September 29, 2021 • 42 mins
When the US government confirmed it had been secretly monitoring reports of UFOs for years, the news caught many people by surprise. However, for some members of the UFOlogy community, this was just another smokescreen disguising the truth: aliens are real, Uncle Sam met with them, and decades ago the President formed a secret group of scientists, politicians and military officials to figure out what to do next. The name of this strange brain trust? Majestic 12.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our compatriot Matt is
on adventures, but we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission
controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Longtime listeners, you know, we've been at this
(00:46):
for a while and every so often we run into
an episode that we can't believe we haven't covered yet.
One thing Matt pointed out a while back that that
I always loved thinking about was that this show has
become like one long conversation. So sometimes Matt Nolan, I
(01:07):
won't know if we've done an episode on something. We'll
think we have because we've talked about it at length,
just hanging out or on another episode or off air
at our favorite local bar. Right and favorite local bar,
the local the local yes, yes, uh? And don't blow
up the spot if you go to Atlanta You're more
than welcome to tell them we send to you, but
(01:29):
but don't don't tell everybody because we love the chicken
wings there. So, we were researching a secret project, and
we're researching some of the latest revelations about the US
government's uh secret obsession with UFOs that they totally lied
about for years. Uh And then no, I knew it
as something strange. We had talked about other alleged and
(01:50):
proven secret investigations of this sort, but there's there's one
we never dove into, and this is a story familiar
to a lot of our ufologists in the crowd. It's funny,
I was thinking back, I'll just try and figure out
when I first heard of this, this story, this phenomenon,
and it's actually from my old hip hop days. There's
(02:11):
a cannabis song called Channel zero. I don't know if
have you ever listened to cannabis. No. It's funny that
when I was reading the the outline, I saw a
mention of a cannabis song and I thought it was
some sort of like cannabis themed folk song from your youth,
like you know, like a like a pizza song or
a spohetti song, you know, like it was cannabis No,
I'm not familiar with the hip hop artist cannabis Us
(02:35):
though for the for the name, I'm not gonna it's great.
It's a different time. It was a different time. He
did a he did a lot of this tracks. Who's
known for his dense lyrical word play and his his
also his love of conspiracy theories. But if you hadn't
heard that song, you're not in the world of UFOs.
You may not be aware of this story. So here
(02:56):
you go, Folks. Forget Project blue Book or the latest
release about U A p. S. From Uncle Sam. For
some people in the UFO community, the real investigation starts
and stops with a single shadowy cabal, as secret elite
group of military officers and politicians and scientists known as
(03:16):
the Majestic Twelve or m J m J twelve. So
here are the facts. First, le band beat me here,
Paul the badger is out of the bag in a
big game way. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's true.
If you've ever listened to any of our earlier reports
or videos, you're very much aware of the US government
has been extensively collecting reports of unexplained aerial phenomenon for
(03:41):
many many years, and you know, like the government does,
they will likely continue to do so um without you know,
cluing us the public. And even that release that you mentioned,
Ben was kind of you know, the one that was
tailor made for consumption of US civilians. And likely there's
another one that's much, much, much more interesting that we
will never ever see. But it did contain some alarming revelations,
(04:05):
first and foremost of which was the explicit statement that
some of the sightings appeared to be controlled my some
kind of intelligent force. Um. It also noted that some
of the evidence might show that objects beyond the current
technological grasp of humanity might also be involved in this
is not to say just the United States, but literally
(04:25):
beyond the comprehension of anything that we as humans anywhere
in the world h could possibly understand or let alone build.
Um Like ever, Yeah, that's that's the spooky part. Of course,
being a government report, they spend a lot of time
asking for more money. Uh. The classified report that was
published in step with this one that only went to
(04:48):
Congress is much longer, We know that much, and it
goes into many more details. But it was so weird
for this thing to come out when it the timing
was either perfect or hilariously unfortunate, because everybody who has
survived the past few months or so, you know, all
(05:10):
the stuff that went down, protests moved across this country.
In the world, natural disasters are accelerating, there's a global
pandemic that just does not show signs of stopping. And
so many people were likely less interested in this report
than they may have been in less turbulent times. But
I love the idea. I love the way that the
(05:30):
internet treated this. It came out and people just sort
of shrugged and said, all right, yeah, aliens, fine that
makes sense. I got a lot of other stuff going on,
but fine, aliens, It's true. The Internet is a big place,
and so is the world of conspiracies, and many of them,
you know, like we talked about all the time, are
you know, provable? The government definitely is lying to us,
and uh, there's no reason to believe this isn't the
(05:52):
case here as well. But you know, it's sort of
like you start watching a TV series. You like it,
it's a good one, maybe get three four EPISO so
it's in, But then another shiny new one kind of
catches your attention and you move on. Uh, And sometimes
it's a while before you come back to that one.
But we are coming back to this one in a
big way. Um. Again, no one has officially claimed there's
any evidence of aliens, extraterrestrials or tiny, little green, great
(06:16):
gazoo type men. Um. Instead, the focus has seemed to
be more practical, uh, in terms of threat evaluation. Are
these sightings a threat? If so, a threat by whom?
Who are they targeting? Um? And these are two very
important questions that, at least in the public sphere, have
seemed to become the focus of recent investigations. Unlikely you're
(06:38):
going to remain the primary motivations for similar investigations in
the future, at the very least on the part of
the government, as in so far as we know. Yeah. So,
if you look at it and you get past some
of the exciting window dressing, and you get past those
two big revelations we just mentioned about appearing to be
intelligent or steered by some sort of intelligence, and you
(07:01):
get past the revelation that humans possibly don't know what
technology is involved, it makes sense that these sorts of
investigations would continue because it's a matter of national security.
It's controlling airspace. It's all the mundane but very important
work that factions of the government do every day. But
make no mistake, fellow conspiracy realist. Ufologists often claim secrets
(07:27):
about the US government and UFOs in general do remain
hidden in the modern day. And the thing is that
they're right at some levels. They're right. There is that
classified report. It was released to Congress, and it has
much more than the ordinary American citizen was able to breed.
The belief in a government UFO team up, a conspiracy, collab,
(07:51):
a collapse, spiracy will works up. That is okay, all right,
thank you, you're too kind. This is uh, this has
long been ingrained in American consciousness ever since the UFO
creeze of the nineteen forties. Uh, stay tuned, by the
way for our upcoming episode on Men in Black. That's when, uh,
(08:14):
you know, before Matt headed out on his his short adventure,
that's one of the ones that he really wanted to
be here for. We gave him, we gave him the choice,
like Majestic twelve, Men in Black choose one no hesitation,
no hesitation. So we're looking belt kind of situation and
it kind of was yeah, and our leather trench coats
I think looked good. I think it was a question
(08:36):
real quickly. But how does Morpheus a sunglasses stay on?
I've never understood. I know you can like buy them,
but is it like just out of sheer matrix magic?
The only wears those when he's in the matrix. But
I'm not mistaken, right, he's a digital avatar, so if anything,
he could have gotten crazier with it. But uh, but
this this idea, the idea that a government and some
(08:58):
kind of extra treshial force could be interacting in some level,
it's so ingrained that it has reached the level of
modern folklore. And this is where we get to one
less well known piece of UFO conspiracy folklore. It's the
idea that there is some shadowy cabal working in secret
to manage government relationships with extraterrestrials. In this theory, aliens
(09:23):
are real. The government knows about it and has interacted
with them, and to some degree. You know, sometimes they
rolled heavy with each other, sometimes they've had tents one
off encounters. But for some reason or another, Uncle Sam
absolutely does not want the public to know what's going down. Now,
have you you've probably heard of stuff like this before,
(09:45):
right now, Okay, Um, so this is a twofold question,
I suppose, like I have I heard of the existence
of this group in particular? Yeah, I've definitely heard of it.
You guys did videos on this before I was involved
in the show to the degree that I am today.
