Top Secret / Majic by Stanton T. Friedman (1996-07-02) Hardcover

I think Friedman tries to make a fairly good and serious case for his view that these documents are authentic and deals well with the many objections raised about them by debunkers. He mainly focuses on the case made by these debunkers who are easily dismissable, while the criticisms of other ufologists (e.g. Kevin Randle et al) as to these documents' authenticity he doesn't get into as much as he should have.Three observations -Firstly, at least some of his interpretations re these documents' layouts and style etc. are interpretible the opposite way. Secondly, the fact that no ufologist has seen or touched the original documents, which is usually a telltale sign that hoax is in play - in this case a fairly sophisticated hoax. Thirdly - and this he left out but should have mentioned - at least one of the original ufologists who handled the film of these documents before passing them to the author, had admitted that he had been employed and involved in government disinformation ops (possible disinformation being the prime objection by others as to the reality of these papers). Perhaps the author didn't know that at the time... But a factoid like that could go a long way to pretty much sinking his whole case and he surely knows that.His commentary on the shady, secretive past of the famous/infamous debunker Dr. Menzel, was quite interesting.The author devotes a bit too much time in trumpeting his qualifications and experience in this field. He also needlessly puts in a lot of his opinions attacking other ufologists. That seems to go on quite a bit amongst this crowd, all the infighting and competition with each other, his falling into that seems unnecessary.Still, the book overall is really 'must' reading for people interested in this field, as so little been published on 'MAJIC-12'. Also it's a good companion volume to his earlier book 'Crash at Corona'.