by Jim Marrs
The Soviet manner of dealing with their Nazi scientists greatly differed from the laxity of Project Paperclip. “With hindsight, it would seem that the Soviets demonstrated a more humanitarian approach toward their technical prisoners than did the Americans,” noted Bennett and Percy. “Moreover, the way in which the technical information was passed from teacher to pupil was very different. The Soviet experts and the Germans worked side by side in the same factory, but in separate areas. Information was passed between these teams without the Germans ever meeting their Soviet counterparts. They only spoke directly to Korolev, who was far curter with them than he had been in Bleicherode [the V-2 test area in Germany’s Harz Mountains, where Korolev had first debriefed the scientists at war’s end].”
Some serious researchers have opined that the space programs of both the USSR and the USA, despite the political posturing, were actually the same program, one far ahead of the current joint Russian-American space efforts such as the International Space Station. “This [overall] project was conceived and designed as a collaboration between two superpowers,” wrote Bennett and Percy. “The Cold War was a convenient cover under which aspects of this program could be implemented and hidden. All these machinations were orchestrated at the very highest level, with only a select and hidden few ever knowing the overall objectives of the project [emphasis in original].”
As noted by Farrell, “This, of course, implies some entity or agency of coordination existing both within the Soviet Union and the United States.” If this were so, who were these hidden manipulators?
To begin with, there were the German rocket scientists themselves. In 1945, Lieutenant Walter Jessel was assigned to investigate how much trust to give the scientists before bringing them to America. According to author Hunt, the lieutenant “uncovered evidence of a conspiracy among von Braun, Dornberger, and Dornberger’s former chief of staff, Herbert Axster, to withhold information from U.S. officers.”
Secret codicils within the 1945 Yalta Agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin allowed for the partitioning of Europe between the Allied powers.
Dr. Wilhelm Voss, the former head of the Skoda Munitions Works in Pilsen, had handled much of the material for Kammler’s Kammlerstab Special Projects Group. In May 1945, when elements of the American Army arrived in the Czech city of Pilsen, Voss attempted to hand over a truckload of Kammlerstab documents but was told by the commanding U.S. officer that he was under orders to give everything to the Russians.
While entire German divisions were trying desperately to surrender to the Western Allies, it is well known that Patton’s Third Army had reached the outskirts of Berlin before being ordered back a hundred miles to await the arrival of the Russians, who were required to fight desperately for every block of the city. Such a withdrawal is clear evidence of the deals being made at the highest levels.
As has been noted, there was communication between the two groups of Nazi scientists even though they were half a world away from each other. This could have been facilitated by the interconnected business and banking interests already described.
As detailed in the section “Communism versus National Socialism” the same Western bankers and financiers who funded Hitler’s National Socialism also supported Communism in Russia. The U.S. federal government’s leniency toward communism has been well documented, beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who began his career as a Wall Street attorney specializing in corporate law. Roosevelt echoed his Wall Street cronies’ warm regard for both Stalin and communism. According to historian Thomas Fleming, the U.S. government was rife with globalist agents conveying secrets back to Russia. “There was scarcely a branch of the American government, including the War, Navy, and Justice Departments, that did not have Soviet moles in high places, feeding Moscow information. [William] Wild Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, had so many informers in its ranks, it was almost an arm of the NKVD. Donovan’s personal assistant, Duncan Chaplin Lee, was a spy,” Fleming wrote.
Another possible crossing point for aerospace information may have been the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), according to Bennett and Percy. While the BIS was reportedly created in September 1945 by combining several existing organizations interested in the future of space exploration, it was not officially inaugurated until December of that year. At that time, Wernher von Braun, the man behind the V-2 rockets, was named as an honorary fellow. Arthur C. Clarke, an early member of the BIS, claimed the society had been in existence long before the war and was merely in “suspended animation” from 1939 to 1945.
Noting that the Soviet embassy in London subscribed to no less than twenty copies of the bimonthly BIS journal, Bennett and Percy asked, “Why was it necessary to reform a society already in existence? Why did the British hasten to grant such an award to the man who only nine months before [as technical director of the Nazi V-1 and V-2 rocket programs], was responsible for the annihilation of so many people in London and the Home Counties? Why did both the British (and von Braun) wish to play down the real timing, if everybody felt comfortable with the reasons for honoring [von Braun]?” Their insinuation is that valuable rocket technology information was passed along via the BIS, possibly with the approval of von Braun.
President Eisenhower, aware of the American public’s concern that the Soviets might be winning the space race, ordered a Manhattan Project approach to the problem. This mandate resulted in a structure that became compartmentalized and shrouded with secrecy. All relevant information was on a strictly “need to know” basis, controlled by members of the self-styled globalist elite, the plutocrats who owned the emerging multinational corporations.
