Speaker 1: Okay, here's something to think about. What if the most
crucial discovery in human history, I mean, something that fundamentally
rewrites our place in the universe, way bigger than the
atomic bomb, was deliberately locked away, hidden from everyone by
the absolute highest levels of power in the country. Imagine
a secret government inside the government, formed specifically to guard
a truth that would just shatter everything we thought we knew,
and they kept that secret ruthlessly for almost forty years.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the territory we're exploring today, this whole deep dive.
It centered on the claims, the really explosive claims inside
those alleged Majestic twelve documents. We're going to unpack how
this supposed covert US committee got started apparently back in
nineteen forty seven by presidential order, and their job wasn't
just grabbing crash tech, but actually managing recovered well non
human entities. But even more than the claims themselves, we
need to look at the campaign around them, this incredibly complex,
decades long effort of deception, basically the weaponization of information.
We've got sources that detail who was supposedly on this committee,
what they found, and then this aggressive sometimes frankly ruthless
campaigned by intelligence agencies to leak bikes, control the narrative,
and ultimately discredit the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, let's definitely unpack this because this feels less
about you know, little green men and flying saucers, and
much more about how governments actually work, secrecy, manipulation of
what people know. If even a fraction of this story
holds water, it tells you so much about the modern state.
So let's start right at the beginning summer of forty seven,
the summer everything supposedly changed.
Speaker 2: Right, and you absolutely cannot understand nineteen forty seven without
the context. The world was just crawling out of World
War Two and boom straight into the Cold War, massive paranoia.
The US had the bomb yet, but the fear, the
constant fear, was that the Soviets would get it, or
maybe already had some advance captured Nazi tech. Nuclear secrecy
that was everything national security bedrock to the military. The
intelligence guys. They were stanning the skies constantly, but they
weren't looking for aliens. They were looking for Soviet bomber,
advanced German rockets, anything fast, silent, unknown that was automatically
seen as a potential existential threat.
Speaker 1: And it's right into that pressure cooker environment that the
first really big public sighting happens. Ye and that shifts
the conversation, doesn't it, from just military threats to something else.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that was the catalyst. June twenty fourth, nineteen forty seven,
civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold. He's flying near Mount Rainier in Washington.
He sees nine objects moving incredibly fast. His description like
a saucer skipping over water. That's what gave us the
term flying saucer. Now, the military, they'd apparently received hundreds
of reports before Arnold, but his story it blew up
in the media. It forced the military to actually talk
about it publicly for the first time. Officially, they sounded
confused internally though, rowing alarm they were maybe facing something
they just couldn't identify.
Speaker 1: And that sort of vague alarm turned into something much
more concrete just two weeks later, right when it went
from just seeing something weird to actually having some crash,
something physical.
Speaker 2: That's the pivot point. July seventh, nineteen forty seven, an
object comes down in the New Mexico Desert near Roswell.
The first official story straight from the Army Air Forces base.
There was amazing they'd recovered a flying disc.
Speaker 1: Wow, they actually said that initially.
Speaker 2: They did, But that story lasted maybe a few hours
before it was yanked back hard, replaced with the cover
story we all know now, just a weather balloon misidentified.
Nothing to see here. But according to these alleged documents,
the MJ twelve briefing, the truth was well extraordinary. They
described what they found as a metallic disc shaped craft
maybe thirty feet across. What really through the engineer is apparently,
was how it was built. No visible seams, no rivets,
no obvious engine or propulsion system, and the metal itself
some kind of alloy they couldn't identify, couldn't replicate. The
internal assessment was pretty blunt. This was engineering beyond any
country on Earth.
Speaker 1: That detail that no seams, no rivets. I always find
that the most compelling bit. It just doesn't sound like
any secret plane we would build, you know, yeah, even
a captured enemy one. But the really huge part of
the recovery, according to these documents, came a bit later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the focus shifted pretty quick from just tech to biology.
The briefing claims that aerial recon a few days after
the crash found something else about two miles east of
the main wreckage, four small human like beings. Looks like
they'd been thrown clear before it hit.
Speaker 1: Human like beings. Okay, give us the details on these.
What do they call it ebes?
Speaker 2: Right, extraterrestrial biological entities. That was the classification supposedly given
by a special scientific team led by a doctor Detlov Bronc.
