once it appeared with Jamie Schandra, 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:31.920 Jamie Schandra developed the film, looked at the pages, shared 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:35.199 it with some of his other UFO buddies, and it 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:38.720 kind of entered the pop culture at that point. So 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.840 if we can accept that that is the correct history 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:44.760 of what happened, in my opinion, based on the research 0:23:44.840 --> 0:23:47.399 that I've done, I do accept that that's the correct 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:49.879 history of where it happened. It did show up at 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:53.640 multiple people's doorstep with no known origin. Nobody knows who 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:56.920 sent it, so who wrote it? Who was trying to 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:01.439 get information out to UFO authors? Well, if some real information, 0:24:01.640 --> 0:24:03.359 they're the last people in the world you would have 0:24:03.400 --> 0:24:05.480 sent it to, Right, you would have sent it to 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:07.600 someone with a little bit more credibility. You've given it 0:24:07.640 --> 0:24:10.960 to The New York Times. I think the default assumption 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:14.879 is that it's a forgery, reasonably obviously, the question is 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:19.359 who forged it. As the years went on, at this 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:22.320 point More it's not pretty much convinced. He is convinced 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:27.000 that it was totally posed, but at the time more 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:31.840 shander Ray and others had not reached that conclusion. They 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:36.119 researched the original documents in great detail and discovered others, 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:39.679 generally with the help of cryptic clues pointing them in 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:42.920 the direction of documents that seemed likely to have been 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:48.239 planted Jamie Chander Ray and Bill Moore. And then they 0:24:48.280 --> 0:24:51.119 were follow up postcards ethiopenial picture postcards mailed from New 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:54.840 Zealand with puzzles and riddles. Right, the puzzles were clues 0:24:55.640 --> 0:24:59.760 for example for a stylish loop shop simp Land. This 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:02.960 at us to the National Repository in Suitland, Maryland, where 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:06.359 we discovered the existence of top secret documents and filed 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:09.159 the freedom of information request, which led us further to 0:25:09.280 --> 0:25:15.920 the Coupler Twining document. Legendary UFO researcher Stanton Friedman had 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:19.879 worked with Bill Moore on the investigation into the Roswell crash, 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:22.800 and he again worked with more on trying to verify 0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:27.080 the legitimacy of the m J twelve documents. Here he 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:30.679 is talking about this treasure hunt in the government files. 0:25:31.480 --> 0:25:33.879 You'll notice a slight difference in where these files were 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:39.440 actually found. My colleague has got some postcards, crazy postcards 0:25:39.560 --> 0:25:43.200 talking about going to Washington. They've gotten a postcard and 0:25:43.320 --> 0:25:50.760 said from box one something like that, I place in 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:57.960 New Zealand, crazy place more in Chanderay went to Washington, 0:25:58.080 --> 0:26:02.200 d C. To see what they could find. But when 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:05.600 they got there, I had been told that they were 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:09.359 declassifying the Air Force Headquarters files. They went to those 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:15.640 and they found this document between pages and folded up 0:26:16.480 --> 0:26:21.840 as if it had been in somebody's pocket. And it 0:26:21.920 --> 0:26:28.360 was in box one, which is quite unexpected. Anyway. It's 0:26:28.400 --> 0:26:33.760 just a brief note, but it says NSC National Security 0:26:33.800 --> 0:26:40.880 Council m J twelve Special Studies Project, and the name 0:26:40.920 --> 0:26:47.000 on it is Robert Cutler. He was Ike's Special Assistant 0:26:47.040 --> 0:26:50.760 to the President for National security. And he's just telling 0:26:50.960 --> 0:26:53.679 General Twining that a meeting will take place during an 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:58.040 a race scheduled meeting instead of after it as originally 0:27:00.160 --> 0:27:04.560 instructed to it. This is the Cutler Twining document that 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:10.159 More mentioned earlier. It is generally considered to be another forgery. 0:27:10.600 --> 0:27:14.000 More eventually wrote a book called the m J twelve Documents. 0:27:15.440 --> 0:27:18.359 It's about a hundred pages long. It's just an analysis 0:27:18.400 --> 0:27:21.160 of all the documents that he got that he could 0:27:21.160 --> 0:27:23.359 talk about or thought that we're promising, and then a 0:27:23.440 --> 0:27:25.680 great as to whether he thought they were imminist partners, 0:27:25.720 --> 0:27:28.239 that they were real or not, and half for more 0:27:28.280 --> 0:27:30.680 of them they said, you know, probably not real or 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:33.920 not not enough information to tell. But at this point 0:27:33.920 --> 0:27:36.800 he says, no, I don't think there's anything real to 0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:38.680 it at all. It's the actual people in it, because 0:27:38.720 --> 0:27:43.080 those people, of course did exists, and the Majestic twelve 0:27:43.080 --> 0:27:45.880 people were supposedly in contact with the aliens and knew 0:27:45.880 --> 0:27:49.720 all about them and everything. And so once this document 0:27:49.800 --> 0:27:53.960 came out, which didn't happen until that has sort of 0:27:54.000 --> 0:27:57.080