Majestic 12

This article is about the purported secret committee to bolster the legitimacy of the brieng papers.[3]
called 'Majestic 12'. For other uses, see Majestic 12 Claiming to be connected to the United States Air Force
(disambiguation).
Oce of Special Investigations, a man named Richard
Doty told lmmaker Linda Moulton Howe that the MJIn UFO conspiracy theories, Majestic 12 (or MJ-12) is 12 story was true, and showed Howe unspecied docuthe code name of an alleged secret committee of scien- ments purporting to prove the existence of small, grey
tists, military leaders, and government ocials, formed humanoid aliens originating from the Zeta Reticuli star
in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. system. Doty reportedly promised to supply Howe with
Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien lm footage of UFOs and an interview with an alien bespacecraft. The concept originated in a series of suppos- ing, although no footage ever materialized.[3]
edly leaked secret government documents rst circulated Soon, distrust and suspicion led to disagreements within
by ufologists in 1984. Upon examination, the Federal Bu- the ufology community over the authenticity of the MJ-12
reau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be documents, and Moore was accused of taking part in an
completely bogus, and many ufologists consider them elaborate hoax, while other ufologists and debunkers such
to be an elaborate hoax.[1][2] Majestic 12 remains popu- as Philip J. Klass were accused of being disinformation
lar among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the con- agents.[4]
cept has appeared in popular culture including television,
The FBI began its own investigation of the supposed selm and literature.
cret documents and quickly formed doubts as to their
authenticity. The United States Air Force Oce of Special Investigations stated that no such committee had ever
1 Origin
been authorized or formed, and that the documents were
bogus. The FBI subsequently declared the MJ-12 docThe concept of Majestic Twelve emerged during a pe- uments to be completely bogus.[2]
riod in the 1980s when ufologists believed there had been
Later in 1996, a document called the MJ-12 Special Opa cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident and speculated
erations Manual circulated among ufologists. It is also
some secretive upper tier of the United States governwidely considered to be a fake and a continuation of the
[3]
ment was responsible. Their suppositions appeared to
MJ-12 myth.[6]
be conrmed in 1984 when ufologist Jaime Shandera received an envelope containing lm which, when devel- Ufologists Linda Moulton Howe and Stanton T. Friedman
oped, showed images of eight pages of documents that ap- believe the MJ12 Documents are authentic. Friedman
peared to be brieng papers describing Operation Ma- examined the documents and has argued that the United
jestic Twelve.[3] The documents purported to reveal a States government has conspired to cover up knowledge
secret committee of twelve, supposedly authorized by of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft.[3]
United States President Harry S. Truman in 1952, and According to journalist Howard Blum the name Majestic
explain how the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell 12 had been pregured in the UFO community when
in 1947 had been concealed, how the recovered alien Bill Moore asked National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt in
technology could be exploited, and how the United States 1982 to collaborate on a novel called MAJIK-12. Because
should engage with extraterrestrial life in the future.[3][4] of this, Blum writes, Pratt had always been inclined to
Shandera and his ufologist colleagues Stanton T. Fried- think the Majestic 12 documents a hoax.[7]
man and Bill Moore say they later received a series of
anonymous messages that led them to nd what has been
called the Cutler/Twining memo in 1985 while search- 2 Alleged members
ing declassied les in the National Archives. Purporting to be written by General Nathan F. Twining to PresiThe following individuals were described in the Majestic
dent Eisenhowers assistant Robert Cutler and containing
12 documents as designated members of Majestic 12.[5]
a reference to Majestic 12, the memo is widely held to
be a forgery, likely planted as part of a hoax.[5] Historian
Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
Robert Goldberg wrote that the ufologists came to believe
Vannevar Bush
the story despite the documents being obviously planted
1

5 FURTHER READING
James Forrestal
Nathan F. Twining
Hoyt Vandenberg
Detlev Bronk
Jerome Clarke Hunsaker
Sidney Souers
Gordon Gray
Donald H. Menzel
Robert M. Montague
Lloyd Berkner

Popular culture

The Majestic 12 stories inspired the television series Dark

Skies[8] and have appeared as a plot element in The XFiles,[9] as well as in the Electronic Arts ARG 'Majestic'.
The 2005 video game Destroy All Humans! has the protagonist, an alien landed in 1950s rural America, ghting
agents of Majestic.
Alien abduction claimant Whitley Strieber wrote a novel
called Majestic in 1989 that focused on the origins of MJ12.[10]
MJ-12 is featured heavily in the Eidos Interactive game
Deus Ex, released on PC and Macintosh in 2000. The
game was later released on the PlayStation 2, and again
on the PlayStation 3.
In the comic book series Atomic Robo, Majestic 12 is
a top secret government agency tasked with weaponizing so-called Tesla-tech uncovered by the FBI in the
wake of Nikola Tesla's mysterious death. Founded by
President Truman, under the advice of Secretary of Defense Forrestal in 1947, Majestic 12 becomes Task Force
ULTRA after the events of Atomic Robo and the Savage
Sword of Dr. Dinosaur.