The sources described them pretty specifically, about four feet tall,
humanoid shape, but with these really large, out of proportioned heads,
no hair at all, grayish skin, and the status well,
according to the documents, three were dead when they found them,
impact killed them. The fourth was alive but died shortly
after recovery. So the military's absolute top priority became twofold one,
get every scrap of physical evidence out of there fast,
and two hammer home that weather balloon story, make it stick,
discredit anyone who said they saw something different.
Speaker 1: So this alleged recovery, the craft and the bodies, that's
the trigger the thing that forced their hand and made
them think we need something permanent to handle it.
Speaker 2: Precisely, they realized, okay, this isn't just a one off,
weird event, this might be ongoing. The sheer scale of
what they thought they'd found demanded a whole new level
of secrecy, a permanent structure. And so, according to the documents,
on September twenty fourth, nineteen forty seven, President Schruman signs
this Executive Order zero nine two four four seven, and
that order creates Majestic twelve MJ twelve. And this wasn't
just some temporary task force. It was designed as the shadowy,
permanent fixture. Right at the top twelve members the absolute
elite scientists, top military leaders, key intelligence figures. And they
were given security clearances supposedly higher than anything else that existed.
Speaker 1: And what was the core mission? What are these twelve
powerful men tasked with doing? According to the sources.
Speaker 2: Three man things laid out pretty clearly in the briefing document. First,
study the recover tech, figure out how it worked, what
it was made of, propulsion, material science, you name it. Second,
develop strategies. What do we do if there's more contact?
What if they're cost all, what if they're not planning
for future scenarios? And Third, and this is absolutely crucial
for our deep dive today, maintain the secret, establish and
run a completely watertight, decades long cover up, keep it
hidden from the public, from the press, even from most
of Congress. Information control was paramount job number one.
Speaker 1: And it's important, I think to stress that for this
alleged MJ twelve committee, Roswell wasn't supposed to be the
end of it, right, This was an ongoing thing, which
suggests more crashes, more recoveries.
Speaker 2: The sources definitely indicate it was an ongoing operation. The
briefing documents mention a second significant incident December sixth, nineteen
fifty another object described as probably similar in origin to
the Roswell one crashed near the Texas Mexico border, a
Lindio Guerrero area. Apparently this one hit much harder high
speed impact. The craft was mostly destroyed, but whatever pieces
were left immediately secured sent off to the Atomic Energy
Commission facility at Sandy Base in New Mexico. That detail
matters because it reinforces the idea that MG twelve wasn't
just formed for Roswell. It was an established system for
ongoing retrieval and analysis. They were prepared for more.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is where for me it gets really interesting.
You have this secret supposedly guarded by the most powerful
man in the country, who literally run the nuclear program
and the intelligence agencies. How does this secret like that
kept under wraps for nearly forty years suddenly just pop out.
Because secrets that big usually don't leak by accent, do they?
They get lead strategically.
Speaker 2: That's the perfect way to frame it, because the leak
itself felt well engineered. It didn't come from a deathbed
confession or a whistleblower walking into the New York Times.
It arrived mysteriously. December eleventh, nineteen eighty four, a package
shows up at the Hollywood office of a film producer
named Jamie shandera plain brown wrapper, no return address, no note,
just a single roll of thirty five millimeter film. Now,
Shandero was already working with a researcher, Bill Moore, and
Moore was deep into the Roswell story, chasing down leads,
trying to verify things.
Speaker 1: So they literally have maybe the biggest scoop in history
sitting on their desk, but it's just undeveloped film.
Speaker 2: Exactly imagine that moment. They apparently turned Shunder's bathroom into
a makeshift dark room to develop it, and what emerged
were photos eight photographs of what looked like highly classified
government documents. The very first page had this classification stamped
on it, top secret, magic eyes only.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, top secret, we get that, But magic
eyes only? What is that? Why is that specific term
so important here?
Speaker 2: Magic isn't just some made up dramatic term. It has
real historical weight. During World War Two, magic was the
actual code word used for the intelligence derived from decrypting
the highest level Japanese codes. Diplomatic and military think Pearl
Harbor warnings, stuff like that. It was a classification reserve
for information so sense of it could literally change the
course of the war, information on par with say, the
Manhattan Project itself. So by labeling these alleged UFO recovery
documents magic eyes only, the documents are explicitly linking the
management of this extraterrestrial issue to the absolute highest level
of national security secrecy, the same level as nuclear weapons
and wartime code breaking. The sources claim this was two
levels above standard top secret.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that detail alone suggests whoever put these documents
together or leak them knew their intelligence history. They knew
the right obscure terminology. So what was the main document
they photographed.
