Hangar 1: The UFO Files, opens with the statement,
"The following incidents are from real case files.
They are from actual UFO investigations."
Here's what Mutual UFO Network's website says about the series:
"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.”
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| 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."The problem is, it's a phony.
Mandate 0463 seen at 3:26
Public Exposure
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 whole thing we see on screen appears to be a complete fabrication from this passage of the fictional MJ-12 documents, and no one on this show acknowledges or addresses the deception involved in creating this fake document as an “illustration.” http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-hangar-1-ufo-files-s01e01-presidential-encounters (3/2/2014)
A Fake Based on a Fake: SOM 1-01 Special Operations Manual
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| The SOM 1-01Manual |
SOM 1-01 was evaluated as a fake by reputable UFO experts, including MUFON's Richard H. Hall and Thomas P. Deuley:
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”.For some reason, SOM 1-01 was not used in the show. Instead, a different counterfeit document was created.
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2014/10/mj-12-hoax-that-quickly-became.html
Mandate 0463: Further Discussions
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| 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
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Made for TV document.
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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 Groff March 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.
Mandate 0463 is presented at 50 seconds in.
Negligence, or willful misconduct?
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| 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?”
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?”
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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
949-47MUFON or 949-476-8366
IMDb gives the senior credits for the “Presidential Encounters” episode as:
| Mitch Marcus | ... | director |
| Amy Cron | ... | senior story producer |
| Christopher Lauer | ... | line producer |
| Douglas Segal | ... | executive producer |
| Kevin Tavolaro | ... | senior story producer |
| Paul Villadolid | ... | executive producer |
