The Bowen Manuscript
Twenty years after they were first thrust upon the ufological scene in Tim Good’s classic book Above Top Secret, the so-called Majestic 12 documents still continue to provoke controversy.
And the controversy is almost certainly going to increase as a direct result of the limited-edition-release of a new book titled An Encyclopaedia of Flying Saucers by Vernon Bowen and with (as the front-cover of the book states) “interpretive material added by Dr. Robert M. Wood” (pictured above)
Basically, the story goes like this: Vernon Bowen was a writer of books for children, and a successful advertising copyrighter who graduated from Marietta College in 1927 and died at the age of 78.
Between 1957 and 1961, Bowen worked on his Flying Saucer manuscript and did something with it that few, if indeed anyone else has ever done: namely, before submitting it to a publisher, Bowen sent an original, typed version of it to the Air Force for review, and in an effort to ensure that its contents, as they related to the Air Force, were accurate.
And that’s when the manuscript vanished.
An Encyclopaedia of Flying Saucers was never published. However, in 1999, a strange thing happened: the same, original, typed version of the manuscript that Bowen sent to the Air Force all those years before, turned up in the mail-box of none other than UFO researcher Timothy Cooper (below).
According to Cooper, the Bowen manuscript was contained in an envelope that identified the sender as someone attached to the US Army’s Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Now, there have of course been a lot of questions raised about the validity (or otherwise!) of photo-copied MJ12-style documents sent anonymously in the mail to elements of the UFO research community.
But, regardless of what you, me or anyone else might think about the MJ12 affair, in this case we’re not working with photo-copies (which, from a forensic perspective, aren’t great to work with). I won’t go into all the complexities of the controversy, but in this case - as the book reveals - there’s no doubt that the manuscript that Vernon Bowen sent to the Air Force at the dawning of the 1960s somehow turned up in the mailbox of Tim Cooper decades later.
In other words, given that Cooper was provided with Bowen’s original and not a photocopy, it does appear to be the case that someone “on the inside” had to have been behind the move to get this material sent to Cooper - since it was the Air Force that had been its original custodian.
Not only that: someone had stamped a number of the pages “TOP SECRET/MAJIC” (various pages contained within the manuscript contain hand-written notes too, reportedly written by someone high-up in the official/”MJ” world who appears to have intriguing knowledge of classified UFO data and projects).
For MJ12 proponents, this is, of course, evidence that after Bowen sent his manuscript to the Air Force, it somehow made its way to the so-called Majestic 12 group, who read it and annotated it. And then, years later, Cooper received it from a sympathetic insider.
Is this evidence that there really was a Majestic 12 group? I would urge anyone with an interest in the story of MJ12 to secure a copy (and quickly, given that it’s a limited edition publication) of An Encyclopaedia of Flying Saucers.
You’ll find in its pages an entertaining and informative manuscript courtesy of Bowen, and comments and observations of a forensic nature from Bob Wood.
For ordering information, contact Ryan Wood at his website: www.majesticdocuments.com
To read PDF-version extracts from Bowen’s original manuscript, click here
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Nov 26 2007 
November 26th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Nick –
This sounds a lot like the Varo edition of M. K. Jessup’s “Case for the UFO.”
Deja vu all over again?
Daniel
November 26th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Daniel
You’re completely right re the Varo parallels. I actually thought of mentioning the Varo story in this post, but didn’t want to go off at a tangent too much. However, I’ll do a follow-up soon that touches on these parallels.
November 26th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Well, hopefully Carlos Allende will have nothing to do with this one.
Of course, since he’s dead, that would be a clever new wrinkle.
Shirley MacLaine, anyone?
Daniel
November 26th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
What a crazy story. And it makes me wonder; since Nick is a big name in the field of ufology/cryptozoology/general weirdness, what strange things, if any, has HE been sent? Hmmmmmmmm.
