SUBJECT: THE KLASS BET FILE: UFO2484
PART 1
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[The following is a re-type of a White Paper sent to me by
Phil Klass when I asked about claims apparently made by
Stanton Friedman regarding a "bet" between the two of them.
I have done my best to keep the proper emphasis and
spelling, even where a given word was misspelled. -- David
Bloomberg]
Philip J. Klass 404 "N" St. Southwest
Washington D.C. 20024
This is in response to your query about whether Stanton T.
Friedman did indeed "win" $1,000 from me because he was
correct and I was wrong about one detail of an "MJ-12"
related memo allegedly written by President Eisenhower's
aide, Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining, on July 14,
1954, which William L. Moore and Jaime Shandera claim to
have discovered in the National Archives.
Yes, I paid Friedman $1,000 because he was correct and I was
wrong. The money came from the interest earned on $1,000
Friedman had earlier paid me. Here is the full story that
Friedman never reveals. (It may be reproduced without
permission.)
As a boy in Iowa, we had a useful expression: "Talk is
cheap; put your money where your mouth is." A friend might
claim he could run around the block in 2 minutes. Bet him a
dime he couldn't--and if he really believed in his claim, he
would accept the wager. I have found this is a most useful
technique in my many years in the UFO field to determine if
there is "adverse evidence".
In fact, I used it during my very first contact with
Friedman, around 1967. He had published a Letter-to-the-
Editor in the American Instit. of Aeronautics & Astronautics
journal, claiming there was overwhelming evidence that UFOs
were ET craft. I promptly sent Friedman a copy of my
$10,000 Contract to determine if he believed his claim was
true and to learn what that evidence was.
Under the terms of this contract, I agree to pay the
other person $10,000 if/when any hard, incontrovertible
evidence is found which shows that the Earth has been
visited by one (or more) ET craft. (The other party does
not need to find the evidence.) The other party agrees to
pay me $100 per year until such evidence is found, but with
a limit/maximum of 10 years of payments. Thus, the maximum
the other party risks is $1,000. Friedman rejected my $10K
offer as "ridiculous."
In my second UFO book, "UFOs Explained," I briefly
discussed my $10,000 offer and noted that Friedman (among
others) had refused to sign up. I noted that the most
Friedman risked losing was $1,000--which was the fee he
typically was paid for giving a single one-hour lecture
"Flying Saucers ARE Real." A few months after this book was
published, Friedman and I appeared on a syndicated talk show-
-pre-taped in Detroit. During the taping, Friedman whipped
out a crisp $100 bill and announced he was accepting my $10K
offer. I promptly sent him the one-page contract which he
signed. During the subsequent nine years, Friedman made his
annual payments and as of early 1984, Friedman had paid me a
total of $1,000. Although I did not put Friedman's payments
into a special "Escrow" account, if I had done so, the
compounded interest I earned on Friedman's money would have
totalled slightly more than $1,000 as of 1989.
So much for background. One of the two MJ-12 documents
made public by William L. Moore, Jaime Shandera and Stanton
Friedman in the spring of 1987 purports to be a document
prepared in November 1952 by Rear Adm. Roscoe H.
Hillenkoetter to brief President-elect Eisenhower on UFOs
and crashed saucers. (Hillenkoetter had been director of
the CIA from 1947 to 1950.)
Christopher Allan, a British UFOlogist, first called my
attention to a very unusual date-format used in this
briefing document--a hybrid of civil and military format. I
discovered that only one other person consistently used this
same unusual date-format in his correspondence: William L.
Moore, who released the MJ-12 papers. Another anomaly in
the briefing document allegedly written by Hillenkoetter was
that he referred to himself as "Adm. Hillenkoetter," rather
than "Rear Adm. [or Radm] Hillenkoetter," which implied he
was a four-star (full) admiral rather than a two-star.
So I requested the Truman Library to send me copies of
letters which Hillenkoetter had written as CIA director to
determine if he consistently used this unusual date-format
and if he correctly identified his rank as Rear Admiral. In
every one of the letters I received, Hillenkoetter used the
traditional military date-format and he correctly showed his
rank as Rear Admiral. Furthermore, from these authentic
archival letters I discovered that he never signed his
letters using his first name "Roscoe." Instead he always
used his initials: "R.H." Yet in the MJ-12 briefing
document which Hillenkoetter allegedly wrote, he used
"Roscoe."