But of course, I mean the notion that there is
some group of whether it be researchers or scientists that
(10:08):
are behind the scenes working with and or against the extraterrestrials,
whether this is a threat assessment situation, or whether we
are trying to harness you know, craft that have been
recovered in almost um, like the X Files movie kind
of way, or maybe like a Independent Stay kind of way. Absolutely,
I mean this is you know, made its way, like
you said, Ben, into the folklore of UFOs, which is
(10:31):
a really great point that we talked about with Roderick Martin. Um,
the idea of UFOs being kind of modern day folklore.
Oh yes, yeah, very much so. And this is where
the rubber hits the road, where the unobtanium hits the engine,
however you want to phrase it. Here's where it gets crazy.
So let's talk about the legend. First, someone ask you
(10:54):
what is Majestic twelve. We're gonna tell you. Get ready,
you know, track, open a beer or your favorite recreation
of choice. Take a seat. Here's the pitch. Majestic twelve
is a code name for top secret committee that was
formed in nineteen to advise on the recovery of alien spacecraft,
(11:15):
the best ways to investigate them, and how, perhaps most importantly,
to reverse engineer that technology. That's right. Also, the President
is involved, he knows about this. Again. In the framework
of this conversation, they also gave the president advice on
how to handle interactions with extraterrestrials, how to generate a
(11:38):
cover up, um to explain away all of these UFO sittings,
and potentially how to do a kind of slow reveal
of the truth to the public so as not to
cause panic, you know, or or alarm. Yeah. Yeah, this
sort of thing, this shadowy think tank is supposedly so secret,
(12:01):
like above what you would consider top secret, above the
idea of compartmentalized information. Apparently it is so off the
books that the people involved and we'll talk about them
in a little bit. Uh, despite being prominent scientists, public figures, politicians,
lauded military officials. Not a one of them ever spoke
(12:21):
about this during their entire lifetime, And according to some theories,
in J twelve continues today, and it's continuing as kind
of a hybrid between a secret society and a brain trust.
I mean, by this point, you know, if it's still around,
they might even have like a few aliens in the squad.
They might have had some some new hires, you know, well, sure,
(12:42):
I mean this is sort of this is is this
not kind of the partially the prototype for the idea
of the Men in Black and that's its own thing,
but it's a similar kind of posse. You know, it's
like the idea that you know, the Men in Black
in the movie they had aliens that were friendlies that
would hang out in the lab, you know, and they
had a registration sis them, you know, they had certain laws.
(13:02):
So if this is a real thing, it would be
so huge that it's tough to imagine how it could
be kept secret. And given let's just assume that's true
and it's real, if it's such a hush hush secret organization,
then how on Earth or in space are we able
to talk about it on a podcast today? We're gonna
pause for word from our sponsors, who may or may
(13:24):
not be aliens, and then we're going to start cracking
down and breaking apart the mystery of m J twelve. So,
like we said at the break, I hope you had
a good break. By the way, uh, top secret, above
top secret, not the website, but actually above top secret.
(13:46):
You've got these guys. I think we're nice enough guys,
but we don't have security clearances. We're talking about this
on a publicly available, free podcast. How did that happen?
When we answer this question, it also helps us examine
the true origins of Majestic twelve, and it gets us
closer to actually solving the mystery, which spoiler alert may
(14:07):
not work out the way we'd all like it too.
So here's how the story goes, And here's this story
that in terms of how we know about MJ twelve today.
Once upon a time, back in the day, there was
a documentary producer and author named Jamie Shandera, and Jamie
(14:29):
Shandera received an anonymous envelope slipped through his male slot
classic beginning of a good X Files episode. That's right.
The envelope was postmarked from an address in New Mexico
and contained nothing but an undeveloped role of thirty five
millimeter film. And thankfully Shandera had a pal who knew
(14:50):
how to develop film. Um, this was back in the
day where people like still had dark rooms in their homes.
I'm sure some people are still into analog photography, but
definitely wouldn't have been a as common. Um. So he
took it to his friend William bill Moore, who was
a conspiracy researcher and more developed the film and discovered
that it contained photos of eight pages of what they
(15:11):
discovered to be classified documents. Uh. And these files, if legitimate,
we're telling a story, a top secret story, a history
in fact of the Roswell cover up. Yeah. So here's
what these photographs of these documents say. It turns out
that if these things are legit, Uncle Sam was publicly
(15:33):
dismissing the vast majority of UFO sightings, and they were
quick to launch investigations that explain those sightings away as
mundane causes, right, weather, balloons, weird ice in the sky,
stuff like that. But these documents said there was a
hidden strategy at play. They date back to nineteen fifty
(15:53):
two and they appear to be You can read these online.
They appear to be a briefing from Director of the
CIA for then President Eisenhower, and it describes several different
UFO incidents from about into the nineteen fifties, and then
it says, hey, Eisenhower, you know the guy who had
(16:14):
the job before you, President Truman. He knew that extraterrestrials
were real, he knew they posed an existential threat, and
he came up with the idea of this thing we
call of this group. We're going to tell you about.
Its twelve government officials and it's their job to investigate
and figure out what the heck is going on. Yeah,
(16:36):
and government speak. I guess you could consider this to
be a committee or, like you said at the top,
some sort of think tank or brain trust. Like brain trust,
it makes me think of like Crang the brain from
the teenage meeting Ninja Turtles cartoons. But I digress. Um.
So this brain Trust group Committee Um included members of
the military and scientists who were trying to figure out
(16:56):
They were tasked with figuring out not just how to
respond to the crash at Roswell, but how to deal
with other alien incursions that would likely doubtlessly even UM
happen in the not too distant future. This was like,
you know, acknowledging this is a new threat. This is
something we're going to have to figure out just the
same way we are foreign powers, UM, how to deal
(17:19):
with them on both the diplomatic level and also just
on preparedness level in terms of you know, defending ourselves. UM.
This document has also become known as the Eisenhower Briefing
and UM. In addition to describing the purpose of the group,
the memo UM suggested to President Eisenhower that its mission
was incredibly important and must continue through the term of
(17:41):
the new administration. Yeah. And I love this idea because
I'm sure something like this happens when people are elected
president or prime minister, depending on their country. You get
you get start getting these memos that say stuff like,
hey Truman, I know you've got a lot of stuff
going on, bro UM, I don't want to pile on
(18:02):
your plate, but real quick, while we have you. Aliens
are real, they're dangerous. Uh, don't tell anybody, but here's
what we're doing. Most most of all, don't tell anybody.
Second of all, we need more money. But according to
according to the documents, the name of the group Majestic
twelve came from the size of the committee. And we
(18:24):
know according to this purported memo and according to things
that were written about it later, we know the twelve
people who are supposed to be on this committee. And
it's important to note that all twelve of these people
will give you their names, are real people, the real
historical figures, and they are luminaries in their field. Yeah, exactly.
I mean that's what I'm saying. When I hear Majestic twelve,
(18:46):
I think of like the Magnificent Seven or whatever. You know,
it's like an absolutely each member has their own superpower
scientifically or in terms of the Magnificent Seven, you know,
gun slinging Lee and you said ball round Robin for
a piece. Is the math working out there? I think
that all right. So we start with Lloyd Birkener, who
(19:07):
is a physicist and engineer. Then we have biophysicist death
Lev bronch Um sounds like a solid biophysicist name. Then
we have engineer and inventor Van ever Bush, who also
headed up the US Office of Scientific Research and Development
during World War two, um and lasted. My little section
here We've got Secretary of Defense James Forrestall. They all
(19:29):
make sense, They all make sense. Uh. Next, we've got
a longtime government official and lawyer named Gordon Gray. He's
one of those behind the scenes guys in the world
of defense and national security. Then we've got the director
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Roscoe H. Hill and Cooter.
(19:50):
He would later go on to become a board member
of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenons. That's a
really interesting link for people who got as far as
names go, UM, Gordon Gray kind of drew the short straw.
He's like the least interesting name out of all of these.
