Well, here it is ..finally.. the episode I've been telling all my friends about. THIS Friday, on Hangar 1: The UFO Files, see "The Smoking Gun." Yeah, yeah, I was going to wait to post this clip until we broke through 1,000 visitors to this page, but ..well, forget that! This episode is my favorite of the whole season. Just wait until you hear Clifford Stone's testimony. Yikes! Please share this video and get folks to watch.
Posted by Dwight Equitz on Hangar 1 on Monday, May 25, 2015
The episode featured the Strategic Operating Manual, better known as SOM 1-01. If that sounds familiar, you may have read my article about it when it was used as the basis for the fabricated Mandate 0463 document in the very first episode of Hangar 1. If you missed it, or need a refresher, here it is:
The flying saucers reported over Washington, DC in July 1952 is one of the most famous events in UFO history. Objects were tracked on radar, and Air Force planes were sent out to investigate, and reportedly, UFOs were seen by at least one pilot and radar operator.
It's an important historical event, worthy of examination, but...
There are rumors and myths too, such as it being widely witnessed by panicking citizens or that photos exist of the event.
It was also covered in a NBC television broadcast, "We the People," which featured interviews with the radar operator witnesses. See The Saucers That Time Forgot: UFOs on TV: The 1952 Washington, DC Saucer Flap.
Had there been a photograph of UFOs during the incidents, Life Magazine would have been happy to publish them. None surfaced despite this being among the most heavily publicized cases in US history.
The Fake
In 1965, over a decade after the events, a photograph was published, and ever since has appeared in almost every discussion and article on the Washington, DC, case, from books, to the internet, documentaries, and television shows. The trouble is, it's a phony.
Well, the photo itself is real, but it is misrepresented and fraudulently used, then accepted and repeated as genuine by people who should know better. It was taken several years after the event, and instead of UFOs, it depicts the reflection of the Capitol's lamps - lens flares.
Many versions exist, cropped in color...
black and white for a more "historical" look...
tweaked with photoshop and so on...
Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos reports:
FOTOCAT's input follows:
Event date: July 19, 1952
Location: Washington, D.C. (USA)
Date information: Non-event (actually dated 1965)
Event is filed as: Lens flares
Time: Between 23:40 and 06:00
Photographer: Unknown http://www.nicap.org/reports/520719washington_report.htm
The first known publication of the picture is in Ray Palmer's Flying Saucers No. 81, Summer 1973
This time, Flying Saucers are not real.
Exposed and Forgotten
As seen on the magazine cover above, it's often cropped to remove the lamps, the source of the "UFOs." It was exposed long ago, in a detailed analysis by Colman von Keviczky that was published in Official UFO Magazine #9, July 1976. A summary by Dr. Bruce Maccabee :
This picture which shows the Capitol dome and lights at the left side is, I believe, just a fraction of the total picture which shows the whole Capitol building, parking lot lights in front of it and numerous "UFO" lights in the sky at both the left and right sides of the dome. Colman von Kevicsky, years ago, showed the "UFO" light images were actually lens "flares"....reflections within the lens of the bright streetlights and parking lot lights in front of the Capitol.
Reconstruction of theOfficial UFO Magazine analysis, showing how the "UFOs" correspond to the lamps as lens flares.
UFOs: The American Scene by Michael Hervey, 1976. “Jacket photograph: UFOs over the Capitol, Washington, D.C."
UFO Exist!
by Paris Flammonde, G.P. Putnam´s, 1976, featured a large photo section in that
center that included the photo, but did not present it as genuine. The caption
stated it was a: “supposed UFO formation… a reoccurrence of the classic 1952 case.”
UFO Exist! by Paris Flammonde, 1976
The photo was included in April 1979 Omni magazine issue in "UFOS: A Gallery of Photographs," the Lee Spiegel article, "First Contact." The tiny caption describes the picture:
"famous UFO formation over Capitol thought by many to be a reflection in camera lens."
The Omni article prompted skeptic James Randi to include the photo in his 1980 book, Flim-Flam!, where he included a diagram demonstrating how the lens flares reflected the lights at the base of the building.
