textfiles/ufo/UFOBBS/1000/1814.ufo

SUBJECT: AN MJ-12 INFORMANT                                  FILE: UFO1814



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 Note:  The following article was submitted to the MUFON Journal for
	copyrighted publication.  It was written in October/89.

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	  AN MJ-12 INFORMANT
	  ------------------


		     by T. Scott Crain, Jr.



	During the past decade or so, evidence has been stacking up

 that the U.S. Government has involved itself in retrieving crashed

 UFOs and their occupants.  A major outlet for these types of cases

 were first reported in the summer of 1978, when Ohio researcher

 Leonard H. Stringfield, presented 17 abstracts reviewing 'Retrievals

 the Third Kind,' cases of alleged UFOs and occupants in military

 custody, at the Mutual UFO Network's annual symposium held in Dayton,

 Ohio that year.  Critic's of Stringfield's paper argued that because

 his informants wished to remain anonymous, it was virtually impossible

 to verify the claims.  He continued his quest for more details on the

 UFO crash retrieval question, and published subsequent updates in 1980

 and 1982.  But spectacular claims require extraordinary evidence, and

 Stringfield's anecdotal evidence was insufficient to prove the case.


	In 1980, noted linguist Charles Berlitz and UFO investigator

 William L. Moore released the book, 'The Roswell Incident' that describes

 how the military intervened and kept secret from the American public the

 recovery of a crashed UFO and occupants outside Roswell, New Mexico in

 1947.  The case was recently reexamined on the September 20, 1989

 episode of NBC-TV's 'Unsolved Mysteries,' which highlighted several

 witnesses to the investigation and one informant.  The informant, Sappho

 Henderson of West Hills, California, told how her late husband, Captain

 Oliver Wendell Henderson, was the pilot who flew the saucer wreckage in

 an Air Force plane to a base in Dayton, Ohio.  Walter G. Haut, who was

 a public-relations officer at Roswell Army Air Force base in July, 1947,

 was also on the show, and verified that wreckage from a flying saucer

 was recovered by the Air Force.


	In September, 1989, UFO researcher Jerome Clark indicates that

 at least three dozen new informants have been interviewed, and that the

 "Roswell incident is surrendering more and more of its secrets, including

 the biggest ones."  Investigators for the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO

 Studies are making some interesting discoveries, and hopefully a report

 of their findings will be released in the near future.


	Support that a UFO did crash near Roswell was bolstered up again

 in 1987, when English writer Timothy Good published for the first time

 alleged official U.S. Government documents outlining how twelve men

 working for the U.S. Government orchestrated the recovery and evaluation

 of a crashed disc that was removed from Roswell, New Mexico, in July,

 1947.  A similar release of this so called 'Briefing Document: Operation

 Majestic 12' occurred several weeks later in the USA by the research

 team of William L. Moore, Jaime H. Shandera and Stanton T. Friedman.


	According to the documents, MJ-12 was a group of distinguished

 scientists, military and intelligence officials, established by President

 Harry Truman to control the recovery of UFOs.  Newspapers around the

 globe reported the allegations that the United States Government covered

 up a UFO crash landing, and recovered it's occupants.  But no official

 spokesman would confirm that any of this was true.  How does one prove

 MJ-12 exist and the documents are real?


	Canadian UFO researcher and nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman,

 was awarded a $16,000. grant by the Fund for UFO Research to answer

 that question, and he has generated a great deal of information to

 support the validity of the documents.  Unfortunately for Friedman, and

 the rest of the research community, all the original designated MJ-12

 members are dead, so any confirmation must come from second hand

 information or locating other supporting documents to prove the case.

 A progress report of his investigation was made at the 1989 Mutual UFO

 Network symposium, held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Friedman reported there

 is "...no indication that the documents are fradulent and a host of small

 details which tend towards legitimacy for MJ-12."


	Working on the assumption that the Majestic-12 documents are

 possibly authentic, Canadian UFO researcher Grant Cameron and I found an

 anchor in which to conduct our own investigation.  We decided to pursue

 people, not documents.  Since the Briefing Document clearly states the

 project is a "TOP SECRET Research and Development Intelligence operation..."

 responsible to the President of the United States, Cameron and I went

 fishing for former members of the R&D Board who were active during the

 late 1940's and early 1950's.  Someone out there had to have knowledge

 of a project of this magnitude.


	During our hunt, we discovered another researcher who had been

 doing a similar check, William Steinman in California.  Steinman, author

 of the book, 'UFO Crash at Aztec,' had been corresponding with Fred Darwin,

 the former Executive Director of the Guided Missile Committee for the

 Department of Defense's R & D Board from 1949 to 1954.  Steiman asked

 Darwin who would be likely candidates for a flying saucer recovery

 operation, if there ever were such a project.  His reply is extraordinary,

 considering he named these people in 1984, three years before the

 Majestic-12 documents were made public.  Darwin listed the following

 names:


		1.)  Dr. Vannevar Bush

		2.)  Dr. Karl T. Compton

		3.)  Dr. Lloyd Berkner

		4.)  Dr. Robert F. Rinehart

		5.)  Dr. Eric A. Walker

		6.)  Dr. John Von Neumann



	Bush and Berkner both appeared on the Majestic-12 list in 1987.