His job is not to be publicly interesting though, so
(20:12):
then rounding out rounding out the next one, we've got uh,
Lieutenant Commander Jerome Clark Hansacker, who was a former US
airman and heavy into aeronautics research. He's someone you hear
about in other stories. The name hans Sacker is distinctly
familiar to me, though we do so many of these
are having a hard time pulling out where I know
(20:32):
the name from. Um. Next we have theoretical astronomer and
astro physicist Donald H. Menzel or Menzel, perhaps Lieutenant General
Robert M. Montague, um Rear Admiral Sidney Sowers, who was
another Director of Central Intelligence, USA F General Nathan F. Twining,
and finally U s A F General Waite Vandenberg. So
(20:53):
those are the twelve. Uh Paul QueQue some music for us.
There something that sounds Innio Morricone perfect, Mr Control folks,
He's a magician. So these are the twelve designated members
has described in these various documents and things written about it.
But what we'd like to do now is look at
(21:15):
some of the facts, and these are still crazy facts. First,
if this is true, it would be absolutely stunning news
for any number of reasons. First, it would be an
indication at least that the US government believes it has
encountered the most important point in human evolution since humans
(21:38):
started being humans. So More and Shandera are not sure
what to do with this at first. At first they
decide they're going to keep this film and therefore the
documents secret, and they're only going to show them to
a couple of friendlies in the UFO community, people like
Stanton Friedman, and then Friedman and Shandera. More would all
(22:00):
later go on to say, hey, we were getting these
anonymous phone calls that were directing us to discover other
additional documents, including something called the Cutler Twining Memo. And
they say, we think this is another thing that confirms
the existence of Majestic twelve. So from their perspective, this
(22:22):
can lead to good research due diligence checking sources. But
it looks like somebody, some anonymous source, really wanted this
to get out in the public. Because when these guys,
for one reason or another, weren't spreading the word fast enough,
another anonymous source was contacting other authors in the UFO
(22:43):
community and it was offering something like these documents. So
even if Shanderra and more and later Friedman didn't want
to play ball, it appeared that someone somewhere very much
wanted this to enter the public conversation. This time, UFO
communities pretty small, people talk to each other, so rumors
about these documents spread, you know, little hints, implications, and
(23:08):
more and more people are coming to these three guys
and they're asking them for evidence, whether accidental or orchestrated.
The leaks began fast forward to seven. There's an author
named Timothy Good who takes the info into the mainstream,
and he publishes parts of this story in his book
Above Top Secret. Later that year, he also speaks about
(23:31):
Majestic twelve openly at a UFO conference, so Boom. However,
it turns out not everyone was convinced about the veracity
of this story. One guy, an author named Philip Class
k L A. S. S. Not the contemporary composer that
just does Yeah. I was bummed. I love Philip Class.
(23:53):
I was like this, how could this man be any
more amazing? No way, Aliens, of course that's so you, Philip.
So that's what this class with a k not glass
with the gum, but similarly psychedelic weirdos. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and uh and we mean that of course as a
massive compliment. Class wasn't he wasn't just gonna, uh, you know,
(24:17):
flop this stuff around in the shallow end of the
UFO community pool. He went directly to the Alphabet boys.
He gave him the documents, and he said, FBI, what
do you think about this? And this is one of
my favorite parts of this story. So the FBI categorically
denies everything, and they debunk the heck out of this
(24:39):
document or this collection right of documents based on these photographs, etcetera.
But yeah, but they kind of mess up when they
do it because they their answer didn't age well. It
feels kind of childish maybe because they you could say,
they shot themselves in the foot when they were trying
(24:59):
to dismiss it. If you look at their response, they
went through the documents and they literally somebody literally like
scrawled the word bogus. It all caps, it's everything, like
the way an angry kid would, you know, write something
on a paper that they didn't like, what's what I'm saying, like,
why are you so mad? Bro? Like all caps that
I mean, surely there are more official ways of denying
(25:21):
the veracity of a report than angrily scrawling the word bogu.
It's almost like exactly it is. It is the federal
equivalent of uh, yeah so or yeah not me, it's
you whatever. But other investigators came in and they were
(25:42):
all looking at the same documents, and they were pointing
out numerous signs of if not forgery, things that indicated
this was not this was not written the way that
a government document would be written like Truman signal. Sure
is legit there, but if you look closely and you
(26:02):
do some photographic analysis, it looks as though someone had
taken uh, something that he really signed, or a reproduction
of it, and they had cut it the way you
would clip coupons back in the day, and they just
cut a signature out and then they carefully pasted it
on the on the memo and they were like, no
(26:23):
one is gonna bust us. This is top tier spycraft.
It's kind of a slick trick, you know. For the eighties.
I've seen definitely like movies and and uh and and
TV shows where people have like forged stuff by cutting out,
you know, text from other parts of documents and then
um pasting it and then photocopying it so you can't
(26:43):
see the edges. Um. But yeah, it seems a little
rudimentary for the US government, right, Yeah, it sure does. Also,
there are different discrepancies that the FBI knows other countries
intelligence agencies would notice, so it's not as if this
could have fooled the Russians or intelligence agents in China
(27:07):
or anything like that. And then there's a regular, kind
of wonky format for the date, and later investigators would say, hey,
this irregular format is kind of similar to the way
Bill Moore would date certain documents. So already there there's
(27:27):
a lot of division about the providence of this information.
And this is where people start to get a little bit,
a little bit more freaked out. For the skeptics, it's
important to note the FBI, even if their bedside manner
is lacking. The FBI saying this is bogus is good
enough for them, coupled with all the discrepancies in these
(27:50):
photographs of these papers. But then for people who are
more on the hardcore UFOs a real side, this is
how cover up happened. The truth is eroded over time
and then over to the window of the conversation shifts
and soon enough it ends up being buried. And that
may have been the case were it not for a
(28:14):
gigantic bombshell that dropped in nine eight nine. Now we're
gonna pause. There's some men in black knocking at my door.
Uh yeah, they've got great time, you know, give them that.
They would be awesome as a dance troupe, you know,
so choreographed. But we're gonna pause. We'll talk to those
dudes while we're on a break for word from our sponsors,
(28:35):
and if we make it back, we'll tell you what
this bombshell is. It might not be what you expect,
but it was huge and we're back then. I have
a weird like hole in my memory for some reason,
like I don't really remember anything today before. What's happening
(28:57):
right now? That's fine, right? Who are? It doesn't matter
the bombshell though, right It says it right here on
the page. There's a bombshell, you know, it gets dropped
in nine. It's coming back to me a little bit.
Why do I have a sign picture of Will Smith? Okay, okay,
maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. I just didn't notice
(29:18):
it before. But but you're right, um, we do. We
are slowly recovering our faculties now and so we do
remember enough about life before that ad break to tell
you that, yes, a bombshell dropped in eighty nine, as
he said, noal, but it was not the one ufologists
we're hoping for. Remember we said Bill Moore was the
(29:38):
second guy to have seen that memo about Majestic twelve.
He went to a mouf On conference and moved on again.
Like we talked about with Roderick Martin. Moufon is the
world's largest civilian UFO Monitoring Investigation Body. So Bill Moore
is at moufon and he says, I have been actively
(30:01):
involved in a conspiracy, folks, and this conspiracy doesn't really
evolve aliens. Instead, for years, I've been helping the US
government spread disinformation in this community as a patriot, because
I want to help throw a smoke screen over the
(30:22):
actual classified projects Uncle Sam is doing. He says, I've
been given the government information about the UFO community, all
people in the community, some of whom are in this room,
including my individual peers. And I've been doing this in exchange.
This is a Hannibal elector type qui pro quo. I've
(30:42):
been doing this in exchange for material and claims that
the government supplies me that I later put into my
books that you guys buy, by the way, Yeah, and
he he did seem to genuinely believe um that m
J twelve was a sort of kind of reward for
his work with the Air Forces disinformation campaigns. And the
(31:04):
news of this happening was not particularly well received, uh
and more soon left the UFO community in disgrace. And
these are all pretty cooperative kind people in the UFO community.
