CUTLER-TWINING MEMO (Contd.) Some have suggested that since the memo (SUBJECT: NSC/MJ-12 Special Studies Project) states, "The President has decided that the MJ-12 SSP briefing should take place during the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16, rather than following it as previously intended," and that there was no NSC meeting scheduled for July 16, that the memo must be a phoney. But the sentence refers only to "the already scheduled White House meeting." There is no mention of an NSC meeting; it was just an already scheduled meeting. Both Ike and Twining were in DC that day and there was a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs. Twining was Chairman at the time. I did find and publish another instance when Twining was at the White House for one meeting, but took time out to meet with the President, and then went back to the original meeting. It should further be noted that Cutler sent a detailed memo to James P. Lay, Executive Secretary of the NSC, to keep things moving out of his in-basket while he was gone to Europe. Three words are underlined for emphasis as is the word "during" in the CT memo. This Cutler to Lay memo was obtained well after the CT memo was located. In addition, although it took me more than two years to obtain it from the Eisenhower Library, I was also able to obtain Lay's July 16, 1954 memo to Cutler while Cutler was in Europe. The last paragraph states, "Hope you will recuperate, rest, and enjoy yourself for few days before returning. Will try to have everything tidy and not too much pressure upon you when you arrive." Obviously Lay was taking care of things for Cutler during Cutler's absence. The point in bringing up these details is that I discovered that Lay had met with Ike in the early afternoon on July 14, 1954 at the White House and there had been a brief telephone conversation after 4:30. I can certainly envision Ike saying, "Jimmy, there has been a slight change in plans about that briefing we discussed earlier. Please notify General Twining that the briefing we discussed will be held during the planned meeting rather than afterward." Lay and Cutler worked very closely together, each usually getting copies of the others memos. They sat next to each other at NSC meetings. George Elsey said that of course Lay would have notified Twining. This would account for the absence of a signature or /s/. These memos were published in Ref. 2, but, unfortunately, Randle doesn't discuss them at all. Lay, as Executive Secretary of the NSC (having been groomed by and succeeding Admiral Souers in that post), would have had clearances, as would Cutler, for just about everything at the White House. TOP SECRET CONTROL NUMBERS 
Another objection from Randle and others to legitimacy for all three TOP SECRET
items is that none has a TOP SECRET control number. This was dealt with in Ref.
3. I was told by an archivist at the Eisenhower Library and another at the
Marshall Archives that often the White House did not use control numbers.
Obviously there is an enormous difference, from a records keeping viewpoint,
between one copy of a one-page memo with no copies and easily transferred in the
classified pouch from the White House to the Pentagon, and twenty copies of a
twenty-page memo. Furthermore, I had already published two TOP SECRET memos from
Cutler to Twining, each one-page, neither having a TS control number, in Ref. 2
(Pages B4 and B5). This issue was discussed in Ref. 3. On January 9, 2003,
Eisenhower Library archivist Herbert Pankratz confirmed that "We have numerous
documents classified as TOP SECRET which do not have control numbers on
them."Thus it seems to me quite reasonable to conclude, based on a host of provable facts, that the Cutler-Twining memo is genuine. These include the watermarked onionskin paper, the typeface, the unusual (but still legitimate according to the GAO) security classification, the slant red pencil mark through the classification, the absence of a signature or /s/, the similar language to another Cutler-Twining memo, the underlined word, the communications between Lay and Cutler before and during Cutler's trip, the communication between Ike and Lay on the day of the memo, and the fact that Twining and Ike were both in town on the day in question. Randle's very selective choice of data, despite these all having been discussed in detail in reports which Randle has, is frankly irresponsible. TRUMAN-FORRESTAL MEMO 
Certainly Randle doesn't approve of the Truman-Forrestal memo. He spends a lot
of time playing semantic games about this one. His biggest problems seem to be
the typewriter used to type it, which he claims dates from the 1960s, and the
Truman signature which matches or is similar or identical to the one on a memo I
dug out from the files of Dr. Vannevar Bush dated October 1, 1947, a week later.