To fully understand how this control over parallel space programs worked, one must look past the Eisenhower administration and study the National Security Act of 1947.
On September 15 of that year—only three months after pilot Kenneth Arnold saw flying discs over Mount Rainier, and just two months after something crashed near Roswell, New Mexico—President Harry S. Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, which, among other things, created the National Security Council (NSC) and the Air Force as a separate branch of service, united the military branches under a Department of Defense, and created America’s first peacetime civilian intelligence organization, the Central Intelligence Agency.
An important example of the tight inner government control by secret society members may be found in the NSC, which has come to dominate U.S. policy decisions, including the use of armed force. Most Americans have no idea who exactly comprises the powerful NSC. The council principals are the president, vice president, and secretaries of state and defense, positions predominantly held throughout the later twentieth century by members of the globalist societies, the Council on Foreign Relations, or the Trilateral Commission. The NSC staff is directed by the president’s national security adviser. To coordinate covert operations, the NSC created the 5412 Committee, also called the Special Group, which has changed names several times to avoid public exposure. In 1964, it was known as the 303 Committee and in 1970 it was renamed the 40 Committee. Within this organization—which included such familiar names as Nelson Rockefeller, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles—was a subcommittee dealing with science and technology. It is here that the connection between the corporate and financial world and government-held technological secrets may be found. Here is centered control over rocketry, space, alternative energy sources, and even UFOs. And it is here that researchers have tracked the mysterious group known as Majic Twelve, later known as Majestic Twelve or simply MJ-12.
The MJ-12 issue was first publicly raised in 1984 when a TV producer and UFO researcher received an undeveloped roll of 35-mm black-and-white film in his mail. The film contained eight pages of what appeared to be official U.S. government documents stamped TOP SECRET/MAJIC EYES ONLY and dated November 18, 1952. The pages were a “briefing document” prepared for president-elect Dwight D
. Eisenhower, concerning “Operation Majestic 12.” There has been ongoing controversy over the legitimacy of these and the subsequent release of other MJ-12 documents, including a Standard Operations Manual (SOM 1-01) marked “Top Secret/MAJIC,” dated April 1954, and titled “Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal.”
The documents listed twelve prominent men as members of Operation Majestic 12, “a TOP SECRET Research and Development/Intelligence operation responsible directly and only to the President of the United States,” who were to deal with the UFO issue at the highest level. The papers went on to detail how a “secret operation” was begun on July 7, 1947, to recover the wreckage of a disc-shaped craft from a crash site “approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell Army Air Base.” Also, “four small human-like beings [who] had apparently ejected from the craft” were found dead about two miles east of the wreckage site. The document added, “Civilian and military witnesses in the area were debriefed, and news reporters were given the effective cover story that the object had been a misguided weather research balloon.” Later, when the weather balloon story became discredited, the story was changed to a Mogul balloon, used to monitor the upper atmosphere for Soviet A-bomb testing, though why such a monitoring device would be launched from New Mexico was never explained.
The “briefing” papers ended by stating, “Implications for the National Security are of continuing importance in that the motives and ultimate intentions of these visitors remain completely unknown. In addition, a significant upsurge in the surveillance activity of these craft beginning in May and continuing through the autumn of [1952] has caused considerable concern that new developments may be imminent. It is for these reasons, as well as the obvious international and technological considerations and the ultimate need to avoid a public panic at all costs, that the Majestic-12 Group remains of the unanimous opinion that imposition of the strictest security precautions should continue without interruption into the new administration.”
These MJ-12 documents created a storm of controversy within the UFO research community. Debunkers claimed to have found all sorts of discrepancies—from misspellings to identical signatures. However, no one has been able to definitively disprove all the MJ-12 documents as fakes and, in fact, there is much evidence to indicate their authenticity. For example, Dr. Robert M. Wood, who managed research and development at McDonnell Douglas for forty-three years, found that the typeface and style of the SOM 1-01 manual matched that of U.S. government printing presses in use during the 1950s.
If the information in the MJ-12 documents is proven correct, it is strong evidence that certain persons within the United States had access to remarkable technology, both taken at Roswell and similar to that described as being in Nazi hands toward the end of the war.