For the most we've we've we've definitely hung out with
some of them, and um, they all seemed to really
take this kind of bond seriously. They treat each other
(31:24):
like families. So to be ousted in that way, that
would require quite a pretty big transgression, don't you think.
Oh absolutely, I mean it's it's an act of betrayal,
and regardless of what circles you move in, that kind
of betrayal usually doesn't land well with people. Uh So,
it seems that Majestic twelve was indeed a conspiracy. It
(31:48):
was at heart a genuine conspiracy, but it just wasn't
about extraterrestrials. It was about disinformation. So it's a propaganda
move to disguise real research from those foreign intelligence agencies
we mentioned earlier. If this is the case, and fellow
conspiracy realist, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates it is, then that
(32:10):
means this conspiracy was successful. In fact, it was much
more successful than its original authors could have ever imagined.
M J twelve is a hot topic of conversation UFO
forms today. It's often just treated as accepted fact and
people just say, oh, yeah, well, after you know, they
got the brain trust together and those guys or some
(32:33):
moneration of them have been in charge of this topic
ever since. And in defense of the original ufologists, the
ones who got like the guy who got the Manila envelope,
the people who he shared this story with, etcetera, etcetera.
With the exception of Bill Moore, they genuinely seemed to
believe the story is true. So they don't from their perspective,
(32:57):
they're not running a dis info or psy op, you
know what I mean, campaign of any sort. They they
are acting in good faith. Yeah, and you know, I
mean the story. Uh, many of you know about this,
probably know the story has been debunked over and over again,
even within you know, UFO enthusiast circles. Um. But there's something.
(33:18):
It's got a little something to it that just makes
it sort of hang around. UM. And I'm wondering what
you think Ben might be the reason this does continue
to circulate in the UFO community to this day, even
though it's been so you know, unilaterally kind of shut down. Yeah.
That's the thing. I posit that we can find the answer,
(33:41):
Tim J. Twelves continuing popularity. We can find it in
part in a version of what Emily Dickinson would have
called a slanted truth. Of course Emily Dickinson, the famous
poet who said, tell the truth, but tell it's slant.
So the m J twelve forgery does appear to a
(34:02):
b a forgery and be describe a fictional group, but
what it describes could very much be a real thing,
because this group is described as functioning very much like
another kind of real sometimes secretive genre of organization, the
think tank like RAND or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(34:25):
That's the oldest modern thing tank started nineteen ten. They're
still kicking it today. Uh. Think tanks are deeply entrenched
part of Washington's corporate political structure, and they do not
need aliens to be dangerous. That's right, because, as many
critics of think tanks point out, these institutions often tend
to be more concerned with the views of their incredibly
(34:49):
wealthy and influential donors, which consists of individuals and corporations
who are also now considered and treated politically like individuals. Um.
And it's in the same way lobbyists are a thing.
Think tanks are often intended to sway public perception. Um.
So you know, if you have enough scientists in a
(35:10):
room saying the thing that makes your corporation look like
the good guy. Then people do tend to believe scientists,
and it's I hate to This is no disparagement on
the scientific community, but we know there are certain scientists
and maybe have fewer scruples than others, um, ones that
maybe work for big oil companies or like geologists that
(35:32):
do you know, work um on fracking and drilling operations
that are ultimately very very bad for the environment, um,
but good for their pockets. And again, this is no
shade on anybody that takes a job. Maybe I can't
not I can't walk that back. Maybe it's a little
bit of shade, but you know, then there are scientists
who are just the truth is the only thing that matters. Uh.
And I refuse to be the puppet of some wealthy
(35:55):
donor or organization. UM. But that's kind of what think
tanks are. Now. There are good think tanks, right then.
I mean that's not to say there aren't think tanks
that are actively out to uh sway public perception in
a direction that is good, you know, for the greater good,
not just these uh, these wealthy individuals and organizations. Right, yeah, yeah,
(36:16):
that's correct. It's it's one of the it's similar to
like a don't let one bad apple ruined the bushel
kind of thing. But the fact of the matter is
that money does talk, and there can be clear conflicts
of interest with think tanks. Uh, and they can they
can have a big effect on policy for good or
for ill. And so with this in mind, these actual
(36:40):
conspiracies that we've named it, you know, honestly, might be
a relief for something like Majestic twelve to go public.
And I bet you, based on everything we've seen so
far in the past year and a half or two
years now, if the government came out and they said, okay, everybody, one,
(37:01):
aliens are real. Two we kick it with him. Three
we have a secret think tank, it's all about it. Uh,
then I possibly, I bet you that there would be
uh a lot of people who would go aliens why not.
But all of those things are things the government would
(37:21):
never actually do in that way you're describing, Like their
answer to that would be a press release or some
you know, full heavily redacted documents. And see, see we
were honest here it is. We gave it to you. Um.
But the government there's a couple of things the government
will ever do and want ever really admit that it's wrong. Um.
On things that matter, it might do like like take
an l you know, as they say, and this is
(37:42):
a sports thing, right is that a basketball thing? Um?
Just in general taken a lot, it is, but I
think I think it comes from sports. But they might
do that on a on an issue that maybe doesn't
matter or it's like part of rhetoric, but never on
the things that actually they have done. They will never
like come out and say, yeah, he supplied weapons to
(38:02):
this militant group that is now what we consider terrorists. Oops. Sorry,
y'all are bad. They'll dance around it and talk about
it in a different way, but now they will never
come right out and say that, or at least not
until decades have passed, Right, And it's when there's there's
a deniability and separation time. You know, heals all wounds
(38:24):
in all different administration, et cetera. The people involved have died,
so they're beyond the bounds of prosecution. Yeah, that kind
of stuff, unfortunately does happen. I love the idea though,
that if admitting aliens were real was a last ditch
attempt to distract from something else, Like what would that
something else be? I love the idea of Like it
(38:46):
turns out magic is real, you know, like that old
Dave Chappelle sketch where he talks about aliens are come in.
It's over. JFK was killed by one guy acting alone.
He shot him with a magic bullet. Magic's real. I
would love that, and also a werewolf. It turns out
that magic bullet was silver, was pure silver. There it is.
(39:08):
I would love I would love, love love to be
at that level of surreality and maybe we'll get there.
Is certainly been the year for it, and it's not
over yet, but today's episode is we're drawing to a close.
We you know, it's it's always a little bit of
a bummer. Maybe when we have to bring critical investigation
(39:34):
to these stories, because again we want them to be true.
It would be in the world we want to believe,
it will be unethical of us to not follow the
truth where it leads. So if you have any evidence that,
if you have any evidence that you think can prove
the existence of Majestic twelve or something like it, with
(39:56):
all the implications that existence would carry with it, then
we would love to hear from you, we would, And
I just want to say too, like, I mean, this
is a very good primer I think on Majestic twelve,
but there's a lot of other conspiracies that are wrapped
up in Majestic twelve, a lot of rabbit holes to
go down. And we highly recommend you do your own research,
as we always do. UM, and this is a great
(40:17):
jumping off point for that. So let us know what
you find. UM. You can find us on the internet
in all of the usual social media places of note, Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube where we are conspiracy stuff for conspiracy stuff
show on Instagram. Yes, and if you don't sip the
social meds, if you're going off the grid and you're like,
I have one way I will contact people. It's using
(40:39):
a telephone. I found the one pay phone that's still
standing in my neck of the Global woods. Uh, then
never fear. You can call us as well. We have
a phone number. It is one eight three three st
d w y t K. You've got three minutes. Those
three minutes belong to you and no one else. Tell
us your name, give yourself a sick moniker, sick nickname.