Speaker 2: The core piece was an eight page briefing paper prepared
specifically for President elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, dated November eighteenth,
nineteen fifty two, and the subject line was unambiguous Briefing
Document Operation Majestic twelve. It laid it all out, confirmed
the forty seven crash near Roswell, the recovery of the
craft and the bodies, the EBE classification, and stated flat
out that the committee MJ twelve was established by President
Truman's executive order.
Speaker 1: And the timing of this leak, yeah, it lands in
their laps in late eighty four. That timing feels well,
almost too perfect, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: That's a key point when you analyze this. The film
role arrives just two months after the death of a
man named doctor Jerome Henner. Hunter was a pretty prominent figure,
an aeronautical engineer, big in NASA, the precursor to NASA,
and according to these documents, he was the very last
surviving member of the original Majestic twelve committee. The implication
is huge. It suggests that someone, maybe someone managing the
records or an associate, deliberately held onto this information waited
until every single original member was dead, unable to deny
it or retaliate, then they leaked it. It feels like
a calculated move to get the story out, but only
when it was safe from the original architects of the secret.
Speaker 1: That really sets the stage, doesn't it for looking at
who these twelve men actually were the alleged guardians of
this incredible secret. Let's talk about the roster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the names listed for MJ twelve. These aren't just
you know, random jem rules or scientists. These are the
guys who literally built the post war American security state,
the dupp state, you could call it. They were the
ones entrusted with the nation's biggest secrets.
Speaker 1: Already, give us a few examples, just to underline the
kind of real world power we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, first some the list. Admiral Roscoe Hill Encoder.
He was the very first director of the CIA. He
literally built the agency. Then you've got General Nathan Twining,
air Force guy crucial in assessing military tech. He was
actually in command at Roswell Army Airfield shortly after the crash,
and famously he wrote a memo in September forty seven,
saying these flying discs were real, they weren't illusions or
weather phenomena, and they needed serious, high level study. That
memo was a key driver for things like Project sign
and maybe the most significant name scientifically, doctor Vana Varbush.
He headed the Office of Scientific Research and Development during
the war. He was, for all intents and purposes, the
chief architect of the Manhattan Project. So you see the pattern.
These weren't just guys in the note. They were the
guys who created the systems for keeping secrets, practically invented
modern national security secrecy.
Speaker 1: It's an unbelievable lineup of institutional power. But there's one
name on that list that seems well completely out of place,
right doctor Donald Menzel, a Harvard astronomer. Why would a
respected academic be on a list like this.
Speaker 2: Menzel's inclusion is where the story shifts, I think, from
just secrecy to active deep deception. Because publicly, doctor Menzel
was America's number one UFO debunker. He was famous for it.
Anytime there was a big sighting, the press would call
Menzel and he'd write books, articles, go on radio explaining
it all away. Swamp gas, weather balloons, temperature and versions
optical illusions, you name it, he debunked it. So, putting
the country's chief skeptic on the secret committee supposedly managing
the reality of UFOs, it suggests the operation wasn't just
about hiding the truth, it was about actively creating a
false narrative. From the very beginning, Menzel's public role arguably
was to be the controlled opposition. His job wasn't to
study UFOs, it was to kill public belief in them.
Speaker 1: So his entire public persona, the FATAS debunker, was potentially
just a cover, a front designed to protect the real
secret through credible authoritative denial.
Speaker 2: That's certainly the implication raised by later research. It turns
out Menzel led this incredible double life. He had a
thirty year association with the National Security Agency, the NSA,
and he held a top secret ultra clearance with the CIA.
Now that level of clearance is way way beyond what
any normal university professor would ever need or get, And crucially,
records show that right after Roswell in forty seven and
forty eight, Menzel made multiple trips down to New Mexico,
trips that were secretly paid for by the US government.
If he was just an astronomer to bumping sightings. What
was he doing at ground zero on the government's dime?
Speaker 1: And it gets darker, isn't it. His connection isn't just
to deception, but potentially to the active destruction of physical evidence,
the erasure of history.
Speaker 2: This part is no, it's pretty chilling, honestly. Harvard University,
where Menzell worked, had been meticulously photographing the night sky
since the eighteen eighties, had this priceless archive of astronomical
data on half a million photographic glass plates, a unique
historical record. Around nineteen fifty two, Menzel becomes the director
of the Harvard College Observatory, and shortly after he takes
over something happens. About a third of that entire irreplaceable collection,
something like one hundred and fifty thousand glass plates were destroyed.
