You got that? I'll wait...

And for those of you who don't know who Bob Wood or Joe Firmage or Tim Cooper are, I'll cue you -- in just a moment. (I'm in haste, and not paid for this piece, hence it will be somewhat stream-of-consciousness).

Ted's idea was to have a skeptic "host" the thing so as to give it balance and credibility. I'm not as skeptical as some, but more than most everyone at the Mutual UFO Network, and I've done some public speaking, so he tapped me: the Resident Skeptic.

The night before the event I realized I hadn't done my Firmage/Tim Cooper MJ-12 homework, so I was up till 2 AM getting caught up and made the mistake of practically mainlining caffeine to do it, after which the caffeine, in defiance of 4 mg of melotonin, and working in tandem with my anxiety about facing a probably-hostile audience of Hardcore Space Brother Believers, with me the only skeptic, kept me awake all night, and I mean all night: I didn't sleep at all.

The morning of the event, I almost canceled. I was just too wasted and wonky and worried. But I decided to soldier through, and I showed up, staggering only a little. "Just get through the introductory ten minutes," I told myself, and then leave. As it developed, I got interested despite my fatigue and stayed for everything but the very last Q&A session with Firmage (I did hear Firmage's digital-slide-show presentation and talk in full). I was also reassured -- despite a few hisses from the less-socially-adept members of the audience -- as the MUFONites and the other Believers there were mostly quite tolerant of me. Bob Wood, in particular, going out of his way to be straightforward, open and friendly. (Ryan Wood, however, seemed to be grinding his teeth and mentally clenching his fists when I challenged his conclusions).

I had come armed with not only my own misgivings about the MJ-12 documents but also with some questions for Bob Wood and son Ryan which I had solicited from arch-skeptic Phil Klass. Yes, at times I was the Phil Klass "ringer!" And Klass's dire name, which I invoked more than once at the event, evoked a hiss or two every time I spoke it!

But though I read some questions he provided me, along with my own, I handled things very differently than Klass would. Neither am I so dead-set against the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis as he is: I'm still open-minded.

Okay here's the short, short version of the Bob and Ryan Wood MJ-12 backstory. About 1993 certain "new MJ 12" documents surfaced through one Tim Cooper -- MJ-12 being the alleged Top Secret US Government UFO/alien contact organization. The papers are purported to be secret MJ-12 documents relating to the Roswell crash and the alien presence

Dr Robert Wood and son Ryan Wood are investigating ("promoting", says Klass), these new papers. Dr Wood is a retired engineer and scientist, who worked with McDonnell Douglas until his retirement in 1993. He's worked on defensive missiles, systems and radars, and for the last ten years of his career, space station technology. For two-thirds of his career he was at the director level. Interestingly, he ran a small research group on the side from 1968-1969 looking into ways to control gravity, and as a part of that study he examined UFO reports. Ryan Wood started his high tech career at Intel Corp, then went to Digital Equipment (now Compaq), then onto Toshiba. He's now a consultant. He and his father have spent the last several years intensively focused on MJ-12 document analysis and authentication.

The Wood team accept the authenticity of the original MJ-12 papers released in 1987 by William L Moore, Jaime Shandera and Stanton Friedman, along with the new papers. At a 1998 UFO conference they presented a paper called "Cosmic Watergate: New Evidence of Retrieved UFOs," said evidence obtained from a little known California researcher named Timothy Cooper, who says these MJ-12 documents came to him from an intelligence agent calling himself Thomas Cantwheel. Cooper is apparently a security guard in some mountain community somewhere.

Enter Joe Firmage. The "UFO CEO" Joseph P Firmage -- a multimillionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur -- was recently pressured into resigning from his own company, USWeb Corp, a company which develops Internet Web sites for clients, because the company was embarrassed (and stock value was threatened) by his assertion that UFOs and ETs have been visiting earth for thousands of years, appearing often as angels; that ET technology explains Biblical miracles; that the US Government is engaged in a massive cover up of the Roswell crash and its use of ET technology; that he had an encounter with a "being of light" that hovered over his bed and anointed him with a ball of energy... Firmage hailed the new MJ-12 documents as authentic and has endorsed them at his UFO related site, a site which is humbly entitled "THE TRUTH".

