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Majestic 12

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Ufologists claim that Harry S. Truman formed the Majestic 12 in 1947

Majestic 12, also known as Majic-12, and MJ-12 for short, is a purported organization that appeared in fake documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984, and that some UFO conspiracy theories still claim to have existed. The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft.

The conspiracy gained notoriety over the years after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax.[1][2] Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film, video games, and literature.[3][4]

Origin, spread, and popularization of MJ-12 claims

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Majestic 12 was the purported organization behind faked government documents delivered anonymously to multiple ufologists in the 1980s.[5][a] All individuals who received the fake documents were connected to Bill Moore.[10]

The concept of "Majestic 12" emerged during a period in the 1980s when ufologists believed there had been a cover-up of the Roswell incident and speculated some secretive upper tier of the U.S. government was responsible.[11]

Origin in Doty-Moore operation against Bennewitz

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After the publication of Moore's book The Roswell Incident, Richard C. Doty and other individuals presenting themselves as Air Force Intelligence Officers approached Moore.[12] They used the unfulfilled promise of hard evidence of extraterrestrial retrievals to recruit Moore, who kept notes on other ufologists and intentionally spread misinformation within the UFO community.[12]

The earliest known reference to "MJ Twelve" comes from a 1981 document used in disinformation targeting Paul Bennewitz.[13]

Doty and Moore spread MJ-12 tales to Pratt, Gerstein, and Moulton Howe

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In 1982, Bob Pratt worked with Doty and Moore on The Aquarius Project, an unpublished science fiction manuscript about the purported organization.[14][15] Moore had initially planned to do a nonfiction book but lacked evidence.[15] During a phone call about the manuscript, Moore explained to Pratt that his goal was to "get as much of the story out with as little fiction as possible."[16] That same year, Moore, Friedman, and Jaime Shandera began work on a KPIX-TV UFO documentary, and Moore shared the original "MJ Twelve" memo mentioning Bennewitz. KPIX-TV contacted the Air Force, which noted many style and formatting errors; Moore admitted that he had typed and stamped the document as a facsimile.[15] The name "Majestic 12" had been prefigured in the UFO community when Bill Moore asked National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt in 1982 to collaborate on a novel initially called MAJIK-12 and eventually changed by Moore to The Aquarius Project. Because of this, Pratt was suspicious of the authenticity of the Majestic 12 documents.[17]

On January 10-11, 1983, Doty and Moore met with attorney and UFO researcher Peter Gersten. Doty told Gersten of a top-level government called "MJ-12" he claimed claimed has been studying UFOs and retrieving alien craft that U. S. radar caused to crash. Doty claimed entities, alive and dead, have been retrieved at alien craft crash sites. According to Doty, the government and ETs have made an agreement whereby the aliens could conduct animal mutilations and human abductions in exchange for teaching U.S. experts about alien advanced technologies.[18]

On March 20, 1983, Gerstein related Doty's claims to cattle mutiliation documentarian Linda Moulton Howe. Howe arranged to visit Doty in Albuquerque on April 9. At that meeting, Doty told Howe that the MJ-12 story was true, and showed Howe unspecified documents purporting to prove the existence of small, gray humanoid aliens originating from the Zeta Reticuli star system. Doty reportedly promised to supply Howe with film footage of UFOs and an interview with an alien being, although no footage ever materialized.[11]

Anonymous package with photographic film of MJ docs

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On December 11, 1984, Shandera received an anonymous package containing an undeveloped roll of film just after a phone call from Moore.[19][20] The documents were found on an undeveloped roll of 35 mm film in a brown paper package that had been dropped through Shandera's mail slot.[21] The package bore no additional information other than a New Mexico postmark.[22] When developed, the roll of film was found to contain an image of a "Truman-Forestall memo", a "Top Secret" memorandum from President Truman to Defense Secretary James Forrestal, dated September 24, 1947, authorizing him and Dr. Vannevar Bush to proceed with Operation Majestic-12; and the Eisenhower Briefing Document, a seven page "Top Secret/Eyes Only" Majestic-12 document used to brief President-Elect Eisenhower, dated November 18, 1952.[21][22]

Cutler-Twining memo found planted in National Archive

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Shandera and his ufologist colleagues Stanton T. Friedman and Bill Moore say they later received a series of anonymous messages that led them to find what has been called the "Cutler/Twining memo"[a] in 1985 while searching declassified files in the National Archives. Purporting to be written by President Eisenhower's assistant Robert Cutler to General Nathan F. Twining and containing a reference to Majestic 12, the memo is widely held to be a forgery, likely planted as part of a hoax.[23] Historian Robert Goldberg wrote that the ufologists came to believe the story despite the documents being "obviously planted to bolster the legitimacy of the briefing papers".[11]

