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64 knowledge of this to himself even during the McCarthy-style loyalty/security hearings in 1950 which threatened to remove his Air Force Secret clearance for having led a scientific expedi- tion to the U.S.S.R. in 1936—even though he had a rare Top Secret-Ultra clearance that far superseded it. Of particular interest is the effort demanded of Friedman to acquire this previously unknown information. It required per- mission from two Harvard department heads and Mrs. Menzel. If the hoax had been perpetrated by someone within the gov- ernment, it would have to have been by someone with access to the most sensitive information. Not impossible, but highly unlikely, and thus evidence of the great and unexplained im- portance of such a hoax. While the members of the MJ-12 group were the sort deserv- ing of being on such a panel, did they behave as if they really were involved in this? Stanton Friedman tracked them down (the last of the twelve to die was Jerome Hunsaker—in 1984, shortly before the Eisenhower briefing paper surfaced) through telephone and appointment logs, and personal and official cor- respondence found in their papers in presidential libraries and the documents division of the Library of Congress. Their com- ings and goings, their meetings and conferences could be traced on certain significant dates. One of the attachments to the Eisenhower briefing paper— the only one that accompanied the document—is a memo from President Truman to Secretary of Defense Forrestal dated September 24, 1947, telling Forrestal of the establish- ment of MJ-12 and referring to a recent conversation between the two of them on this matter. September 24 was the only day between May and December 1947 on which Truman and Vannevar Bush met, and thus was the likely time for the decision to create MJ-12. Bush and Forrestal, the two men credited in the briefing paper as having recommended the establishment of MJ-12, met on that day as well and saw Truman together. No prankster could possibly have known this: it took Friedman many, many hours and thousands of miles of travel to discover these facts. CRASH AT CORONA