References

[1] Donovan, Barna William (2011-07-20). Conspiracy

Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious.
McFarland. pp. 107. ISBN 9780786486151. Retrieved
17 September 2014.

[4] Peter Knight (1 January 2003), Conspiracy Theories in

American History: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, pp.
490, ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9
[5] Kendrick Frazier, The Hundredth Monkey: And Other
Paradigms of the Paranormal, Prometheus Books, Publishers, pp. 338, ISBN 978-1-61592-401-1
[6] Brenda Denzler (2001), The Lure of the Edge: Scientic
Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs, University of California Press, pp. 190, ISBN 978-0-52093027-8
[7] Howard Blum (1 January 1991), Out there: the governments secret quest for extraterrestrials, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-66260-8
[8] Burnett, Robyn (2002). Crash Into Me: The World of
Roswell. ECW Press. pp. 16. ISBN 9781550225396.
Retrieved 18 September 2014.
[9] Delasara, Jan (2000-07-01). PopLit, PopCult and The
X-Files: A Critical Exploration. McFarland. pp. 167.
ISBN 9780786483327. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
[10] Joshi, S. T. (2007). Icons of Horror and the Supernatural:
An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares. Greenwood
Publishing Group. pp. 27. ISBN 9780313337819. Retrieved 18 September 2014.

5 Further reading
Stanton T. Friedman, TOP SECRET/MAJIC, 1997,
Marlowe & Co., ISBN 1-56924-741-2
Philip J. Klass, The MJ-12 Crashed Saucer Documents, Skeptical Inquirer, vol XII, #2, Winter 198788, 137-146. Reprinted (sans gures) as chapter 7
of The UFO Invasion.
Philip J. Klass, The MJ-12 Papers - part 2, Skeptical
Inquirer, vol XII, #3, Spring 1988, 279-289.
Philip J. Klass, MJ-12 Papers Authenticated"?,
Skeptical Inquirer, vol 13, #3, Spring 1989, 305-309.
Reprinted as chapter 8 of The UFO Invasion.
Philip J. Klass, New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax, Skeptical Inquirer, vol 14, #2, Winter 1990, 135-140.
Reprinted as chapter 9 of The UFO Invasion. Also
reprinted in The Outer Edge: *Classic Investigations
of the Paranormal, edited by Joe Nickell, Barry
Karr, and Tom Genoni, CSICOP, 1996.

[2] FBI - Majestic 12 Part 1 of 1. An FBI archive containing

details of Majestic 12. Retrieved April 10, 2011.

Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer, The Crashed Saucer

Forgeries, International UFO Reporter, March 1990,
4-12.

[3] Robert Alan Goldberg (1 October 2008), Enemies Within:

The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America, Yale University Press, pp. 189, ISBN 978-0-300-13294-6

Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies: a Chronicle of the

Flying Saucer Myth, 1994, Smithsonian Press, ISBN
1-56098-343-4, pp 264268.

3
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as
a Candle in the Dark, 1995, Random House, ISBN
0-394-53512-X, page 90.
Kathryn S. Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to
9/11. Chapter 6: Trust No One: Conspiracies and
Conspiracy Theories from the 1970s to the 1990s.
2009 Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19975395-6

External links
FBI site on Majestic 12
National archives memo on Cutler memo

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

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Majestic 12 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12?oldid=727070872 Contributors: Tarquin, Roadrunner, Shii, Edward, Nixdorf, Collabi, Wapcaplet, Notheruser, Emperor, Darkwind, Vzbs34, Vodex, Dysprosia, Tempshill, Bevo, Earthsound, AnonMoos, Chris
Rodgers, Pakaran, Finlay McWalter, Twang, DavidA, TMC1221, Wjhonson, Auric, Wereon, Seth Ilys, David Gerard, Tom harrison,
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Hairy Dude, RussBot, RyokoMocha, GusF, Hydrargyrum, Gaius Cornelius, Welsh, Nebogipfel~enwiki, Thiseye, Claudemonet~enwiki,
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7.3

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