Let me get this out of the way: at some point in the proceedings someone asked why anyone would go to so much trouble to hoax documents of this sort -- I replied that first we can all agree that many highly elaborate hoaxes have been carried out, in any number of fields, so it's not as if elaborate hoaxes are outside our experience. Reasons for them vary -- they may include a desire for attention, psychological obsessions, an agenda relating to disinformation... or it may simply be for money. It was a relevant question, I said, whether or not the wealthy Mr Firmage had paid either Robert and Ryan Wood for their work on these documents, or Cooper for access to them. Firmage is certainly closely involved in the promotion of the documents. How much money has changed hands?

The Woods did not answer this question. It remains open. It remains relevant.

I have a strong intuitive sense of Robert Wood, at least, as utterly sincere. He may be taken in, but I find it inconceivable this man has hoaxed anything himself. Cooper -- who knows? Ryan Wood claims that Cooper does not fit the psychological profile of a hoaxer -- which he sketched out for us -- but that, of course, proves nothing.

Do I suspect a hoax? Yes. But I suspect that Cooper is being hoaxed too...

So here we have documents discussing crashed flying saucers, alien bodies, analysis of alien technology; and a sort of MJ-12 handbook for dealing with the alien presence. How do we ascertain that these papers are, in fact, real...or are, in fact, fraudulent? Especially when we haven't got the originals -- only photocopies and photos.

The Woods presentation, that Sunday morning and afternoon, focused on methods for authenticating alleged government documents. How do we tell a real from a fake?

They used extensive slides and overhead projections and hand-outs to illustrate a fairly sophisticated methodology. First of all, one makes very close comparisons to authentic National Archives documents (the original MJ-12 papers were allegedly located in the National Archives and found at the behest of an anonymous tipster), down to all manner of telling details, and then analysis of typography for period verisimilitude, use of typing grids, comparisons of writing styles for consistency and inconsistency with government styles, and on and on.

Skeptics have pointed to inconsistencies in the original MJ 12 documents as noted by archivist Jo Ann Williamson: the lack of a proper register number as assigned by the Archives, the lack of a watermark in use at the time, and the use of a security classification that did not exist until the Nixon Administration.

In response to this sort of comment, Bob and Ryan made a very solid point: that inconsistencies, in certain documents, with styles found in other archival samples is, in fact, a kind of consistency -- because, as they demonstrated with authentic documents unrelated to MJ-12, there really is no definitive consistent style in paperwork emanating from government (or military) agencies. There are general trends and ideal procedures, but, in fact, human nature is such that people do it differently from one office to the next. And why do some of these documents turn up when they shouldn't? Because mistakes are made. I can buy both those arguments -- you'll have no problem convincing me of the presence of inconsistency and incompetency in the US military or in the intelligence bureaucracy. Additionally, I, for one, find it believable that some in the government service, along the lines of the fictional Fox Mulder, might disagree with the (alleged) government policy of cover-up of the (alleged) ET presence and might leak documents to try to bring the public into the loop on so epochal an issue.

I asked, "Never mind for the moment, where Cooper got the documents...why did he get the documents? Why were they sent anonymously, unasked for, to him?"

It was pointed out to me that Cooper had made many FOIA requests re UFOs, perhaps eliciting someone's notice; and that, furthermore, his father was (if I'm remembering this correctly) an intelligence agent at one time, someone the man calling himself "Cantwheel" knew. So he might've been picked for those reasons.

I raised the following issue at the event, which Bob and Ryan did not answer, to my recollection, except to say, "Well, yeah..."

Hoaxers, I suggested, would naturally have gone to the National Archives and studied documents to determine what to replicate including, for example, the correct page size for a document circa 1947 (Bob Wood pointed out that the MJ 12 documents were scrupulously of the right size for the era), typography, period watermarks, period bureaucratese, and "Buy War Bonds" stamps and military formatting, etc.

