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Majestic 12
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 The 1947 letter, purported to be signed by Harry Truman, authorizing "Operation Majestic Twelve". OverviewThe primary evidence for the existence of a group named Majestic 12 is a collection of documents that first emerged in 1984. The original MJ-12 documents state that:The Majestic 12 group... was established by order of President Truman on 24 September, [sic - see discussion] 1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.The existence of MJ-12 has sometimes been denied by some agencies of the United States government, which insist that documents suggesting its existence are hoaxes. The FBI investigated the documents, and concluded they were forgeries, based primarily on an opinion rendered by AFOSI, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Opinions among UFO researchers are divided: Some argue the documents may be genuine while others contend they are phony, primarily due to errors in formatting and chronology. In 1985, another document mentioning MJ-12 and dating to 1954 was found in a search at the National Archives. Its authenticity is also highly controversial. The documents in question are rather widely available on the Internet, for example on the FBI website, where they are dismissed as bogus (linked below). Since the first MJ-12 documents, thousands of pages of other supposedly leaked government documents mentioning MJ-12 and a government coverup of UFO reality have also appeared, sometimes collectively referred to as the "Majestic Documents." All of them are controversial, with many disputing their authenticity. A few have been proven to be unquestionably fraudulent, usually retyped rewrites of unrelated government documents. The primary new MJ-12 document is a lengthy, linotype-set manual allegedly dating from 1954, called the MJ-12 "Special Operations Manual (SOM)". It deals primarily with the handling of crash debris and alien bodies. Objections to its authenticity usually center on questions of style and some historical anachronisms. The documents date from 1942 to 1997 and have been hotly debated in the UFO community. The documents include such matters as the conduct to be used when meeting an alien, diagrams and records of tests on UFOs, memos on assorted coverups, and descriptions of the President's statements about UFO-related issues. The documents contain supposed signatures of important people such as Albert Einstein and Ronald Reagan, creating a major debate in the conspiracy and UFO communities. No more documents have been leaked or released since 1997. Their authenticity remains uncertain, and some claim them to be entirely fake. However, before the appearance of the various dubious MJ-12 documents, Canadian documents dating from 1950 and 1951 were uncovered in 1978. These documents mention the existence of a similar, highly classified UFO study group operating within the Pentagon's Research & Development Board (RDB) and headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. Although the name of the group is not given, proponents argue that these documents remain the most compelling evidence that such a group did exist. There is also some testimony (see Arguments for below) from a few government scientists involved with this project confirming its existence. Other theories of the MJ-12 groupMJ-12 is sometimes associated in recent UFO conspiracy literature with the more historically verifiable but also deeply secretive NSC 5412/2 Special Group, created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954. Although the Special Group was not specifically concerned with UFOs, and post-dates the alleged creation of MJ-12 in 1947, the commonality of the number '12' in the names of the two groups is cited as intriguing, as is the first chairman, Gordon Gray, being one of the alleged MJ-12 members. As the highest body of central intelligence experts in the early Cold War era (the Group was alleged to include the President but exclude the Vice President), the Special Group certainly would have had both clearance and interest in all matters of national security, including UFO sightings if they were considered a real threat.Others have speculated that MJ-12 may have been another name for the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, an officially recognized UFO-related military group active from the 1940s through the late 1950s. Another government group recently associated with MJ-12 was the CIA's Office of National Estimates or ONE, a forerunner of the current National Intelligence Council (NIC). ONE was created in 1950 by CIA Director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, alleged to have replaced Secretary of Defense James Forrestal on MJ-12 after