Description

*tl;dr: Newly examined* *September 1947 entries* (https://figgy.princeton.edu/downloads/0854bca2-8bbd-40d2-bfea-ce37f76…) *in the* *Forrestal Diaries* (https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC051) *reveal: (1) Additional confirmation of the 24 September meeting between President Truman, Forrestal, and Dr. Vannevar Bush; (2) details of Bush and Forrestal urging Truman to form a small, expert advisory body shielded from political interference during this meeting; and (3) supporting details re: the National Security Council's inaugural meeting on 26 September 1947.*

September 1947 represented a pivotal moment in MJ-12's history. And while skeptics have long searched for inconsistencies in the Majestic documents, there are two key sets of facts related to MJ-12’s genesis that remain consistent throughout: (1) President Truman met with Defense Secretary Forrestal and Dr. Vannevar Bush on 24 September 1947, and (2) created MJ-12 at their recommendation during that specific meeting.

As previously mentioned (https://www.reddit.com/r/UFObelievers/comments/1m3eblt/mj12_corrobora…), independent corroboration via President Truman’s official appointment logs has established that these three individuals met on 24 September 1947. Here is the excerpt from Forrestal's diary (which notably reveals that Forrestal met with Dr. Bush before their meeting with President Truman):

Excerpt 1 - Source: see page 37 of this pdf: https:\/\/figgy.princeton.edu\/downloads\/0854bca2-8bbd-40d2-bfea-ce37f76b1437\/file\/7d26b07b-6b9e-470f-97f3-4c170e6a0881 (https://preview.redd.it/06ilahwch1if1.png?width=660&format=png&auto=w…)

That said, to my knowledge, researchers have not yet verified the second key fact cited in the Majestic documents, ie, that President Truman created MJ-12 *at the recommendation of both Dr. Bush and Forrestal.* So, my search continued down the rabbit hole that is the complete, uncensored Forrestal papers (https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC051), which have been available on Princeton's website since 2020, for any hints related to his work with MJ-12.

Below is a screenshot (https://figgy.princeton.edu/downloads/0854bca2-8bbd-40d2-bfea-ce37f76… Forrestal's recap of his meeting with Dr. Bush and President Truman on September 24th (note the original primary source below incorrectly states the meeting date as 25 September 1947):

Excerpt 2 - Page 39 of 50 of the pdf here: https:\/\/figgy.princeton.edu\/downloads\/0854bca2-8bbd-40d2-bfea-ce37f76b1437\/file\/7d26b07b-6b9e-470f-97f3-4c170e6a0881 (https://preview.redd.it/hlkcqkw7i1if1.png?width=689&format=png&auto=w…)

Reading between the lines, you might notice that everything that Dr. Bush and Forrestal are describing here, ie, the creation of a small, elite, technical advisory group outside political pressures — feels like a functional description of MJ-12, albeit in vague, coded language. The entry goes on to say that Bush argued the President would need a “professional body to protect him against the importunities of states and regions of the country on a political basis”, especially when it came to scientific funding decisions. Finally, note that Forrestal himself confirmed that he "supported this view" and provided his own additional examples to support Bush's argument.

I believe the vague use of the NSF Bill here was essentially a code or proxy if you will to disguise for the far more classified discussion on MJ-12. To my knowledge, I'm not aware that historians have examined Forrestal's diary entries through this lens. This info matters because it seems to corroborate the narrative alleged in the Majestic documents, ie, that on 24 September 1947 Dr. Bush and Forrestal recommended to President Truman that he should form a a small, elite, apolitical technical group to advise the President outside the normal political channels.

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26 September 1947 - Inaugural NSC Meeting

I want to call attention to Forrestal's diary entry regarding the inaugural NSC meeting which took place two days later. See below annotated in red. This is incredibly important information because it is the unfiltered raw intelligence straight from the Secretary of Defense's diary entry, recapping the first meeting EVER held by the National Security Council. There was a lot of precedent set in this meeting. This really was a pivotal moment for the MJ-12 group and for the intelligence community more broadly. Take a look into Forrestal's recap of the meeting and of his vision for how it should operate:

[Excerpt #3 \[Ibid, Page 43 of 50\]](https://preview.redd.it/z3td20ocn1if1.png?width=680&format=png&auto=w…)

Two big things here:

(1) Forrestal makes clear to President Truman that he is going to "call informal meetings of the members of the Council from time to time to prepare the agenda for the formal meetings with the President...in the interests of conserving his time" while simultaneously making sure to "look to Mr. Souers to report what transpired at these informal meetings to the President so that he would be at all times kept thoroughly informed of the running thread of even informal conversations." So, in other words, they are going to have meetings off the record that the President won't know about what they're doing officially (in the interest of "conserving his time"), but they will nonetheless have NSC Executive Secretary (and alleged MJ-8) Sidney Souers on hand at apparently all of these meetings so that he can report on them directly to the President.

(2) The group collectively "agreed that minutes of the ... Council should be kept but only in the form of recoding decisions ... excluding any record of the discussions or opinions leading up to those decisions." Nice precedent for plausible deniability....

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Finally, note that these excerpts were *not* taken from the sanitized Forrestal diaries originally published circa 1951. These are excerpts from the complete and original uncensored Forrestal Papers preserved in the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University, which were first published in microfilm in 2001, and released digitally in January 2020.