And, it turns out, you can photograph anything you want in the National Archives. So, after you've developed the photos of the samples, you can make the comparisons -- and counterfeits -- at your leisure. How is the counterfeiting carried out? Sometimes as simply as using antique typewriters (readily available), scissors, and photocopy machines, other times using software like Photoshop.

I pointed out, as Phil Klass has, that hoaxers should become aware that counterfeiting a federal document is a federal crime.

Ryan Wood was markedly more impatient with me -- and more of a kind of monotone Believer -- than his father. He spoke with some enthusiasm about the MJ 12 training manual. It was printed, according to his analysis, on a cheap government printing press available at the time. There was a mis-allignment of the printing of the letter "Z" which was characteristic of such documents, for reasons he outlined quite convincingly. How was this now-obsolete printing reproduced complete with the occasional appropriately raised "Z"? You'd have to get hold of a type of printing press which exists only in museums, said Ryan. He claimed that he'd consulted with computer graphics experts who said that it'd be really difficult and tedious to do it that way.

But then the whole hoaxing process would be difficult and tedious. I have a friend whose job is computer graphics -- he says there aren't any documents that he couldn't fake with extant software. But suppose you would have to have the original press -- which one is more likely, that this is a government manual for dealing with aliens and crashed saucers, or that someone found an old printing press of the right sort somewhere and faked it up?

There's another possibility. The documents are pretty damn sophisticated, if they're hoaxed. Who's capable of such imaginative details, of such relative verisimilitude?

Specialists in faked documents, is who -- and there are such in our own government's intelligence circles. Government disinformation or psy-ops agents, perhaps using an old press found in the basement of the Pentagon, might have produced these documents. There exists a memo from the head of the CIA circa 1952 suggesting that "the UFO Phenomenon" could be used for "Psychological Operations". Could the MJ-12 documents be one of those operations? Are they intended, ultimately, to come to the attention of foreign powers, to throw up a smoke screen, to hide real top-secret (but non-ET-related) projects?

Or perhaps they are a feint to distract investigators from the real MJ-12. There does seem to have been one. Ted Oliphant's military sources tell him that MJ-12 was actually dedicated to nuclear weaponry and nuclear energy development. "The Majestic 12" or "The Magic 12" is, oddly enough, mentioned in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! with, I've heard, a list of names visible in the movie which are the same names seen on MJ-12 documents. Could the movie have inspired the hoax? Or does the movie reference a real-life group that was up to something that American intelligence agencies don't want us to know about -- agencies already embarrassed by revelations of our recruitment of Nazi intelligence personnel, and Nazi scientists, into secret post-war operations.

To me, it's more credible that the documents originated with government disinformation agents, than with agencies who had routine dealings with numerous crashed extraterrestrial vehicles.

View, then, an apparently genuine MJ-12 document in that context: The one document that seemed authentic among those presented was from Admiral Hillenkoetter; it was obtained not through "Cantwheel" but through the Freedom of Information Act, and does reference MJ-12. However, it doesn't reference aliens or UFOs or Roswell... MJ-12 might be anything.

Somewhere around mid-morning Bob Wood tackled that notorious Harry Truman MJ-12 letter to Vannevar Bush, refuted by skeptics because of its photographic-precise likeness of the Truman signature to another Truman signature found on another document-- identical down to near-microscopic blots. This exact duplication appears to show that the signature was photographed or photocopied from that other, unrelated letter. Bob suggested that the similarity in the signatures, beyond ordinary signature consistency, was the result of the use of a "pentagraph" machine, a device which Truman used (there are photos of him using one) to sign more than one document at the same time, with several pens mechanically connected.

I replied that the pentagraph, being mechanical and not a digital or photographic device, would not make precisely the same signature -- it would make one that would be similar, but not exactly the same. The two signatures in the disputed documents are exactly, precisely, photographically the same -- way beyond the likely capability of a pentagraph. Bob nodded but said that the jury was still out on the exactitude of a pentagraph's signature-duplicating capability. They hadn't found one to test yet.

