Jim Westwood's MJ-12 disinformation theory

Jim Westwood's MJ-12 disinformation theory

Analyst	James "Jim" Westwood, described by Jacques Vallée as a former CIA expert on fake Soviet documents
Document examined	The "Eisenhower Briefing Document", dated 18 November 1952
Commissioned by	Hal Puthoff, for Robert Wood's MJ-12 study
Verdict	"All the earmarks of a fake", an American disinformation document once meant to fool the KGB
Recorded in	Vallée, Forbidden Science: Volume Four, p. 438, entry of 1 January 1999
Surfaced	2019, via a disputed 2001 NIDS memo naming Westwood
Date	1 January 1999
Topics	Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
People	Jim Westwood, Robert M. Wood, Harold Puthoff
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 137
Year	1999 in UFO history
Timeline	1999 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	6

Jim Westwood, whom the ufologist Jacques Vallée described as a former CIA expert on fake Soviet documents, concluded in the late 1990s that the "Eisenhower Briefing Document", the centrepiece of the Majestic 12 (MJ-12) story, had all the marks of a fake. In his view it was an American disinformation document originally meant to fool the KGB.^[1] His verdict is known only from Vallée's published journal, in an entry dated 1 January 1999.^[1] Westwood was reportedly hired by the physicist Hal Puthoff to help the aerospace engineer Robert Wood, who was then studying the MJ-12 papers and would go on to defend their authenticity.^[1][3][5]

The MJ-12 documents

The MJ-12 papers claim to describe a secret committee of scientists, military leaders and officials set up in 1947 by an executive order of President Harry Truman to recover and study alien spacecraft.^[2] The key events:^[2]

• 1981. The earliest known mention of "MJ Twelve" appears in a document used in the disinformation campaign against the Albuquerque businessman and UFO researcher Paul Bennewitz. Air Force officials, including Richard Doty, misled Bennewitz. Doty and others presenting themselves as Air Force intelligence officers also recruited the ufologist Bill Moore, who spread misinformation within the UFO community.
• 11 December 1984. Shortly after a phone call from Moore, the television producer Jaime Shandera received an undeveloped roll of 35 mm film in a brown paper package with a New Mexico postmark. It held a "Truman–Forrestall memo" dated 24 September 1947 and the seven-page "Eisenhower Briefing Document", dated 18 November 1952, which supposedly briefed President-elect Eisenhower on MJ-12.
• Later batches. A "Cutler/Twining memo" was found in the National Archives in 1985 after anonymous tips. An MJ-12 "Special Operations Manual" was sent to Don Berliner in 1994, and more than 100 documents came to Timothy Cooper from 1992. All existed only as copies or photographs.

The briefing document also described a second crash, in 1950 near El Indio and Guerrero on the Mexico–U.S. border. An investigation for MUFON found no evidence of it.^[2]

Robert and Ryan Wood

Robert M. Wood held a Cornell doctorate in physics and worked at Douglas Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas from 1956 until he retired on 8 October 1993.^[3] In the late 1960s he ran a small McDonnell Douglas project, informally called "Boys in the Back Room", that tried to work out how UFOs might control gravity. By his own account it cost about $500,000 and ended in 1970 with null results.^[5] He later sat on the boards of MUFON and the Fund for UFO Research.^[3]

Wood's writing on MJ-12 included:

• 1997. A review of Stanton Friedman's MJ-12 book Top Secret/Majic in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, followed by an exchange with Vallée, Kevin Randle and Friedman.^[3]
• March 1999. "Another Look at Majestic", written with his son Ryan Wood, in the MUFON UFO Journal, No. 371.^[3]
• Later. The father and son's book The Secret (MJ-12): Evidence That We Are Not Alone, which MUFON sold through its store.^[5]

The Woods' overall conclusions are not detailed in the sources here, beyond that book's title.^[5]

Westwood's verdict

In Forbidden Science: Volume Four, page 438, under 1 January 1999, Vallée described tensions around Wood's project:^[1]

• NIDS refused. Wood had suggested that the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), created by the Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow, sponsor his MJ-12 analysis, and had been rebuffed. Vallée wrote that a "Bob" in his circle grew angrier on learning that Wood was analysing the documents anyway.
• Puthoff's hire. Puthoff hired James Westwood, whom Vallée called a former CIA expert on fake Soviet documents who had himself created similar fakes for disinformation. Puthoff paid him to bring his skills to Wood's project.
• The finding. Westwood's verdict was that the briefing document had "all the earmarks of a fake, an American disinformation document once meant to fool the KGB".

The entry does not say how Westwood reached his conclusion, which features he found telling, or whether he wrote a report. No other account of his work appears in the sources.^[1]

How it surfaced

The verdict drew attention in 2019. On 4 June that year an eleven-page document appeared online, purporting to be a 23 March 2001 memo from the NIDS staffer Eric Davis to Bigelow. It concerned Kit Green's evaluation of the "alien autopsy" film.^[1] The blogger Keith Basterfield found that Vallée's journals did not confirm the briefings the memo described. Researching the unfamiliar names in the memo, he traced "Jim Westwood" to Vallée's 1999 entry.^[1] Basterfield's blog also covered aerospace companies' interest in UFOs, but the archived copy of that post contains only reader comments.^[6]

Other views

A Cold War disinformation origin would explain why the papers look official yet contain errors. Most investigators, however, regard them as modern forgeries:^[2]

• The FBI. In 1988 the Air Force Office of Special Investigations told the FBI that no such committee had ever been authorized or formed. The FBI declared the documents "completely bogus" and closed its inquiry.
• Signs of forgery. The documents use an idiosyncratic date format found not in government papers of the period but in Moore's personal notes. Truman's signature matches one on a genuine 1 October 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush. Philip Klass called it a pasted-on photocopy, "including accidental scratch marks".
• The Cutler memo. Robert Cutler, Eisenhower's aide, was abroad visiting military bases on the memo's supposed date, and no National Security Council meeting took place that day.
• Klass on disinformation. Klass called the theory that the documents were disinformation "ridiculous", arguing that their many flaws could never have fooled Soviet or Chinese intelligence.
• Confessions. From 1989, participants in the deception campaign confessed to fabricating MJ-12 lore to deceive UFO researchers.

Westwood's reported verdict agrees with the sceptics that the briefing document is fake. It differs on the purpose, treating it as an older intelligence product rather than a hoax aimed at ufologists.^[1][2] An Atlas Obscura article on the FBI's handling of the papers is also listed among the sources, but it could not be read (the site refused automated access).^[4]

People and topics

• Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
• MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
• Jim Westwood — Former CIA consultant who studied the MJ-12 papers.
• Robert M. Wood — McDonnell Douglas engineer who ran an in-house UFO study and later promoted the MJ-12 documents.
• Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.
• Eisenhower Briefing Document — The MJ-12 document dated 1952, received on film in 1984.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• Air Force Office of Special Investigations — The Air Force's criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency.

On the Timeline

• Jehovah teletype (Cooper documents) (November 1998) — An allegedly leaked CIA teletype is given to a researcher.
• Bigelow's contact contingency planning (1999) (8 January 1999) — Bigelow discusses the need for a plan if alien contact were confirmed.

See every 1999 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Majestic 12”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.