 One name that came up that we found interesting was Dr. Eric Walker,

 former President of the Pennsylvannia State University.


	The fact that Walker may be involved originated with American

 physicist Dr. Robert I. Sarbacher.  In the 1950s, Sarbacher was serving

 as a consultant for the military's R & D Board and was a member of the

 Guidance & Control panel.


	In a September 15, 1950, interview with Canadian scientist

 Wilbert B. Smith, Sarbacher told Smith flying saucers exist, we have

 not been able to duplicate their performance, and the subject of flying

 saucers is classified two points higher than the H-bomb.  When the

 contents of this 1950 interview was made public through one of Leonard

 Stringfield's monographs, 'UFO CRASH/RETRIEVAL: AMASSING THE EVIDENCE-

 STATUS REPORT III' in 1982, Steinman managed to find Sarbacher in Palm

 Beach, Florida, and wrote him for more information.


	In a letter to Steinman dated November 23, 1983, Sarbacher

 confirmed he was "...invited to participate in several discussions

 associated with the reported recoveries..." (of UFOs) but that he was

 unable to attend the meetings.  Sarbacher stated that U.S. laboratories

 analyzed that material that reportedly came from these flying saucer

 crashes and that the hardware was "...extrememly light and very tough."

 Sarbacher described the beings that controlled the flying saucer to

 Steinman.  He states:


		"There were reports that instruments or people
		 operating these machines were also of very
		 light weight, sufficient to withstand the
		 tremendous deceleration and acceleration
		 associated with their machinery.  I remember
		 in talking with some of the people at the
		 office that I got the impression these "aliens"
		 were constructed like certain insects we have
		 observed on earth, wherein because of the mass
		 the inertial forces involved in operation of
		 these instruments would be quite low."


	In an October 1985 issue of the Flying Saucer Review, editor

 Gordon Creighton gave further details about Sarbacher's involvement

 in his article 'TOP U.S. SCIENTIST ADMITS CRASHED UFOs.'  Creighton

 writes that although Sarbacher didn't attend, the meetings about the

 recoveries were held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,

 Ohio, where officials were to report their findings to scientists

 connected to the Defence Department's Joint Research and Development

 Board.


	During a telephone interview between researcher Stanton Friedman

 and Robert Sarbacher, he asked Sarbacher if he could recall anyone who

 attended those meetings.  Although he could not recall his name, he

 named enough clues to Friedman, that when William Steinman reviewed the

 conversation, all the evidence led to Dr. Eric A. Walker.   In the early

 1950's, Walker was serving as Executive Secretary of the Research and

 Development Board, and would have been a logical candidate to be asked

 to attend UFO retrieval meetings, if they were held.  In a letter to

 Grant Cameron, Steinman said that when he made the discovery, he

 telephoned Sarbacher and asked him if Dr. Eric Walker was the individual

 he was trying to remember.  Sarbacher's response, according to Steinman,

 was Walker was the man who attended all those meetings at Wright-Patterson

 Air Force Base.


	If the evidence we have gathered is true, we now have identified a

 scientist who was in a position to confirm or deny the U.S. Government's

 crash retrieval program.  Steinman states he telephoned Walker on August

 30, 1987.  According to Steinman's "word for word" telephone transcript

 of the interview, Dr. Eric A. Walker confirmed attending these meetings

 at Wright-Patterson AFB regarding the "military recovery of flying

 saucers, and the bodies of the occupants."  According to Steinman,

 Walker acknowledged that he knew of MJ-12 and was familiar with them

 since 1947.  In the interview, Walker tells Steinman to "leave it alone,"

 that he is "delving into a area that you do absolutely nothing about."

 Steinman responds that the people have the right to know the truth,

 and that he is "...not going to drop it."


	Steinman has been investigating Walker since 1984, and received

 several letters from Walker, one of which discusses a downed saucer.

 Crain and Cameron teamed up in the fall of 1987, to learn as much as

 we could about Walker's involvement, before releasing his name to

 the public.


	Although Dr. Walker is being less responsive these days regarding

 inquiries into his past involvement with UFOs, Cameron and I believe we

 have gathered enough background material on Dr. Walker to show he was

 in the right place at the right time to know if the United States has

 a crashed UFO in military custody.  A report of our findings have been

 assembled in a book, 'UFOs, MJ-12 AND THE GOVERNMENT,' which we hope to

 release in the near future.




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