Mellon on the Majestic documents
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Speaker | Christopher K. Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (1999–2002) |
|---|---|
| Interview | With Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles, 2022 |
| Statement | The MJ-12 documents were "very controversial"; he had heard varying explanations, including that they were forgeries |
| Documents | Papers first circulated from December 1984 describing a secret 1947 committee on recovered alien craft |
| Official findings | FBI: "completely bogus" (1988); GAO: no evidence of executive-branch origin (1995) |
| Status | Generally regarded as forgeries arising from a 1980s deception campaign |
| Date | September 2022 |
| People | Christopher Mellon |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 209 |
| Year | 2022 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2022 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
In a 2022 interview with the journalist Linda Moulton Howe, the former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon said the Majestic 12 (MJ-12) documents were very controversial. He said he had heard varying explanations for them, including that they were forgeries.[1][7] The papers purport to describe a secret committee set up under President Truman in 1947 to handle recovered alien craft. The FBI called them "completely bogus" in 1988, and the General Accounting Office found no evidence in 1995 that they were genuine government documents.[3][4] Mellon's guarded answer is typical of the more cautious UAP advocates, who avoid relying on the documents.[1][2]
Mellon
Mellon worked for many years in defence and intelligence oversight.[2]
- Posts. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence from November 1999 under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. He was later minority staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
- Black programmes. He served on a Defense Department committee with oversight of special access programmes.[2]
- UAP advocacy. As an adviser to To the Stars Academy he helped bring about the 2017 New York Times report on the Pentagon's AATIP programme. He also helped supply the Navy UAP videos, and later wrote and lobbied for congressional action.[2]
The interview is on Howe's Earthfiles channel under the title "Linda interviews Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Asst. Sec. of Defense for Intelligence 1999–2002". The remarks on MJ-12 come about 18½ minutes in.[1][7] The video could not be checked for this article.
The MJ-12 documents
"MJ-12" first entered UFO lore in the early 1980s as part of a deception campaign. The earliest known reference, to "MJ Twelve", is in a 1981 document used to mislead the researcher Paul Bennewitz.[3]
- Doty's stories. Richard Doty and others, presenting themselves as Air Force intelligence officers, approached the ufologist Bill Moore. In 1983 Doty told the attorney Peter Gersten that a top-level group called MJ-12 was studying UFOs and recovering crashed alien craft.
- Howe's meeting. On 9 April 1983 Doty met Howe herself in Albuquerque. He told her the MJ-12 story was true and showed her documents purporting to describe grey aliens from Zeta Reticuli. The film and alien interview he promised never appeared.[3]
- The film roll. On 11 December 1984 Moore's colleague Jaime Shandera received an undeveloped roll of film in an envelope with a New Mexico postmark. It held an alleged Truman–Forrestal memo of 24 September 1947 authorising "Operation Majestic-12", and an "Eisenhower Briefing Document" dated 18 November 1952.
- Later batches. These included a "Cutler/Twining memo" found in the National Archives in 1985 after anonymous tips, a 1994 film roll and over 100 documents given to Tim Cooper.[3]
Several official bodies examined the papers.
- FBI, 1988. In 1988 the Air Force Office of Special Investigations passed a copy to the FBI. The Air Force confirmed on 30 November that no such committee had ever been authorised or formed, and the FBI declared the document "completely bogus".[3]
- GAO, 1995. In 1995, at congressional request, the GAO reported its findings. The Information Security Oversight Office, the Air Force and the National Archives knew of MJ-12 only from material sent in by private individuals. There was "no evidence that the material constituted actual documents which originated in the executive branch". Archivists had found nothing matching it, and the Air Force had determined that a 1980 message containing the words "MJ Twelve" was a forgery. Wikipedia dates the Bennewitz document to 1981.[4]
Researchers found other signs of forgery:[3]
- The signature. Truman's signature was identical to one on a genuine letter to Vannevar Bush of 1 October 1947. Philip Klass called it "a pasted-on photocopy".
- The date format. An idiosyncratic date format matched one in Moore's personal letters.
- Cutler's whereabouts. Robert Cutler was out of the country on the date of the Cutler/Twining memo.
Klass dismissed the idea that the papers were sophisticated disinformation as "ridiculous", given their many flaws. From 1989, people involved in the deception campaign confessed to fabricating MJ-12 material.[3] An Atlas Obscura account of how the FBI handled the documents could not be read for this article.[6]
Significance
Mellon's cautious comments fit the general approach of prominent UAP advocates. They tend to treat the MJ-12 papers as unreliable whatever their origin, and to rest their case on recent military sensor data and witness testimony instead.[1][2] The interviewer's own history added an irony to the exchange: Howe had been shown MJ-12 material by Doty in 1983.[3]
Other contested documents still shaped the debate in 2022. At the House Intelligence subcommittee's 17 May 2022 public hearing on UAP, Representative Mike Gallagher asked Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie whether he knew of the disputed Wilson–Davis notes. When Moultrie said he did not, Gallagher had them entered into the record by unanimous consent.[5]
People and topics
- Christopher Mellon — Former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who helped release the Navy UAP videos.
- MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
- Air Force Office of Special Investigations — The Air Force's criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency.
- Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
On the Timeline
- Mellon on off-the-books operation allegations (September 2022) — Mellon says there are many allegations of an off-the-books aerospace UAP operation.
- Mellon on conflicting insider claims (September 2022) — Mellon says credible people claim a cover-up, and equally credible people deny it.
See every 2022 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Majestic 12 file — FBI Vault · vault.fbi.gov · archived copy
References
- "Linda interviews Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Asst. Sec. of Defense for Intelligence 1999–2002", Earthfiles (YouTube) · youtu.be · archived copy
- Christopher Mellon — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- GAO, "[Comments on Majestic 12 material]" (Jul 1995) · gao.gov · archived copy
- "Davis–Wilson memo timeline", daviswilsonmemo.github.io · daviswilsonmemo.github.io · archived copy
- How the FBI debunked the MJ-12 papers — Atlas Obscura · atlasobscura.com · archived copy
- youtu.be · youtu.be · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Christopher Mellon”, “Majestic 12”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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.
No discussion yet.