Public awareness of MJ12 claims

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On May 31, 1987, it was widely reported that British ufologist Timothy Good claimed to be in possession of 1950s-era UFO documents. The documents purported to reveal a secret committee of 12, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, and explain how the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell in July 1947 had been concealed, how the recovered alien technology could be exploited, and how the U.S. should engage with extraterrestrial life in the future.[11][24][25]

Soon, distrust and suspicion led to disagreements within the ufology community over the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents, and Moore was accused of taking part in an elaborate hoax, while other ufologists and debunkers such as Philip J. Klass were accused of being "disinformation agents".[24]

On June 24, 1987, Friedman appeared on the ABC network news program Nightline opposite Klass, where he discussed the MJ-12 with anchor Ted Koppel.[26][27] As early as the summer of 1987, spokesmen from the White House and National Security Council denied the existence of any organization called Majestic 12, MJ-12 or Majic-12.[28]

On October 14, 1988, Doty pseudonymously appeared on the syndicated television broadcast UFO Coverup? Live, which introduced many Americans to the Majestic 12 hoax.[29][30] It featured the first public mention of Nevada's Area 51 as a site associated with aliens.[31]

Moore confesses to deception operation

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External videos
video icon Bill Moore addresses MUFON, July 1 1989

At a 1989 Mutual UFO Network conference, Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of extraterrestrials to UFO researchers, including Bennewitz.[32] Doty later said that he gave fabricated information to UFO researchers while working at Kirtland Air Force Base in the 1980s.[33] Roswell conspiracy proponents turned on Moore, but not the broader conspiracy theory.[34]

Document analysis reveals hoax

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The Majestic-12 materials have been heavily scrutinized and discredited.[32] The various purported memos existed only as copies of photographs of documents.[35] Carl Sagan criticized the complete lack of provenance of documents "miraculously dropped on a doorstep like something out of a fairy story, perhaps 'The Elves and the Shoemaker'."[36]

FBI declares documents "completely bogus"

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First page of the alleged Majestic 12 memo with FBI markings

On September 15, 1988, a special agent at the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) contacted the Dallas branch of the FBI after receiving the Majestic 12 document from an individual at an unnamed school who claimed to have received it in the mail. The FBI then began its own investigation of the supposed "secret" document and quickly formed doubts as to its authenticity. After receiving information from the OSI on November 30 of that year that no such committee had ever been authorized or formed, the FBI declared that the document was "completely bogus". The Director of the FBI subsequently instructed the Dallas office to close their investigation.[2]

Forgery evidence

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Researchers noted that the idiosyncratic date format was not found in government documents from the time they were purported to originate, but was widely used in Moore's personal notes.[37] Some signatures appear to be photocopied from other documents.[38] For example, a signature from President Harry Truman is identical to one from an October 1, 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush.[39] Klass noted that the Truman signature was "a pasted-on photocopy of a genuine signature—including accidental scratch marks—from a memo that Truman wrote to Vannevar Bush on October 1, 1947".[40][41][42]

MuckRock contributor Emma Best has suggested that the papers were "government sponsored, or at least tolerated, disinformation" because the declassified FBI file on Majestic 12 does not mention any further investigation to find or prosecute the forger responsible for it.[2][43]

In addition to the Roswell incident, the "Eisenhower Briefing Document" also mentioned a second crash in 1950.[44] This second alleged crash was in Mexico, near the towns of El Indio and Guerrero along the Mexico–US border.[44][45] Tom Deuley investigated the Guerrero claim for MUFON, but found no evidence for a reported UFO crash.[46][47]

Cutler-Twining memo debunked

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Klass's investigation of the MJ-12 documents found that Robert Cutler was actually out of the country on the date he supposedly wrote the "Cutler/Twining memo". Klass dismissed theories that the documents were part of a disinformation campaign as "ridiculous", saying they contained numerous flaws that could never fool Soviet or Chinese intelligence. Other discrepancies noted by Klass included the use of a distinctive date format that matched one used in Moore's personal letters, and a conversation reported by Brad Sparks in which Moore confided that he was contemplating creating and releasing some hoax Top Secret documents in hopes that such bogus documents would encourage former military and intelligence officials who knew about the government's (alleged) UFO coverup to break their oaths of secrecy.[48]

Later analysis

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Later in 1996, a document called the MJ-12 "Special Operations Manual" circulated among ufologists. It is also widely considered to be a fake and "a continuation of the MJ-12 myth".[49]

Ufologists Linda Moulton Howe and Stanton T. Friedman believed the MJ-12 documents to be authentic. Friedman examined the documents and argued that the United States government has conspired to cover up knowledge of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft.[11]

Scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning investigated the history of the subject, and reported his findings in the 2016 Skeptoid podcast episode "The Secret History of Majestic 12". He cited ufologist Bill Moore's suspicion that, rather than a hoax perpetrated by the UFO community, the papers were actually part of a disinformation campaign of the US government meant to deflect attention from secret Air Force projects.[50]

Inspiration from Operation Magic

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The 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! names twelve individuals ("The Twelve Apostles") with access to Operation Magic codebreaking decrypts. In a pivotal scene (above),Lt. Colonel Rufus S. Bratton (E.G. Marshall) removes the president from the list, indicating information will be withheld from the White House to protect national security. The scene was noted for similarities to the later Majestic 12/Majik 12 conspiracy theory.[51]

Operation Magic was a 1940s-era effort to break Axis codes and decrypt intercepts of their messages. Kathryn S. Olmsted, a historian of conspiracy theories, notes that "other researchers denounced the MJ-12 documents as fakes. In one case, the forgers, showing an impressive command of earlier conspiracy theories, had cribbed much of Gen. George Marshall’s 1944 letter to Thomas Dewey disclosing the Pearl Harbor "Magic" intercepts, with names and dates changed and "magic" becoming "majic".[52][53][54]

Alleged members

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The following individuals were described in the Majestic 12 documents as "designated members" of Majestic 12.[23][55]