(41:02):
Tell us what's on your mind, let us know if
we can use your voice and or message on air,
and perhaps most importantly, don't feel like you have to
edit yourself. Folks, if you have a story that needs
more than three minutes, don't have to keep pushing quarters
into the phone to call us. You can write the
story out in full, give us links, give us photos,
(41:22):
any supporting evidence you have. We read every email we get,
and we'd love to hear from you. Send all that
stuff to us where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is
(41:52):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our compatriot Matt is
on adventures, but we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission
controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Longtime listeners, you know, we've been at this
(00:46):
for a while and every so often we run into
an episode that we can't believe we haven't covered yet.
One thing Matt pointed out a while back that that
I always loved thinking about was that this show has
become like one long conversation. So sometimes Matt Nolan, I
(01:07):
won't know if we've done an episode on something. We'll
think we have because we've talked about it at length,
just hanging out or on another episode or off air
at our favorite local bar. Right and favorite local bar,
the local the local yes, yes, uh? And don't blow
up the spot if you go to Atlanta You're more
than welcome to tell them we send to you, but
(01:29):
but don't don't tell everybody because we love the chicken
wings there. So, we were researching a secret project, and
we're researching some of the latest revelations about the US
government's uh secret obsession with UFOs that they totally lied
about for years. Uh And then no, I knew it
as something strange. We had talked about other alleged and
(01:50):
proven secret investigations of this sort, but there's there's one
we never dove into, and this is a story familiar
to a lot of our ufologists in the crowd. It's funny,
I was thinking back, I'll just try and figure out
when I first heard of this, this story, this phenomenon,
and it's actually from my old hip hop days. There's
(02:11):
a cannabis song called Channel zero. I don't know if
have you ever listened to cannabis. No. It's funny that
when I was reading the the outline, I saw a
mention of a cannabis song and I thought it was
some sort of like cannabis themed folk song from your youth,
like you know, like a like a pizza song or
a spohetti song, you know, like it was cannabis No,
I'm not familiar with the hip hop artist cannabis Us
(02:35):
though for the for the name, I'm not gonna it's great.
It's a different time. It was a different time. He
did a he did a lot of this tracks. Who's
known for his dense lyrical word play and his his
also his love of conspiracy theories. But if you hadn't
heard that song, you're not in the world of UFOs.
You may not be aware of this story. So here
(02:56):
you go, Folks. Forget Project blue Book or the latest
release about U A p. S. From Uncle Sam. For
some people in the UFO community, the real investigation starts
and stops with a single shadowy cabal, as secret elite
group of military officers and politicians and scientists known as
(03:16):
the Majestic Twelve or m J m J twelve. So
here are the facts. First, le band beat me here,
Paul the badger is out of the bag in a
big game way. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's true.
If you've ever listened to any of our earlier reports
or videos, you're very much aware of the US government
has been extensively collecting reports of unexplained aerial phenomenon for
(03:41):
many many years, and you know, like the government does,
they will likely continue to do so um without you know,
cluing us the public. And even that release that you mentioned,
Ben was kind of you know, the one that was
tailor made for consumption of US civilians. And likely there's
another one that's much, much, much more interesting that we
will never ever see. But it did contain some alarming revelations,
(04:05):
first and foremost of which was the explicit statement that
some of the sightings appeared to be controlled my some
kind of intelligent force. Um. It also noted that some
of the evidence might show that objects beyond the current
technological grasp of humanity might also be involved in this
is not to say just the United States, but literally
(04:25):
beyond the comprehension of anything that we as humans anywhere
in the world h could possibly understand or let alone build.
Um Like ever, Yeah, that's that's the spooky part. Of course,
being a government report, they spend a lot of time
asking for more money. Uh. The classified report that was
published in step with this one that only went to
(04:48):
Congress is much longer, We know that much, and it
goes into many more details. But it was so weird
for this thing to come out when it the timing
was either perfect or hilariously unfortunate, because everybody who has
survived the past few months or so, you know, all
(05:10):
the stuff that went down, protests moved across this country.
In the world, natural disasters are accelerating, there's a global
pandemic that just does not show signs of stopping. And
so many people were likely less interested in this report
than they may have been in less turbulent times. But
I love the idea. I love the way that the
(05:30):
internet treated this. It came out and people just sort
of shrugged and said, all right, yeah, aliens, fine that
makes sense. I got a lot of other stuff going on,
but fine, aliens, It's true. The Internet is a big place,
and so is the world of conspiracies, and many of them,
you know, like we talked about all the time, are
you know, provable? The government definitely is lying to us,
and uh, there's no reason to believe this isn't the
(05:52):
case here as well. But you know, it's sort of
like you start watching a TV series. You like it,
it's a good one, maybe get three four EPISO so
it's in, But then another shiny new one kind of
catches your attention and you move on. Uh, And sometimes
it's a while before you come back to that one.
But we are coming back to this one in a
big way. Um. Again, no one has officially claimed there's
any evidence of aliens, extraterrestrials or tiny, little green, great
(06:16):
gazoo type men. Um. Instead, the focus has seemed to
be more practical, uh, in terms of threat evaluation. Are
these sightings a threat? If so, a threat by whom?
Who are they targeting? Um? And these are two very
important questions that, at least in the public sphere, have
seemed to become the focus of recent investigations. Unlikely you're
(06:38):
going to remain the primary motivations for similar investigations in
the future, at the very least on the part of
the government, as in so far as we know. Yeah. So,
if you look at it and you get past some
of the exciting window dressing, and you get past those
two big revelations we just mentioned about appearing to be
intelligent or steered by some sort of intelligence, and you
(07:01):
get past the revelation that humans possibly don't know what
technology is involved, it makes sense that these sorts of
investigations would continue because it's a matter of national security.
It's controlling airspace. It's all the mundane but very important
work that factions of the government do every day. But
make no mistake, fellow conspiracy realist. Ufologists often claim secrets
(07:27):
about the US government and UFOs in general do remain
hidden in the modern day. And the thing is that
they're right at some levels. They're right. There is that
classified report. It was released to Congress, and it has
much more than the ordinary American citizen was able to breed.
The belief in a government UFO team up, a conspiracy, collab,
(07:51):
a collapse, spiracy will works up. That is okay, all right,
thank you, you're too kind. This is uh, this has
long been ingrained in American consciousness ever since the UFO
creeze of the nineteen forties. Uh, stay tuned, by the
way for our upcoming episode on Men in Black. That's when, uh,
(08:14):
you know, before Matt headed out on his his short adventure,
that's one of the ones that he really wanted to
be here for. We gave him, we gave him the choice,
like Majestic twelve, Men in Black choose one no hesitation,
no hesitation. So we're looking belt kind of situation and
it kind of was yeah, and our leather trench coats
I think looked good. I think it was a question
(08:36):
real quickly. But how does Morpheus a sunglasses stay on?
I've never understood. I know you can like buy them,
but is it like just out of sheer matrix magic?
The only wears those when he's in the matrix. But
I'm not mistaken, right, he's a digital avatar, so if anything,
he could have gotten crazier with it. But uh, but
this this idea, the idea that a government and some
(08:58):
kind of extra treshial force could be interacting in some level,
it's so ingrained that it has reached the level of
modern folklore. And this is where we get to one
less well known piece of UFO conspiracy folklore. It's the
idea that there is some shadowy cabal working in secret
to manage government relationships with extraterrestrials. In this theory, aliens
(09:23):
are real. The government knows about it and has interacted
with them, and to some degree. You know, sometimes they
rolled heavy with each other, sometimes they've had tents one
off encounters. But for some reason or another, Uncle Sam
absolutely does not want the public to know what's going down. Now,
have you you've probably heard of stuff like this before,
(09:45):
right now, Okay, Um, so this is a twofold question,
I suppose, like I have I heard of the existence
of this group in particular? Yeah, I've definitely heard of it.
You guys did videos on this before I was involved
in the show to the degree that I am today.
