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Majestic 12 - Wikipedia
Majestic 12 is a purported secret panel said to have been created in 1947 by President Truman to recover and study alien spacecraft—a narrative that rose to prominence in the 1980s when ufologists circulated documents such as a Truman-Forestall memo and an Eisenhower Briefing Document claiming a 12-member roster of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, a saga sparked when Jamie Shandera, aided by Stanton Friedman and Bill Moore, received materials about Operation Majestic-12 after a film was dropped through a mail slot, including a Cutler/Twining memo widely regarded as a forgery that referenced Majestic-12 and fed the hoax, with the FBI declaring the documents completely bogus and White House and National Security Council spokesmen denying any such organization, provoking internal ufology disputes about hoaxes versus disinformation, amid alleged promises of alien footage and beings by Richard Doty to Linda Moulton Howe but no verifiable material, and skepticism from investigators like Philip Klass and Brian Dunning, while a roster of named figures—Lloyd Berkner, Detlev Bronk, Vannevar Bush, James Forrestal, Gordon Gray, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Jerome Clarke Hunsaker, Donald Menzel, Robert M. Montague, Sidney Souers, Nathan Twining, and Hoyt Vandenberg—has been cited as members, though many experts view the MJ-12 story as a hoax that nonetheless left a lasting imprint on UFO lore.
