Stanton Friedman; A commentary.

The book Crash at Corona states on the flyleaf:

"Stanton Friedman is a nuclear physicist who has worked for General Electric, Westinghouse, and other companies in the design and development of fusion rockets and nuclear power plants for space applications…. and is acknowledged as the premier investigator of the "Roswell Incident.""

More accurately, after Friedman received his MS degree in Nuclear Physics, he spent ten years working for 4 companies in his academic specialty. But since the mid 70's, he has made his living not as a physicist, but as a researcher, book writer and paid lecturer on the subject of UFO's. He is perhaps best known for his book Crash at Corona, written with Don Berliner, and numerous TV appearances.

There are some very disturbing claims made in the book Crash at Corona. The authors place great emphasis on this excerpt from the Twining Letter:

"The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious"

This is in a book that is attempting to show that an alien spaceship crashed in New Mexico in July 1947, that the Air Force knows this, and is hiding the truth. It is at best deliberately misleading, and at worst totally dishonest.

When discussing this quote, Friedman quite conveniently omits that the Twining letter states that this is only an opinion:

"2. It is the opinion that:
          a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious. "

Further, Friedman neglects to include that Twining went out of his way to state that this opinion was based on eyewitness reports and some small studies only, and that it should be kept in mind that:

"The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects."

So in a book attempting to demonstrate a conspiracy by the AF to cover up the procession of a crashed alien spaceship, Friedman not only quotes out of context from the Twining letter, but deliberately omits that the letter also stated that there is no "physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits". Had the Air Force indeed been in possession of a crashed interplanetary craft- as Friedman claims- Twining would surely have commented on it.

The Twining letter further states that "It is possible within the present (1947) U.S. knowledge… to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in sub-paragraph (e) above …"

Which again conflicts with Friedman's concept that the Air Force had a crashed alien spaceship. Unless, of course, the "alien spaceship" used 1947 technology.

Crash at Corona quotes from the hoaxed Schulgen* letter to the effect that:

"For the purpose of analysis and evaluation of these so-called "flying saucers," the object sighted is being assumed to be a manned craft of unknown origin. While there remains the possibility of Russian manufacture, based on perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans, it is the considered opinion of some elements that the object may in fact represent an interplanetary craft of some kind."
(Emphasis in Crash at Corona)

* (This document was called into question when it was first found by William Moore of MJ-12 fame.)

There are two problems with this.

First if a spaceship was recovered by the Air Force at Roswell (as Friedman asserts), then the Air Force would not bother with possibilities. They would know for a fact that it was an interplanetary craft of some kind, complete with little grey men, and they wouldn't consider "the possibility of Russian manufacture".

Second, the real document says something totally different!

"For the purpose of analysis and evaluation of the so-called "flying saucer" phenomenon, the object sighted is being assumed to be a manned aircraft, of Russian origin, and based on the perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans."

Not a single surmise at all about interplanetary craft.

Chapter 5 of Crash at Corona goes into the Top Secret Smith Memorandum at great length. Unfortunately, Friedman doesn’t discuss the fact that Smith was not a reliable source of information even at this time. Friedman does state that Smith has showed signs of "mental disturbance" but claims that was only later. In reality, Smith was not working on a top secret project, didn’t have authority to stamp documents top secret, and even stamped many of his personal papers top secret. He used to sit in his orchard at home with a tape recorder, so when the Space Brothers Topside came down so he could interview them. The Smith memorandum is not considered to be a real top secret document worthy of study by very many people in UFOlogy.

Friedman mentions that the memo was checked with Sarbacher. But he doesn't mention that Sarbacher claimed that the aliens were large insects, not little grey men.

The main witnesses in Friedman's book are Barney Barnett and Gerald Anderson. Barnett is long dead and was never interviewed by Friedman. He used only supposed second hand statements- hearsay. Gerald Anderson, who can be read about in his own section on the Roswell witnesses, later was disowned by Friedman. It is not a pretty story!

(Note:  Friedman has since repudiated his repudiation of Anderson! He now claims that Don Berliner, his co-author of Crash at Corona, wrote the original comments disowning Gerald Anderson, but now he- Stanton Friedman, disagrees with Don on this point.  Stanton now says that he still trusts Gerald, although he says he is "disappointed" that Gerald got caught hoaxing a document.

Friedman continues to claim as genuine both the MJ-12 documents and the Crash on the Plains of San Agustin. Yet, the two conflict, as both can’t be true! The MJ-12 documents only list one alien spaceship crash and places it far from the Plains of San Agustin, where Anderson and the Barnett stories put it. This point is usually hidden or glossed over by Mr. Friedman.

Crash at Corona also claims that "Majestic-12 is quite possibly the single most important key to the entire UFO mystery." Majestic-12 will be discussed separately because of its importance.

