UFO Documents: Provenance and Credibility by Barry Greenwood

Barry Greenwood's name came up during a discussion with Paul Dean. Paul recently published an article, The Fake 1961 "Special National Intelligence Estimate", and a $1000 Offer To Prove It Genuine... at his blog, UFOs - Documenting The Evidence. The alleged SNIE recently received attention when it was identified as the MJ-12 document endorsed as being authentic by Dr. Hal Puthoff of To The Stars Academy. Majestic 12, or MJ-12 is the alleged US government group in charge of covering up the UFO secrets, supported only by counterfeit documents from anonymous sources.
Talking to Paul about UFO documents (genuine and otherwise) and the role they played in UFO research, I wondered if anyone had ever done a historical overview. Paul suggested I check with an expert.

Barry Greenwood is a UFO historian, and he is currently engaged in diligent work to archive original literature and documents for posterity. He co-authored Clear Intent with Lawrence Fawcett in 1984, later reprinted as The UFO Cover-Up. 

In 2007, Barry co-authored a paper with Brad Sparks, “The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12.” With Paul’s prompting, I emailed Barry and asked him for his view, noting:

This recent noise about the SNIE document has me wondering about the contrast between the fakes and the genuine instances of leaked documents. …Donald Keyhoe received some leaked material, but it was contemporary, not the allegedly decades-old stuff that periodically surfaces. 

Barry Greenwood promptly replied and graciously gave me permission to share his thoughts, presented here as a guest column.

UFO Documents: Provenance and Credibility

by Barry Greenwood

With regard to Keyhoe, he received contemporary documents from known sources. Sometimes, sources were not named but the information was not sensationalized and survived the passage of time. In Flying Saucers- Top Secret, he talked of "Hidden Cases" where they were aggravatingly thin on researchable detail. I spent time over the last three years in the NICAP files looking for these reports but they are missing. Keyhoe was derelict in not having safety copies of these reports in a safe place and now they are lost to history. I asked Gordon Lore about this but he was not in the loop. I guess Keyhoe thought he could live forever!

There was always hoaxing in this subject but the transition of the usual hoaxing to deliberate falsification of government documents crossed a line in the late 1970s. We finally had achieved some sort of credibility in what the government knew about UFOs by gaining access to official inquiry and investigations that revealed they didn't quite know what it was with what they dealt. Then a few fakes appeared followed by one in the military [Richard Doty] who planted fakes in government files and had those officially released via FOIA, a nefarious act that was eventually supported by major names in UFO research. This same source continued to circulate questionable documents as real. But by then every government paper officially released had a taint of "how do you know that is real?" A more effective watering down of what we had achieved, I can't recall and it took little effort.

So now more "leaks" about the same topic [MJ-12] still appear over 40 years later and are still embraced as genuine despite this long history of hoaxing and taint. The persistence is eye-opening and has the appearance of a cult relentlessly pushing their agendas. What really astonishes me is how a very simple rule of thumb has been, and is being, ignored. I explained very clearly in Clear Intent that provenance of documents is vital to the credibility of the information. We filed FOIAs and kept cover letters to establish the sources of the information as authentic, already knowing that fakery was underway and illegitimately competing for the attention of UFO researchers. The common theme of the fakes was that the sources were mysterious and it took a leap of faith to accept the contents. A large percentage of people are gullible, even very gullible, about the sensation of information on UFOs. If the information promised to satisfy articles of belief, it was embraced before any investigation as to the authenticity of that information. I think this contributed to Stan Friedman's rabid promotion of questioned documents. Not knowing from where information came opens the door to fiction becoming fact in the minds of ones seeking quick conclusions about a mysterious topic.