Nevertheless, once a fake gets into the UFO bloodstream it lives forever. The internet and television assured its immortality. There are even phony motion pictures of it.
These are just a tiny fraction of the appearances of the photo. By gathering some of this data, maybe this will show up alongside the search returns, and people can get some better information on the history. We've not seen the last of this one, but just remember that whenever you see it, you are looking at a lie, ineptitude, misinformation or disinformation on the part of whoever is presenting it.
The DC deception's inclusion as an indicator of a high baloney content. It shows that they're not a trustworthy source.
2018 Update:
The Italian UFO group CUN hosted a presentation in Rome on Oct. 27, 2018 by Tom DeLonge on the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Luis Elizondo on the AATIP. Elizondo discussed some UFO history, including the famous 1952 Washington, DC saucer event saying:
"In the early 1950s, the United States had another very significant event over our nation’s Capitol. Once again, these objects were identified both with the naked eye and again on radar, and unlike Roswell, many people had cameras and were able to take photographs. And what you see here are real photographs, along with the story - the headline story that came out."
Elizondo's picture came from the internet, a YouTube preview image for the video, "UFO Sightings over Washington D.C. and The White House in 1952," by FindingUFO.
It is composed of two images: 1, a frame from a CGI-animated version of a picture of lens flares from UFO's: The Secret Evidence, and 2, a b&w version of an image from the 1954 comic book, Weird Science-Fantasy #26 found in the files of Project Blue Book.
"While providing general background, I indicated that one particular slide contained real photographs of UAPs over Washington DC. It did not. The slide was intended to be illustrative but was presented as factual and with the help of a few individuals, I quickly realized the error. I acknowledge the misstatement and sent an immediate 'mea culpa' note to my TTS Academy team... it was an oversight on my part, and it will not happen again."
2021 Update
James Fox's documentary, Phenomenon was shown in by the Travel Chanel in their “Shock Docs” series about paranormal encounters as The UFO Phenomenon.
While labeled "Artistic Rendition," Fox's use of it perpetuates the legitimacy of the phony saucer photo, which matches nothing that was witnessed or photographed.
This fake UFO photo is like Dracula in the movies. It rises from the grave again and again.
. . .
Thanks to Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, Nab Lator, Gilles Fernandez and the others mentioned above for helping straighten out the fact from fiction in the DC picture.
"The premise of each episode is to examine a number of MUFON cases, looking for patterns that tie in to historic UFO events and try to show what the alien agenda may be. Actual footage and recreations will be used along with expert testimony... The show will showcase MUFON’s mission to educate the public about the UFO phenomenon.
Stay tuned because the 'truth is out there' or shall we say, it’s actually in HANGAR 1.”
Illustration
In the first episode of Hangar 1: The UFO Files episode one, “Presidential Encounters,” there's a clip showing a document used to illustrate the US Government UFO cover-up.
According to the show, after President Eisenhower met aliens at Muroc Air Force base in 1954, he tightened the lid on UFO secrecy. The narration states, "A secret policy was adopted that stated that any information on the matter of extraterrestrials was a matter of National security and therefore classified." They show and quote from a document, Mandate 0463.
"under no circumstances are the general public or public press to learn of the existence of these entities, the official government policy is that such creatures do not exist."
Jason Colavito’s blog was the first one to examine the false document:
They show a document on screen labeled “MANDATE 0463” from 1 March 1954, but I can find no record that this paper actually exists outside of the show...
Here’s the MAJESTIC-12 language attributed to “Chapter 5: Extraterrestrial Biological Entities” of the Group Special Operations Manual dated April 1954, reformatted on this show to fabricate a “1 March 1954” memo, by computer, in Times New Roman... "Under no circumstances is the general public or public press to learn of the existence of these entities. The official government policy is that such creatures do not exist, and that no agency of the federal government is now engaged in any study of extraterrestrials or their artifacts. Any deviation from this stated policy is absolutely forbidden.” This is the same text Hangar 1 uses, but they excerpt only some sentences from the MJ-12 manual in crafting their own fake memo.
