--- alias: - Jaime Shandera - Jaime H. Shandera - Jamie Shandera - Shandera category: UFO & Anomalous Phenomena created: 2026-10-03 location: North Hollywood, California relations: - fn: 12 role: 'co-investigator of the MJ-12 documents; Moore said in 1989 that he brought Shandera into the project in June 1982; co-author of The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (1990)' start: 1982-06 type: partner_of with: '[[William L. Moore]]' - fn: 8 role: consultant and interviewer of the sources Falcon and Condor start: 1988-10-14 type: participant_in with: '[[UFO Cover-Up Live]]' summary: Los Angeles television producer who received the roll of 35mm film bearing the Eisenhower briefing document on December 11, 1984 and found the Cutler-Twining memorandum at the National Archives on July 18, 1985. tags: - Person - UFO - MJ12 - Television - NationalArchives - Disinformation updated: 2026-10-03 --- Jaime H. Shandera is a television producer and director of [Los Angeles](/places/los-angeles/) who, with [William L. Moore](/people/william-l-moore/), received and published the [Majestic-12](/events/majestic-12/) documents. A biography prepared for the 1988 program [UFO Cover-Up Live](/events/ufo-cover-up-live/) describes him as a producer, director and researcher of twenty years with a background in news and documentaries, producer and director at Time-Life Broadcast in [San Diego](/places/san-diego/) and RKO General in Los Angeles, and head of Sonex International Corp. with corporate clients worldwide, whose research into government secrecy "began five years ago with William Moore."[^1] A UFO BBS text states that Moore and Shandera became partners in 1982.[^2] Moore said on July 1, 1989 that in June 1982 he "approached my friend Jaime Shandera and brought him into the project," that Shandera knew Moore was in contact with people in the intelligence community and that some of what came through was disinformation, and that Shandera saw the work as burrowing into a beehive "at the express invitation of the queen bee herself, who clandestinely oversaw and encouraged the process from a distance."[^12] Moore added that the name Falcon was invented by himself and Shandera in 1984 as a private way of referring to a source on the telephone, and that after the broadcast of UFO Cover-Up Live the FBI interviewed several ufologists "including Jaime Shandera," while avoiding Moore.[^12] Moore and Shandera wrote in 1990 that Shandera is "a television producer-director with strong background in television news."[^3] ### The film, December 1984 Moore and Shandera wrote that on December 11, 1984 a taped brown envelope with no return address and an Albuquerque postmark of December 8 arrived at Shandera's North Hollywood residence, containing nested envelopes, the innermost bearing a Marriott logo, and a black plastic canister holding undeveloped 35mm Tri-X film. The film yielded eight good negatives of what appeared to be a 1952 briefing document for President-elect [Dwight D. Eisenhower](/people/dwight-d-eisenhower/), then two blank frames and the same eight frames again. Moore and Shandera arranged for professional prints at a photographic laboratory owned by an associate and wrote that both were present in the darkroom. They wrote that with the assistance of the [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) and the [Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department](/organizations/los-angeles-county-sheriffs-office/) they identified questioned-document examiners, that four were approached, and that none would allow his name to be used.[^4] ### The Cutler-Twining memorandum, July 1985 Moore and Shandera wrote that a postcard postmarked in [New Zealand](/places/new-zealand/), bearing the printed address "Ethiopian Tourism Commission, Box 189, Addis Ababa," reached Moore's Dewey, Arizona box 189 in or before March 1985 with the typewritten message "When doors won't open, search for windows. Add some zest to your trip to [Washington](/places/washington-dc/); Try Reece's pieces. For a stylish look, shop Suit Land," and that a second similar card, postmarked Christchurch, followed months later. Stanton Friedman, who was in Washington, understood "Reece's pieces" to mean Ed Reese of the Modern Military Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration and "Suit Land" to mean the archives annex at Suitland, Maryland. According to Moore and Shandera, Reese told Friedman that the [U.S. Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) had arranged to declassify a large block of Intelligence Directorate files from 1946 to 1955, sending declassification officers from the [Pentagon](/organizations/pentagon/), and that old Air Technical Intelligence Center records on Projects Sign and Grudge were included. Moore and Shandera left on Monday, July 15, 1985; on Thursday, July 18, after searching nearly 100 boxes, Shandera found the memorandum in box 189 of Record Group 341, immediately adjacent to file folder 4-1846.[^5] The National Archives gives the location as Record Group 341, entry 267, folder T4-1846, and records that the memorandum lacks the top secret register number its series requires, that no other document in the folder mentions "NSC/MJ-12," that the "Top Secret Restricted Information" marking did not come into use until the [Nixon](/people/richard-nixon/) administration, that a conservation specialist found the paper to be a ribbon copy on "diction onionskin" without letterhead or watermark, while documents Cutler created on the [National Security Council](/organizations/national-security-council/) staff have an eagle watermark on the bond paper and his onionskin carbon copies have either an eagle watermark or none, that no record exists of a National Security Council meeting on July 16, 1954, and that Cutler's travel report shows him on a trip to Europe and North Africa from July 3 to 15, 1954.