From: UFOLAWYER1@aol.com 
To: CAUSupdates@caus.org 
Subject: [CAUS updates] -  Joe Firmage and the "new" MJ-12 Documents
Date: Tuesday, December 15, 1998 4:07 PM

Dear CAUS Members,

First, I would like to personally welcome the over 1000 new members who have
joined the CAUS in the last 24 hours.  I am confident you will not be
disappointed.

In the past few days CAUS has received e-mails requesting that I comment on
the 'new' MJ-12 documents released recently.  Due to more immediate concerns,
I have not had the opportunity to read all the documents, and thus will not
comment until I do.  What I do find interesting, though, is the fact that Mr.
Firmage, the driving force behind their release, though possessing the
documents for several years, at no time asked for my opinion...though I have
probably read more government released documents in the past twenty years than
anyone else.  I would also be interested in learning whether a handwriting
analysis of the signatures of each of the documents was attempted.

But for those of you clamoring for some information, CAUS shares with you two
recent postings...one about Joe Firmage, and the other by him:
 
1) The London Times Dec. 9, 1998
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Times/timintint01007.html?3011046

Joe Firmage is a Californian New Ager, a hippy-speaking child of Salt
Lake City Mormons, whose stated ambition
is to explore 100 new planets.

There aren't many reasons why anyone would listen when this man starts
claiming he has documents proving the US
government recovered alien corpses from a crashed UFO - except, at the
age of 28, Joseph P. Firmage has already
made two multimillion-dollar fortunes.

His first business, Serius, writing operating system codes, sold for $24
million in 1993. His second, USWeb, is
about to become the world's biggest specialist in online business
services. Now Firmage says he is sinking $2
million of his own capital into Project Kairos, preparing humanity to
meet the extra-terrestrials who imparted
wisdom to our ancestors.

On November 25 he launched a research institute called the International
Space Sciences Organisation, to explore
the technology that will connect us to the aliens.

To encourage mankind to abandon the profit motive, he is developing
EarthCity, an online shopping scheme that will
fund charities. And to open our minds to his message, he has published
The Truth at http://www.the-word-is-truth.org/truth.cfm - a book on the
web telling the history of UFO visits to Earth.

Like all truths, this one is beautiful but puzzling. Instead of an
index, there's a poem. Readers navigate through the
chapters along a twining double helix of DNA that glows and flashes as
the cursor shifts.

The style floats from far-out to spaced-out. Firmage's press officer,
Melinda Mattei, makes things clearer. Top
secret documents, she says, are being released through the site. Dr
Robert Wood, a former physicist with McDonnell Douglas, has declared
them genuine.

The papers are said to prove a wrecked UFO was captured by the US
military in 1947. Autopsies were carried out on the occupants.

Inside the highest security cordon ever created, technicians probed the
ship. Their discoveries were "seeded" into private industry, and included
advances in micro-circuitry and fibre optics.

"For the first time in 50 years, society is now ready to hear the rest
of the story," says Firmage. At least he's putting his money where his
mouth is.

copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.

2) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	PRESS CONTACT
December 14, 1998	Melinda Mattei 650-558-0890
mmattei@earthlink.net  

Statement Issued Regarding the Authenticity of the MAJESTIC 12 Documents

SANTA CLARA, CA: December 14, 1998. The following statement was released
today by Joseph Firmage, chairman of the International Space Sciences
Organization, and primary author of The Truth (www.TheWordIsTruth.org)
 .

"Now that the new MAJESTIC 12 documents are in broad circulation, it is
appropriate for me to make a few comments regarding their authenticity and
their role in support of the hypothesis contained in The Truth.

Let me first state for the record five key philosophical points that frame
my sponsorship of this initiative:

1- I have no economic motive in advancing this hypothesis or these
materials. I have every conceivable career disincentive for pursuing this
research. However, this line of discovery in my opinion is more important
than any individual's career, and I am putting my money where my mouth is to
do this.

2- Only those who have taken the time to read extensively in the domain are
qualified to assess the historicity of the UFO phenomenon. Outright
rejection of the evidence without comprehensive review of the research in
print across hundreds of books is close-minded, unscientific, and indeed
irresponsible in the extreme. It is also quite understandable given decades
of government disinformation which, right or wrong in its genesis and
continuation, was specifically designed to create a "giggle factor"
surrounding the subject.

