Majestic 12, also known as MJ-12, is a highly secretive and mysterious organization that has long been the subject of conspiracy theories and speculation. Said to have been established by US President Harry Truman in the wake of the infamous Roswell incident in 1947, MJ-12 is rumored to be a shadowy group of government officials and scientists tasked with investigating and concealing the truth about extraterrestrial life.
Evidence of the existence of this organization has remained elusive over the years, and of course there has been no official confirmation. But the question has to be asked: is MJ-12 extremely well hidden, or is there simply nothing to find?
Who Has Seen Them?
This is what makes Majestic 12 so secret. Despite their existence having been leaked over 30 years ago, none of the members of the Majestic 12 have ever been spotted in public. Aliens themselves are a more common sight.
The possibility of the group’s existence entered public knowledge on May 31, 1987, when a British ufologist called Timothy Good claimed to possess a batch of 1950s-era UFO documents. These documents revealed a secret group of 12 that had been formed in 1947. The documents detailed how the group had covered up the Roswell crash in July 1947 and how the US had been engaging with aliens ever since.
It was claimed that these documents had first been discovered in 1984 when another ufologist, Jaime Shandera, received an envelope containing film that showed photographs of government briefing papers that described “Operation Majestic 12”. Throughout the 1980s leading ufologists claimed to find more and more evidence of MJ-12’s existence.
Much of the testimony in support of the existence of MJ-12 comes from eye-witnesses, who refer to mysterious and unidentified government representatives who appear after alien encounters. These men, dressed in black suits (hence the “Men in Black” that this rumor has morphed into in popular entertainment) seek to restrict information and control evidence.
Shandera, Stanton T. Friedman, and Bill Moore claimed to have received a series of mysterious messages that led them to the declassified files section of the National Archives. In these archives, they found the “Cutler/Twining Memo”. This memo, supposedly written by President Eisenhower’s assistant, Robert Cutler, to General Twining contains a reference to Majestic 12.
What Did They Do?
One of the big problems with the Majestic 12 conspiracy theory is that it’s all a little vague. Lots of people claim to have been visited, or abducted, or mind wiped by the men in black, but no one seems to have officially interacted with MJ-12. They’re too secretive.
As such it’s not terribly clear what MJ-12 is actually meant to be doing. Believers in the conspiracy theory believe that the committee is responsible for covering up any and all evidence of extraterrestrial visitation and controlling the release of said evidence to the public. Essentially, every time a UFO turns out to be a wayward weather balloon, it’s MJ-12’s handiwork.
These people also believe that it’s MJ-12s job to recover and analyze crashed UFOs and the alien bodies found within. They then supposedly use their findings to develop secret technologies based on alien tech.
Are Majestic 12 Real?
The answer to this likely depends on how much one trusts the government. The supposed “evidence” has been widely and repeatedly debunked. Various historians have claimed that the documents found at the national archives were obvious forgeries and were likely planted as a part of an elaborate hoax.
For a start, records show that Cutler was out of the country on the day he supposedly wrote the memo. The Eisenhower signature on the memo is also clearly fake. It appears to be a pasted-on photocopy of a signature from another memo and even includes the original’s accidental scratch marks.
Even the FBI got involved after two of its offices received copies of the documents in 1988. They agreed with the conclusions of debunkers such as Philip J. Klass that the documents were part of a hoax and wrote them off. Likewise, the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations declared that MJ-12 never existed and that the documents were all fake. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Not everyone agrees with the debunkers, however. Despite the fact that by the late 80s, most prominent ufologists had given up on MJ-12, some still hold out. They believe it’s all part of a disinformation campaign by the government in an attempt to hide the existence of extraterrestrials. As is common with any conspiracy theory, the more MJ-12 is debunked, the more fervent its believers become.
Overall, the Majestic 12 conspiracy theory seems easy to debunk. The “evidence” that proves their existence is simply too shoddy to be believable. There’s also the troubling fact that Bill Moore (one of the ufologist ringleaders) once admitted to contemplating creating and releasing hoax documents as a way to encourage leaks of real conspiracies.
In the end, this conspiracy has the same fatal flaw that all UFO-related conspiracy theories have had recently. In the last few years, the US has released hundreds of documents related to UFO sightings that all but admit world governments have been tracking UFOs for decades. At the same time, various high-profile military leaders have come out as believing in aliens and UFOs.
In short, anyone looking for evidence that we are not alone should ignore anything to do with Majestic-12 and just look at the official documents that are publicly available. They’re far more convincing than anything these conspiracy theorists have “uncovered’.
Top Image: The truth about the existence of Majestic 12 has yet to be fully proven, but recently released US Government information on UFO tracking suggests they do not. Source: Adin / Adobe Stock.
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