his death. A history of the NIC states that ONE was a type of super branch of the CIA "whose sole task was to produce coordinated 'National Intelligence Estimates.'" Besides Smith, it apparently consisted of 11 other members. A recent article on the history of the CIA's involvement in UFO investigations states that ONE received a UFO intelligence briefing on January 30, 1953, immediately after the end of the CIA's UFO debunking study known as the Robertson Panel. Members of ONE at that time included FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, William Bundy, President Eisenhower's chief of staff Admiral B. Bieri, and William Langer, a Harvard historian, who was chairman. Referring to ONE as "super think tank" within the CIA, the article states, "ONE is as close as we get to a documented version of the rumoured Majestic-12 group." Connection to the secret Pratt documentsAt the Mutual UFO Network or MUFON 2007 Symposium in Denver Colorado, UFO researcher Brad Sparks presented a paper that describes the MJ12 documents as an elaborate disinformation campaign perpetrated by William Moore, Richard C. Doty, and other Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) personnel. The sources for this information are files dating from 1981 (3 years before the first alleged MJ12 documents surfaced) that UFO researcher Bob Pratt gave MUFON before his death in 2005. The information lay hidden in MUFON's archives until they were digitized as part of MUFON's Pandora Project and made available to UFO researchers. The paper can be downloaded from the following reference. MUFON has made the Pratt documents available online. Of interest will be the paragraph that has a handwritten date of 1/02/82 and states: "3. UFO project is Aquarius, classified Top Secret with access restricted to MJ 12. (MJ may be "magic"). This project begun about 1966, but apparently inherited files of earlier project." The significance of this paragraph is that it ties MJ12 to the Aquarius document, a purported fabricated document, that alleges that Jesus Christ was an alien. MembershipAll the alleged original members of MJ-12 were notable for their military, government, and/or scientific achievements, and all were deceased when the documents first surfaced (the last to die was Jerome Hunsaker, only a few months before the MJ-12 papers first appeared).The original composition was six civilians (mostly scientists), and six high-ranking military officers, two from each major military service. Three (Souers, Vandenberg, and Hillenkoetter) had been the first three heads of central intelligence. The Moore/Shandera documents did not make clear who was the director of MJ-12, or if there was any organizational hierarchy. The named members of MJ-12 were:
According to other sources and MJ-12 papers to emerge later, famous scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Karl Compton, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Wernher von Braun were also allegedly involved with MJ-12.(see also Arguments for below, particularly statements by Dr. Robert Sarbacher) Reliably-documented UFO activities by purported MJ-12 membersMany of these men had reliably documented activities related to UFOs:
Professional and social connections between purported MJ-12 membersResearch has also shown that there were many social and professional connections between many of the alleged members of MJ-12. For example, Bush, Hunsaker, Bronk, and Berkner all sat on the oversight committee of the Research and Development Board (RDB), which Bush had established and initially chaired. Other notables on the RDB oversight committee were Karl Compton, Robert Oppenheimer, and Dr. H. P. Robertson, who headed up the debunking Robertson Panel, of which Berkner was a member. As mentioned, 1950 Canadian documents indicated that Bush headed up a small, highly secret UFO study group within the RDB. (See also Arguments for below)Various alleged MJ-12 members or participants would also naturally be part of the Presidential office's National Security Council, created in 1947. This would include (depending on NSC composition, which evolved) various NSC permanent members: Executive Secretary (Souers, Cutler), the Secretary of Defense (Forrestal), the Secretary of the Army (Gray), National Security Advisor (Gray), and the Air Force Chief of Staff (Vandenberg, Twining). Other nonpermanent members who would attend NSC meetings as advisors and implement policy would be the CIA director (Hillenkoetter, Smith), the head of the Research and Development Board (Bush, Compton), the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Cutler, Gray), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Twining). Therefore the supposed members and participating personnel of MJ-12 would have served on many other high government