Majestic 12 (also known as Majic 12, Majestic Trust, MJ 12 or MJ XII) is thought to be the code name of a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman. The purpose was to investigate UFO activity in the aftermath of the Roswell incident, the purported crash of an alien spaceship near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. This alleged committee is an important part of the UFO conspiracy theory of an ongoing government cover up of UFO information.
[edit] Overview
- See also: Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit
The primary evidence for the existence of a group named Majestic 12 is a series of questionable documents that first emerged in 1984 and which have been the subject of much debate. The original MJ-12 documents state that:
The Majestic 12 group... was established by secret executive order of President Truman on 24 September, [sic - see discussion] 1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.[1]
Dr. Bush was named as head of the group. The existence of MJ-12 has been denied by some agencies of the United States government, which insist that documents suggesting its existence are hoaxed. The FBI investigated the documents, and concluded they were forgeries, based primarily on an opinion rendered by AFOSI, the U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence office. Opinions among UFO researchers are divided: Some argue the documents may be genuine while others contend they are phony, due primarily 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 so-called MJ-12 documents have also appeared, all of them controversial. Some have been proven to be unquestionably fraudulent, usually retyped rewrites of other totally unrelated government documents. The primary new MJ-12 document is a lengthy, linotype-set manual dating from 1954. 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.
However, before the appearance of the various dubious MJ-12 documents, Canadian documents dating from 1950 and 1951 were uncovered in 1978.[2] These documents mention the existence of a similar, highly classified UFO study group operating within the Pentagon's U.S. Research and Development Board, and again headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. Although the name of the group is not given, these documents remain the most compelling evidence that such a group did exist. There is also some testimony from a few government scientists involved with this project confirming its existence.
MJ-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 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 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 (actual or imagined) 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 military group active from the 1940's through the late 1950s.
[edit] Membership
All 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 named members 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 Werner von Braun were also allegedly deeply involved at some time.
Many of these men had reliably documented activities related to UFOs:
- Twining and Vandenberg oversaw early U.S. Air Force UFO investigations, like Project Sign and Project Blue Book and made some public statements on UFOs.
- Twining had previously written a famous Secret memo on September 23, 1947 (the day before Truman allegedly set up MJ-12) stating that flying saucers were real and urged formal investigation by multiple government organizations such as the AEC, NACA, NEPA, Bush's JRDB, and the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. [1] This led directly to the creation of Project Sign at the end of 1947.
- Vandenberg met with Bush's JRDB in a suddenly called meeting on the morning of the Roswell UFO incident (July 8, 1947) and was reported in the press as handling the later public relations crises. [3]
- Bush was directly implicated in 1950-51 Canadian documents heading a highly secret UFO investigation within the Research and Development Board (RDB). Immediately after the Roswell UFO incident, Bush made public statements denying any knowledge of UFOs or any relation they might have to secret government projects. [4]
- Menzel filed a UFO report in 1949, later wrote several UFO debunking books, and was the most prominent public UFO debunker of his time.
- Hillenkoetter was on the board of directors of the powerful civilian UFO organization NICAP and made public statements to Congress about UFO reality in 1960.
- The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which Hunsaker chaired from 1941-1958, is also known from documents to have occasionally delved into UFO cases. Other members of NACA were Bush (1938-1948), Compton (1948-1949), Vandenberg (1948-1953), Twining (1953-1957), and Bronk (1948-1958).
Research has also shown that there were many social and professional connections between the various alleged members of MJ-12. For example, Bush, Hunsaker, Bronk, and Berkner all sat on the oversight committee of the Research and Development Board, 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).
Thus, it is argued, the supposed members and participating personnel of MJ-12 would have served on many other high government agencies and could thus influence government policy at many levels.
[edit] History
The history of the MJ-12 papers is highly complex and what follows is only a sketch of what happened. 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.”
What came to be known as the “MJ-12 papers,” detailing a secret UFO committee again headed by 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.
However, the term "MJ Twelve" originally surfaced only a year after Bray’s book in what turned out to be a bogus Air Force teletype message dated Nov. 17, 1980, called the “Aquarius document.” This had been given to Albuquerque physicist Paul Bennewitz in November, 1980, by AFOSI (counterintelligence) officer Richard Doty as part of a disinformation campaign against him to discredit his information. Bennewitz had photographed and recorded electronic data of what he believed to be UFO activity near nearby Kirtland AFB, which he had reported to the office (counterintelligence) at Kirtland. Later it was discovered the Aquarius document was phony and had been prepared by Doty.
One sentence in a lengthy document 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."[5]
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 1980's and '90s UFOlogy, and it eventually spread beyond its confines to become a cultural mainstay."[6]
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 it 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)
Just prior to Bennewitz and the Aquarius document, Bill Moore had been contacted in September 1980 by a shadowy group of 10 military intelligence insiders, some thought to be AFOSI personnel at Kirtland such as Doty, who claimed to be opposed to UFO secrecy. Moore called them the “Aviary.” Soon after, in January 1981, Doty provided Moore with a copy of the phony Aquarius document with mention of MJ Twelve. Moore would later admit in 1989 that he began collaborating with AFOSI at the time in spying on fellow researchers such as Bennewitz and dispensing disinformation, ostensibly to gain insider trust and penetrate the coverup. 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 Ufologists, 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 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.
Unlike Pratt, who was convinced they were a hoax, Friedman would investigate the historical and technical details in the documents and become their staunchest defender.