November 27th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I noticed this comment on Mac Tonnies’ www.posthumanblues.com blog today, in reference to the Bowen manuscript:
“dr. x said…
“I’m hesitant to suggest this, but has it been considered that the perfect cover for a top-level, secret government ufo “control group” would be to promote a scenario, via hoaxed documents like MJ-12, the source and origins of which would eventually be laid to confabulators like Doty and Moore, et al, as a way of discrediting the very idea of such an existing and ongoing group, from those who might be most interested in finding out, like serious, adept ufo researchers, thus providing even greater cover for some real group of this kind?
“Just wondering if anyone else has seriously discussed or written about this idea anywhere. Well?
“You could term it the ‘doppelganger effect.’”
Any comments reference this concept?
The Bowen manuscript, and semi-related MJ-12 controversies remind me of the incident that occurred to Rex Heflin, who apparently too 4 polaroid photos of a “hat-shaped” ufo in 1965, and who, shortly after this got into the press, was confronted at his home by two “NORAD agents” who insisted he turn over the photos to them, and the photos and the “agents” never reappeared.
That is, until 1993, when Heflin allegedly found them in his mailbox one day, and not sent through the USPO–simply placed in his mailbox!
————————————–
Personally, I find the new “mailing” from NSA HQ of the Bowen manuscript, whether it’s the actual original or not, highly suspect, to say the least.
I note that, in the 15 pages in .pdf format excerpted from the manuscript mailed to Tim Cooper, who I also suspect may have either fabricated or at least been a conduit for hoaxed MJ-12 docs fed in turn to the Woods, there appears a form of handwriting I’ve seen before on other bogus MJ-12 docs the Woods have displayed on their website, which were also received from Cooper, and I think I recall that this very same or quite similar handwriting was the result of annotations by Cooper on these “received” docs by himself!
Which raises the question of 1) are there handwritten annotations on the new Bowen manuscript that _weren’t_ released on the net, and that are in a different handwriting, and 2) why did Cooper make handwritten notes on the prior “MJ-12″ docs anonymously sent to him in the first place? Whassup’ with that??
Curious and curiouser, to say the least. Is Doty, et al, just bored that his grandious Serpo/Seinu efforts crashed like a lead ballon on his Roswellianly obsessed brain-pan?
I’d appreciate comments and response to the above points and questions. MJ-12 is like some super-zombie, it’s dead, and has been shot through the head many times now, like with Sparks most recent MUFON article, but continues to live on!
IMHO, just further grayshit seeking a gullible audience to distract and for legit ufo researchers to once again expose, further siphoning off time, energy, and continuing efforts to put the MJ-12 zombie-vampire back in it’s grave. It’s kinda like some Carl Allen types sitting around Ft. Belvoir and Ft. Meade, at taxpayer expense might be having fun and playing enless games to foist yet another generation of the MJ-12 follies (see www.cufon.org, for UHR #3, by Greenwood for details) via another unethical and possibly illegal disinfotaining domestic psyop against the usual “suspects.”
Don’t these jerks have anything better to do with their time and lives than create stupid mindfucks on the ufo “research community,” such as it is? Or could this be just an independent non-USG sponsored shit storm of deception for certain parties apparently enless amusement? What say you all? Nick, Greg, etc.?
November 27th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Dear Nick,
Now with what Brad Sparks has done the MJ12 documents seem to be hoaxed. But I think Brad miss is the real reason. I think it was to take attention off of Roswell. There is still something there that can be found.
Brad Hinted at it himself at the 38th MUFON convention although he never has made the connection. His explanation that the airfoce was deverting attention away from itself toward NASA just doesn’t hold water.
As you point out the Bowen Manuscript was an eye opener and someone went to great length begin this crafted hoax.
When I take into account all of the insider info contained in these disinformation documents, this M12 hoaxed operation had to be ordered by someone further up the food chain.