Among the documentation reviewed was a report on the "possibilities for biological warfare programs" implied by the discovery of a "retro-virus" supposedly found in the tissue of one of the (alleged) alien bodies. It's doubtful the term retro-virus was in use then, or originated at that time; it's doubtful they could have determined its "retro virus" characteristics at the time. But that's not what threw me here -- it's the whole flavor of this alien-retro-virus business. For the first time the documents felt decidedly false to me, due to the introduction of this late-20th-century-hot-topic of retro-viruses conveniently found in a document dated in (as I recall)1952.

We associate retro-viruses with AIDS, you see. The Conspiracy Culture has long muttered darkly that HIV/AIDS was cooked up in some government laboratory and introduced by evil homophobes into the population. This flavor of contemporary Conspiracy Culture dropped into the documents tastes sharply of hoax.

And if we're to believe that the AIDS virus originated with those alien bodies then we're to believe that the men associated with MJ-12 -- the head of the CIA, President Truman, Vannevar Bush, and all the others -- were somehow party to having released a murderous alien virus into the general population. First into the homosexual population, then into the general population through tainted blood banks. We're to believe they are that villainous? And if they are -- to what end? Why would they do it?

Bob and Ryan Wood and Firmage also buy into the tedious, silly business of UFO "spare parts" (oh, all right, debris) having been used as the basis of new technologies introduced after 1947, including fiber optics and integrated circuits and transistors. Why faster-than-light spacecraft would use something that must be so relatively primitive, to them, as transistors and even integrated circuits, I don't know.

I asked Bob Wood, in a face-to-face conversational aside, later, something I'd always wanted to ask about these assertions...

If you allege that, say, fiber optics originated with a UFO crash, and not with the research documented and filed with the Patent Office, aren't you suggesting, at least by implication, that the people who filed for the patent have committed fraud? They must know that they didn't come up with the thing themselves, that it came from an outside source. If they don't reference that source in their documentation with the Patent Office, aren't they committing fraud, aren't they deceiving the federal government -- aren't they committing a crime? Does Wood really want to suggest that the humans who patented these technologies are liars and criminals?

Wood replied that it was routine for ripped off tech to find its way to American inventors, in a quiet hush-hush way having to do with secret contracts between the government and said inventors, as for example the use of technology coming from crashed MiGS. And, he said, perhaps only bits and pieces were fed to the inventors -- they may not even know that they're being prompted by alien artifacts.

Asked (this question originated with Klass) how he explains why Stan Friedman, who strongly endorses the existence of MJ-12, believes that at least some of Cooper's documents are counterfeit, Wood said that while he respects Friedman he's not bound to agree with him about everything, and Friedman hasn't looked at the documents as closely as he has.

Bob Wood, you see, thinks on his feet. He's a very likable guy, who could have been a politician.

One question I raised, which was never answered by Wood and Wood, so far as I heard, was: if some of the documents are fake -- and they seemed to suggest that some of them quite possibly are -- then why should we take any of them seriously? Again that UFOlogy bugaboo, the question of patchy credibility. To me, a witness is not credible only sometimes; he's either credible or he's dismissable. Same with a group of related documents. If one's fake they're all fake because the source is unreliable.

After the Wood presentation came Joe Firmage, the UFO CEO. He's not quite 30 years old. A compact, good looking little guy with a neatly trimmed black beard, he either has his rap down or he improvises nicely. He had a grand slide show that seemed to be digital, with its own internal animation, showing tables and graphs and the Earth and the stars, all to illustrate his theme that mankind is on the brink of some kind of star-child leap in evolution, possibly prompted by the alien presence; that they've been helping us all along, maybe even interbreeding with us somehow, giving us some genetic help, here and there; that we're on the verge of a revolution in technology relating to the interfacing of psychic power and high tech, and a revolution in our understanding of the "mental" nature of the physical world, our capacity to impinge mental formulations on apparently physical phenomena through psychic contact with the quantum level; we could create whatever reality we could envision...

Firmage, it should be noted, is a lapsed Mormon and one of Brigham Young's many descendants. This New Age ET-powered vision of his is akin to something found in Mormonism: the idea that if you're a righteous Mormon you "create your own paradise", after death.