Speaker 1: Austin destroyed. Why on earth would the director of an
observatory destroyed decades of astronomical records. They call this the
Menzel gap.
Speaker 2: Exactly the Menzel gap, because those plates represented seventy years
of visual history of the sky. If there were any strange,
anomalous objects caught by chance on film over those decades,
evidence that might contradict the official denial story later on, Well,
destroying the plates removes that possibility. It looks like a
systematic effort to erase any potentially inconvenient historical evidence and
to make sure no new evidence emerged. Menzel then apparently
blocked Harvard from taking any more photos of the sky
for the next fifteen years. It wasn't just destroying the past,
it was imposing a blackout on the future.
Speaker 1: So Menzel was maybe the controlled denier, but another alleged member,
James Forstall, the first Secretary of Defense, he seems to
have been the opposite a problem because he wouldn't stay
quiet in his story, Yeah, it really highlights the potential
danger of knowing the secret, doesn't that what happens if
you're at the top and you push back.
Speaker 2: The story of James Forstall is frankly a brutal lesson
in the politics of secrecy and power. Forstall was a
powerful guy, self made Wall Street background. As the first
sect f he was known for being outspoken, sometimes clashing
with Truman over post war policy. He raised concerns about
joining NATO too quickly, about recognizing Israel so fast. His
arguments were strategic about oil security, regional stability.
Speaker 1: But the really dangerous thing he did, at least in
the eyes of the establishment back then, was publicly warning
that he believed communists had deeply infiltrated the US government
and the media. I claim that, you know, later Jay
some traction with the whole HUAC thing, but at the
time was seen as deeply destabilizing.
Speaker 2: Right scene is uncontrollable. He was politically connected, independently wealthy,
and he wasn't afraid to speak his mind, even about
sensitive topics. He valued transparency, maybe too much for their liking. So,
according to the sources and later researchers, Truman's inner circle
decided he had to be neutralized. They apparently orchestrated this
vicious smear campaign in the press, feeding friendly journalist stories
that Forrestall was paranoid, unstable, losing his mind. The goal
seemed clear, destroy his credibility, make him seem mentally unbalanced,
so that if he ever decided to talk about government secrets,
maybe including what he knew or suspected about Roswell and
MJ twelve, he'd just be dismissed as delusional.
Speaker 1: And that campaign worked. It led directly to him being
pushed out and confined.
Speaker 2: It absolutely worked. He was forced to resign in March
nineteen forty nine. Just days later, he was admitted to
Bethosda Naval Hospital. The official reason was severe exhaustion, but
many saw it as basically a high security confinement. His
access to the outside world was tightly called visitors restricted significantly.
His own Catholic priest was reportedly blocked from seeing him
seven times. Forsole himself wrote letters saying he was fine,
demanding to be released, but the Navy kept.
Speaker 1: Him there, and then just seven weeks later the silence
became permanent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, around one fifty am on May twenty two, nineteen
forty nine, there was a crash reported outside the hospital.
Forestyle was found dead on a third floor ledge. His
room was on the sixteenth floor. The official verdict came
almost instantly suicide. They said he'd tried to hang himself
with his bathrobe belt, it snapped and he fell. The
hospital declared it a suicide within hours. No autopsy was
ever performed. The corner just rubber stamped the report apparently
without even examining the body or the scene.
Speaker 1: Properly, and the cover up afterward just screams that something
wasn't right.
Speaker 2: It was meticulous and frankly bizarre. Navy officials actually classified
the number of windows in his hospital room as top secret.
I mean, why classify the number of windows unless you're
hiding something about how someone got in or out on
more telling forstyle, kept extensive personal diaries, thousands of pages
detailing meetings, thoughts, potentially sensitive information. Those diaries were immediately
seized by the Navy. When they were finally released years
later after a lot of pressure, huge sections were blacked out,
entire passages just missing, censored by the Navy. The strong
suspicion among his family and supporters was that those missing
septions contained secrets someone powerful wanted buried forever, Secrets, possibly
about the communist infiltration he warned about, and maybe maybe
about the burden of the MJ twelve secret he allegedly carried.
Forrestal's death sent a chilling message through the corridors of power.
Keep the secret. Silence is not optional. There are consequences
for breaking ranks.
Speaker 1: That foresole story is just wow. It's crucial because it
shows the potential lengths they were willing to go to.