3- I will not selectively listen only to the evidence that simply agrees
with my own previously stated views, nor will I reject evidence because it
is contrary to conventional presumptions of scientists. The case "for" the
reality of the UFO phenomenon is rather comprehensively summarized in The
Truth, and as credible and rigorous new evidence materializes, it will be
added to the site. As I discover rigorous skeptical examinations of
individual documentary or historical evidence, I will include them also as
part of the appropriate sections of The Truth, and/or use them to modify my
own position as reflected in the narrative. Everyone will have the ability
to read such perspectives and decide for themselves what is true.

4- The UFO phenomenon can no longer be dismissed because of an apparent
incompatibility with the laws of physics, such as the speed of light
limitation on interstellar travel. There are now numerous well-grounded
physics papers and books in circulation that clearly point towards the
ability to engineer spacetime itself, which effectively provide clear
plausibility to the concept of gravitational propulsion. If we have the
intellectual courage to take the Drake equation and project into it
technology capable of engineering gravity, we will be left not only with the
plausibility of something like the observed UFO phenomenon, but the
overwhelming likelihood of it. This is a simple scientific fact.

5- I am unwaveringly committed to a rigorous pursuit of the truth, wherever
that may lead. www.TheWordIsTruth.org   will
contain my best effort to present the complete and true story spanning the
subjects touched upon within it.

With those points as a foundation for the evolution of my book, I would like
to state my own views on the question of how the authenticity of the MJ-12
materials bears on the historicity of the events they describe.

After years of analysis of previously-published MJ-12 documents (such as the
work conducted by Stanton Friedman) and particularly in light of the newly
released MJ-12 documents, one thing is clear to virtually all serious
researchers regardless of whether they believe in the pristine authenticity
of the new materials: many of the MJ-12 documents simply must have been
authored by or within the military-intelligence community of a superpower.
This fact alone speaks volumes when considered next to the mountain of other
UFO evidence. If the documents are pristine and true, they were written by
the individuals therein mentioned or assistants. If the documents are
partial or complete forgeries, then they were written by an intelligence
agency of the government of either the United States or the Soviet Union. In
this sense, even the serious-minded skeptics are hard pressed not to agree
that they are "authentic" in terms of military-intelligence authorship. The
question is, could they be authentic in military-intelligence authorship and
not authentic in detail? And if so, what does that say about the most
important authentication question of all: the basic history they describe?

It is almost certain that the security infrastructures created to contain
the history of the crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle in 1947 would
ultimately wind up creating forgeries for whatever purpose. Three ulterior
purposes immediately spring to mind: (1) documents seeded with small but
critical flaws, destined to one day leak and discredit their entire chains
of custody and all of the surrounding research, thereby helping to seal the
cover on the program, (2) documents fabricated to mis-inform Cold War allies
or enemies or proxies thereof about the details of the events, and (3)
documents fabricated to disinform internal constituencies: competing
branches of government, particularly nosy investigators, diligent reporters,
or the public at large. But whether every single MJ-12 document is
completely accurate in historical detail, genuine in authorship, or pristine
in generation is not the issue. It is obviously possible that an
intelligence agency of either superpower fabricated one or more of the
documents for one of the purposes described above, or some other purpose.
However, I believe that it is exceedingly improbable that such documents
were created in a vacuum - created as complete fiction, in the complete
absence of an authentic phenomenon and original historical events. The mere
existence of such documents as these, containing the verifiable details that
they do, is powerful evidence for the reality of the basic storyline in the
history they recount.

Indeed, I have personally sat across the table from top leaders and
brilliant minds of the military and science, on multiple occasions, who have
confirmed the basic truth of the UFO phenomenon. Those who know me best know
that I would never have bet my reputation and my career without such
explicit confirmation. I have nothing - nothing - to gain by lying. I am
telling the truth.

For those involved in UFO research, I strongly suggest that you focus your
energies on tying together the historical events and people described in the
documents, rather than exclusively concentrating on the history of the pages
themselves. As far as "proving" the pristine authenticity of the MJ-12
documents and their history is concerned, it is really only critical to
validate any one of the principal documents. If only a single major document
is validated, then MJ-12 was factual, and its confirmed existence and basic
mission is to be added to the already overwhelming and far more powerful
testimonial evidence in favor of the reality of the UFO phenomenon. Focusing
too much time on the provenance of the pages themselves is a mistake,
because the most compelling proof that their storyline is basically true -
short of new materials or events unfolding - is bound to come in the form of
other corroborating historical research and witness testimony.

