The US Governments Secret UFO Group MJ-12 Is

The US Governments Secret UFO Group MJ-12 Is Revealed

Posted On: June 7, 2022

Who or what was MJ-12 or MAJESTIC 12?

According to Wikipedia, Majestic 12, also known as MJ-12 for short, is a purported organization that appears in UFO conspiracy theories. 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 concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film and literature

According to a document acquired by TV producer Jaime Shandera in 1984, a highly secret panel, code-named "Majestic 12" or "MJ-12", was formed by President Truman in 1947 to investigate UFOs and report on its findings to the President. The document, dated 18 November 1952 and classified TOP SECRET/MAJIC/EYES ONLY, was allegedly prepared for President-elect Dwight Eisenhower, and includes the astonishing statement that the remains of four alien bodies were recovered two miles from the Roswell wreckage site.

The document names the twelve high-ranking members of the panel. They were: Lloyd Berkner, Detlev Bronk, Vannevar Bush, James Forrestal, Gordon Gray, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Jerome Hunsaker, Donald Menzel, Robert Montague, Sidney Souers, Nathan Twining and Hoyt Vandenberg.

Dr. Lloyd Berkner, a scientist who was executive Secretary of the Joint Research and Development Board in 1946 (under Dr. Vannevar Bush), also headed a special committee to direct a study that led to the establishment of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group. He was also a member of the CIA’s "Robertson Panel", a scientific advisory panel on UFOs requested by the White House and sponsored by the CIA in 1953.

Dr. Detlev Bronk was an internationally known physiologist and bio-physicist who was Chairman of the National Research Council and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Energy Commission. With Dr. Edward Condon, Director of the National Bureau of Standards, (who later headed the Air Force-sponsored UFO project at the University of Colorado), Bronk became a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Dr. Vannevar Bush, recognized as one of America’s leading scientists, organized the National Defense Research Council in 1941 and the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1943, which led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. After the war Dr. Bush became head of the Joint Research and Development Board. As the Canadian government scientist Wilbert Smith noted in his top secret memorandum, Dr. Bush headed a "small group" set up to investigate UFOs, which matter "is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb". Could this "small group" have been "Majestic 12"?, If so. Bush’s background in co-ordinating top secret intelligence research projects would have made him the ideal choice to head the group. In 1949, for instance, the US Intelligence Board, the co-ordinating body of all US government intelligence agencies, commissioned Bush to recommend methods of linking all the intelligence bureaucracies, a move initiated by James Forrestal, coincidentally another member of MJ-12.

James Forrestal served as Secretary of the Navy before becoming Secretary of Defense in July 1947, (the time of the Roswell incident), a position he held until a mental breakdown led to his resignation in March 1949. He officially committed suicide at Bethesda Naval Hospital in May 1949.

Gordon Gray was Assistant Secretary of the Army at the time when MJ-12 was established, and became Secretary of the Army in 1949. In 1950 he was appointed as Special Assistant to President Truman on National Security Affairs, and in 1951, according to William Steinman, directed the Psychological Strategy Board, referred to in a 1952 CIA memorandum from Director Walter Bedell Smith discussing the psychological warfare implications of UFOs.

Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter was the third Director of Central Intelligence, (DCI) from 1947 to 1950, and the first Director of the CIA, which was established in the same month as MJ-12, September 1947. Hillenkoetter was one of the first intelligence chiefs to make public his conviction that UFOs were real, and that "through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense". Hillenkoetter was also on the board of Directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, and was therefore in an excellent position to monitor the activities of this influential civilian group.

Dr. Jerome Hunsaker was a brilliant aircraft designer who headed the Departments of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. His opinion on the materials recovered at Roswell would have been invaluable.

Dr. Donald Menzel was Director of the Harvard College Observatory, and is chiefly remembered for his dismissive statements and books on UFOs, all of which, he said, could be explained in mundane terms. Menzel would have been helpful as an astronomical consultant to MJ-12, and later as the world’s most widely read UFO debunker. He was also involved with the National Security Agency, and held a Top Secret Ultra security clearance.

General Robert Montague was Base Commander at the Atomic Energy Commission installation at Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, from July 1947 to February 1951.

Rear Admiral Sidney Souers was the first Director of Central Intelligence, (January-June 1946) and in September 1947, (when MJ-12 was set up), became Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. Following his resignation in 1950, Souers was retained as a special consultant to the Executive on security matters.

