Dr Detlev Bronk: an internationally known physiologist and biophysicist who was Chairman of the National Research Council and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Energy Commission. With Dr Edward Condon, Director of the National Bureau of Standards (who later headed the Air Force-sponsored UFO project at the University of Colorado), Bronk became a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of
the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Dr Vannevar Bush: recognized as one of America's leading scientists, he organized the National Defense Research Council in 1941 and the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1943, which led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. After the war Dr Bush became head of the Joint Research and
Development Board. As the Canadian Government scientist Wilbert Smith noted in a Top Secret memorandum (Chapter 10), Dr Bush headed a `small group' set up to investigate UFOs, which matter `is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb'. Could this `small group' have been `Majestic 12'? If so, Bush's background in co-ordinating top-secret intelligence research
projects - and his concern with the compartmental- ization of classified information - would have made him the ideal choice to head the group. In 1949, for instance, the US Intelligence Board, the co-ordinating body of all US Government intelligence agencies, commis- sioned Bush to recommend methods of linking all the intelligence bureaucracies, a move initiated by James Forrestal - coincidentally another alleged member of MJ-12.
James Forrestal: served as Secretary of the Navy before becoming Secretary of Defense in July 1947 (the time of the Roswell incident) - a position held until a mental breakdown led to his resignation in March 1949. He committed suicide at Bethesda Naval Hospital in May 1949. The MJ-12 briefing paper names General Walter Bedell Smith (see below) as his successor.
Gordon Gray: Assistant Secretary of the Army at the time MJ-12 was supposedly established, he became Secretary of the Army in 1949. In 1949 he was also appointed as SPecial Assistant to President Truman on National Security Affairs, and in 1951 directed the CIA's Psychological Strategy Board. (The latter is referred to in a 1952 directive to the National Security Council from CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith - see p. 401.) He was also adviser on national security matters to President Eisenhower in the last two years of his term of office, and was a chairman of the highly secret `54/12 Group' or `Special Group' formed in
the early years of the Eisenhower administration.
Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter: the third Director of Central Intelligence, from 1947 to 1950, and the first Director of the CIA, which was established in the same month as the supposed MJ-12 group - September 1947. Hillenkoetter was one of the first intelligence chiefs to make public his conviction that UFOs are real, and that `through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense' (Chapter 16). Hillenkoetter was also on the board of directors of the National Investigations Committee
on Aerial Phenomena, and was therefore in an excellent position to monitor the activities of this influential civilian group.
Dr Jerome Hunsaker: a brilliant aircraft designer who headed the Departments of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. His opinion on the materials recovered at Roswell would have been invaluable.
Dr Donald Menzel: Director of the Harvard College Observatorv, he is chiefly remembered for his dismissive statements and books on UFOs, all of which, he insisted, could be explained in mundane terms. The name of Menzel on the MJ-12 list came as a complete surprise, until Stanton Friedman learned that he had been a top-class expert in code-breaking (holding a Top Secret Ultra security clearance), had a lengthy association with the National Security Agency and its predecessor Navy group, and furthermore had been a consultant to several US Presidents on
national security affairs!" . General Robert Montague: base commander at the Atomic Energy Commission installation at Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, from July 1947 to February 1951.
Rear Admiral Sidney Souers: the first Director of Central Intelligence (January June 1946), who in September 1947 (when MJ-12 was allegedly set up) became Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. Following his resignation in 1959 Souers was retained as a special consultant to the Executive on security matters.
General Nathan Twining: an outstanding commander of bombing operations in both the European and Pacific theatres during the Second World War. In 1945 he was appointed Commanding-General of Air Materiel Command, based at Wright Field (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). A declassified document reveals that in September 1947 Twining presented the conclusions of AMC that `the phenomenon reported is something real' (see Chapter 14). Significantly, Twining suddenly cancelled a
planned trip to the West Coast on 8 July 1947, the day of the first press release announcing the recovery of a crashed disc near Roswell, `due to a very important and sudden matter'. Researcher William Moore has learned that while reporters were told that Twining was out of the office, `probably in Washington DC', he had in fact made a sudden trip to New Mexico, where he remained until 10 July.
The remaining member of the alleged MJ-12 panel was General Hoyt Vandenberg. Following a distinguished career in the Army Air Forces, he became the second Director of Central Intelligence in 1946, a position he held until May 1947. In August 1948, when a Top Secret `Estimate of the Situation' by the Air Technical Intelligence Center offered its opinion that UFOs were interplanetary, Vandenberg - Air Force Chief of Staff at the time - ordered the document to be burned (Chapter 14).
The most controversial and confusing aspect of the Roswell case centres around the claim by a number of military and civilian witnesses that not only were there three crash sites, but that alien bodies were discovered at two of them, and controversy surrounds the precise location of these sites. In the unauthenticated Top Secret memorandum cited earlier (not to be confused with the MJ-12 briefing-paper), Rear Admiral
Hillenkoetter allegedly stated that:
The recovery of unidentified planform aircraft in the state of New Mexico on 6 July 1947, ten miles northwest of Oscura Peak, and a debris field 75 miles northwest of the Army's 509th Atomic Bomb Group, Roswell Army Air Field, is confirmed. A subsequent capture of another similar craft 30 miles east of the Army's Alamogordo Army Air Field on 5 July 1947, has convinced the Army Air Forces S-2, Army G-2 and Navy ONI, that the craft and wreckage are not of US manufacture.
No reference is made in this document to the recovery of alien bodies, possibly because - assuming the document to be genuine - such information would have been restricted to those with an appropriate Top Secret-based compartmented access.
Major Jesse Marcel was quite certain that no bodies were among the debris he collected near Corona, and that whatever the object was it must have exploded above ground. In a recorded interview with Randle and Schmitt, Brigadier General Arthur Exon testified that in November 1947 he personally flew over two crash sites. At the second site - reported by Schmitt and Randle to be about 35 miles north-north-west of Roswell Army Air Field, based on dubious testimony (and not corroborated by Exon) - the main body of the craft apparently had come to rest. `They did say there were bodies,' said Exon. `They were all found, apparently,
outside the craft itself but were in fairly good condition. In other words, they weren't broken up a lot.'
Interestingly, although professing no knowledge of a `Majestic-12' group, Exon stated that, following the incident, a highly secret committee - which he referred to as the `Unholy Thirteen' - was set up under President Truman and controlled all access to the wreckage, bodies and all information thereon and, later, to all classified UFO reports. The committee members, he is quoted as having told Randle and Schmitt, included General Carl Spaatz, first US Air Force Chief of Staff; James Forrestal, then Secretary of War; and probably the Director
of the CIA, Rear Admiral Hillenkoetter. (General Exon has subsequently pointed out that he only suggested these names as possibilities.)
Stanton Friedman, who has devoted many years to studying the Majestic-12 affair, is convinced that the briefing-document contains significant information - not least, regarding the Roswell incident. According to the document, during the recovery of the debris 75 miles north-west of Roswell:
. . . aerial reconnaissance discovered that four small human-like beings had apparently ejected from the craft at some point before it exploded. These had fallen to earth about two miles east of the wreckage site. All four were dead and badly decomposed due to action by predators and exposure to the elements during the approximately one week time period which had elapsed before their discovery. A special scientific team took charge of removing these bodies for study . . .
Roswell Page 1!
Read actual reprinted storys from the Roswell Daily Record dated July 8th, and 9th 1947.