References

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  1. ↑ Donovan, Barna William (2011-07-20). Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious. McFarland. pp. 107–. ISBN 978-0786486151. Retrieved 2014-09-17.
  2. 1 2 3 "FBI – Majestic 12 Part 1 of 1". An FBI archive containing details of "Majestic 12". Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved April 10, 2011.
  3. ↑ "Everything 'X Files' Fans Need to Know about MJ-12, the Most Significant UFO Conspiracy Theory". Inverse. 2016-01-20. Retrieved 2025-02-18. MJ-12's influence has extended everywhere in the realm of entertainment and media. In the realm of TV, its influence has not only been felt on The X-Files; the show Dark Skies was completely about it.
  4. ↑ D'Estefano, Diana (2022-03-11). "How Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Majestic 12 Conspires to Control the World". Game Rant. Retrieved 2025-02-18.
  5. ↑ Pflock 2001, p. 193
  6. ↑ Blum 1990, p. 284
  7. ↑ Moore & Pratt 2007, p. MP-18
  8. ↑ Peebles 1994, pp. 258–259
  9. ↑ Gulyas 2014, ch.5
  10. ↑ Pflock 2001, pp. 193–194
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Goldberg, Robert Alan (2008), Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America, Yale University Press, pp. 189–231, ISBN 978-0-300-13294-6
  12. 1 2 Goldberg 2001, p. 213
  13. ↑ Peebles 1994, pp. 258–259: "The official US Government Policy and results of Project Aquarius is still classified top secret with no dissemination outside official intelligence channels and with restricted access to 'MJ Twelve'. Case on Bennewitz is being monitored by NASA, INS, who request all future evidence be forwarded to them through AFOSI, IVOE."
  14. ↑ Pflock 2001, p. 199, fn. 9
  15. 1 2 3 Peebles 1994, p. 259
  16. ↑ Moore & Pratt 2007, p. MP-9: "Yeah, that's true and if we go beyond that we are really going beyond the realm of what we are trying to do, which is try to get as much of the story out with as little fiction as possible."
  17. ↑ Sparks, Brad; Greenwood, Barry (August 10–12, 2007). "The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12". In Carrion, James (ed.). MUFON 2007 International UFO Symposium Proceedings - An Estimate of the Situation: The ET Hypothesis. Denver, Colorado: Mutual UFO Network. p. 97: In a letter to the late Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) UFO researcher Robert Todd, Pratt explained how his title for the book started as MAJIK-12 but was changed by Moore to The Aquarius Project, which was its final title for the unpublished manuscript. [...] In effect Pratt was compiling a journalistic investigation of both Moore and Doty, at the same time Moore was investigating Doty, their secretive third partner on the book project.
  18. ↑ An Alien Harvest, p.139
  19. ↑ Korff 1997a, p. 170
  20. ↑ Blum 1990, p. 240
  21. 1 2 Klass, Phillip J. (Winter 1987–1988). "The MJ-12 Crashed-Saucer Documents". Skeptical Inquirer. 12 (2): 137–138.
  22. 1 2 Wood, Stacy Elizabeth (2017). Making Secret(s): The Infrastructure of Classified Information (Ph.D. thesis). United States -- California: University of California, Los Angeles. p. 133. ProQuest 1925343204. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
  23. 1 2 Frazier, Kendrick (2010), The Hundredth Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal, Prometheus Books, Publishers, pp. 338–, ISBN 978-1-61592-401-1
  24. 1 2 Knight, Peter (2003), Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, pp. 490–, ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9
  25. ↑ "UFO memo: Aliens crashed". The Bismarck Tribune. 1987-05-31. p. 1.
  26. ↑ Friedman, Stanton (2008). FLYING SAUCERS AND SCIENCE: A SCIENTIST INVESTIGATES THE MYSTERIES OF UFOS: INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, CRASHES, AND GOVERNMENT COVER-UPS. New Page Books. p. 249. ISBN 978-1-60163-011-7. ...Nightline with Ted Koppel had me appear with Philip Klass on June 24, 1987, the 40th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting of nine flying discs near Mt. Rainier.
  27. ↑ "Stanton Friedman vs Philip Klass (1987)". YouTube. 11 August 2023.
  28. ↑ Humes, Edward (August 24, 1987). "UFO hunter is a serious sleuth, not a space case". Santa Ana Orange County Register. p. 15. Spokesmen for the White House and the National Security Council denied the existence of any organization called Majestic-12 or MJ-12 or Majic-12, two abbreviations used in the document.
  29. ↑ Gulyas, Aaron (2015-06-11). The Paranormal and the Paranoid: Conspiratorial Science Fiction Television. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-5114-4 – via Google Books.
  30. ↑ Peebles, Curtis (1995-12-12). Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Berkley Books. ISBN 978-0-425-15117-4 – via Google Books.
  31. ↑ Clary, David A. (2001-01-22). Before and After Roswell: The Flying Saucer in America, 1947-1999. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4628-4129-5 – via Google Books.
  32. 1 2 Gulyas 2016
  33. ↑ Kloor 2019, p. 53
  34. ↑ Goldberg 2001, pp. 207, 214
  35. ↑ Korff 1997a, p. 171
  36. ↑ Sagan 1997, p. 88
  37. ↑ Peebles 1994, p. 266
  38. ↑ Goldberg 2001, p. 206
  39. ↑ Korff 1997a, p. 172
  40. ↑ "New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax | Skeptical Inquirer". January 1990.
  41. ↑ https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1990/01/22165233/p30.pdf
  42. ↑ https://skepticalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2019/03/Issue-02-12.pdf
  43. ↑ North-Best, Emma (2017-06-05). Brown, JPat (ed.). "Conspiracy Weary: FBI's real-life "X-Files" document one of the Bureau's laziest investigations". MuckRock. Retrieved 2024-12-11. Despite having at least four different statutes that they could have used to prosecute the forger depending on the circumstances of the case, the declassified FBI file shows that once they announced the files had been forged, the case was closed. Despite the FBI saying they looked into this case because of "a potential violation of federal law under our jurisdiction that we did investigate," the Bureau neither investigated the espionage angle they opened the file for, nor any of the potential violations of federal law involved in forging government documents.
  44. 1 2 Goldberg, Robert Alan (2001). "Chapter 6: The Roswell Incident". Enemies Within: the Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-300-13294-6.
  45. ↑ Blum, Howard (1990). Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 211–212, 287. ISBN 978-0-671-66260-8.
  46. ↑ Klass, Philip J. (September 2000). "Significant Discrepancy Between EBD And '1st Annual Report'" (PDF). Skeptics UFO Newsletter. No. 65. Washington, DC. p. 4.
  47. ↑
  48. ↑ Klass, Philip (May 2000). "The New Bogus Majestic-12 Documents". Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  49. ↑ Denzler, Brenda (2001), The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs, University of California Press, pp. 190–, ISBN 978-0-520-93027-8
  50. ↑ Dunning, Brian (July 19, 2016). "Skeptoid #528: The Secret History of Majestic 12". Skeptoid. Retrieved 17 June 2017.
  51. ↑ Fortean Times: letter "The Origins of MJ-12?". John Brown Pub. December 1997. p. 53.
  52. ↑ Olmsted, Kathryn S. (2009-01-02). Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-972024-8. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  53. ↑ Gerald K. Haines, “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90,” Studies in Intelligence 1, no. 1 (1997), n. 93, cited by Olmstead (2009)
  54. ↑ Center for UFO Studies - "Fraudulent 27 September 1944 'MJ-12' Document, cited by Olmstead (2009)
  55. ↑ Blum, Howard (1991), Out there: the government's secret quest for extraterrestrials, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-66260-8

Further reading

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Notes

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a Not to be confused with the Twining memo of 1947 establishing Project Sign

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  1. ↑ The MJ-12 organization is given several similar names. The Shandera document called it "Majestic-12 (Majic-12)".[6] Pratt and Moore used "Majik 12" while working on their novel.[7] The earliest Bennewitz memo called it "MJ Twelve".[8] Milton William Cooper called it "Majesty Twelve".[9]
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