He puts a lot of weight on casual comments made years ago by a noted typewriter
expert, Peter Tytell, whose father and mother were both typewriter experts
before, during, and after World War II, and who has been called upon over and
over again to provide assistance to the government as well as to lawyers
involved in questioned legal documents evaluation.Randle is clearly upset by my comment in one of the references that the TF doesn't have a label on it as an executive order or as a special classified executive order -- which it certainly does not. It is listed on the missing page 7 of the EBD As ATTACHMENT "A" -- Special Classified Executive Order #092447. (TS/EO)[The number is clearly the date 09 24 47; TS/EO means TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY]. In the text appears "The Majestic 12 (Majic 12) Group which was established by special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September, 1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary James Forrestal." Randle doesn't mention that all attachments A-H on page 7 have all the words in the titles start with a capital letter (except the word "and" in the last one). He doesn't mention that the 092447 is obviously the date (he does quote Barry Greenwood saying so) nor that I had discovered many documents from the state department using the date as part of a filing number. However, neglecting these facts, he tries to claim that the executive order number isn't on a list of executive orders, so the document is a fraud! While it has all the attributes of an executive order, clearly being stamped TOP SECRET EYES ONLY, it could not be listed on an unclassified list of orders published in the Federal Register. The word "Special" would seem to assure that as well.  A copy of
the EBD, the TF and the CT had been sent to Tytell many years ago. He seemed to
have two major gripes. He claimed that the TF typeface was not in use until the
1960s, and also that the signature was obviously lifted. He did not prepare a
formal statement, since he wanted to be paid to do a careful study. He also had
done plenty of government work so might have found himself in a conflict of
interest situation. Clearly, if genuine, these documents would be the most
important classified US government documents ever leaked to the public. Randle
quotes a number of remarks Tytell made years ago. One can judge Tytell's
familiarity with the EBD on the basis of this remark: "It was just perfect
because the whole thing of the twelve pages or however many pages it was. Most
of the pages were just blank pages with just five words written on them, like
Top Secret or Appendix A or something like that." The fact of the matter is
there were eight pages, not twelve, and only one of them, the missing page 7,
bore "APPENDIX A" and security markings.Dr. Robert M. Wood, who has spent a great deal of money and time while he and his son Ryan have been working on the various MJ-12 documents, including the SOM1.01 Special Operating Manual (not mentioned at all by Randle) and the Tim Cooper MJ-12 documents discussed below, did pay a questioned documents examiner, James A. Black, to perform a professional examination of the TF typeface. In a letter dated November 13, 1998, Black stated, "My knowledge of typewriter fonts permits me to conclude that the letter was likely to have been typed by an Underwood Standard typewriter. The portions of the type font of the letter that can be clearly visualized match those of a typewriter exemplar of an Underwood Standard typed in May 1940." That is good enough for me. But Black seems to agree that the signature has been transplanted, since he says, "The signature, in my opinion, is most likely to be a reproduction. I reached this opinion because the ink line is homogeneous, and feathering is absent at the ends of the lines." Randle talks about the signature a lot and how it is identical to a Truman signature on an October 1, 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush. Randle doesn't give me credit for finding it in the first place. He correctly quotes me as saying, early on, "it matches the signature" after switching the comment to "Friedman reported the signature exactly matched." Matches is not the same as saying exactly matches. There were reasons to say the two signature were not identical. Segment lengths, when compared, did not have the same length ratio. But I had long ago raised the question of where Hillenkoetter or W.B. Smith (responsible for high security briefings for the President Elect) would have obtained a copy of the memo with a signature on it. 
Presumably the original went to Forrestal since it is addressed to him. Quite
conceivably there would have been copies given to Bush, who is mentioned by
name; and to Hillenkoetter who, while not named, is referred to as Director of
Central Intelligence; and maybe a copy to the President's files. But I would not
expect any but the original would be signed. Forrestal died in May, 1949. So
where would his original have been by November, 1952? If Smith had told
Hillenkoetter that he thought Ike would have wanted a signed executive order, it
would have been easy. Bush would have found his unsigned copy with the October 1
letter from Truman, the CIA would have its disinformation people transfer it.
