Majestic 12

The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft.

[3][4][5] According to ufologist William L. Moore, his friend, Los Angeles television writer-producer Jamie Shandera, received documents that appeared to be briefing papers describing "Operation Majestic-12" in mid-December 1984.

[6][7] The concept of "Majestic 12" emerged during a period in the 1980s when ufologists believed there had been a cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident and speculated some secretive upper tier of the U.S. government was responsible.

[3] Shandera and his ufologist colleagues Stanton T. Friedman and Bill Moore say they later received a series of anonymous messages that led them to find what has been called the "Cutler/Twining memo"[a] in 1985 while searching declassified files in the National Archives.

Purporting to be written by President Eisenhower's assistant Robert Cutler to General Nathan F. Twining and containing a reference to Majestic 12, the memo is widely held to be a forgery, likely planted as part of a hoax.

Other discrepancies noted by Klass included the use of a distinctive date format that matched one used in Moore's personal letters, and a conversation reported by Brad Sparks in which Moore confided that he was contemplating creating and releasing some hoax Top Secret documents in hopes that such bogus documents would encourage former military and intelligence officials who knew about the government's (alleged) UFO coverup to break their oaths of secrecy.

[2] MuckRock contributor Emma Best has suggested that the papers were "government sponsored, or at least tolerated, disinformation" because the declassified FBI file on Majestic 12 does not mention any further investigation to find or prosecute the forger responsible for it.

He cited ufologist Bill Moore's suspicion that, rather than a hoax perpetrated by the UFO community, the papers were actually part of a disinformation campaign of the US government meant to deflect attention from secret Air Force projects.