Eisenhower Briefing Document
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📄 Document
Contents 6
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| Type | Document |
|---|---|
| On the Timeline | 1 event, 1999 |
The Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) is a seven-page document marked "Top Secret/Eyes Only", dated 18 November 1952, that claims to be a briefing for President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower about "Majestic 12", a secret group set up to deal with recovered alien spacecraft. It surfaced in 1984 and is the best-known of the "MJ-12" papers. The FBI and most researchers regard it as a hoax.[1]
How it surfaced
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On 11 December 1984 television producer Jaime Shandera received an anonymous package through his letterbox containing an undeveloped roll of 35 mm film, postmarked in New Mexico. It arrived shortly after a phone call from his research partner, UFO author William Moore. When developed, the film showed the EBD and a memo supposedly from President Harry Truman to Defense Secretary James Forrestal authorising the group. [1]
Contents
The document describes the 1947 Roswell incident as the crash of an alien craft and mentions a second alleged crash in 1950 near El Indio and Guerrero in Mexico; an investigation by Tom Deuley for the Mutual UFO Network found no evidence of such a crash. It names twelve "designated members", including scientist Vannevar Bush, Forrestal, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, General Nathan Twining and astronomer Donald Menzel.[1][2]
FBI investigation
In September 1988 an Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent passed a copy of the MJ-12 papers to the FBI's Dallas office. On 30 November 1988 the Air Force reported that no such committee had ever been authorised or formed, and the FBI called the document "completely bogus" and closed its inquiry.[1][3]
Analysis
Skeptic Philip Klass argued that the date format used in the papers was not used in government documents of the time but appeared widely in Moore's personal notes, and that the Truman signature was a photocopy pasted from a genuine memo of 1 October 1947 to Vannevar Bush. Nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman defended the papers' authenticity for many years and debated Klass on ABC's Nightline in 1987, though he also helped show that some later MJ-12 documents were fakes.[1][4]
On the UAP Timeline
- Jim Westwood's MJ-12 disinformation theory (1 January 1999) — A former CIA consultant suggests the MJ-12 briefing document was a fake to fool the KGB.
References
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Donald Howard Menzel — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Majestic 12", FBI Records: The Vault (archived) · web.archive.org · archived copy
- Philip J. Klass, "The MJ-12 Crashed-Saucer Documents", Skeptical Inquirer (1988) · skepticalinquirer.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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