aka MJ-12, MAJI, MAJIC, Majority, Majesty

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Majestic 12 is the name of a super-secret UFO research group first headed by Vannevar Bush.

The members of the performance troupe were:

  • Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
  • Dr. Vannevar Bush
  • James Forrestal (replaced after his death by Gen. Walter Bedell Smith)
  • Nathan Twining
  • Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg
  • Dr. Detlev Bronk
  • Dr. Jerome Hunsaker
  • Rear Adm. Sidney Souers
  • Gordon Gray
  • Dr. Donald Menzel
  • Maj. Gen. Robert Montague
  • Dr. Lloyd Berkener

It is widely assumed that the group never existed as described in the fakebriefing documents sent to TV producer Jamie Shandera on a roll of undeveloped film. However as a hoax, it was fairly sophisticated. In some cases, the hoax revealed classified information which wasn’t yet public, such as the high-level security clearances of Donald Menzel, and the hoaxers demonstrated some degree of access to secure facilities (such as the memo found by Stanton Friedman in a classified area of the National Archives).

Whatever MJ-12 was, it’s performers had a subtle understanding of both the Intelligence Community and the Conspiracy Community. In other words, the hoax may have been a “real” secret operation, quite possibly with some ties to the U.S. government. However it was probably targeted not at researching UFO’s themselves but rather at researching the community of UFO researchers.

Majestic 12 was depicted most famously by the X-Files with Cancer Man and the dark room of shadowy, un-named conspirators. The X-Files version of this mythology followed an orthodox theory of alien takeover by means of genetic hybrids and human collaborators, somewhat similar to the beliefs of David Icke, but less manipulative and lizard-centric.

See also: NSC 5412/2 Special Group

References