General Nathan Twining was an outstanding commander of bombing operations in both the European and Pacific theaters during World War II. In 1945 he was appointed Commanding General of Air Materiel Command, based at Wright Field,,(Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). A declassified secret document reveals that in September 1947 Twining presented the conclusions of AMC that "the phenomenon reported is something real", further details of which will be discussed later. Significantly, Twining suddenly canceled a planned trip to the West Coast on 8 July 1947, the day of the first press release announcing the recovery of a crashed disk near Roswell, "due to a very important and sudden matter". William Moore has learned that while reporters were told that Twining was out of the office, "probably in Washington, DC", he had in fact made a sudden trip to New Mexico, where he remained until 10 July.

The remaining member of the alleged MJ-12 panel was General Hoyt Vandenberg. Following a distinguished career in the Army Air Forces he became the second Director of Central Intelligence in 1946, a position he held until May 1947. In August 1948, when a top secret "Estimate of the Situation" by the Air Technical Intelligence Center offered its opinion that UFOs were interplanetary. Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, ordered the document to be burned.

Timothy Good's inquiries into the authenticity of the Majestic 12 story during a research trip to the United States in 1986 have led him to believe that the group did indeed exist, and the document seems authentic enough.

Unfortunately, all the members are now deceased, and Timothy Good's questions addressed to a former Director of the CIA, as well as two ex-Presidents, remain unanswered, which is hardly surprising. But it is interesting that "MJ-12" crops up in an alleged Air Force Office of Special Investigations, (AFOSI) document, dated 17 November 1980. Paragraph 2 states: "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".

AFOSI informed Timothy Good that the retyped document is a fabrication, yet the existence of Project Aquarius has now been confirmed by the National Security Agency. It is still classified Top Secret, and details therefore remain exempt from disclosure. There is as yet no official confirmation of the existence of MJ-12, however.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988

According to William Cooper on the Topic of MJ-12

By secret Executive Memorandum, NSC 5410, Eisenhower had preceded NSC 5412/1 in 1954 to establish a permanent committee (not ad hoc) to be known as Majority Twelve (MJ-12) to oversee and conduct all covert activities concerned with the alien question. NSC 5412/1 was created to explain the purpose of these meetings when Congress and the Press became curious. Majority Twelve was made up of Nelson Rockefeller, the director of the CIA Allen Welsh Dulles, the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, and six men from the executive committee of the Council on Foreign Relations known as the "Wise Men". These men were all members of a secret society of scholars that called themselves "The Jason Society", or "The Jason Scholars" who recruited their members from the "Skull and Bones" and the "Scroll and Key" societies of Harvard and Yale.

The "Wise Men" were key members of the Council on Foreign Relations. There were 12 members including the first 6 from Government positions thus Majority Twelve. This group was made up over the years of the top officers and directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and later the Trilateral Commission. Gordan Dean, George Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski were among them. The most important and influential of the "Wise Men" who served on MJ-12 were Jogn McCloy, Robert Lovett, Averell Harriman, Charles Bohlen, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson. It is significant that President Eisenhower as well as the first 6 MJ-12 members from the Government were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Thorough researchers will soon discover that not all of the "Wise Men" attended Harvard or Yale and not all of them were chosen for "Skull and Bones" or "Scroll and Key" membership during their college years. You will be able to quickly clear up this mystery by obtaining the book "The Wise Men" by Walter Issacson and Even Thomas, Simon and Schuster, New York. Under illustration #9 in the center of the book you will find the caption "Lovett with the Yale Unit, above far right, and on the beach his initiation into Skull and Bones came at an air base near Dunkirk". I have found that members were chosen on an ongoing basis by invitation based upon merit post college and was not confined to only Harvard or Yale attendees.

A chosen few were later initiated into the Jason Society. They are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations and at that time were known as the "Eastern Establishment". This should give you a clue to the far reaching and serious nature of these most secret college societies. The Jason Society is alive and well today but now includes members of the Trilateral Commission as well. The Trilateralists existed secretly several years BEFORE 1973. The name of the Trilateral Commission was taken from the alien flag known as the "Trilateral Insignia".

Majority Twelve was to survive right up to the present day. Under Eisenhower and Kennedy it was erroneously called the "8412 Committee" or more correctly, the "Special Group", in the Johnson administration it became the "303 Committee" because the name 5412 had been compromised in the book "The Secret Government" actually NSC 5412/1 was leaked to the author to hide existence of NSC 5410. Under Nixon, Ford, and Carter it was called the "40 Committee", and under Reagan, it became the "PI-40 Committee". Over all those years only the name changed.