The SOM 1-01 manual arrived in the mail to Don Berliner as a roll of film from an anonymous source. This immediately raises suspicions, since there is no identifiable source whose veracity and reputation can be checked and no original documents that can be subjected to forensic analysis...We believe this to be a hoax document; a deliberate fake designed to mislead the public and to plant false information in the UFO research community... See http://www.cufos.org/ros5.html
Robert Hastings has also written about "SOM 1-01" in Operation Bird Droppings "As was the case with the earlier batch of MJ-12 'documents' that surfaced 25 years ago, the newly-disseminated MJ-12-related SOM-01-I 'field manual' is undoubtedly a forgery." More recently, in MJ-12: The Hoax That Quickly Became a Disinformation Operation.
For example, MJ-12 was prominently featured during the Citizens Hearing on Disclosure, held in Washington D.C. in May 2013. Linda Moulton Howe breathlessly characterized the MJ-12-related SOM 1-01 Special Operations Manual—which directs military personnel how to recover crashed UFOs and dead aliens—as having “stood the test of time”. Hardly! Military document expert and longtime UFO researcher Jan Aldrich has discovered over 50 factual errors and/or discrepancies in military protocol in the so-called “manual”. http://www.theufochronicles.com/2014/10/mj-12-hoax-that-quickly-became.html
For some reason, SOM 1-01 was not used in the show. Instead, a different counterfeit document was created.
Mandate 0463: Further Discussions
A blurry look at "Mandate 0463"
Shortly after the broadcast of Hangar 1 episode: “Presidential Encounters,” other authors wrote about the use of Mandate 0463.
Tim Printy at SUNlite: The show then decides to present something called Mandate 0463 (dated 3 March 1954), which states that the existence of aliens is to be denied by all DOD departments/personnel. Does such a document really exist? The document states that it was created at the 2374th meeting of the DOD on March 1, 1954. The DOD was created September 18, 1947. There were 2356 days between these two dates. According to Jason Colavito’s blog, some of the wording comes from the MJ-12 SOM-1 manual Chapter 5. 5 This document looked fabricated... (May 2014) http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite6_3.pdf
Made for TV document.
Robert Sheaffer also covered the use of Mandate 0463:
MUFON has fabricated documents to look like genuine secret government UFO documents, and presented them in Hangar 1 as if they were authentic, with no explanation or disclaimer. If that isn't downright dishonesty, I don't know what else to call it. (3/13/14) http://badufos.blogspot.com/2014/03/mufon-jumps-shark.html
Sheaffer’s article is particularly interesting because a MUFON representative replied to it:
Terry Montgomery GroffMarch 13, 2014 at 3:03 PM"No, MUFON claims these programs are based on files in a real storage area in Cincinnati, Ohio that they call Hanger 1. Everything in the program does indeed have associated files in storage including information on Presidential encounters."
Besides the UFO skeptics, there were also online discussions of it at forums such as:
Facebook, at various pages and groups, including, UFO UpDates and "The 'Official' Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Facebook Page, with Rich Hoffman and Steve Hudgeons, Jr.
Hangar 1 producers may not have been aware of the criticism, but members and officials of MUFON were. The Mandate 0463 clip was used again Nov. 14, 2014 in a MUFON promotional film:
Mandate 0463 is presented at 50 seconds in.
Negligence, or willful misconduct?
More documents "made for TV"
The Mandate 0463 document is a fake, made for television. Hangar 1 features plenty of discussion of speculative and undocumented material, but that is really a whole other topic. By displaying phony documents such as Mandate 0463, it seems to indicate that MUFON or the show's producers are having trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Or, that they are unconcerned with the difference.
The UFO topic is polluted enough with misinformation and mistakes. There's no need to manufacture new ones. Was Mandate 0463's use in Hangar 1 negligence, or willful misconduct? In the public eye, this is exactly the situation that prompts the media to ask, “Idiot or Liar?”
- - -
To learn more about Hangar 1: The UFO Files:
Jan Harzan is the executive director of MUFON and is featured on the program.
MUFON Headquarters: 3822 Campus Drive Suite 201 Newport Beach, CA 92660