It takes MJ twelve out of the realm of just
theory and into well potentially deadly real politic. Okay, let's
jump forward again mid nineteen eighties. The first document dump happens,
Then the trail goes cold until this really weird coded
message shows up like something out of a spy novel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after the initial excitement about the nineteen eighty four
film role died down a bit, the researchers More and
Shander they knew they needed more, something to really corroborate
those initial documents. Then in early nineteen eighty five, this
postcard arrives at Bill Moore's house, postmarked from New Zealand,
which is weird enough, but the return address, a PO
box in addis Ababa, Ethiopia, even weirder. And the message
itself was just cryptic clues, words like Suitland and Reese's Pieces.
Speaker 1: I love this part. It sounds so deliberately cloak and dagger.
So what did Suitland and Reese's Pieces turn out to mean?
It wasn't candy, I dig it.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not the candy from Etymore figure. This had
to be code, probably aimed at someone familiar with the
DC area and maybe military stuff he brought in Stanton Friedman,
the nuclear physicist and UFO researcher. Friedman, you know, he
approached the stuff scientifically, having worked on classified projects himself.
Friedman helped crack it. Suitland wasn't about clothes. It was Suitland, Maryland,
which is home to the National Archives Massive Record Center
and Reese's pieces. That was apparently a phonetic clue for
a person Ed Reese, who worked at the Archives, specifically
in the military records branch. The postcard was basically a
treasure map, pointing them to a specific building and even
a helpful person inside.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, armed with this totally bizarre postcard code, they
head out to the National Archives in Suitland, which is
just this enormous place, right, How did they find the
needle in that haystack?
Speaker 2: Well, they used the other clue from the postcard, the
return address PO box number one eighty nine. They asked
the archivist, presumably Ed Reese or someone. He directed them
to to search the records for box one eighty nine
within Record Group three forty one. That specific group covers
air Force records from that era. The archivist checks the
system and here's the kicker. The computer shows the last
time that specific box Box one eighty nine had been
accessed was September nineteen eighty four, just two weeks after
doctor Jerome Herner, the last alleged MJ twelve member, died,
and right before that film role mysteriously showed up in Hollywood.
It really looked like someone was leaving a breadcrumb trail
for them, timing it perfectly.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what was in Box one eighty nine? Was
it the smoking gun?
Speaker 2: Well, inside this box, which mostly contained boring routine Air
Force budget reports from the early nineteen fifties, they found
one single sheet of paper just tucked in there, almost hidden.
It was the Cutler Twining Memo, a memorandum classified top
secret restricted information from General Nathan Twining, signed off by
Robert Cutler, who was President Eisenhower's Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs, and the key sentence, the one that made
them think they'd hit the jackpot, read, the President has
decided that the MJ twelve SSP briefing should take place
during the already scheduled White House Meeting of July sixteenth,
SSP likely meeting Special Studies Project for More and schonderra
This looked like it the final piece an official government
document filed in the National Archives that explicitly referenced MJ twelve.
It seemed to confirm everything they must.
Speaker 1: Have thought they'd cracked it. They had the initial briefing,
the names, the foresol tragedy is content text, and now
this official memo seemingly tying it all together in government files.
But and there's always a butt with this story. The
deeper layer here, according to the sources, is that this
discovery itself might have been completely staged, part of a
much bigger game.
Speaker 2: That's the deeply unsettling twist in all this. Remember where
the first envelope, the one with the film, was postmarked Albuquerque,
New Mexican.
Speaker 1: Right home of Kirtland Air Force Base exactly.
Speaker 2: And Kirkland AFB was the operational base for a special
agent named Richard Doty. He worked for AFOSI, the Air
Force Office of Special Investigations.
Speaker 1: And Doty's job wasn't just investigating crimes, was it? His
specialty was something else.
Speaker 2: His unit's official designation internally was deception Operations. Not disinformation,
which is just spreading lies, but deception, a more complex
strategy using a mix of truth and lies to actively
mislead an opponent, control their perception, make them waste resources.
His specific program targeting the UFO community was apparently called
Operation Qinaw, and Dotey's job essentially was to neutralize the
growing public and research interest in UFOs by feeding the
community controlled information, sometimes true, sometimes false, always designed to
confuse and misdirect. His most infamous target was a guy
named Paul Benowitz. Benowitz was a physicist working near Kirtland,
and he genuinely believed he was intercepting coded electronic communications,
possibly from aliens interacting with secret US projects. He might
have been picking up signals from actual classified projects getting
too close.
Speaker 1: So instead of just telling Benowitz to knock it off
or investigating them conventionally, Doty took a different approach.
Speaker 2: A much more insidious approach. It was basically psychological warfare.