The Study Group

By secret Executive Memorandum, NSC 5411 in 1954, President Eisenhower had commissioned the study group to "examine all the facts, evidence, lies, and deception and discover the truth of the alien question. NSC5412/2 was only a cover that had become necessary when the press began inquiring as to the purpose of regular meetings of such important men. The first meetings began at Quantico Marine Base. The study group was made up of 35 members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Secret scholars known as "The Jason Society" of the "Jason Scholars". Dr. Edward Teller was invited to participate, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski was the study director for the first 18 months. Dr. Henry Kissinger was chosen as the group's study director for the second 18 months. Nelson Rockefeller was a frequent visitor during the study.

Study Group Members were:

Gordon Dean, Chairman.
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Study Director - 1st phase.
Dr. Henry Kissinger, Study Director - 2nd phase.
Dr. Edward Teller.
Maj. Gen. Richard C. Lindsay.
Hanson W. Baldwin.
Lloyd V. Berkner.
Frank C. Nash.
Paul H. Nitze.
Charles P. Noyes.
Frank Pace, Jr.
James A. Perkins.
Don K. Price.
David Rockefeller.
Oscar M. Ruebhausen.
Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin.
Caryl P. Haskins.
James T. Hill, Jr.
Joseph E. Johnson.
Mervin J. Kelly.
Frank Altschul.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong.
Maj.Gen.James McCormack, Jr.
Robert R. Bowie.
McGeorge Bundy.
William A.M. Burden.
John C. Campbell.
Thomas K. Finletter.
George S. Franklin, Jr.
I. I. Rabi.
Roswell L. Gilpatrio.
N. E. Halaby.
Gen. Walter Bedell Smith.
Henry DeWolf Smyth.
Shields Warren.
Carroll L. Wilson.
Arnold Wolfers.

The second phase meetings were also held at the Marine Base at Quantico Virginia and the group became known as Quantico II. Nelson Rockefeller built a retreat somewhere in Maryland which could only be reached by air for MJ-12 and the study committee so that they could meet away from public scrutiny. This secret meeting place is known by the code name "The Country Club". Complete living, eating, recreation, library, and meeting facilities exist at the location.

The study group was "publicly" closed in the later months of 1958, and Henry Kissinger published what was officially termed the results in 1957 as "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" by Henry A. Kissinger, published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper and Brothers, New York.

In truth the manuscript had already been 80% written while Kissinger was at Harvard. The study group continued veiled in secrecy. A clue to the seriousness Kissinger attached to the study can be found in statements by his wife and friends. Many of them stated that Henry would leave home early each morning and return late each night without speaking to anyone or responding to anyone. It seemed as if he were in another world which held no room for anyone else.

These statements are very revealing. The revelations of the alien presence and actions during the study must have been a great shock. Henry Kissinger was definitely out of character during time surrounding these meetings. He would never again be affected in this manner no matter the seriousness of any subsequent event. On many occasions he would work very late into the night after having already put in a full day. This behavior eventually led to divorce.

A major finding of the alien study was that the public could not be told as it was believed that this would most certainly lead to economic collapse, collapse of the religious structure, and national panic which would lead into anarchy. Secrecy thus continued. An offshoot of this finding was that if the public could not be told then the Congress could not be told, thus funding for the projects and research would have to come from outside the government. In the meantime money was to be obtained from the military budget and from CIA confidential non-appropriated funds.

Source: Majestic 12 and the Secret Government, By William Cooper.

My Take: The whole MJ-12 situation is a divided topic amongst UFO researchers.

Hoax side of the argument.

Could it be an elaborate hoax? Absolutely. The government is certainly capable of sending out disinformation to muddy up the waters. Even if it is a hoax. Why would the government even bother? This proves to me that they are covering up something and disinformation is a powerful weapon. The best lies are sandwiched between two truths.

Pro side of the argument.

I think it is totally plausible that the government had some kind of secret group to investigate UFOs. The members of the group all seem to be good member candidates of that time period. The FBI saying it’s all a hoax is meaningless. That’s like the criminals investigating themselves and saying, ‘No Crime Here’.

Either way, it’s an interesting story. What do you think? Please discuss in the comments below.

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