agencies and could conceivably have influenced government policy at many levels. (See also list of supposed current MJ-12 members below, again indicating various individuals who have served in high government positions.) The purported members were trusted, high-ranking officials who were often involved in important government projects—they possessed diverse skills and high security clearances. However, they were not so recognizable that they would be missed if they were to be called upon in a secret emergency. If such a group existed, these individuals would make plausible members. Timeline of MJ-12 Claims and DocumentsArthur Bray's discovery (1978)In 1978, Canadian researcher Arthur Bray uncovered previously-classified Canadian UFO documents naming Dr. Vannevar Bush as heading a highly secret UFO investigation group within the U.S. Research and Development Board. No name for the group was given. Bray published excerpts of the documents in his 1979 book, The UFO Connection.Aquarius document and Paul Bennewitz connection (1980)The earliest citation of the term "MJ Twelve" originally surfaced in a purported U.S. Air Force teletype dated November 17, 1980. This so-called "Project Aquarius" teletype had been given to Albuquerque physicist and businessman Paul Bennewitz in November, 1980, by U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations counterintelligence officer Richard C. Doty as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit Bennewitz. Bennewitz had photographed and recorded electronic data of what he believed to be UFO activity over and nearby Kirtland AFB, a sensitive nuclear facility. Bennewitz reported his findings to officials at Kirtland, including Doty. Later it was discovered the Aquarius document was phony and had been prepared by Doty.One sentence in the lengthy teletype read: The official US Government policy and results of Project Aquarius is [sic] still classified TOP SECRET with no dissemination outside channels and with access restricted to "MJ TWELVE."As Greg Bishop writes, "Here, near the bottom of this wordy message in late 1980, was the very first time anyone had seen a reference to the idea of a suspected government group called 'MJ Twelve' that controlled UFO information. Of course, no one suspected at the time the colossal role that this idea would play in 1980s and '90s UFOlogy, and it eventually spread beyond its confines to become a cultural mainstay." As Bennewitz was the subject of a disinformation campaign, many investigators are automatically suspicious of any documents or claims made in association with the Bennewitz affair. Because the entire MJ-12 affair made its appearance only a year after Bray had made public the incriminating Canadian documents about the secret UFO committee, one theory is that the Project Aquarius teletype was part of a counterintelligence hoax to discredit the information in the just-revealed Canadian documents. Thus the various MJ-12 documents could be fake, but the secret committee described in the verified Canadian documents could still have been real. (See Arguments for below) The Moore/Shandera documents (1984)What came to be known as the "MJ-12 papers" – detailing a secret UFO committee allegedly involving Vannevar Bush – first appeared on a roll of film in late 1984 in the mailbox of television documentary producer (and amateur ufologist) Jamie Shandera. Shandera had been collaborating with Roswell researcher William Moore since 1982.Just prior to Bennewitz and the Aquarius document, Moore had been contacted in September 1980 by Doty, who described himself as representing a shadowy group of 10 military intelligence insiders who claimed to be opposed to UFO secrecy. Moore called them "The Aviary". In January 1981, Doty provided Moore with a copy of the phony Aquarius document with mention of MJ Twelve. Moore would later claim in 1989 that he began collaborating with AFOSI in spying on fellow researchers such as Bennewitz, and dispensing disinformation, ostensibly to gain the trust of the military officers, but reality to learn whatever UFO truth they might have, and also to learn how the military manipulated UFO researchers. In return, Doty and others were to leak information to him. Later it would turn out that some of the UFO documents given Moore were genuine, but others were forged by Doty and compatriots, or were retyped and altered from the originals. Furthermore, the film mailed Shandera with the MJ-12 documents was postmarked "Albuquerque," raising the obvious suspicion that the MJ-12 documents were more bogus documents arising from Doty and AFOSI in Albuquerque. In 1983, Doty also targeted UFO researcher and journalist Linda Moulton Howe, revealing alleged high-level UFO documents, including those describing crashed alien flying saucers and