[^6] The Archives stated that certification of a copy establishes only that it is a faithful copy of archival material.[^6] ### The program and the Fund for UFO Research At the program of October 14, 1988, Howe wrote that a flow chart of authority shown after the Falcon statement was "created by William Moore and Jaime Shandera."[^7] [Robert M. Collins](/people/robert-m-collins/) wrote that in September 1988 Moore and Shandera shot interviews in Albuquerque with "the surrogate Falcon ([Rick Doty](/people/richard-doty/))," with Collins as Condor, and with Doty unmasked as "Special OSI Agent Rick Doty," the last of which was cut for time; the writer Barry Taff wrote that just before the broadcast Moore, Shandera and Robert Emenegger began playing practical jokes on the producer on the set.[^8][^11] Moore and Shandera wrote that on March 12, 1983 they attended a board meeting of the Fund for UFO Research as guests, where the [Aquarius teletype](/programs/project-aquarius/) was discussed; the 1990 *MJ-12 Documents* report was offered through the Fund for $12.50, with Friedman's separate 59-page report prepared under a $16,000 Fund grant.[^3][^9] ### Bird Code and the 1995 trip Collins wrote that from 1987 to 1988 Moore, Shandera, Ernie Kellerstrass, Doty and Collins received a "Bird Code" of seventeen or more pages, purporting to give directions to an apartment in Washington near the Mall where a female extraterrestrial ambassador was kept; that Shandera and Moore "actually made the trips to DC"; that Shandera worked on the code again in the early 1990s with postcards from New Zealand and other places; and that in the summer of 1995 Shandera met in front of a building near the Mall a man Collins called "Mr. X" ("Walter Ferguson, [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/)?", with Collins adding that "Jaime wasn't too clear on that"), who escorted him inside past a checkered floor to a door that Shandera described as a vault of "volumes" on extraterrestrials. Collins distinguished the "Raven" that he wrote Doty applied to [Richard Helms](/people/richard-helms/) from "Jaime Shandera's 'Raven,'" which he called "still an unknown," and wrote that "to this day many of us still stay in contact (except for Bill & Jaime)." A passage in the book over Shandera's name states that "Jaime Shandera has now had the existence of ETs proven to him beyond question."[^8] Moore had said in 1989 that Jerome Clark reported in *Fate* that Moore and Shandera made a trip to Washington in anticipation of meeting a live alien and were stood up, and answered that "considering what you now know of our project and its goals, we had a story. No matter what happened, we made the trip because we simply couldn't lose," adding "there's more to that experience than you know about."[^12] Pilkington wrote that Greg Bishop recalled Shandera, "Moore's colleague in the MJ-12 and Aviary investigations, transformed suddenly from cynical disbeliever to terrified convert," and that when pressed Shandera would only say "they showed me something."[^10] Collins wrote that Shandera's last known residence was San Diego with his wife and that he had recently moved back to Los Angeles.[^8] [^1]: "Background on Moore/Shandera/Friedman," UFO BBS file UFO1876, http://textfiles.com/ufo/UFOBBS/1000/1876.ufo (promotional text for *UFO Cover-Up? Live!*). [^2]: "E B E's," part 5, UFO BBS file UFO1024, http://textfiles.com/ufo/UFOBBS/1000/1024.ufo (author not identified in the copy consulted). [^3]: William L. Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, *The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report* (Fund for UFO Research, 1990), "Introduction," p. 3; "The Aquarius Teletype," p. 9, http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/The-MJ-12-Documents-An-Analytical-Report-Excerpts.pdf (scanned excerpt, read as page images). [^4]: Moore and Shandera, *MJ-12 Documents*, "The MJ-12 Documents (Dec. 1984)," p. 29, same excerpt. [^5]: Moore and Shandera, *MJ-12 Documents*, "The Cutler-Twining Memo (Jul. 1985)," pp. 61 to 62, same excerpt. [^6]: National Archives and Records Administration, "Majestic 12 or 'MJ-12' Reference Report," in "Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects," https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos [^7]: Linda Moulton Howe, *An Alien Harvest*, 2nd ed. (2014), p. 194 (statement of "Falcon" in the broadcast of October 14, 1988), https://archive.org/details/howe-l.-m.-an-alien-harvest-2nd-ed-2014 [^8]: Robert Collins and Richard Doty, *Exempt from Disclosure: The Black World of UFOs*, introduction and Section 2, Chapter 4 with references 4 to 6 (the archive.org copy is dated 2010 in its metadata but cites material of July 2012), https://archive.org/details/exempt-from-disclosure [^9]: Moore and Shandera, *MJ-12 Documents*, "Introduction," p. 3 (price and Fund address) and "The Aquarius Teletype," p. 9 (meeting of March 12, 1983). [^10]: Mark Pilkington, *Mirage Men* (Constable, 2010), chapter "How to Believe Weird Things," https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Mark%20Pilkington%20-%20Mirage%20Men%20-%20A%20Journey%20into%20Disinformation,%20Paranoia%20and%20UFOs.pdf. Bishop's recollection reaches the page through Pilkington only. [^11]: Barry E. Taff, "UFO Cover-Up? Live!: The Untold Story," part 3, UFO BBS file UFO137, http://textfiles.com/ufo/UFOBBS/0000/137.ufo (reprinted in UFO Magazine and ParaNet). [^12]: William L. Moore, address to the MUFON International UFO Symposium, Las Vegas, July 1, 1989, from the caption transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfimKiS-po (video of the Ron Regehr recording, Internet Archive item bill-moore-1989-mufon); names corrected from mis-rendered captions.