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Also see (look for “Bush and Conant’s”):

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/11609/31295001310464.pdf

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By the way going back one of your Aug 23 2023 tweets (and replies) certainly alludes to the idea of using the abortive AEC proposal as a prototype for Majestic. I certainly would have seen at least the parent tweet a long while back when I was ascertaining awareness of #ufotwitter about Vannevar Bush, and It may well have been rattling around my subconscious when I read the above references when it came time to needing to trigger on the relevant keywords.

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Also especially for thread-unifying (Vannevar would probably say 'trails'-unifying, applying his Memex vocabulary), I want to highlight your foreshadowing Medium post of that same date: https://medium.com/@richgel99/dr-vannevar-bushs-1944-committee-of-12-f8f2fd14a122

Again I couldn't rule out (and very possible well did! :) ) read it at some point. As I was alluding: I don't know how subconsciouses work, but they do work and background activity like this can almost certainly set a contextual framework contributing to another's subconscious to implicitly evaluate the weights of newly observed pieces of evidence.

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Thanks for that Rich - especially appreciating its coming from someone who has definitely not 'feared to tread' on Majestic territory :) . I'm reading the thesis now and it's a brilliant one as far as relevance to the topic goes.

Seaver's thesis refers to the abortive bill in question as the 'War Department Bill' (30 times) and the 'May-Johnson Bill' but one time. I don't know why he prefers to use that term for the bill since The New World, which he also cites, refers to it as 'May-Johnson'.

If he had written 'May-Johnson bill' more than 'War Department Bill', I'm pretty certain you would have written this blog post instead of me.

PS How did you come across that interesting thesis? For all intents and purposes it doesn't even show up in my directed searches, much less running across it passively. Was it cited somewhere more familiar?

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Jun 30·edited Jun 30

I don't now remember exactly how. I find things like this via keyword searching across numerous archives/engines, then following the links (like following nodes in a huge graph of records). Used many different keywords. Such a process can takes many days or months of looking with many dead ends.

I didn't put 2 and 2 together about "May-Johnson" (MJ) because the author referred to "Johnson" and "May" (in that opposite order).

I personally have zero doubts that the Majestic "Working Group" existed, and a form of it still probably exists in an expanded/modernized form.

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Jul 5·edited Jul 5

The author might be interested in getting a copy of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy In The United States, by Alex Wellerstein

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Looks like a great & relevant book..! =) Thanks for the reco :)

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Backup URL for the thesis "Origin And Significance Of The Atomic Energy Act Of 1946

by DAVID MARSHALL SEAVER, B.A.":

https://archive.org/details/origin-and-significance-of-the-atomic-energy-act-of-1946-thesis-31295001310464

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Your article has gotten attention and has brought the modern disinfo guys out of the woodwork. This means you are over the target.

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It's making me feel seen 😌

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A lot of reaching. There was no Majestic. Majestic was already a code name in WW2 for the planned allied invasion of the Japanese islands, as part of Operation Olympic.. There was no Majestic twelve. The code name was declassified in 1946, and no longer would be used. There was no secret MJ12 group dealing with saucers. This is basic research. Also, groups of 12 go back to ancient times, its a common number for councils/committees/secret groups/etc..

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Laughable disinformation. Of course they would have a Working Group handling the situation.

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Blocked Epistemology is already aware of this but just putting it here for the public record, in section 5 the reddit comment from user /u/Harry_is_white_hot states:

"'MAGIC' was the code word used for intelligence collected from a VERY high source within the Japanese High Command during WW2"

This is just slightly off, although not in a way important to the topic. MAGIC was used to denote that the messages were from decrypted Japanese Foreign Office (diplomatic) communications which used the PURPLE encryption device.

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Thanks for posting it here. If u/Harry_is_white_hot responds on Reddit I'll relay it here.

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Right on, and thanks for emphasizing about the proportional makeup of the working group. The first New World passage excerpted in the article above reflects that too:

5:3:2:2

Scientists:Civilians:Army:Navy .

(I assume 3 intelligence people can count as 'civilians'...:J ) The first Majestic drop's itemization of the working group members hews *very* close to this proportion, (allowing for a couple of reasonable reclassifications in Forrestal & Hillenkoetter as their Navy pedigree) but still not 100%. If the itemization is accurate, one could retroactively suppose that with the Air Force having recently split off from the Army, then between them they should get 1 extra representative instead of 2 (at the expense of civilian representation). Given the 'F' in 'UFO', the Air Force might have growled that they had outsized say in the matter...

I may update the post with that but its getting long as it is; if I do I'll acknowledge your tweet's prompting. :)

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