recovery of aliens. Doty again mentioned MJ-12, explaining that “MJ” stood for “Majority” (not “Majestic”) Moore soon showed a copy of the Aquarius/MJ 12 teletype given him by Doty to researchers Brad Sparks and Kal Korff. In 1983, Moore also sought Sparks' reaction to a plan to create counterfeit government UFO documents, hoping to induce former military officers to speak out. Sparks strongly urged Moore not do this. The previous year Moore had similarly approached nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton T. Friedman about creating bogus Roswell documents, again with the idea of encouraging witnesses to come forward. Also, in early 1982, Moore had approached former National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt (who had first published a story on Roswell in the Enquirer in 1980). Moore asked Pratt to collaborate on a novel called MAJIK-12. As a result, Pratt always believed that the Majestic-12 papers were a hoax, either perpetrated personally by Moore or perhaps by AFOSI, with Doty using Moore as a willing target. Moore, however, flatly denied creating the documents, but eventually thought that maybe he had been set up. Noted UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass would also arguesee Blum, 1990 that Moore was the most likely hoaxer of the initial batch of MJ-12 documents. Unlike Pratt, who was convinced they were a hoax, Friedman would investigate the historical and technical details in the MJ-12 documents and become their staunchest defender. The 1984/1985 MJ-12 PapersThe Eisenhower briefing documentThe film allegedly received by Shandera in 1984 consisted of two MJ-12 documents. The main document, dated November 18, 1952, was supposedly prepared by Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first CIA director, to brief incoming president Dwight Eisenhower on the committee's progress. The document lists all the MJ-12 members and discusses United States Air Force investigations and concealment of a crashed alien spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, plus another crash in northern Mexico in December 1950.Eisenhower did indeed receive extensive briefings November 18, 1952, including a briefing at the Pentagon by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which would have included alleged MJ-12 members Twining and Vandenberg. However, Eisenhower’s Pentagon briefing is still classified and thus the subject matter discussed remains speculative. The Cutler/Twining memo (1985)In 1985, Shandera and Moore began receiving post cards postmarked “New Zealand” with a return address of "Box 189, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia." The cards contained a series of cryptic messages referring to "Reeses [sic] Pieces" and "Suitland" (among other terms) that Shandera and Moore assumed were a code; however, they were unable to "decode" the seeming message.A few months later, a happenstance request from Friedman unlocked the mystery: busy due to previous obligations, Friedman asked Moore and Shandera to examine newly declassified Air Force documents at the National Archives (NARA) repository in Suitland, Maryland; the head archivist there was named Ed Reese. After a few days in Suitland, Shandera and Moore discovered yet another MJ-12 document, the so-called Cutler/Twining memo, dated July 14, 1954. Interestingly enough, the memo turned up in "Box 189" of the record group. In this memo, NSC Executive Secretary and Eisenhower’s National Security Advisor Robert Cutler informed Air Force Chief of Staff (and alleged MJ-12 member) Nathan Twining of a change of plans in a scheduled MJ-12 briefing. The Cutler-Twining memo lacked a distinctive catalog number, leading many to suspect that whether hoaxed or genuine, the memo was almost certainly planted in the archives. Moore and Shandera have been accused of hoaxing the memo and then planting it in the archives. However, Friedman notes that the memo, unlike the other early MJ-12 papers which were available only as photos, is on original onionskin paper widely used by the government at that time. The document also has some subtle historical and other details that a civilian hoaxer would be unlikely to know, such as a red pencil declassification marking also found with the other declassified files. Furthermore, NARA security procedures would make it difficult for a visitor to the Archives to plant such a document; even the skeptical Klass argued that NARA security procedures made it highly unlikely that Shandera and Moore could have planted the Cutler-Twining memo in the archives. Instead, Friedman has argued that one of the many Air Force personnel involved in declassifying NARA documents could easily have planted the Cutler/Twining memo in with other unrelated documents. However, most researchers have