And so on Oct. 30, 1987, using my old "put your money
where your mouth is" approach, I offered Friedman the
opportunity to win many thousands of dollars. I offered to
pay Friedman $2,000 for each and every authentic letter
written by Hillenkoetter while he was at the CIA IF the
letter used the unusual MJ-12 date-format and if it was
signed "Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter," providing Friedman agreed
to pay me 1/5th that amount ($400) for every Hillenkoetter
letter I could supply which did not use the unusual date-
format and which was signed with his initials.
Thus, if Hillenkoetter used the "MJ-12 format" in even
one out of every four letters he wrote, Friedman could win
some of my money. Friedman promptly rejected my generous
offer in his letter of Nov. 5, 1987. So I sent him a
slightly revised version on Nov. 10 which he also rejected
on Nov. 19. (Copy of my offer and Friedman's comments are
enclosed.)
Now for the $1,000 wager that Friedman did accept, and
which he won. On Jan. 16, 1989, based on a modest sample of
letters written by Robert Cutler which I had obtained from
the Eisenhower Library, I had reason to believe that the
typewriters in Cutler's office all used the "elite" (small)
typeface then used for many executives. But the Cutler memo
which Moore/Shandera claimed to have found in the National
Archives used the larger "pica" typeface. Further, I had
learned that Cutler could not possibly have written the memo
to Gen. Twining on July 14, 1954, because Cutler was out of
the country on official business on that date.
If all of the typewriters in Cutler's office used pica
type, that would be further evidence that the July 14 memo
was a counterfeit. So, on Jan. 16, 1989, I challenged
Friedman on this issue and offered to pay him $100 for each
letter written by Cutler during this same time period which
he could find which "uses a typeface identical in size and
style to that used in the alleged Cutler/Twining memo of
July 14, 1954." (Fortunately for me, I set an upper limit
of $1,000 on my payments.) Friedman did come up with
several dozen Cutler letters with pica typeface.
I might have quibbled over whether their typeface was
"identical in style," but I opted to promptly pay off and
sent him my check for $1,000. My payment to Friedman
represented the interest I had earned on his earlier $1,000
payment to me under our $10,000 contract.
More recently, I extended a similar challenge to
Friedman under which he could win another $1,000 while
risking only $100 of his own--a challenge he declined to
accept. The recent crashed-saucer book co-authored by
Friedman and Don Berliner ["Crash at Corona"] features the
tale of Gerald F. Anderson who claims that in 1947 he and
four other members of his family (all now deceased) stumbled
onto a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin in New
Mexico. Anderson claimed that his family was soon joined by
a group of archaeologists headed by a Dr. Buskirk. Despite
the fact that Anderson was only 5 years old at the time of
the alleged incident and the 40+ years which had elapsed, he
was able to reconstruct Dr. Buskirk's appearance with the
aid of techniques used by the police to reconstruct the
appearance of a criminal.
Thanks to a painstaking investigation, UFOlogist Tom J.
Carey managed to locate Dr. Buskirk who closely resembled
Anderson's sketch but who flatly denied Anderson's tale.
Buskirk had hard evidence to show that he was hundreds of
miles away from the Plains of San Agustin at the time of the
alleged crashed saucer incident. However, Carey learned
that Buskirk had been a teacher at the Albuquerque, N.M.
high school in the late 1950s when Gerald F. Anderson had
taken a course in anthropology which Buskirk taught. Yet
Anderson claimed that he had never seen Dr. Buskirk since
the crashed-saucer incident in 1947.
When skeptical investigators tried to obtain a copy of
Anderson's high school records to see if he had taken a
course in anthropology (under Buskirk), Anderson instructed
school officials not to release his records. Anderson then
released what he claimed to be a photocopy of his school
records which seemed to show he had not taken a course in
anthropology. But there were suspicions that the record
that Anderson made public might have been "doctored."
On Aug. 8, 1992, I sent Friedman a Memorandum of
Agreement dealing with this key issue which could reveal
whether Anderson had resorted to falsehood and altering of
evidence. My memo noted this issue could be resolved "if
Anderson will request and authorize the present Principal of
the Albuquerque High School, or the Superintendent of
Schools, to carefully examine the transcript of Anderson's
high school records and issue a public statement that
Anderson did, or did not, take a course in anthropology."
I offered to pay Friedman $1,000 if Anderson would
provide me with a notarized statement authorizing such
action by Albuquerque school officials, while Friedman would
pay me $100 if Anderson refused to take such action.
Friedman never responded. (Within nine months, Friedman and
Berliner publicly acknowledged that Anderson "can no longer
be seen as sufficiently reliable." But they added that this
"does not mean that everything reported by Gerald Anderson
is without value.")
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