Joseph Capp
UFO Media Matters
November 27th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Wintermuse:
I do indeed consider the possibility (indeed probability) that MJ12 and the assorted documents are a diversion.
I’d suggest one of 2 possibilities - a diversion to keep people busy and away from a real MJ-type group, but one of different membership and name; or…that the “crashed UFO” angle of all this - and the related documents - is also a smokescreen to divert people away from classified, human ops (rather than alien ops), as per Greg’s “Project Beta” book and my “Body Snatchers” book.
There is no doubt that the manuscript that Bowen sent to the Air Force is the one that was sent to Cooper - however, we need to try and determine *why* precisely this was done.
The manuscript, with the “MAJIC” stamps on certainly reinforces the existence of the MJ12 group in the minds of the MJ believers.
That may have been the point all along: keep people looking for MJ and away from something else…
Yes, the complete Bowen manuscript contains far more annotations than are at the website. There’s no doubt about the age of the paper, or that it was typed on Bowen’s old typewriter.
The big question is when it was annotated and can the ink etc be dated.
These are ongoing issues that I think in time will be cleared up.
There’s also a possibility that I sometimes muse on: namely, that some of these “crashed UFO” documents might have been created decades ago to spook the Soviets into believing the West had advanced crashed UFO technology in its possession - but that they are spurious.
However, what if (and admittedly this is just speculation) someone in the official world came across copies of them in the 80s, not realizing their psy-op history, but presuming them to be the real thing, and then tried to get them out to the public (in their role as a sympathetic insider), but not realizing they were leaking documents that were nothing but psy-op fakes all along…?
We often presume that the leaker of the documents was either (a) deliberately spreading disinfo, or (b) was leaking real documents because they wanted the truth to come out.
We seldom consider the idea that, yes, they might have been sympathetic insiders, but insiders who had no idea they were feeding the UFO community with the aged faked-work of some old spy-master whose bizarre psy-op against the Russians was initiated decades ago, and then lost to the fog of time, until copies of them may have been found buried in some archive or vault, with little or no provenance to say what they were, or where they were from.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Joseph:
I agree: there’s little doubt in my mind that whatever lies at the heart of the MJ controversy, it does indeed go high up the chain. Something is being hidden and it does seem to go back to Roswell. The big question is: what is it that’s hidden and that is so controversial? Aliens? Cold-War experiments? Both? Something else we’ve never considered?
One day I hope we have more answers than questions!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Nick:
Interesting story…
I am unclear though about some of the details. Why did Bowen send the airforce what I presume was his only copy? I assume it was because there were no Xerox machines around yet, but in any case, I’d have been pretty upset if someone swiped my only copy of a manuscript. Did Bowen try to get it back? Was he stonewalled? If Bowen died in 2005, was he aware that Tim Cooper received it in 1999? It would be great if you could provide more details…thanks!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:27 am
As this is the work of a known, published author who intended the manuscript for publication should they not be making the entire document freely available online? Either that or none of it at all. It seems a bit unethical to take someone else’s manuscript and resell it yourself unless of course they’ve cleared all this with Bowen’s estate or whatever.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Gilligan:
I’ll ask Bob Wood about these questions, as the book doesn’t make it clear, and will post the replies soon as I hear.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Not_Anonymous:
Yes, it was all cleared with the Bowen estate: Patrick Bowen (Vernon Bowen’s son) has written the Foreword to the newly-published edition of his father’s book.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I’m still mulling how INSCOM got hold of the manuscript, as it was sent to the AF (Blue Book, presumably) orfiginally. This stirs wonderings about Philip Corso and his writings and the fact that Corso claimed Roswell materials to be under HIS control and also claimed ongoing “influence” in UFO investigation over the years. But Corso was ARMY intelligence, not Air Force. Now this manuscript arrives, ostensibly from INSCOM , an ARMY intelligence agency (shades of Corso). Makes me wonder if the USAF hasn’t been a UFO “dodge” all along.