Friedman’s comments to the audience at a MUFON conference. "The (TV) media is starting to be reasonable" in its treatment of UFOs. TV producers no longer feel obliged to have "Noisy Negativists" appear "for decoration at the end of the show."

Apparently even brief comments from skeptics might seduce the viewers away from the "TRUTH!"

Friedman has been also known for his use of The NSA Documents. He usually appears on TV and his lectures waving an FOIA document from NSA on UFOs that is totally blacked out, and asking why this is necessary unless they are hiding something about UFOs. Friedman makes these comments even though he knows full well that there is probably no UFO info in the NSA documents, just as he is fully aware of comments made by Tom Deuley.

Friedman seems reluctant to discuss the fact that what he is showing is a 21 page document from NSA to the Judge in a 1980 FOIA lawsuit by CAUS, explaining why the documents couldn’t be released at that time with less blacked out material. Judge Gesell endorsed the NSA position- A decision that was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

Tom Deuley worked at NSA for 4 years in the mid-70s. In late June 1987, He presented a paper at a MUFON conference entitled "Four years at NSA - NO UFOs." When he went to work at NSA, he told them outright that he was interested in the subject of UFOs and that he would be going to the MUFON conference. He even met with some officials of NSA, and according to him, he didn't "get any feeling that they even cared about UFOs."

In fact, because of his stated interest in UFOs, NSA selected him to review its UFO-related material! "I believe I saw or held copies of the large majority of documents withheld in that FOIA suit. Though there may have been exceptions among the documents that I did not see, none of the documents I was aware of had any information of scientific value."

"The documents ... are not worth the effort, in terms of forwarding the effort of UFO research."

"I concluded that UFOs do not have any importance at NSA."

Tom Deuley eventually became an official in two UFO organizations: MUFON and FUFOR.

Later, NSA re-released the same documents with the majority of the documents not blocked out. It turns out, in many cases, that when the Soviets would use the term "unidentifiable object", the NSA translators would use the term UFO. They also added "Probably a balloon" after most of these comments, referring to Soviet radar calibration balloons. The judge’s decision is clearly borne out to be a good decision as these documents aren’t about UFOs as it is used by the UFOlogists and the general public.

These are Communication Intelligence reports. The reports indicate the station that made the report, and could give the Soviets information on which transmitters we were listening and what we know about their actions. The main sections still blacked out are those about the locale of where the reports were made.

Here are some formerly blacked out sections in the re-released NSA documents:

"One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from/ 22 nm Se (Blacked out) toward East, Alt 49,200 ft. Revw"

"One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from (Blacked out) toward East and passed North of (Blacked out) South of (Blacked out) alt. 46,000 - 49,200 ft"

"One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from (Blacked out) toward NE and faded (Blacked out) Alt. 46,000 - 59,200 ft. [...] Two UFO (probably balloons) moved passed (Blacked out) South of (Blacked out) and South of (Blacked out) and then faded. Alt. 44,00 - 49,200 ft."

"Two UFO (probably balloons) moved 43 Nautical miles 190 degrees off (Blacked out) and faded 22 Nautical miles 178 degrees off (Blacked out)"

"One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from (Blacked out) and (Blacked out) faded 190 Nautical miles East of (Blacked out) Alt. 52,500 Ft."

"One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from 32 NM 90 deg off (Blacked out) toward East and faded 64 NM 90 deg off (Blacked out) Alt. 47,640 - 49,200"

"Three UFO (probably balloons) moved from (Blacked out) toward West slowly and faded (Blacked out) Alt. 69,000 - 79,000 Ft."

"Four UFO (probably balloons) moved from West of (Blacked out) Alt. 11,500 - 13,100 Ft. B. 0455 - 0520, One UFO (probably a balloon) moved from East of (Blacked out) toward South and faded East of (Blacked out) alt. 11,500 - 13,100 ft. C. 0734 - 1025, Three UFO (probably balloons) moved slowly from South of (Blacked out) toward West and passed (Blacked out) and (Blacked out) alt. 49,200 - 66,000 Ft."

It goes on and on in this fashion, showing that what Tom Deuley said about NSA and their interest in UFOs was absolutely correct.

One item of interest is that Friedman himself is mentioned, indirectly, in the NSA documents!

Friedman had pushed a Cuban UFO report that was supposedly picked up by radio as real. Since it was reported to have been picked up by radio, it was investigated by the NSA and found to be phony! To the best of my knowledge, Friedman has never addressed his being mentioned in the NSA documents in any of his presentations about UFOs.

In his book, TOP SECRET/MAJIC, Friedman discusses his early UFO lectures:

"As I gave more lectures, I found that I enjoyed speaking, and that people believed me no matter what I said. After all, I was a nuclear physicist for Westinghouse…"