Doty didn't deny what Benefitz was finding. He reportedly confirmed it, saying, yeah, Paul,
you are onto something big. It is aliens. And then
Dody and his Fosley colleagues started feeding Benowitz's counterfeit documents
increasingly bizarre stories about secret treaties with aliens, underground alien
bases right there under dulstin New Mexico crazy stuff. They
encouraged his paranoia, validated his wildest theories until Benowitz had
a complete mental breakdown. He was eventually institutionalized, and just
like that, anything he might have genuinely stumbled upon was discredited.
He was just another crazy UFO guy. The goal wasn't
just to stop him, it was to utterly destroy his credibility,
maybe even his sanity.
Speaker 1: And they didn't just go after vulnerable individuals like Benowitz,
did they. They aimed this deception strategy right at the
mainstream media too.
Speaker 2: That's when you see the real power and reach of
this operation. They targeted Linda Moulton Howe, an Emmy Award
winning documentary filmmaker. She was working on a big project
for HBO, a serious documentary about the UFO phenomenon, focusing
on potential government involvement and animal mutilations possibly linked to it.
Dodie approached her acting like a sympathetic insider, a whistleblower.
He promised her access access to official documents, even footage
of crash saucers, alien bodies, the whole nine yards. But
the real goal under Operation Canal was specifically to derail
that HBO documentary, to stop a credible, high profile investigation
from reaching a mass audience.
Speaker 1: So they did it by feeding her their own tainted.
Speaker 2: Information exactly Doti and another a Focie agent, allegedly showed
Howard documents, gave her film clips stuff that looked authentic
but was later determined to be fabricated. They strung her along,
feeding her a mix of potentially real leads and definite fakes.
By getting her invested in their controlled narrative, possibly using
fake evidence, they effectively compromised her investigation. HBO ended up
canceling the documentary, her reputation as a serious journalist took
a major hit. You see the pattern. Promise the truth,
deliver sophisticated fakes, let the researcher run with it, and
then when it collapses, or maybe even help it collapse,
the researcher is discredited and the core secret, whatever it is,
remains untouched.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a massive fundamental question, doesn't it. How
can you possibly trust any of this information, any of
these documents when the researchers who brought them to light
might have been compromised. When one of the key players,
Bill Moore, actually confessed to being part of the deception.
Speaker 2: Morre's confession in nineteen eighty nine, Yeah, that was like
a bomb going off in the UFO research world. Here
was Bill Moore, the guy hailed as a hero for
uncovering the MJ twelve papers, standing up at a conference
and admitting it, Admitting he'd been recruited by Dody by Aphosi.
He confessed his job was basically to act as an agent,
feeding information back to Apossy about who believed, what, how
effective their disinformation campaigns were, Spying on his own colleagues.
Speaker 1: And he admitted that some of the wilder stories circulating
than secret treaties with aliens, underground battles, mass subductions, and implants,
these were things Afosy was actively injecting into the community
to muddy the waters.
Speaker 2: He confirmed that those narratives were at least in part
manufactured and pushed by the disinformation apparatus. His confession was
absolutely devastating. He was basically run out of the field.
His career was over and instantly it cast this huge
shadow over the MG twelve documents themselves. Were they genuine
or were they just the most elaborate piece of disinformation
ever created, designed to be found generate excitement and controversy,
and then be publicly torched by their own controlled asset
more a way to waste everyone's time and kill the
topic for good.
Speaker 1: It's kind of horribly brilliant if you think about it.
The best way to hide a real secret is to
create a fake, confusing, ultimately discredited version of it. The
lie inoculates against the truth. But the story didn't even
end there, did it. Yeah, even after Moore's confessions seemed
to sync the whole MJ twelve ship.
Speaker 2: It's incredible, isn't it. Just when you think the story
is dead and buried as a complex hoax, another wave
hits nineteen ninety four, ten years after the first leak.
This time the documents are sent again anonymously to a
different researcher, Don Berliner, who was known for his work
with Friedman. And this wasn't just another memo or briefing.
This was supposedly the jackpot, the Rosetta Stone, as some
called it.
Speaker 1: This was the Majestic twelve Group Special Operations Manual.
Speaker 2: That's the one. Full title SOM one zero one Majestic
twelve Group Special Operations Manual. Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology Recovery
and Disposal, dated April nineteen fifty four and stamped yet
again with that top secret magic eyes only classification. For
the believers, this was it the Holy Grail, a detailed,
step by step instruction manual for military and intelligence teams
on exactly how to handle crash retrievals, how to secure
the site, how to handle the craft, how to deal
with well the occupants. The procedures were so specific, so clinical,
they felt chillingly real, and.