With regard to the SNIE paper, Paul may have told you the details but he approached me a while back with this document. He said it came from a prominent person [affiliation redacted] who wanted input as to whether or not is was genuine. It took about ten seconds to see it was another MJ-12 hoax, again unattributed as to source and likely from the Richard Doty/Tim Cooper school of document fakery. Cooper has said he had about 4000 pages of “leaks" acquired under very suspicious circumstances, which could provide a years-long supply of continuous attention to the MJ-12 conspiracy. Cooper eventually admitted all the documents were fake. 

But what is disturbing is that despite the history of this story churning like an upset stomach, seemingly high profile people involved with the effort to get Congress to investigate UFOs appear to be giving such unattributed ”releases" a stamp of approval. I understand Hal Puthoff declared the SNIE to be genuine along with who knows who else in that group [TTSA]. It is nonsense from a long-term hoax effort but linking this to the new efforts to get the military and Congress to research will do profound damage to these efforts. The UFO subject needs to grow up and pay more attention to what has happened which provides perspective to what is happening.

. . . 

The CUFOS site hosts a nice biography of Barry Greenwood, and he also maintains his own site, Barry Greenwood UFO Archive.

Documenting Luis Elizondo's Leadership of the Pentagon's UFO Program

When To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science burst on the scene, the feather in it's cap was the revelation that the US government had a secret UFO investigation, and that the program's former director was now a key member in their company, TTSA.

The news was really made by the article in the  New York Times from Dec. 16, 2017, by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean. Luis Elizondo was presented as the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). It was revealed that Senator Harry Reid was the architect of AATIP's creation, and it referred to a letter by him that had been presented to journalists to establish the bona fides of AATIP and Elizondo.

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

Senator Reid's letter proposed the establishment of AATIP as a Special Access Program (SAP) with black budget funding. It was dated June 24, 2009, and addressed to "Honorable William Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense." The effort was unsuccessful, and AATIP remained a small, part-time project. As Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell, a UFO and paranormal documentary film journalist, described it, “AATIP was more of an assignment than a program."

George Knapp, KLAS-TV news reporter and TTSA proponent, published a copy of the Reid letter on July 25, 2018, in the article Exclusive: I-Team obtains some key documents related to Pentagon UFO study, however, Knapp redacted some of the players' names, supposedly to protect the identities of the persons involved.

Senator Reid's June 24, 2009 letter (link to PDF)

See this article by Keth Basterfield for an examination of the Reid AATIP letter:
The 2009 Senator Reid AATIP letter revisited

Controversy arose after Keith Kloor's scathing June 1, 2019, Intercept article, "The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?" The DoD denied Luis Elizondo's role in AATIP. Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood stated:

 “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”

Elizondo's supporters insisted the Pentagon statement by Sherwood was deceitful or incorrect, and cited the Dec. 16, 2017, Politico story by Bryan Bender that stated:

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to POLITICO that the program existed and was run by Elizondo. But she could not say how long he was in charge of it and declined to answer detailed questions about the office or its work, citing concerns about the closely held nature of the program.

Bender did not provide a direct quote from White, and she's no longer in that job, therefore in no position to provide clarification. For the record, there was another attempt to verify Elizondo's AATIP role at the time. Sarah Scoles of Wired repeatedly questioned Pentagon spokesperson Audricia Harris about  AATIP matters. From her Feb. 17, 2019 article, “What Is Up With Those Pentagon UFO Videos?”

"WIRED was unable to verify that Elizondo worked on AATIP, but Harris does confirm that he worked for the Defense Department."

Before the flap raised about Elizondo by the Intercept article was started, researcher Roger Glassel was pursuing verification on something different, a sensational AATIP-related story in a tabloid. The May 22, 2019, New York Post, contained partial quotes from a Pentagon spokesperson, and on June 4, Glassel obtained the complete original Pentagon statement it was based on. What Glassel received contained an identical statement about Elizondo from the Pentagon's Christopher Sherwood, showing the NY Post author had the information about the denial of Elizondo's role in AATIP back in May, but omitted any mention of it. At that point, the Pentagon had provided the same statement to at least three journalists, and it contradicted the AATIP leadership claims made by Luis Elizondo.

