Date:   Mon Sep 20 1993  07:18:24
From:   David Bloomberg
Subj:   MJ-12 Papers Not Official
UFO                            -------------------------------

From the Fall 1993 _Skeptical Inquirer_:

The notorious MJ-12 papers are officially _not official_.  Released nearly six
years ago by UFO promoters William L. Moore, Stanton T. Friedman, and Jaime
Shandera, they were purported to be official U.S. government documents about
recovery of crashed flying saucers in New Mexico.  They were immediately
suspected of being a hoax, and evidence now clearly shows that to be so (see
Winter 1987-88, Spring 1988, and Winter 1990, for example).  Now the Office of
the Secretary of the Air Force has officially designated and stamped on them:
NOT AN OFFICIAL USAF DOCUMENT, NOT CLASSIFIED, SUSPECTED FORGERY OR BOGUS
DOCUMENT.  The process took so long because only the agency that classifies a
document has the authority to declassify it.  Finally, Philip J. Klass reports
in his July 1993 _Skeptics UFO Newsletter_, Col. Richard L. Weaver, Deputy for
Security and Investigative Programs in the Office of the Secretary of the Air
Force, "decided to bit the bullet and buy an appropriate rubber stamp."  Klass
nominates Col. Weaver to receive "the USAF's Medal for Outstanding Bravery and
Valor Under Deadly Fire."

                                -- Kendrick Frazier