John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

Type	Person
Also known as	President Kennedy, Kennedy
On the Timeline	10 events, 1961–2022

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (29 May 1917 – 22 November 1963), known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.^[1] He is not known to have spoken publicly about UFOs. He has nevertheless become a major figure in UFO lore, through disputed documents linking him to the alleged "Majestic 12" group and a theory that he was killed for seeking UFO secrets.^[2][3][4][5] A memo dated 12 November 1963, in which he supposedly asked the CIA for its UFO files, has not been found in his presidential papers. The "burned memo", which supposedly records CIA concern over his "inquiries", is regarded by most historians as fake.^[3][4]

Life and presidency

Kennedy was born into the prominent Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1940.^[1] In the Second World War he commanded PT boats in the Pacific. His survival after the sinking of PT-109, and his rescue of his crew, made him a war hero.^[1] He represented Massachusetts in the House from 1947 to 1953 and in the Senate from 1953 to 1960. In 1960 he narrowly defeated Richard Nixon to become, at 43, the youngest elected president and the first Roman Catholic president.^[1] His presidency saw the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty.^[1] He was assassinated on 22 November 1963.^[1]

The MJ-12 documents

"Majestic 12" is a supposed secret committee, said to have been formed under Truman to study crashed alien craft. It appears only in documents that are widely regarded as forgeries, beginning with a roll of film sent to Jaime Shandera in 1984.^[5] Several later documents, many supplied to the researcher Timothy Cooper from 1992, tie Kennedy to the group:^[2][5][6]

• June 1961 memo. An alleged one-page memo from Kennedy to the Director of Central Intelligence, dated 28 June 1961, requests a review of MJ-12 operations as they related to Cold War psychological warfare plans.^[2] In December 2022 a newly declassified calendar showed that the then CIA director, Allen Dulles, met Kennedy twice that day. Shellenberger's timeline notes this as possibly significant.^[6] Two further disputed papers dated 5 November 1961 claim to be a Dulles "operations review" of MJ-12 and a Special National Intelligence Estimate on "MJTWELVE". They mention six crash recoveries of "unidentified space vehicles". Hal Puthoff has said the estimate is legitimate.^[6] See Kennedy MJ-12 memo of June 1961.
• The "burned memo". In 1999 an anonymous source, who said he worked for the CIA from 1960 to 1974, sent Cooper a partly burned document he said he had pulled from a fire as the agency destroyed sensitive files.^[3][4] In it the CIA director, his name blacked out, writes: "Lancer [Kennedy's code name] has made some inquiries regarding our activities, which we cannot allow."^[3][4] Experts have never verified it, and most historians believe it is fake.^[3][4] See Burned Kennedy MJ memo.

The November 1963 memo

In 2011 the author William Lester, writing a book on Kennedy, published what he said was a top-secret memo dated 12 November 1963. In it Kennedy orders the CIA director to organise the agency's UFO intelligence files and debrief him on all "unknowns" by the following February.^[3][4] It also says: "It is important that we make a distinction between known and unknowns in the event the Soviets try to mistake our extended cooperation as a cover for intelligence gathering of their defense or space programs."^[4] Lester said he obtained it with two other letters from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act in about 2006 or 2007.^[3][4] He argued that Kennedy's interest arose from fear that Soviet UFO sightings would be mistaken for provocative U.S. aircraft, and from his interest in space.^[4]

Archivists doubted it. A research technician at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston said a search of the president's office files and the CIA, NASA and national security files found "no evidence of this memo or anything like it". Kennedy kept carbon copies of all his letters, including classified ones.^[3][4] The technician added: "Something is a little odd about it." It was "sanitized in very odd places", such as the director's name and the agency heading, and its "top secret" marking was in tiny print rather than the usual large stamp.^[3][4]

The earlier version of this article said that on 12 November 1963 Kennedy signed a genuine directive proposing space cooperation with the Soviet Union, and that the UFO memo with the same date surfaced in the 1990s. The sources read here do not cover the space directive. They date the UFO memo's appearance to Lester's book of 2010–11, not the 1990s, though Lester said it was released in 2006 or 2007.^[3][4]

Assassination theories

UFO conspiracy theories multiplied after Kennedy's assassination.^[5] In 1967 the New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison accused the UFO hoaxer Fred Crisman of involvement in the assassination. After that, UFO conspiracy theorists began to link Kennedy's death to aliens.^[5] Later writers developed the theme:^[5]

• Ray Palmer. In 1976 the pulp publisher claimed "a definite link between flying saucers, The Shaver Mystery, The Kennedy's assassinations, Watergate and Fred Crisman".
• Bill Cooper. In Behold a Pale Horse (1991) he claimed Kennedy was killed after he "informed Majestic 12 that he intended to reveal the presence of aliens to the American people".
• Jim Marrs. By 1997 he was linking the murder to a UFO conspiracy.
• The burned memo. Its promoters read it as evidence that the CIA killed Kennedy to protect UFO secrets.

Lester asked: "If Kennedy had gotten some level of control of this issue from NASA or the CIA, who's to say he wouldn't have disclosed that information to the American public?"^[3] Because most historians regard the burned memo as fake, the claimed link to a CIA plot "doesn't stick", as Space.com put it.^[4] No evidence connects Kennedy's death to UFOs.^[3][4][5]

Other links

The CIA photo interpreter Arthur Lundahl briefed Kennedy on the Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962.^[7] Some UFO researchers claim he also briefed presidents on UFOs, which is unconfirmed. The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, named after him, is the setting of a disputed 1971 UFO account.^[6] See Arthur Lundahl and presidential briefings and USS John F. Kennedy encounter (1971).

On the UAP Timeline

• Kennedy MJ-12 memo of June 1961 (28 June 1961) — An alleged Kennedy memo asks the CIA to review 'MJ-12' operations.
• Arthur Sylvester's "right to lie" remarks (29 October 1962) — A Pentagon spokesman defends withholding information when it's in the public interest.
• Torbitt Document (1970) — Author 'William Torbitt' claims a group ran counterintelligence for advanced aerospace programs.
• USS John F. Kennedy encounter (1971) (June/July 1971) — A Navy yeoman says the USS John F. Kennedy's systems failed during a UAP encounter in the Caribbean.
• Arthur Lundahl and presidential briefings (1994) — Researcher Grant Cameron says the CIA's Arthur Lundahl may have briefed presidents on UAP.
• Burned Kennedy MJ memo (23 January 1999) — An alleged JFK-era 'MJ' memo is sent to a researcher.
• Stephen Lovekin testimony (21 July 2003) — A White House communications specialist says he received UAP briefings.
• Bill Cooper and Behold a Pale Horse (2004) — Bill Cooper claims underground bases host cooperation between aliens and humans.
• Cape Canaveral Chronicles (3 December 2008) — An alleged former NASA employee claims a saucer landed near Kennedy Space Center.
• Dulles–Kennedy meeting of 28 June 1961 (17 December 2022) — A declassified calendar shows CIA chief Allen Dulles met President Kennedy on 28 June 1961.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “John F. Kennedy”, “UFO conspiracy theories”, “Arthur C. Lundahl”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.