All governments according to texts on disinformation have groups for making
phoney documents, visas, ID cards, etc. I had raised this point twelve years ago,
but Randle doesn't discuss it at all. Bush was still going strong; Hillenkoetter
had served on active duty in Korea before coming back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard
in 1951.A point that, as might be expected, Randle doesn't consider, is the fact that the last portion of the date is "24,1947." It is not in line with the "September" strongly indicating it was put in a separate typewriter to add the numbers. I was told that that often happened with documents prepared for the President's signature which would have to be dated appropriately. The period at the end of the date is important as well. Rarely did Truman put a period after the date, but Bush's office always did. I asked George Elsey whether it would have been feasible for the memo to have been prepared for Truman's signature by either Bush and/or Forrestal. He said that 90% of what a President signs is prepared by others and that he certainly would have trusted Bush or Forrestal. As it happens that was a very, very busy week for Truman: signing the new National Security Act; separating the Air Force from the Army; setting up the new Central Intelligence Agency; and catching up with world problems, having been off to Brazil for an international Conference and returning a few days earlier on the USS Missouri. Furthermore, the record indicates that Bush and Forrestal met together for 30 minutes prior to their meeting with Truman on September 24, the only date when all three were together over a many-month period. The Truman Library had not provided this information to anybody else. Incidentally, in a battle with Phil Klass about the Pica typeface on the CT memo, he thought it should have been elite instead of Pica (because he had all of nine Elite-type pages of the 250,000 NSC pages) but wound up paying me $1000.00 for proving him wrong as I produced more than fourteen James Lay NSC office documents using the exact same Pica typeface as used in the CT memo. I also produced some where the text was in one typeface, and the date in another -- clearly establishing that sometimes the date was added later. These items and his check are shown in Ref. 2. DR. DONALD H. MENZEL As noted above, while ignoring most of the MJ-12 members, their relations with each other and their outstanding suitability for the task at hand, Randle does talk about Dr. Donald H. Menzel. His name is the only shocker in the group since he was supposed to be a total UFO sceptic (based on his three books and numerous articles) and because he certainly did not need a very high level compartmentalized security clearance to teach astronomy at Harvard. All eleven others clearly had such clearances. Montague, probably the least well known of the MJ-12 list, was not only a West Point man, as were Twining and Vandenberg, but in the first week in July, 1947, was named head of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque, coming up from Fort Bliss at the western Edge of Texas and just Southeast of New Mexico. He had control of the German rocket scientists brought over under Operation Paperclip. His son, also West Point and also a general, told me that he thought the reason his father would have been involved (he was quite an expert on artillery computations) is that he had manpower to provide to Roswell, north of Ft. Bliss. General Montague (the son) not only provided me with a picture of his father for use in TOP SECRET/MAJIC, but also said nice things about the book after I sent him a copy. 
Anyway, when Bill Moore first read me the MJ-12 member list in December, 1984,
he left Menzel's name until last. My response was: that was all we needed.
Probably a hoax document from somebody who thinks he can get us to go public and
then thumb his nose at us. I didn't like Menzel, since I thought his UFO books
were unscientific, and I'd had one run-in with him on the phone when I invited him
to attend my lecture at Harvard. He said he knew all about me, having seen
letters and memos (I still don't know what he meant), though I asked if he meant
my congressional testimony next to his in the "UFO Symposium of 1968," Ref. 6. He
also said, "You can't be a scientist and believe in flying saucers." I laughed,
which he didn't like. I invited him and he said of course he wouldn't attend. I
told the story at the lecture. Menzel's name on the list was one reason that