Firmage speaks convincingly, intelligently, and makes some leaps that have the quality of genius about them. There's no doubt a powerful intelligence at work in him.

Many great minds have been seduced by the power of their own imagination. The more intelligent you are, the more intricately you can imagine; if you lack the discipline to separate projection from imagination, you'll project what you imagine on what you think. And you'll do it -- if you're intelligent enough -- with such complexity you'll find it difficult to disbelieve your own vision, however improbable.

Perhaps something like this has happened to this brilliant young entrepreneur. Certainly he makes leaps from one conclusion to another with very little evidence for their genuine connectedness.

He concluded with a fetchingly rendered slide, which he said would summarize his theme, that showed a sea becoming a rainforest becoming a primate becoming a young woman who was gazing at the stars from whence came primeval life originally: for, it's true, it all began with stars. An image of the cycle, the evolutionary leap from matter to complex life to star-being...to creator?

And who knows? But for me, his credibility as a metaphysician is harmed by his willingness to buy into the discredited Roswell crash, and by his having had a personal encounter with a glowing star-being that just happened to have anointed him with a sort of energy of blessing...

"Very convenient, that," John Lydon remarked, when I discussed this "anointing" incident with him just before Firmage's talk.

Lydon (known by some as Johnny Rotten from his days as front man for the Sex Pistols, known by others as the leading light of the band Public Image Limited) was there with friend and associate David Jackson. Jackson is himself a CEO, of a production company called Blink. He was there "to catch Firmage's pitch" which he wanted to "notebook" for a show that he's developing called 21st Century Heretics -- originally entitled The Bullshit Chronicles! He described it as a series of in-depth investigations into various contemporary fringe beliefs and faiths that will attempt to cover the entire gamut of "heretical" thinking and opinion on UFOs, ETs, abduction, Conspiracy, metahistory, human origins, reincarnation, etc. Each episode will center around the most vocal and controversial advocates in their particular fields, like Sitchen, Icke, Baigent, Gardner, Firmage, Strieber, Scallion, Hoagland, etc. David Icke, says Jackson, believes that "the British Royal Family are Reptilians and the Queen turns into a lizard at night to suck the blood of babies".

Jackson seems bemusedly skeptical but open-minded -- just like Lydon. I confess I was a little star-struck, meeting "Johnny Rotten", one of my boyhood heroes. I was at the last Sex Pistols concert at Winterland in San Francisco. I told Lydon that and he laughed and said, "From that to this, ay?"

Lydon looked energetic and sober; he was dressed in a day-glo lime-colored baseball shirt and cap, but says he's not a baseball fan. He struck me as very intelligent indeed, his mind racing ahead, and there was something almost Zen-like about his presence, the sense that he was just here in the moment embracing the chaos of life. He gave out a vibe of not caring at all what people think of him, yet he was friendly, and kind when my 12 year old son asked him for an autograph. He has a show of his own coming up on VH-1 called The Rotten Hour.

Lydon was taking all this in for fun, basically -- and that's probably the right attitude. It could be dangerous to take Firmage too seriously, well-meaning as he might be. Firmage concluded his talk by saying that although he does not advocate a new religion, he does think that "the best ideas" from the major religions ought to be extracted and synthesized into one overall new spirituality. He did not explain why that would not be, in effect, founding a religion -- all religions contain bits of religions that came before them. Then there's his tale of having been anointed by that alien visitor to his bedroom -- Christ means "the annointed one". Does Firmage suspect that he's been Chosen by the space aliens to lead the human race to a higher spiritual/psychic/interstellar reality? Clearly he does. Men who believe themselves Chosen are, historically, dangerous men. Especially when at least some of their "data" comes from hallucinations...

Joe Firmage reminds me of Stephen Greer, who seemed to me to be a nascent cult leader, except that Firmage is just plain smarter than Greer.

Smart, but not sufficiently discriminating -- Firmage lacks the critical filter one needs to separate out the wheat from the chaff. Unlike Phil Klass, I believe there's wheat to be found...but not in Firmage's crop of The Truth.

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