In response to the controversy, George Knapp put up a photo of a less redacted version of the final page of the Senator Reid letter on Twitter June 4, 2019, stating:

"Lue Elizondo and Hal Puthoff were two recipients of June 2009 AATIP letter from Sen. Reid."

In a follow-up message, he tweeted:

"I will send out a cleaner version in a little bit. This was my own crude handiwork. Redacting the names was a condition from the source of the letter. (Some are still active in govt. Others do not want to be subjected to what Lue. E, is enduring.)"

Later the same day, Knapp tweeted a third redacted version of the list.

"Cleaner version of AATIP letter from Sen. Harry Reid :"  

George Knapp didn't explain the differences in the appearances of the three versions he's shown, but it's clear that his original copy contains more information than he chooses to share. We can see enough in it to indicate that the number of government personnel involved in the working end of AATIP was no more than a handful, eight at the most.

The particular significance of Luis Elizondo's name in the letter is that he's among the people Senator Reid refers to in this passage.:

"Due to the expertise required to carry out the objectives of this program, we will require  a small, specialized group of DoD personnel, who are dedicated to performing the SAP-related functions and executing programmatic requirements within the program. It is essential that the Government & military personnel who are already involved with this program are assigned to further support this program in a Restricted SAP capacity (See Attachment 1). These individuals all currently possess the appropriate security clearances and are already providing unique support to AATIP."

Although the Reid letter is unsourced, it has been referenced by Pentagon spokesperson, so it  appears to be genuine, and seems to indeed establish Elizondo's association with AATIP. However, there's nothing in the letter to indicate his role. The letter is dated June 24, 2009; Elizondo states he was formally named director of AATIP when his predecessor resigned in 2010.

Reporter Bryan Bender of Politico has become involved in the story, and appears in the TTSA mini-series on History, Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation. On June 7, Bender made a statement about AATIP and Elizondo on Twitter:

"This was not an office but a 'program' and then a portfolio among a series of responsibilities he and others had -- first in DIA and then in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. And I have documentation he was in charge of the portfolio."

As of June 13, 2019, no further documentation has been produced by To The Stars or any of its associated promoters to verify provide clarification as to Luis Elizondo's role in AATIP.

If AATIP was comprised only of the handful of people listed in the Reid letter, and it was indeed an assignment or study,  - a side project - rather than a genuine Pentagon program, then, AATIP may not have had a formal director. Whatever the case, despite all the press about AATIP, the journalists driving the story have yet to answer the fundamental questions about it.

. . .

Update (6/14/2019)

Former Senator Harry Reid was interviewed on June 13, 2019 on KNPR’s State of Nevada radio program. The show was titled, Harry Reid: UFOs, The Military And Impeachment.
Part of the conversation covered the UFO topic and Reid’s involvement in the AATIP story. One particular question addressed the controversy surrounding the recent Pentagon statement about Luis Elizondo’s role in AATIP. Reid’s response was only a partial answer. He vouches for Elizondo's character and confirms the previously-established fact that he worked for the Defense Department, but does not specifically mention his role in AATIP.

Here's the transcription of the question and answer:

(At 15:28)
Interviewer: In this History Channel report, the guy who is interviewing people is Luis Elizondo, he was in charge of the Pentagon’s - it was called the AATIP program, that’s an acronym for something, I’m not sure, but it’s basically the program set up with at 22 million dollars, and online now there are people saying he never actually had this Pentagon job of looking into UFO sightings. So, can you verify that he is the guy - Can - Have you met him - Can you verify that he is who he says he is?