argued that various subtle details point to a forgery (see #Arguments against for some). For example, the date of the alleged MJ-12 meeting does not correspond to any known meeting of import. However, this doesn’t negate Friedman’s point that the memo could have been planted by someone in the Air Force). The FBI investigation (1988)The MJ-12 documents were first made public in 1987 by Shandera, Moore, and Friedman. Another copy of the same documents Shandera received in 1984 was mailed to British researcher Timothy Good in 1987, again from an anonymous source. Good first reproduced them in his book Above Top Secret (1988), but later judged the documents as likely fraudulent.After the documents became widely known with the publication of Good’s book, the Federal Bureau of Investigation then began its own investigation, urged on by debunker Philip J. Klass. The MJ-12 documents were supposedly classified as "Top Secret", and the FBI's initial concern was that someone within the U.S. government had illegally leaked highly classified information. The FBI quickly formed doubts as to the documents' authenticity. FBI personnel contacted the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (counterintelligence), asking if MJ-12 had ever existed. AFOSI claimed that no such committee had ever been authorized or formed, and that the documents were “bogus.” The FBI adopted the AFOSI opinion and the FBI’s official position became that the MJ-12 documents were "completely bogus.” However, when Stanton Friedman contacted the AFOSI officer, Col. Richard Weaver, who had rendered this opinion, Friedman said Weaver refused to document his assertion. Friedman also noted that Weaver had taught disinformation and propaganda courses for AFOSI and was principal author of the Air Force’s debunking Roswell report in 1994. (Friedman, 110-115) Timothy Good in Beyond Top Secret also noted that Weaver in 1994 was the Director of Security and Special Programs Oversight of AFOSI’s Pentagon office, a very high level organization within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. Good commented that AFOSI is “an agency whose work involves counterintelligence and deception, and which has a long record of deep involvement in the UFO problem.” Within Weaver’s office were “special planners.” According to Good, “In Air Force parlance, the term ‘special plans’ is a euphemism for deception as well as for ‘perception management’ plans and operations.” Conducting an interview with one Roswell witness, Weaver himself admitted, “We’re the people who keep the secrets.” It is difficult to tell from interviews such as these, as the cold war tactics of deceptions within deceptions are intentionally vague as to where the disinformation and coverup of espionage ends and the government's actual investigation into UFOs begins. William Moore would later reveal that the whole New Mexico UFO disinformation scheme was run out of the Pentagon by a Colonel Barry Hennessey of AFOSI. When the Defense Department phone directory was checked, Hennessey was listed under the "Dept. of Special Techniques." Working under him at the time was the same Col. Weaver. Friedman therefore raised the question as to whether Weaver rendered an objective intelligence opinion about the authenticity of the MJ-12 papers or was deliberately misleading the FBI as a counterintelligence and disinformation agent, much like Doty had done with Moore and Howe earlier. Journalist Howard Blum in his book Out There (1990) further described the FBI’s difficulty in getting at the truth of the matter. One frustrated FBI agent told Blum, “All we’re finding out is that the government doesn’t know what it knows. There are too many secret levels. You can’t get a straight story. It wouldn’t surprise me if we never know if the papers are genuine or not.” Authenticity debateArguments for
"Memorandum for General Twining, from Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President, Subject: "NSC/MJ-12 Special Studies Project" dated July 14, 1954. The memos advised Twining of a change of scheduling for a planned briefing following an already scheduled, unspecified "White House meeting" on July 16. Cutler was Eisenhower's National Security Adviser. The memorandum does not identify MJ-12 or the purpose of the briefing (see links). However, arguments have been made against this document's authenticity; see below.
Arguments againstTo recapitulate, the original MJ-12 documents are the 1947 Truman memo establishing MJ-12,the 1952 Eisenhower briefing document, and the 1954 Cutler/Twining memo from the National Archives. Below are a number of arguments against the authenticity of various MJ-12 documents:
Briefing document and Truman letterSkeptics argue there is strong evidence that the briefing document and Truman letter are fake.