In the final analysis, the skeptic is charged with doing far, far more than
discrediting these newly released documents through speculative criticisms
based upon typographical errors or one or two seemingly anachronistic
details, because the historicity of the documents is not the most important
question. The most important question is the historicity of the phenomenon
they describe. There is OVERWHELMING evidence that the UFO phenomenon is
real. Therefore, ANY such well-crafted documents - pristine in every detail
or not - argue in behalf of the reality of the UFO phenomenon. It is
astronomically unlikely that the massive and generally self-consistent
evidence of extraterrestrial activity over the past five decades is simply a
large coincidence or the product of a several good hoaxes. 

I ask the skeptic to step forward and comprehensively refute all the
evidence: the millions of sightings, the thousands of reported landings, the
thousands of abduction experiences, and the countless highly strange
accompanying phenomena for which no one yet has a clear explanation: crop
circles, cattle mutilations, etc. The refutation must take into account the
following facts: (1) compelling UFO evidence spans all nations, modernized
or not, regardless of whether their populations have been exposed to science
fiction, (2) the evidence spans far more than 50 years - rather it goes back
thousands of years, peppered throughout the ancient books and scriptures of
our ancestors, and (3) the evidence is found to be exactly as it should be
found when describing a phenomenon advanced far beyond humanity: it borders
on the incomprehensible. How is a family of monkeys to interpret a Palm
Pilot III? Or a Boeing 777? Or a football game? Or a scientist shooting at
them with a dart to tranquilize, abduct, examine, and release them? Such a
comparison is entirely fair and completely literal.

I am not aware of the existence of sufficient contrary data to refute the
massive accumulation of evidence supporting the reality of the UFO
phenomenon. Indeed, let me restate perhaps the only truly powerful
scientific argument against its plausibility: gravitational propulsion is
not possible, therefore we have not been and are not being visited by beings
from other worlds. This argument is ultimately the only basis upon which the
UFO phenomenon can be rejected as a product of our collective imagination.

So I ask you this: what if it is possible to engineer gravity? 100% of the
scientific presumptions against interstellar travel - and by direct
implication extraterrestrial visitation - must immediately be extinguished
if there is a single credible demonstration of practical gravity
engineering. There is good evidence to believe that open science is now
flirting with such a demonstration, and it is reported in my book. 

But beyond the issue of UFOs, the hypothesis of The Truth integrates the
majestic history of science with the profound history of faith. The reason I
have not "called out" the MJ-12 documents within The Truth web site more
prominently than the narrative is because we can begin to comprehend the UFO
phenomenon only if we are capable of putting it into a coherent world view.
How else can the implications of such astonishing information possibly be
considered? The Truth represents one best continuing effort to rigorously
integrate a world view given such knowledge. It proposes that several
billion faithful human beings across history have indeed been doing their
faltering best to follow their truth, just as several hundred million
scientists have done more recently. If we reject the hypothesis of The Truth
and nothing replaces it that can as coherently connect science and faith in
history, then we must ask ourselves how we can avoid spiraling towards one
of three unambiguous and harsh futures: science deconstructing faith as
fantasy, religion destroying science as evil, or perhaps economics
destroying both as inefficient.

If the hypothesis of The Truth is correct, or if another hypothesis can
bring these questions into coherence with equal completeness, then there is
indeed a grander integrated story of our history. In that case it is not
only important, but vital at this time to step beyond our preexisting world
view and expand the boundaries of our imagination. If humanity is indeed the
subject of a multimillennium process of education, if not genesis itself, it
is of fundamental importance that we demonstrate our ability to think, study
and teach on a new level."

The International Space Sciences Organization can be reached at 1556 Halford
Avenue, Suite 110; Santa Clara, CA 95051, PH:  408-395-4378

Hopefully I will be able to read the documents before the new year.  

On another note, if you are still looking for that perfect Christmas or
Hanukah gift for that special someone interested in UFOs, may I suggest the
recent CAUS video, Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt. The video is only $19.98
plus $3.00 for priority mailing and will be received before the holidays.
Information about the video can be obtained by accessing the CAUS website at
http://caus.org or click on:  CAUS - Citizens
Against UFO Secrecy - home page  and scrolling to the bottom of the
homepage.

Have an enchanting Tuesday and of CAUS...watch the skies!

Peter A. Gersten
Director
Be sure to visit the CAUS web site at http://caus.org
To join this mailing list, go to http://caus.org/feedback.htm

To be REMOVED from this mailing list, go to... http://caus.org/remove/

Served by TheHostPros.com - http://TheHostPros.com