Hillenkoetter MJ-12 memo of 19 September 1947
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Attributed to | Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947–1950) |
|---|---|
| Alleged content | Recommends a presidential directive and a scientific study of recovered discs |
| Belongs to | The "Majestic" (MJ-12) papers, released in batches from 1984 |
| Assessments | FBI (1988): "completely bogus"; Philip Klass (1987–88): fraudulent |
| Hillenkoetter's real record | Genuine 1947 files concern the new CIA and psychological warfare, not saucers; NICAP board member 1957–1962 |
| Status | No verified government origin |
| Date | 19 September 1947 |
| Topics | Government programs (topic) |
| People | Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Jaime Shandera, Harry S. Truman, Philip Klass, Kevin Randle |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 38 |
| Year | 1947 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1947 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
The "Hillenkoetter memo of 19 September 1947" is a document attributed to Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It supposedly recommends a presidential directive and a scientific study of recovered discs.[1][7] It belongs to the Majestic, or MJ-12, papers, which the FBI declared "completely bogus" and which are widely regarded as forgeries.[1][3] Hillenkoetter's genuine correspondence from September 1947 deals with the new CIA and contains nothing about flying saucers.[4][5]
The MJ-12 papers
The MJ-12 papers arrived in several batches:[1][3]
- 1984. In December 1984 Jaime Shandera, a Los Angeles television writer-producer, received an anonymous roll of undeveloped 35 mm film. It held a "Truman–Forrestal memo" of 24 September 1947 and a seven-page briefing for President-elect Eisenhower dated 18 November 1952. The briefing named Hillenkoetter as the briefing officer and as "MJ-1".
- 1985. The "Cutler–Twining memo" of 14 July 1954 was found in the National Archives by William Moore and Shandera after an anonymous tip.
- 1990s. From 1992 the researcher Timothy Cooper said he was receiving more than 100 further documents. In 1994 an MJ-12 "Special Operations Manual" was sent to Don Berliner.
These later batches were promoted by Robert and Ryan Wood. The papers describe a secret committee of twelve scientists and officials, including Hillenkoetter, set up by President Truman to manage crashed-saucer recoveries.[1] A copy of the 19 September memo on a site promoting the documents could not be retrieved.[7]
Criticism
The FBI investigated the original briefing paper in 1988. After the Air Force Office of Special Investigations said no such committee had ever been authorised or formed, the FBI declared it "completely bogus".[1][2] Philip Klass's analysis in the Skeptical Inquirer found several problems:[3]
- Dates. Every date in the Hillenkoetter briefing used an "erroneous mixture" of military and civil formats, such as "18 November, 1952". This was "precisely the same style used by William L. Moore" in letters to Klass. The documents also used a leading zero ("01 August, 1950") that Moore adopted only in late 1983.
- Hillenkoetter's whereabouts. Hillenkoetter left the CIA for sea duty in 1950 and returned to the United States only in late 1951. That made him an odd choice to brief Eisenhower when Vannevar Bush, who supposedly organised the group, had stayed in the country.
- The Truman memo. Its format and worn typeface differed from authentic Truman memoranda of the time. Its vague wording was "un-Truman-like", and an authentic Truman signature could have been placed on bogus text using a photocopy.
- Moore's foresight. Moore had named Bush as "the logical choice" to run a crashed-saucer project in 1982, two years before the papers "confirmed" it.
Later analysts found that a supposed Hillenkoetter memo to Truman of 17 February 1948 copied the structure of a George Marshall letter to Roosevelt. They also found that Truman's signature on the 24 September memo was a pasted photocopy from an October 1947 letter.[1] The crash-retrieval researcher Kevin Randle, among others, has also documented problems with signatures, typefaces and anachronisms across the papers. The FBI's own Vault page on Majestic 12 refused automated access.[2]
Hillenkoetter's real record
Hillenkoetter (1897–1982) was Director of Central Intelligence from 1 May 1947 to 7 October 1950, the first director of the CIA created by the National Security Act of 1947.[5] The State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the emergence of the intelligence establishment prints his genuine correspondence from that autumn. It includes memoranda to and from Hillenkoetter on psychological and political warfare and the new agency's organisation, and nothing about flying saucers.[4]
After retiring from the Navy in 1957, Hillenkoetter sat on the board of the civilian UFO group NICAP until 1962. Its director, Donald Keyhoe, had been his Naval Academy classmate.[5] In a 1960 letter to Congress, reported in The New York Times, he wrote: "Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs." MJ-12 supporters often cite the statement.[5] A CIA reading-room document listed among the sources showed only the reading room's front page when retrieved.[6]
Status
The memo is best treated as part of a disputed set of documents with no verified government origin.[1] Its attribution to Hillenkoetter rests on the same MJ-12 papers that the FBI and independent analysts found to be fabricated. His documented record from 1947 shows no involvement with saucers.[1][3][4]
People and topics
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- Roscoe Hillenkoetter — First Director of Central Intelligence (1947–50) and later NICAP board member; named in the disputed MJ-12 papers.
- MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
- Jaime Shandera — TV producer who received the MJ-12 film in 1984.
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd U.S. president (1945–53), in office during the first flying disc wave and the start of official UFO studies.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
- Philip Klass — Aviation journalist and leading UFO skeptic.
- Kevin Randle — Roswell researcher and author of many books on crash-retrieval claims.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
On the Timeline
- War Department denial of a U.S. disc program (1947) (19 August 1947) — The War Department says it knows of no U.S. program that could explain the flying discs.
- Twining memo (1947) (23 September 1947) — Gen. Nathan Twining writes that the flying discs are real and could be a secret U.S. or Soviet project.
See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Majestic 12 file — FBI Vault · vault.fbi.gov · archived copy
References
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Majestic 12", FBI Vault · vault.fbi.gov · archived copy
- Philip Klass, "The MJ-12 crashed-saucer documents", Skeptical Inquirer (1988) (PDF) · centerforinquiry.s3.amazonaws.com · archived copy
- Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945–1950: Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, chapter 7, Office of the Historian · history.state.gov · archived copy
- Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- CIA reading room document · cia.gov · archived copy
- majesticdocuments.com · majesticdocuments.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Majestic 12”, “Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter”, 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.
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