Moore, Shandera and I didn't go public until 1987.Randle repeats a very tall tale apparently from Karl Pflock with an unattributed source saying I had decided much earlier that because Menzel had spent some time in New Mexico, he must have headed a group consisting of all those people later named in the EBD. In effect, saying that probably I faked the documents. This is pure hogwash. Of course I was aware of Menzel. I had read his first book back in about 1960. After being informed of the EBD, I did do a lot of checking including with a retired employee of Engineering Research Associates in Minneapolis, headed by Menzel's WW II boss, who told me that Menzel was a consultant there and left suddenly one summer on a special classified project. I asked what year. He said 1947. I should note here that because so much of the stuff in the EBD made sense, I felt that I should check on Menzel. I had looked at his extensive UFO correspondence housed at the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia. Nothing stood out there. I had been checking on Vannevar Bush, later listed on MJ-12 but earlier named in a 1950 memo by Canadian Wilbert Smith as heading a group working on the Modus Operandi of Flying Saucers. I therefore was looking at Bush's correspondence files at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and noted a letter from Menzel's lawyer to Bush thanking him for helping during Menzel's Loyalty Hearing. This certainly established a connection. I checked with a prestigious Boston law firm. They mentioned that more than 1000 pages of Menzel's hearings testimony were in Menzel's files at Harvard. I was able to get a grant from the Fund for UFO Research to look into his Harvard papers after getting permission from three different people to see his files. There, in 1986, I made a host of totally unexpected discoveries about Menzel which I reported in International UFO Reporter in detail (Ref. 7), in my "Final Report on Operation Majestic 12" (Ref.2) and in even more detail in TOP SECRET/MAJIC (Ref. 1). Randle spends all of two pages discussing Menzel and lists the supposed basis for my conclusions that he belonged on MJ-12: "... that Menzel spoke Japanese, for example, was a Navy cryptologist during the Second World War, knew John F. Kennedy well enough to call him by his first name, was a consultant to the NSA, and that he was nearly chased from government work during a McCarthy era challenge to his loyalty. Menzel was friends with MJ-12 members Vannevar Bush and Detlev Bronk." This is a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote about Menzel's involvement. He was a world class cryptographer before, during and after the war. He wrote JFK in 1960 saying he had the longest continuous association with the NSA and its Navy predecessor, 30 years as of 1960, of anybody in the country; he did classified consulting work for 30 companies after the war; he had a TOP SECRET ULTRA clearance with the CIA; and he was head of the US Navy Reserve Communications Unit No. 1 after the war. 
I noted that Menzel had written science fiction and was well placed to provide
disinformation. His first UFO book was translated into Russian. I said nothing
about knowing Kennedy well enough to call him by his first name (JFK was on the
board of Overseers at Harvard and picked Astronomy, Menzel's domain, as his area
of interest). I quoted from Menzel's letters to JFK offering to brief him on the
NSA once they were properly cleared to each other and stressing his long
connection with them. I noted that Bush (who had known Menzel since 1934) was
Menzel's staunchest defender at the Loyalty Hearing. None of Menzel's many
post-war intelligence work activities were noted in an eight-page appreciation of
him in Sky and Telescope (Ref. 8) after his death.Randle claims, apparently thinking to put the end to any possible connection between Menzel and the oversight group, that "nowhere did he [Friedman] find any mention of MJ12 [In his papers and records]. There are no marginal notes, no oblique references, no highly-placed correspondence that suggests, mentions, identifies or confirms the existence of MJ-12 or Menzel's connection to it." Half a page later Randle claims, "After examining Menzel's papers at Harvard, at the APSL [American Philosophical Society Library] and the University of Denver archives, Friedman found nothing that referenced MJ-12." This is certainly true, but completely irrelevant, since at none of these places were there any classified Menzel papers or documents. There is no question -- based upon Menzel's letters to Kennedy, his unpublished autobiography, and other details -- that he was up to his ears in classified consulting work long after World War II was over. I talked to people who worked for him. He was certainly security conscious. Of course, I didn't find any mention of any black budget programs he worked on and no formerly classified documents. Thirty-plus years with the NSA and Randle thinks Menzel would have left smoking guns around? We must remember that absence of evidence is NOT evidence for absence. From reading Bush's statement to the Loyalty Committee (and statements from others as well) it is perfectly clear that he was well aware of Menzel's classified work. I am reminded of the fact that there are no classified documents at the General George C. Marshall Library. His files were carefully reviewed for declassification by Dr. Forrest Pogue, a military historian, scholar, etc. The classified Marshall files are elsewhere. So are the classified Menzel files. His contract with ERA was worth $18,000 per year in the immediate post-war period for consulting work. None of those papers are at Harvard or APSL or the U of D. In short, then, Randle's treatment of Menzel is a splendid example of the standard tool of the Propagandist: selective choice of data, serious errors of both omission and commission, false reasoning. |
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