Speaker 1: The protocols for dealing with the ebees they weren't exactly gentle,
were they. No.
Speaker 2: The manual makes it brutally clear security is of paramount importance.
All other considerations are secondary. It goes on to state
that while preserving the ede's life is preferable, the loss
of ebe life is considered acceptable if conditions or delays
to preserve that life in any way compromises the security
of the operations. It laid out procedures for bagging cadavers,
wrapping them in waterproof material, preserving them with ice or refrigeration.
It treated potential alien life as essentially a hazardous material
or a captured asset, and nothing more.
Speaker 1: And this manual even included like a taxonomy classifying the
different types of craft and beings they were supposedly encountering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it got really specific. It described four main types
of alien craft they might recover discs, cigars, cones, and triangles,
and it detailed two distinct types of edes. Type one
were described as roughly five feet tall with pale yellowish skin.
Type two were the ones that sound much more familiar
from pop culture, three to four feet tall, the classic grays,
big heads, large slanted eyes, pale gray skin, three long
fingers in the thumb, and guess we're Page two of
this incredibly detailed top secret manual identified its source location
curtlind Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Richard Dody's home turf,
again always pointing back there.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's really get into the forensic analysis here, because
this set of documents, the manual especially, it's either the
most explosive confirmation immageable or it is perhaps the most sophisticated,
deliberate forgery ever created. What does the evidence say when
you break it.
Speaker 2: Down, Well, the case for it being a hoax, or
at least a forgery is actually pretty strong, based on
some very specific errors. Errors that seem maybe too obvious,
which makes you wonder if they were put there deliberately
as a kind of built in deniability. For example, that
Cutler Twining memo, the one found in the archives. Later
research showed Robert Cutler, whose signature supposedly on it, was
actually verifiably out of the country on the date the
memo was signed. That's a big problem.
Speaker 1: And there were issues with the language used, too right
seen and too modern for the fifties exactly.
Speaker 2: The documents consistently use the broad term media to refer
to the press. That term didn't really come into common
usage like that until much later in the fifties. They
would have just said the press. There were also weird
inconsistencies in date formats, sometimes using a leading zero for
single digit days like six, sometimes not, which wasn't standard
military practice then. And critically, the nineteen fifty four Operations
Manual makes references to Area fifty one. That name Area
fifty one was a much later CIA designation for the
Groom Lake Facility. It wasn't called that in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: But the real killer, the anachronism that seems impossible to
explain away. If the manual's genuine from fifty four involves
space technology, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: That's probably the biggest red flag for it being a
straightforward forgery. The nineteen fifty four manual includes detailed procedures
for recovering down satellites artificial Earth satellites, But the first
artificial satellite ever launched was Sputnik by the Soviets in
October nineteen fifty seven, three years after this manual was
supposedly written. How could a nineteen fifty four US military
manual have protocols for recovering technology that literally didn't exist yet.
That kind of glaring error makes you think either the
forger was sloppy or that error was deliberately planted. Planted
so that if the document ever got serious scrutiny, it
could be easily shot down publicly debunked. See it mentioned
satellites before Sputnik. It's fake.
Speaker 1: Okay, So those are some serious problems pointing towards forgery.
But what about the other side. What makes these documents,
especially the manual, so compelling? Why did they fool people
for so long? And why do some still believe the
sophistication must be incredible?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's astonishingly sophisticated in other ways. The physical aspects
were often spot on the role of film. The manual
arrived on it was authenticated as genuine nineteen fifties era
codac tricks photographic stock. Forensic analysis of the typography the
actual printed letters on the documents it showed characteristics like
a slightly raised letter Z that were consistent with a
specific type of hot lead printing press commonly used by
government printers in nineteen fifty four. They got obscure details
right too. They use the correct period specific term craft
tape instead of the modern term duct tape. They use
the official nineteen fifties postal abbreviation for New Mexico, which
was NMEX, not the modern NM. Little things, but they
add up to an air of authenticity.
Speaker 1: It's this crazy mix, isn't it, Glaring errors next to
incredibly precise, authentic details. And then there's those factual hooks,
the coincidences that are just hard to dismiss entirely.