But of course, I mean the notion that there is
some group of whether it be researchers or scientists that
(10:08):
are behind the scenes working with and or against the extraterrestrials,
whether this is a threat assessment situation, or whether we
are trying to harness you know, craft that have been
recovered in almost um, like the X Files movie kind
of way, or maybe like a Independent Stay kind of way. Absolutely,
I mean this is you know, made its way, like
you said, Ben, into the folklore of UFOs, which is
(10:31):
a really great point that we talked about with Roderick Martin. Um,
the idea of UFOs being kind of modern day folklore.
Oh yes, yeah, very much so. And this is where
the rubber hits the road, where the unobtanium hits the engine,
however you want to phrase it. Here's where it gets crazy.
So let's talk about the legend. First, someone ask you
(10:54):
what is Majestic twelve. We're gonna tell you. Get ready,
you know, track, open a beer or your favorite recreation
of choice. Take a seat. Here's the pitch. Majestic twelve
is a code name for top secret committee that was
formed in nineteen to advise on the recovery of alien spacecraft,
(11:15):
the best ways to investigate them, and how, perhaps most importantly,
to reverse engineer that technology. That's right. Also, the President
is involved, he knows about this. Again. In the framework
of this conversation, they also gave the president advice on
how to handle interactions with extraterrestrials, how to generate a
(11:38):
cover up, um to explain away all of these UFO sittings,
and potentially how to do a kind of slow reveal
of the truth to the public so as not to
cause panic, you know, or or alarm. Yeah. Yeah, this
sort of thing, this shadowy think tank is supposedly so secret,
(12:01):
like above what you would consider top secret, above the
idea of compartmentalized information. Apparently it is so off the
books that the people involved and we'll talk about them
in a little bit. Uh, despite being prominent scientists, public figures, politicians,
lauded military officials. Not a one of them ever spoke
(12:21):
about this during their entire lifetime, And according to some theories,
in J twelve continues today, and it's continuing as kind
of a hybrid between a secret society and a brain trust.
I mean, by this point, you know, if it's still around,
they might even have like a few aliens in the squad.
They might have had some some new hires, you know, well, sure,
(12:42):
I mean this is sort of this is is this
not kind of the partially the prototype for the idea
of the Men in Black and that's its own thing,
but it's a similar kind of posse. You know, it's
like the idea that you know, the Men in Black
in the movie they had aliens that were friendlies that
would hang out in the lab, you know, and they
had a registration sis them, you know, they had certain laws.
(13:02):
So if this is a real thing, it would be
so huge that it's tough to imagine how it could
be kept secret. And given let's just assume that's true
and it's real, if it's such a hush hush secret organization,
then how on Earth or in space are we able
to talk about it on a podcast today? We're gonna
pause for word from our sponsors, who may or may
(13:24):
not be aliens, and then we're going to start cracking
down and breaking apart the mystery of m J twelve. So,
like we said at the break, I hope you had
a good break. By the way, uh, top secret, above
top secret, not the website, but actually above top secret.
(13:46):
You've got these guys. I think we're nice enough guys,
but we don't have security clearances. We're talking about this
on a publicly available, free podcast. How did that happen?
When we answer this question, it also helps us examine
the true origins of Majestic twelve, and it gets us
closer to actually solving the mystery, which spoiler alert may
(14:07):
not work out the way we'd all like it too.
So here's how the story goes, And here's this story
that in terms of how we know about MJ twelve today.
Once upon a time, back in the day, there was
a documentary producer and author named Jamie Shandera, and Jamie
(14:29):
Shandera received an anonymous envelope slipped through his male slot
classic beginning of a good X Files episode. That's right.
The envelope was postmarked from an address in New Mexico
and contained nothing but an undeveloped role of thirty five
millimeter film. And thankfully Shandera had a pal who knew
(14:50):
how to develop film. Um, this was back in the
day where people like still had dark rooms in their homes.
I'm sure some people are still into analog photography, but
definitely wouldn't have been a as common. Um. So he
took it to his friend William bill Moore, who was
a conspiracy researcher and more developed the film and discovered
that it contained photos of eight pages of what they
(15:11):
discovered to be classified documents. Uh. And these files, if legitimate,
we're telling a story, a top secret story, a history
in fact of the Roswell cover up. Yeah. So here's
what these photographs of these documents say. It turns out
that if these things are legit, Uncle Sam was publicly
(15:33):
dismissing the vast majority of UFO sightings, and they were
quick to launch investigations that explain those sightings away as
mundane causes, right, weather, balloons, weird ice in the sky,
stuff like that. But these documents said there was a
hidden strategy at play. They date back to nineteen fifty
(15:53):
two and they appear to be You can read these online.
They appear to be a briefing from Director of the
CIA for then President Eisenhower, and it describes several different
UFO incidents from about into the nineteen fifties, and then
it says, hey, Eisenhower, you know the guy who had
(16:14):
the job before you, President Truman. He knew that extraterrestrials
were real, he knew they posed an existential threat, and
he came up with the idea of this thing we
call of this group. We're going to tell you about.
Its twelve government officials and it's their job to investigate
and figure out what the heck is going on. Yeah,
(16:36):
and government speak. I guess you could consider this to
be a committee or, like you said at the top,
some sort of think tank or brain trust. Like brain trust,
it makes me think of like Crang the brain from
the teenage meeting Ninja Turtles cartoons. But I digress. Um.
So this brain Trust group Committee Um included members of
the military and scientists who were trying to figure out
(16:56):
They were tasked with figuring out not just how to
respond to the crash at Roswell, but how to deal
with other alien incursions that would likely doubtlessly even UM
happen in the not too distant future. This was like,
you know, acknowledging this is a new threat. This is
something we're going to have to figure out just the
same way we are foreign powers, UM, how to deal
(17:19):
with them on both the diplomatic level and also just
on preparedness level in terms of you know, defending ourselves. UM.
This document has also become known as the Eisenhower Briefing
and UM. In addition to describing the purpose of the group,
the memo UM suggested to President Eisenhower that its mission
was incredibly important and must continue through the term of
(17:41):
the new administration. Yeah. And I love this idea because
I'm sure something like this happens when people are elected
president or prime minister, depending on their country. You get
you get start getting these memos that say stuff like,
hey Truman, I know you've got a lot of stuff
going on, bro UM, I don't want to pile on
(18:02):
your plate, but real quick, while we have you. Aliens
are real, they're dangerous. Uh, don't tell anybody, but here's
what we're doing. Most most of all, don't tell anybody.
Second of all, we need more money. But according to
according to the documents, the name of the group Majestic
twelve came from the size of the committee. And we
(18:24):
know according to this purported memo and according to things
that were written about it later, we know the twelve
people who are supposed to be on this committee. And
it's important to note that all twelve of these people
will give you their names, are real people, the real
historical figures, and they are luminaries in their field. Yeah, exactly.
I mean that's what I'm saying. When I hear Majestic twelve,
(18:46):
I think of like the Magnificent Seven or whatever. You know,
it's like an absolutely each member has their own superpower
scientifically or in terms of the Magnificent Seven, you know,
gun slinging Lee and you said ball round Robin for
a piece. Is the math working out there? I think
that all right. So we start with Lloyd Birkener, who
(19:07):
is a physicist and engineer. Then we have biophysicist death
Lev bronch Um sounds like a solid biophysicist name. Then
we have engineer and inventor Van ever Bush, who also
headed up the US Office of Scientific Research and Development
during World War two, um and lasted. My little section
here We've got Secretary of Defense James Forrestall. They all
(19:29):
make sense, They all make sense. Uh. Next, we've got
a longtime government official and lawyer named Gordon Gray. He's
one of those behind the scenes guys in the world
of defense and national security. Then we've got the director
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Roscoe H. Hill and Cooter.
(19:50):
He would later go on to become a board member
of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenons. That's a
really interesting link for people who got as far as
names go, UM, Gordon Gray kind of drew the short straw.
He's like the least interesting name out of all of these.