(At 15:56)
Reid: Oh, yes - Oh, I’ve talked to Luis on many - several times, met him here in Las Vegas recently. So here’s one thing that - what we have to understand with this: First of all, I believe in science, and that’s what we should be dealing with, but there are some people who wanted for many years to have kind of um, they’re kind of conspiratorial issues, kind of weirdness, and when they are challenged with real science, they don’t like it. So, that’s the problem we have with this. And then you have people who are just coming aboard, and they want to also report, ‘I saw a flying saucer,’ and all this stuff, and some of which is true, most of it, of course, isn’t.
So, I know Elizondo is a real guy. People are out there – a few people are trying to punch holes in what he is saying and what he does, but he was part of the Defense Department, no question about it, and a man of, I think, veracity.

. . .

Update #2 (6/14/2019)

John Greenewald posted a new article at his site The Black Vault:
Pentagon Reinforces Mr. Luis Elizondo Had “No Responsibilities” on AATIP; Senator Harry Reid’s 2009 Memo Changes Nothing

Greenewald contacted Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough to ask her about Luis Elizondo's name being listed in connection with AATIP in the Harry Reid letter. Greenwald reports that Gough replied on June 23, saying:

“I can confirm that the memo you’re referring to is authentic. DOD received it and responded to Sen. Reid,” Ms. Gough said. She then explains that her office is unable to provide The Black Vault a full copy of the response, since the Public Affairs office does not release Congressional correspondence, but she adds, “It makes no change to previous statements. Mr. Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP while he was in OUSD(I). DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] administered AATIP, and Elizondo was never assigned to DIA. Elizondo did interact with the DIA office managing the program while the program was still ongoing, but he did not lead it.”

Greenewald also received a comment from Hal Puthoff, former AAWSAP/AATIP contractor, ow a partner in TTSA along with Elizondo, an endorsement of his leadership of the program, which we'll shorten here as:

"I have no problem asserting... Elizondo’s leadership and responsibility for maintaining continuity of the Program..." 

For the full context and other related information, be sure to read the complete article.

With this new statement from yet another Pentagon spokesperson, the denial of Elizondo's role in AATIP can no longer be regarded as merely some kind of an error by Christopher Sherwood. More information is clearly needed, and documentation to back it up.

MJ-12, The "Pratt Sensitive" Documents, Cash-Landrum, Doty and Moore

Some big UFO news broke in 2007, about MJ-12 and how it came to be. Majestic 12, or MJ 12 was said to be the secret US government cabal that controlled UFO information. At the MUFON 2007 Symposium, Brad Sparks presented a paper that he co-authored with Barry Greenwood:

The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12 by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood (PDF)

The paper was based on documents from UFO journalist, Bob Pratt, notes from his meetings and calls with William L. Moore and Richard C. Doty. The key point of interest to the authors of the paper was that Moore and Doty were discussing MJ-12 and the related concepts before any documents were known to exist, and they planned to use it as the basis for a UFO science fiction novel.

Bob Pratt

Bill Moore

Rick Doty

There's discussion of Paul Bennewitz, Roswell, abductions, alien bodies, crashed and recovered flying saucers, ETs influencing our cultural and religious history (Jesus was one of theirs), espionage, disinformation and so much more! At the site Reality Uncovered, the article, Bill Moore's Disinfo- A Vehicle for Injected Social Memes examines the concepts and how they were spread.

Immediately after the release of the Sparks/Greenwood article, there was a round of heated debate, even among the author themselves! Some of the saga is chronicled at UFO UpDates starting Aug. 13, 2007.

The Documents: "Pratt Sensitive"

Shortly after the Sparks-Greenwood article was published, James Carrion, then MUFON director, released a PDF of the original 60 pages of Pratt documents:

Bob Pratt's documents on Moore and Doty: "Pratt Sensitive" (PDF)

It's a rare opportunity to see how fraudulent information was seeded and spread into UFO lore.

 

The Doty Cash Landrum Disinformation

My particular interest in the Pratt documents are the early bogus claims Richard Doty made about the Cash-Landrum case, which are very elaborate and colorful. A sample: 

Betty Cash, Vikie Landrum and Colby Landrum, were not contacted by AFINTEL because of their involvement with civilian UFO people. It was determined that these three could be used to further the "UFO explanation" and thus provide effective cover for the real nature of the affair.

