DIA source notes on fake MJ-12 papers (2004)

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Contents 7
DIA source notes on fake MJ-12 papers (2004)
Jacques Vallée
Jacques Vallée Photo: Cmichel67 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Date26 March 2004
TopicsSecrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
PeopleJacques Vallée, Eric W. Davis
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 156
Year2004 in UFO history
Timeline2004 on the UAP Timeline
Sources9

According to Jacques Vallée's journals, in March 2004 physicist Eric Davis received notes said to come from a source in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), stating that certain MJ-12 papers were fakes planted to mislead ufologists and describing a real secret programme behind them. The material has never been released.[1]

Davis

Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow talks during a press conference shortly after he and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver toured the…
Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow talks during a press conference shortly after he and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver toured the… Photo: Bill Ingalls · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Davis is a physicist who worked for Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science and for Hal Puthoff's EarthTech in Austin, and later advised the Pentagon-funded AAWSAP programme. The disputed "Wilson–Davis notes", presented as his record of a 2002 conversation with Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson about a secret contractor programme, surfaced in 2019.[1][2][3]

MJ-12

Portrait of President Harry S. Truman (ca. 1947).
Portrait of President Harry S. Truman (ca. 1947). Photo: National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Harry S… · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The Majestic 12 documents, which reached researchers from the 1980s, purport to describe a secret committee formed under President Truman to manage recovered alien craft. The FBI called them "completely bogus" in 1988, and researchers have found evidence of forgery. One theory holds that some were deliberate disinformation; in the late 1990s a former CIA expert on fake Soviet documents, hired at Puthoff's request, judged the "Eisenhower Briefing Document" to be an American disinformation document meant to fool the KGB.[2][4]

Assessment

Illustration of lights in formation over the landscape
Illustration: lights in formation over the landscape. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

If accurate, the 2004 notes would support the view that some MJ-12 papers were planted disinformation while implying a genuine programme existed. But the source was never identified, and the entry is one of several in which Davis is described as receiving inside information that has not been confirmed.[1][2]

People and topics

Dr. J. Allen Hynek (left) and Dr. Jacques Vallée (right).
Dr. J. Allen Hynek (left) and Dr. Jacques Vallée (right). Photo: United States Government · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
  • Defense Intelligence Agency — The Pentagon's military intelligence agency, which ran AAWSAP.
  • MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
  • Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
  • Eric W. Davis — Physicist who worked on AAWSAP and has said the U.S. holds recovered craft.
  • Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
  • Wilson–Davis notes — Wilson–Davis notes

On the Timeline

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Illustration: an observer watching the sky. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

See every 2004 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

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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