Majestic 12 documents

In December 1984 television producer Jaime Shandera, working with UFO researcher William Moore, received an envelope with no return address containing undeveloped 35 mm film. The negatives showed what looked like a 1952 top secret briefing for president elect Dwight Eisenhower. It described Operation Majestic 12, a committee of twelve scientists, military officers and officials, including Vannevar Bush and James Forrestal, supposedly created by President Truman in 1947 to handle the recovery of a crashed flying saucer and alien bodies near Roswell, New Mexico. Moore, Shandera and nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman spent two years checking the documents before releasing them in 1987.¹³

The papers caused a sensation, and more MJ-12 documents surfaced in later years. Skeptics, led by Philip Klass, found anachronistic date formats, typefaces and security markings, and showed that Truman's signature on an attached memo matched one on a real 1947 letter exactly, suggesting it was pasted in. The FBI investigated after receiving a copy in 1988, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations told it the documents were completely bogus. The National Archives found no record of such a committee.¹²