MJ-12 Fifth Annual Report

MJ-12 Fifth Annual Report

Claims to be	A report of the "President's Special Panel" on the MAJESTIC TWELVE project, around 1952
Copy examined	A 15-page photocopy (pages numbered 2–16) posted on majesticdocuments.com
Main claims	Two craft crashed in New Mexico in July 1947; five bodies recovered; a retrovirus from the bodies; later UFO incidents up to 1951
Latest events mentioned	Early to mid-1951
Origin	Part of the "Majestic documents" circulated by private researchers in the 1990s; no government source
Status	Unauthenticated; the MJ-12 papers are generally regarded as fabrications
Date	1952
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic)
People	Harry S. Truman, Jaime Shandera, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ryan Wood
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 44
Year	1952 in UFO history
Timeline	1952 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	4

The "MJ-12 Fifth Annual Report" claims to be a report of about 1952 from the Majestic-12 group, the alleged secret committee formed under President Truman to deal with crashed flying saucers.^[1][4] It describes the July 1947 crash of two craft in New Mexico and the recovery of five bodies. It also describes the deaths of four technicians contaminated by the bodies and a string of later "UFO" incidents, and it recommends support for the MAJESTIC-12 project.^[4] Like the rest of the "Majestic documents", it has no confirmed government source and surfaced through private researchers.^[1][3]

The document

The copy on majesticdocuments.com is a scanned photocopy of fifteen typed pages, numbered from 2 to 16. The cover page is not included.^[4]

• Origin of the panel. It presents itself as the report of a panel that, "with your directive... of 9 July 1947", carried out "a two month exploratory mission concerning the reality of other-world visitation". The panel was assisted by advisers from the State, Treasury, War and Navy departments and reviewed about 1,200 memoranda and intelligence reports.
• Conclusions. No country could have produced the craft. The objects were "interplanetary in nature", and their occupants were "in most respects, human or human-like".
• Intelligence files. It cites a "MAJESTIC SERIES" of exploitation reports. It says the panel's work had produced "at least 8,973 items" for military intelligence files, of which 2,764 had been published by December 1950.^[4]

The report's account of the 1947 events runs as follows:^[4]

• The sites. One craft hit the ground at a sharp angle and came to rest at "Site LZ-2", for which coordinates are given. It was described as the remains of a "rocket-plane" or "powered glider", with "a magnetic drive propulsion powered by a fusion reactor of sorts" and no wiring, fuel systems or control surfaces. A second craft impacted almost vertically at another site.
• The ranch debris. It attributes the debris "discovered on 2 July 1947, by a local rancher" to a mid-air collision with "an X-plane", another unidentified object, or both. It says a Project Mogul balloon recorded a high-altitude explosion on 4 July 1947.
• The bodies. There were "five recovered bodies". Two were found in "a severely damaged escape cylinder" and three some distance away, apparently killed by sudden decompression. Their autopsies are said to be covered in a separate study.
• The technicians. Four technicians who handled the bodies were said to have died of seizures and profuse bleeding, with tissue samples kept at Fort Detrick.
• A retrovirus. Samples from the bodies were said to have yielded "a retro-virus not totally understood", promising "the ultimate BW weapon".

The annexes give a chronology and a list of incidents.^[4]

• Founding. It dates the group's founding to an executive order of 24 September 1947.
• A December 1950 crash. A crash near El Indio–Guerrero on the Texas–Mexico border on 6 December 1950 was supposedly recovered by "Project STORK and MOON DUST" teams.
• Spellman. It reports a meeting between Cardinal Francis Spellman and the President about religious speculation.
• Well-known cases. It retells Flight 19's loss in December 1945 as an encounter with "a phenomenon of celestial nature", and Captain Thomas Mantell's fatal 1948 chase as destruction by "the propulsion wash of the object's exhaust".
• Atomic plants. It describes UFO overflights of atomic plants such as Oak Ridge in October 1950.

Its latest dated events fall in 1951, consistent with its claimed date.^[4]

The Majestic documents

The MJ-12 story began on 11 December 1984. That day the documentary maker Jaime Shandera received an anonymous roll of film showing an alleged 1947 Truman–Forrestal memo and a 1952 briefing paper for President-elect Eisenhower.^[1]

• Origins. The concept had grown out of a deception campaign against UFO researchers in the early 1980s.
• FBI, 1988. After the Air Force confirmed that no such committee had existed, the FBI declared the Eisenhower document "completely bogus".
• Signs of forgery. Researchers found a photocopied Truman signature and a date format matching Bill Moore's letters.^[1]
• Cooper's documents. A second, larger set began reaching the researcher Timothy S. Cooper in 1992: over 100 documents in all. Karl Pflock wrote that he suspected Cooper of writing bogus documents himself.^[1]

Robert and Ryan Wood, reportedly funded by the internet entrepreneur Joe Firmage, set out to authenticate these "new" documents by searching real archives. They posted them on majesticdocuments.com.^[3] Writing in Lobster magazine, the researcher Martin Cannon called the Cooper documents "phonies". He also called the original MJ-12 papers fakes "of a different sort".^[3]

In the National Archives the Woods found a genuine Joint Chiefs of Staff "Joint Logistic Plan for MAJESTIC", dated September–October 1952. Cannon pointed out that it was a war plan against the Soviet Union and "makes no reference to UFOs". He argued that whoever invented the MJ-12 myth had probably borrowed the name of a real classified project, which would explain why requests about "MAJESTIC" ran into national-security refusals.^[3] An Atlas Obscura account of the FBI's handling of the papers could not be read for this article.^[2]

Assessment

Most researchers, including many who believe in a crash-retrieval cover-up, regard the MJ-12 papers as hoaxes, or possibly as intelligence disinformation aimed at UFO investigators.^[1][3] The Fifth Annual Report is posted on majesticdocuments.com, the site that Cannon described as devoted largely to the Cooper material.^[3] There is no record of its existence in any government archive, and it exists only as a photocopy of uncertain provenance.^[1][4] It also folds together many of the best-known UFO stories of the 1940s and 1950s, from Roswell and Mantell to Flight 19, and gives each a dramatic hidden explanation.^[4] The earlier version of this article noted that analysts have pointed to wording, formatting and technical details that do not fit 1952. It is included here because it has been widely circulated and discussed, not because it has been authenticated.

People and topics

• MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
• Harry S. Truman — 33rd U.S. president (1945–53), in office during the first flying disc wave and the start of official UFO studies.
• Jaime Shandera — TV producer who received the MJ-12 film in 1984.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower — 34th U.S. president, named in the MJ-12 briefing document.
• Ryan Wood — Researcher who published the Majestic documents with his father Robert Wood.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Project Moonstruck brain-stimulation claim (1952) — An alleged CIA project is said to study long-range brain stimulation by radio frequencies.
• Wright-Patterson guard and the tarp-covered craft (1952) (1952) — A former guard is said to have seen a tarp-covered craft taken into a secure area at Wright-Patterson.

See every 1952 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Majestic 12”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.