Speaker 2: Those are the anchors, the little bits of verified truth
woven into the potentially fabricated narrative that make it so
hard to just throw the whole thing out, Like President
Truman really did meet with vanavar Bush and James Forskall
on the exact date the alleged MJ twelve executive order
was supposedly signed. That's verifiable. General Twining's official flight logs
do place him in New Mexico right around the time
of the Roswell crash. That's verifiable. Doctor Menzel, the debunker
really did hold top secret clearances with the CIA and
NSA and travel to New Mexico on the government's dime.
That's verifiable. The forgeries, if that's what they are, weren't
just random lies. They were carefully constructed around a skeleton
of actual, verifiable, often sensitive, historical facts. That's what makes
them so powerful and so confusing.
Speaker 1: So let's try and connect all these threads. If we
look at the whole picture, the initial leak, the coded messages,
the archives, discovery, the confession, the second wave of documents,
the mix of errors and accuracy, what's the conclusion. It
sounds less like a simple hoax and more like, well,
exactly what Doty specialized in, a psyop a psychological operation.
Speaker 2: When you step back and look at the entire arc,
that's really the only conclusion that seems to fit all
the pieces. However contradictory they seem. This wasn't just some
guy in his basement faking documents, This wasn't a genuine
leak that got confused. The sheer complexity, the resources involved,
the timing, the connection back to Aposi in Kirtland, the
use of a compromised researcher like More to eventually discredit it.
It all points towards a highly sophisticated, deliberately constructed psychological
operation run by elements within US intelligence. This wasn't really
about revealing aliens. It was an exercise and information control.
The documents were likely designed to be found, designed to
be debated, designed to consume massive amounts of time and
energy from researchers, and ultimately designed to be debunkable, possibly
by their own operatives, discrediting the entire field. Why maybe
to distract from actual secrets being tested out in the
desert near Kirtland, real black projects, experimental air crap things
they really didn't want people looking too closely at. By
feeding the UFO community of this incredibly elaborate, ultimately flawed narrative,
they could control the conversation, misdirect attention, and neutralize anyone
who got too close to something sensitive.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate counterintelligence tactic, isn't it. Don't just deny
this secret exists. Create a fake, incredibly messy, controversy laden
version of the secret, let people chase it for years,
then pull the rug out. After that, nobody will believe
any version of the story. The real secret is safer.
Speaker 2: Than ever exactly, And the truly chilling takeaway I think
for everyone listening today is that this wasn't just some weird,
isolated thing that happened to UFO researchers back in the eighties,
Richard Dody and a FOCI. They were field testing techniques
for manipulating public perception and controlling narratives. The methods they
perfected back then the calculated leaks, the blend of truth
and lies, the strategic smearing of credible sources, the use
of compromised insiders. These are now standard operating procedure in
modern information warfare. We are all subject did to these
kinds of manipulation campaigns constantly now, in politics, in media, narratives,
in online discourse everywhere.
Speaker 3: Wow, so we're all basically pull Benewitz now constantly swimming
in this sea of information, some true, some false, all
designed to keep us confused, divided, and chasing shadows.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: If the MJ twelve story teaches us anything, so that
the real battle isn't necessarily about finding that one magic
document that proves everything. It's about understanding who is releasing
information and why, discerning the motivation behind the message.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, critical thinking isn't just a buzzword. It's the essential
survival skill in this environment. You have to constantly question
the source question, the timing question, the narrative. We need
to recognize that creating confusion, fostering division, promoting distraction, these
are often the intended goals of these information campaigns, both
the historical ones like MJ twelve and the ones happening
right now, when everyone's arguing about whether the date format
on a memo is correct or whether media was the
right word for nineteen fifty two, not asking the bigger,
harder questions, questions about government secrecy, about accountability, about the immense,
often unchecked power structures that were solidified way back in
nineteen forty seven and arguably still operate today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ultimate truth of the Majestic twelve saga perhaps
isn't really about whether aliens crashed or roswell. It's about governance.
It's about control. It's about the willingness of people in
power to manipulate reality, to sacrifice truth for what they
see as strategic necessity. The weaponization of information might have
been tested on a relatively small community back then, but
its effects are everywhere now. It impacts every single one
of you listening, staying focused, rejecting the easy distractions, demanding transparency,
and holding elected officials genuinely accountable. That's maybe the only
way to push back against these systems.
Speaker 2: We have to be as persistent in demanding truth and
clarity as those systems maybe established with the kind of
rieflessness we saw hinted at in Forstal's story, have been
in maintaining their secrets. It's a constant struggle against engine
your noise and deliberate confusion. You have to keep asking
the hard questions.