His job is not to be publicly interesting though, so
(20:12):
then rounding out rounding out the next one, we've got uh,
Lieutenant Commander Jerome Clark Hansacker, who was a former US
airman and heavy into aeronautics research. He's someone you hear
about in other stories. The name hans Sacker is distinctly
familiar to me, though we do so many of these
are having a hard time pulling out where I know
(20:32):
the name from. Um. Next we have theoretical astronomer and
astro physicist Donald H. Menzel or Menzel, perhaps Lieutenant General
Robert M. Montague, um Rear Admiral Sidney Sowers, who was
another Director of Central Intelligence, USA F General Nathan F. Twining,
and finally U s A F General Waite Vandenberg. So
(20:53):
those are the twelve. Uh Paul QueQue some music for us.
There something that sounds Innio Morricone perfect, Mr Control folks,
He's a magician. So these are the twelve designated members
has described in these various documents and things written about it.
But what we'd like to do now is look at
(21:15):
some of the facts, and these are still crazy facts. First,
if this is true, it would be absolutely stunning news
for any number of reasons. First, it would be an
indication at least that the US government believes it has
encountered the most important point in human evolution since humans
(21:38):
started being humans. So More and Shandera are not sure
what to do with this at first. At first they
decide they're going to keep this film and therefore the
documents secret, and they're only going to show them to
a couple of friendlies in the UFO community, people like
Stanton Friedman, and then Friedman and Shandera. More would all
(22:00):
later go on to say, hey, we were getting these
anonymous phone calls that were directing us to discover other
additional documents, including something called the Cutler Twining Memo. And
they say, we think this is another thing that confirms
the existence of Majestic twelve. So from their perspective, this
(22:22):
can lead to good research due diligence checking sources. But
it looks like somebody, some anonymous source, really wanted this
to get out in the public. Because when these guys,
for one reason or another, weren't spreading the word fast enough,
another anonymous source was contacting other authors in the UFO
(22:43):
community and it was offering something like these documents. So
even if Shanderra and more and later Friedman didn't want
to play ball, it appeared that someone somewhere very much
wanted this to enter the public conversation. This time, UFO
communities pretty small, people talk to each other, so rumors
about these documents spread, you know, little hints, implications, and
(23:08):
more and more people are coming to these three guys
and they're asking them for evidence, whether accidental or orchestrated.
The leaks began fast forward to seven. There's an author
named Timothy Good who takes the info into the mainstream,
and he publishes parts of this story in his book
Above Top Secret. Later that year, he also speaks about
(23:31):
Majestic twelve openly at a UFO conference, so Boom. However,
it turns out not everyone was convinced about the veracity
of this story. One guy, an author named Philip Class
k L A. S. S. Not the contemporary composer that
just does Yeah. I was bummed. I love Philip Class.
(23:53):
I was like this, how could this man be any
more amazing? No way, Aliens, of course that's so you, Philip.
So that's what this class with a k not glass
with the gum, but similarly psychedelic weirdos. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and uh and we mean that of course as a
massive compliment. Class wasn't he wasn't just gonna, uh, you know,
(24:17):
flop this stuff around in the shallow end of the
UFO community pool. He went directly to the Alphabet boys.
He gave him the documents, and he said, FBI, what
do you think about this? And this is one of
my favorite parts of this story. So the FBI categorically
denies everything, and they debunk the heck out of this
(24:39):
document or this collection right of documents based on these photographs, etcetera.
But yeah, but they kind of mess up when they
do it because they their answer didn't age well. It
feels kind of childish maybe because they you could say,
they shot themselves in the foot when they were trying
(24:59):
to dismiss it. If you look at their response, they
went through the documents and they literally somebody literally like
scrawled the word bogus. It all caps, it's everything, like
the way an angry kid would, you know, write something
on a paper that they didn't like, what's what I'm saying, like,
why are you so mad? Bro? Like all caps that
I mean, surely there are more official ways of denying
(25:21):
the veracity of a report than angrily scrawling the word bogu.
It's almost like exactly it is. It is the federal
equivalent of uh, yeah so or yeah not me, it's
you whatever. But other investigators came in and they were
(25:42):
all looking at the same documents, and they were pointing
out numerous signs of if not forgery, things that indicated
this was not this was not written the way that
a government document would be written like Truman signal. Sure
is legit there, but if you look closely and you
(26:02):
do some photographic analysis, it looks as though someone had
taken uh, something that he really signed, or a reproduction
of it, and they had cut it the way you
would clip coupons back in the day, and they just
cut a signature out and then they carefully pasted it
on the on the memo and they were like, no
(26:23):
one is gonna bust us. This is top tier spycraft.
It's kind of a slick trick, you know. For the eighties.
I've seen definitely like movies and and uh and and
TV shows where people have like forged stuff by cutting out,
you know, text from other parts of documents and then
um pasting it and then photocopying it so you can't
(26:43):
see the edges. Um. But yeah, it seems a little
rudimentary for the US government, right, Yeah, it sure does. Also,
there are different discrepancies that the FBI knows other countries
intelligence agencies would notice, so it's not as if this
could have fooled the Russians or intelligence agents in China
(27:07):
or anything like that. And then there's a regular, kind
of wonky format for the date, and later investigators would say, hey,
this irregular format is kind of similar to the way
Bill Moore would date certain documents. So already there there's
(27:27):
a lot of division about the providence of this information.
And this is where people start to get a little bit,
a little bit more freaked out. For the skeptics, it's
important to note the FBI, even if their bedside manner
is lacking. The FBI saying this is bogus is good
enough for them, coupled with all the discrepancies in these
(27:50):
photographs of these papers. But then for people who are
more on the hardcore UFOs a real side, this is
how cover up happened. The truth is eroded over time
and then over to the window of the conversation shifts
and soon enough it ends up being buried. And that
may have been the case were it not for a
(28:14):
gigantic bombshell that dropped in nine eight nine. Now we're
gonna pause. There's some men in black knocking at my door.
Uh yeah, they've got great time, you know, give them that.
They would be awesome as a dance troupe, you know,
so choreographed. But we're gonna pause. We'll talk to those
dudes while we're on a break for word from our sponsors,
(28:35):
and if we make it back, we'll tell you what
this bombshell is. It might not be what you expect,
but it was huge and we're back then. I have
a weird like hole in my memory for some reason,
like I don't really remember anything today before. What's happening
(28:57):
right now? That's fine, right? Who are? It doesn't matter
the bombshell though, right It says it right here on
the page. There's a bombshell, you know, it gets dropped
in nine. It's coming back to me a little bit.
Why do I have a sign picture of Will Smith? Okay, okay,
maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. I just didn't notice
(29:18):
it before. But but you're right, um, we do. We
are slowly recovering our faculties now and so we do
remember enough about life before that ad break to tell
you that, yes, a bombshell dropped in eighty nine, as
he said, noal, but it was not the one ufologists
we're hoping for. Remember we said Bill Moore was the
(29:38):
second guy to have seen that memo about Majestic twelve.
He went to a mouf On conference and moved on again.
Like we talked about with Roderick Martin. Moufon is the
world's largest civilian UFO Monitoring Investigation Body. So Bill Moore
is at moufon and he says, I have been actively
(30:01):
involved in a conspiracy, folks, and this conspiracy doesn't really
evolve aliens. Instead, for years, I've been helping the US
government spread disinformation in this community as a patriot, because
I want to help throw a smoke screen over the
(30:22):
actual classified projects Uncle Sam is doing. He says, I've
been given the government information about the UFO community, all
people in the community, some of whom are in this room,
including my individual peers. And I've been doing this in exchange.
This is a Hannibal elector type qui pro quo. I've
(30:42):
been doing this in exchange for material and claims that
the government supplies me that I later put into my
books that you guys buy, by the way, Yeah, and
he he did seem to genuinely believe um that m
J twelve was a sort of kind of reward for
his work with the Air Forces disinformation campaigns. And the
(31:04):
news of this happening was not particularly well received, uh
and more soon left the UFO community in disgrace. And
these are all pretty cooperative kind people in the UFO community.