Doty's "disclosures" on the C-L case are not the only comments he's made on it, and he was central in building the legend that the UFO was a malfunctioning US military experiment. He's been spreading lies about the case ever since. While I suspect he originally began exploiting the case chiefly because it was new and a hot topic. However, Doty's bogus input influences and contaminates the way the case is discussed, even now.

An illustration similar to Doty's description of the Cash-Landrum UFO shape

Richard Doty was there when the MJ-12 legend was created, and it's just one of the many pieces of disinformation he used to pollute the UFO topic. 

Area 51, the CIA and Cold War UFOs: TD Barnes

In the 2010 Mirage Men book, Mark Pilkington discusses how Dr. Leon Davidson thought some UFO radar appearances were man-made, created for covert counterintelligence purposes. Pilkington discussed a CIA program that created radar "ghosts," Project Palladium, and how it might have been used to also spoof UFOs.

CIA Saucers?

TD Barnes, president of Roadrunners Internationale, was kind enough to answer some of my questions about his work at Area 51 and the purpose and capabilities of the CIA radar program known as Project Palladium.

TD Barnes

Q: What can you tell me about Project Palladium?

A: Gene Poteat was a fast-rising star in CIA who headed up the project. As you will see, the CIA Project OXCART at Area 51 was the purpose and need of Project Palladium to determine if we would be able to safely overfly Russia with the Mach 3 A-12 Blackbird intended to replace the U-2. We were very hot in the arms race at the time and didn't have a clue what the Russians were up to. 

Eugene Poteat and TD Barnes

Q: Was Palladium or another radar spoofing system used on China in the early 60s? I'm wondering if the "ghost planes" it could generate explain the story told in Above Top Secret by Timothy Good:

"Miles Copeland, former CIA organizer and intelligence officer, related an interesting story to me involving the Agency's attempt on one occasion to use fictional UFO sightings to spread disinformation. The purpose, in this case, was to 'dazzle' and intoxicate' the Chinese, who had themselves on several occasions fooled the CIA into sending teams to a desert in Sinkiang Province, West China, to search for nonexistent underground 'atomic energies.' The exercise took place in the early 1960s, Copeland told me, and involved launching fictional UFO sighting reports from many different areas. The project was headed by Desmond Fitzgerald of the Special Affairs Staff (who made a name for himself by inventing harebrained schemes for assassinating Fidel Castro). The UFO exercise was 'just to keep the Chinese off-balance and make them think we were doing things we weren't,' Copeland said."

A: I'm not sure the project name of the spoofing action in China. We were doing a lot U-2 overflights of China and losing a lot of planes in the process. I recall our training a group of Taiwan Chinese at Groom Lake in 1969 in a C-130E to drop motion and light sensors in the desert of northwest China to gather intelligence on the Chinese nuclear weapons development program. These were palletized sensors that looked like ordinary rocks that they dropped out of the back of a C-130 over Locknor and Zhang Sinzu area. 

"TALL KING" parabolic shaped radar antenna

Though I have no first-hand knowledge of UFO disinformation, I don't doubt for a minute that we did it. Our U-2 and Blackbird flights were UFO sightings that we really didn't want to occur, especially the CIA A-12 whose existence we wanted to keep secret. In the A-12 alone, we flew 2850 flights out of Area 51 and many of them were responsible for UFO sightings. The Air Force Bluebook investigators having to make up stories to cover for us caused a lot of the skepticism that exists today. Psy-Ops by all parties were a major component of the Cold War, but in our case we preferred to be undetected.  

A-12, CIA plane built by Lockheed.

Thanks to Mr. Barnes for answering my questions. For more information on him and his work, check out http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/

For more information on Project Palladium, see Gene Poteat's article, 
Stealth, Countermeasures and ELINT 1960-1975 pdf