The Cutler Memo
:"president Eisenhower's Appointment Books contain no entry for a special meeting on July 16, 1954 which might have included a briefing on MJ-12. Even when the President had 'off the record' meetings, the Appointment Books contain entries indicating the time of the meeting and the participants ... :"The Declassification office of the National Security Council has informed us that it has no record of any declassification action having been taken on this memorandum or any other documents on this alleged project ..." :Robert Cutler, at the direction of President Eisenhower, was visiting overseas military installations on the day he supposedly issued this memorandum − July 14, 1954. The Administration Series in Eisenhower's Papers as President contains Cutler's memorandum and report to the President upon his return from the trip. The memorandum is dated July 20, 1954 and refers to Cutler's visits to installations in Europe and North Africa between July 3 and 15. Also, within the NSC Staff Papers is a memorandum dated July 3, 1954, from Cutler to his two subordinates, James S. Lay and J. Patrick Cone, explaining how they should handle NSC administrative matters during his absence; one would assume that if the memorandum to Twining were genuine, Lay or Cone would have signed it." In addition, although the Cutler memo was supposedly a carbon copy, it was folded as if it had been in a shirt pocket, which would be unusual for a carbon copy put in a file. The memo is in the National Archives; the question is how it got there, and if it is authentic. A document entitled "SOM1-01: Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal" (ref. http://209.132.68.98/pdf/som101_part1.pdf) and found on www.majesticdocuments.com contains paragraphs with subheads set in the sans serif "Helvetica" typeface. The document purports to be from 1954 yet the typeface in question was first designed in 1957 by the Swiss graphic designer, Max Miedinger. The capitalized sans serif letter "R" (and others) found on many pages confirms that this typeface is not the much earlier Akzidenz Grotesk sans serif typeface. This evidence seems to strongly suggest that this document is a fabrication. MJ-12 in popular fictionMajestic 12 forms part of the mythology of TV series The X-Files. In the Unofficial X-Files Companion: Volume 2 author N.E. Genge remarks that according to less extravagant conspiracy theory lore, Majestic 12 known as the Syndicate in the show, was created with a more humble goal: to cover up alien activities on Earth, and liaise with the aliens to obtain technology in exchange for knowledge and testing on human biology.In the TV series Dark Skies, Majestic 12 is involved with combating an attempt by aliens to covertly infiltrate and conquer the Earth, and is a central plot element. The time period is the early 1960s, with then MJ-12 members being notables such as Robert Kennedy, vice-President Hubert Humphrey, past CIA director Allen Dulles, and astronomer Carl Sagan. MJ-12 was also portrayed as being responsible for President Kennedy's assassination. The fourth installment of the popular Space Invaders franchise was titled Majestic 12: Space Invaders Part IV for its 1990 Japanese release. MJ-12 also plays a central role in the computer game Deus Ex, wherein the shadowy MJ-12 secretly controls much of the world and is battling the Illuminati for world domination. Blink-182's song "Aliens Exist" from their album Enema of the State briefly mentions Majestic 12 in the last line of the song, "Twelve Majestic Lies". Clutch's song "Animal Farm" from their self-titled album Clutch mentions MJ-12. Many of their other songs such as "Escape from the Prison Planet" deal with related topics. Majestic 12 played as the antagonist in the video game Destroy All Humans! led by a sexist woman named Silhouette and was mentioned in Destroy All Humans! 2 as Majestic 16 or M16 (referring to MI-6). In the anime and manga of Konjiki no Gash Bell!, there are a team of twelve American superheroes called the Majestic Twelve led by Dr Riddles, and they appear at various points in the anime and manga. Though they are said to have their own individual and seemingly supreme talents, they are shown to be humorously incompetent at fighting. The Majestic 12 is mentioned in the movie Shark Swarm starring oscar winning F. Murry Abraham. Abraham plays Professor Bill Girder. The reference happens early in the movie at 28:10, Girder shows fellow academic Professor Phillip Wilder a new navigation system developed by NASA that he has gained access to, whuch is used later to combat the sharks. As he logs on the username is MAJESTIC 12. It is unknown why this reference is made and among the cult following of shark swarm, many fans think it hints that Girder may have ties to the mysterious organisation. Some fans even go as far as to claim that Girder was in cahoots with town developer Hamilton Lux as part of a CIA plot, Lux being the reason that the sharks began to swarm in the first place. A group of international power-mongerers going by the name of "Majestic-12" battles Shane Schofield in Matthew Reilly's novel "Scarecrow". A Swedish Black Metal band called Mutant has a song named "The Majestic Twelve", first track from their first album "The Aeonic Majesty". Mutant was a parallel project related to the band Theory In Practice. The Delta Green setting for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game has Majestic-12 as one of the detailed factions. In the history of the setting, MJ-12 have successfully made contact with the alien "greys" (actually a cover for the real alien Mi-go), and have made deals to access their technology in return for continued silence. |
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Used under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply.
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