For the most we've we've we've definitely hung out with
some of them, and um, they all seemed to really
take this kind of bond seriously. They treat each other
(31:24):
like families. So to be ousted in that way, that
would require quite a pretty big transgression, don't you think.
Oh absolutely, I mean it's it's an act of betrayal,
and regardless of what circles you move in, that kind
of betrayal usually doesn't land well with people. Uh So,
it seems that Majestic twelve was indeed a conspiracy. It
(31:48):
was at heart a genuine conspiracy, but it just wasn't
about extraterrestrials. It was about disinformation. So it's a propaganda
move to disguise real research from those foreign intelligence agencies
we mentioned earlier. If this is the case, and fellow
conspiracy realist, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates it is, then that
(32:10):
means this conspiracy was successful. In fact, it was much
more successful than its original authors could have ever imagined.
M J twelve is a hot topic of conversation UFO
forms today. It's often just treated as accepted fact and
people just say, oh, yeah, well, after you know, they
got the brain trust together and those guys or some
(32:33):
moneration of them have been in charge of this topic
ever since. And in defense of the original ufologists, the
ones who got like the guy who got the Manila envelope,
the people who he shared this story with, etcetera, etcetera.
With the exception of Bill Moore, they genuinely seemed to
believe the story is true. So they don't from their perspective,
(32:57):
they're not running a dis info or psy op, you
know what I mean, campaign of any sort. They they
are acting in good faith. Yeah, and you know, I
mean the story. Uh, many of you know about this,
probably know the story has been debunked over and over again,
even within you know, UFO enthusiast circles. Um. But there's something.
(33:18):
It's got a little something to it that just makes
it sort of hang around. UM. And I'm wondering what
you think Ben might be the reason this does continue
to circulate in the UFO community to this day, even
though it's been so you know, unilaterally kind of shut down. Yeah.
That's the thing. I posit that we can find the answer,
(33:41):
Tim J. Twelves continuing popularity. We can find it in
part in a version of what Emily Dickinson would have
called a slanted truth. Of course Emily Dickinson, the famous
poet who said, tell the truth, but tell it's slant.
So the m J twelve forgery does appear to a
(34:02):
b a forgery and be describe a fictional group, but
what it describes could very much be a real thing,
because this group is described as functioning very much like
another kind of real sometimes secretive genre of organization, the
think tank like RAND or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(34:25):
That's the oldest modern thing tank started nineteen ten. They're
still kicking it today. Uh. Think tanks are deeply entrenched
part of Washington's corporate political structure, and they do not
need aliens to be dangerous. That's right, because, as many
critics of think tanks point out, these institutions often tend
to be more concerned with the views of their incredibly
(34:49):
wealthy and influential donors, which consists of individuals and corporations
who are also now considered and treated politically like individuals. Um.
And it's in the same way lobbyists are a thing.
Think tanks are often intended to sway public perception. Um.
So you know, if you have enough scientists in a
(35:10):
room saying the thing that makes your corporation look like
the good guy. Then people do tend to believe scientists,
and it's I hate to This is no disparagement on
the scientific community, but we know there are certain scientists
and maybe have fewer scruples than others, um, ones that
maybe work for big oil companies or like geologists that
(35:32):
do you know, work um on fracking and drilling operations
that are ultimately very very bad for the environment, um,
but good for their pockets. And again, this is no
shade on anybody that takes a job. Maybe I can't
not I can't walk that back. Maybe it's a little
bit of shade, but you know, then there are scientists
who are just the truth is the only thing that matters. Uh.
And I refuse to be the puppet of some wealthy
(35:55):
donor or organization. UM. But that's kind of what think
tanks are. Now. There are good think tanks, right then.
I mean that's not to say there aren't think tanks
that are actively out to uh sway public perception in
a direction that is good, you know, for the greater good,
not just these uh, these wealthy individuals and organizations. Right, yeah, yeah,
(36:16):
that's correct. It's it's one of the it's similar to
like a don't let one bad apple ruined the bushel
kind of thing. But the fact of the matter is
that money does talk, and there can be clear conflicts
of interest with think tanks. Uh, and they can they
can have a big effect on policy for good or
for ill. And so with this in mind, these actual
(36:40):
conspiracies that we've named it, you know, honestly, might be
a relief for something like Majestic twelve to go public.
And I bet you, based on everything we've seen so
far in the past year and a half or two
years now, if the government came out and they said, okay, everybody, one,
(37:01):
aliens are real. Two we kick it with him. Three
we have a secret think tank, it's all about it. Uh,
then I possibly, I bet you that there would be
uh a lot of people who would go aliens why not.
But all of those things are things the government would
(37:21):
never actually do in that way you're describing, Like their
answer to that would be a press release or some
you know, full heavily redacted documents. And see, see we
were honest here it is. We gave it to you. Um.
But the government there's a couple of things the government
will ever do and want ever really admit that it's wrong. Um.
On things that matter, it might do like like take
an l you know, as they say, and this is
(37:42):
a sports thing, right is that a basketball thing? Um?
Just in general taken a lot, it is, but I
think I think it comes from sports. But they might
do that on a on an issue that maybe doesn't
matter or it's like part of rhetoric, but never on
the things that actually they have done. They will never
like come out and say, yeah, he supplied weapons to
(38:02):
this militant group that is now what we consider terrorists. Oops. Sorry,
y'all are bad. They'll dance around it and talk about
it in a different way, but now they will never
come right out and say that, or at least not
until decades have passed, Right, And it's when there's there's
a deniability and separation time. You know, heals all wounds
(38:24):
in all different administration, et cetera. The people involved have died,
so they're beyond the bounds of prosecution. Yeah, that kind
of stuff, unfortunately does happen. I love the idea though,
that if admitting aliens were real was a last ditch
attempt to distract from something else, Like what would that
something else be? I love the idea of Like it
(38:46):
turns out magic is real, you know, like that old
Dave Chappelle sketch where he talks about aliens are come in.
It's over. JFK was killed by one guy acting alone.
He shot him with a magic bullet. Magic's real. I
would love that, and also a werewolf. It turns out
that magic bullet was silver, was pure silver. There it is.
(39:08):
I would love I would love, love love to be
at that level of surreality and maybe we'll get there.
Is certainly been the year for it, and it's not
over yet, but today's episode is we're drawing to a close.
We you know, it's it's always a little bit of
a bummer. Maybe when we have to bring critical investigation
(39:34):
to these stories, because again we want them to be true.
It would be in the world we want to believe,
it will be unethical of us to not follow the
truth where it leads. So if you have any evidence that,
if you have any evidence that you think can prove
the existence of Majestic twelve or something like it, with
(39:56):
all the implications that existence would carry with it, then
we would love to hear from you, we would, And
I just want to say too, like, I mean, this
is a very good primer I think on Majestic twelve,
but there's a lot of other conspiracies that are wrapped
up in Majestic twelve, a lot of rabbit holes to
go down. And we highly recommend you do your own research,
as we always do. UM, and this is a great
(40:17):
jumping off point for that. So let us know what
you find. UM. You can find us on the internet
in all of the usual social media places of note, Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube where we are conspiracy stuff for conspiracy stuff
show on Instagram. Yes, and if you don't sip the
social meds, if you're going off the grid and you're like,
I have one way I will contact people. It's using
(40:39):
a telephone. I found the one pay phone that's still
standing in my neck of the Global woods. Uh, then
never fear. You can call us as well. We have
a phone number. It is one eight three three st
d w y t K. You've got three minutes. Those
three minutes belong to you and no one else. Tell
us your name, give yourself a sick moniker, sick nickname.
(41:02):
Tell us what's on your mind, let us know if
we can use your voice and or message on air,
and perhaps most importantly, don't feel like you have to
edit yourself. Folks, if you have a story that needs
more than three minutes, don't have to keep pushing quarters
into the phone to call us. You can write the
story out in full, give us links, give us photos,
(41:22):
any supporting evidence you have. We read every email we get,
and we'd love to hear from you. Send all that
stuff to us where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio
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