A cursory look at the men identified as the original MJ-12 group, as well as their corporate and intelligence connections, makes clear the potential for high-level control over exotic technology—groundbreaking technology that could upset the monopolies over energy, transportation, and communications held by the wealthy globalists who financed Hitler. As listed in the documents, MJ-12 members included:
Adminstrator Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, a 1919 graduate of the Naval Academy, who was familiar with both intelligence work and the Nazis, having worked undercover for a year in Vichy, France. After serving as the third director of Central Intelligence Group, he became the first director of the CIA upon its formation in September 1947, obviously a good choice for a top-secret group like MJ-12. After his retirement from government, Hillenkoetter joined the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a private UFO group, and stated publicly that UFOs were real and “through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”
Dr. Vannevar Bush, an eminent American scientist, who in 1941 organized the National Defense Research Council, and in 1943 the Office of Scientific Research and Development that led to the production of the first atomic bomb. Dr. Bush was another prime candidate for a high-level group dealing with space. He also was a close friend to Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, who had ownership in Union Banking Corporation along with Prescott Bush. (It is reported that Vannevar Bush was unrelated to the political Bush family.) In 1949, the U.S. Intelligence Board asked Bush to study ways of combining intelligence from all agencies. Bush’s plan was initiated by America’s first secretary of defense, James V. Forrestal, who also is listed as an MJ-12 member. Bush’s connections to the corporate world were deep and many. In 1922, Bush, along with his former roommate Laurence K. Marshall and scientist Charles G. Smith, formed American Appliance Company, today known as the powerful Raytheon Corporation heralded in its company literature as an “industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services and business aviation and special mission aircraft.” Bush joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a professor in 1919, and in 1936 was awarded a major grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. His work during World War II resulted in the development of the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer, an analog mainframe computer composed of 2,000 vacuum tubes and 150 motors. Bush also served on the board of directors of the Metals and Controls Corporation, which in 1959 merged with Texas Instruments to become the first U.S. government–approved fabricator of uranium rods. Bush also was a presence in the corporate world of pharmaceuticals, eventually becoming chairman of the board of Merck and Company, one of the world’s most powerful drug companies. Merck has been among the leaders in researching the human genome, the DNA structure that forms cells into humans. Bush also was connected to the Carnegie wealth, serving as president of the Carnegie Institute from 1935 to 1955.
James V. Forrestal, who, prior to World War I, was a bond salesman for William A. Read and Company, later to become Dillon, Read and Company. After the war, he returned to Read and Company and by 1937 was named president. This was at a time when Dillon and Read were the most profitable of all Wall Street syndicate managers handling German industrial issues in the U.S. capital market. In 1957, Fortune magazine named Clarence Dillon as one of the wealthiest men in America, with a fortune estimated to have been between $150 and $200 million. Russell A. Nixon, the young attorney for the U.S. Military Government Cartel Unit who tried to break up the Nazi corporate syndicates at the end of the war, was blocked in his efforts by Brigadier General William H. Draper, who along with Forrestal was an officer of Dillon and Read. According to Sutton, “Banker William Draper, as Brigadier General William Draper, put his control team together from businessmen who had represented American business in prewar Germany.” Forrestal also sat on the board of General Aniline and Film (GAF), a subsidiary of I. G. Farben with 91.5 percent ownership by the brother-in-law of Farben chairman Hermann Schmitz. Heading GAF was Rudolf Ilgner, who near the outbreak of war offered the U.S. Army Agfa film at a low price for photographing the Panama Canal and other defense installations. “Ilgner has a sense of humor,” noted Charles Higham, the New York Times writer who traced the Nazi-American money plot in his 1983 book Trading with the Enemy. “He gave the American government copies of the movies and still photographs and kept the originals, which were shipped via the Hamburg-Amerika steamship line [partly owned by Prescott Bush]. The president of this company was Julius P. Meyer, head of the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce, whose chairman was—Rudolf Ilgner.” Forrestal became secretary of defense in July 1947—the time of the Roswell incident—but resigned in March 1949, a month before he reportedly committed suicide at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He claimed he was being followed by Zionist agents. His MJ-12 position was permanently filled by General Walter B. Smith.
General Walter Bedell Smith, who had been Eisenhower’s chief of staff and former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, replacing Averell Harriman. In 1950, Smith replaced Admiral Hillenkoetter as Director of Central Intelligence. Most intriguing was Smith’s close relationship as friend and busi
ness partner with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the former SS officer who, with Smith’s help, founded the secretive Bilderberg Group. Before leaving for England prior to hostilities, the German-born Bernhard was employed in I. G. Farben’s Intelligence Department, NM7.
General Nathan F. Twining, commander of the Air Material Command based at Wright-Patterson, who was already heavily involved in the UFO issue by the time of MJ-12. He had canceled a scheduled trip on July 8, 1947, “due to a very important and sudden matter.” This was the day the Roswell Air Base press release regarding the recovery of a flying saucer was issued. UFO researcher William Moore claimed that Twining actually made a two-day trip to New Mexico. On September 23, 1945, just as the air force became a separate service, Twining sent a letter to the chief of staff of the Army Air Force, Brigadier General George Schulgen, who had requested information on “flying discs.” In a letter stamped SECRET, Twining began by stating without equivocation, “The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” He recommended that a permanent group be established to study UFOs.