The Buried James Conant Letter That Connects Roswell, Aztec, and the Creation of MJ-12

Hidden within the Forrestal archives is an extraordinary private letter dated April 29, 1948, from Harvard President James B. Conant to Dr. Vannevar Bush. Its obscurity belies its significance. It was Dr. Conant writing privately to Dr. Bush in the immediate aftermath of the March 1948 Aztec crash recovery.

Dr. Conant began by recounting concerning details in a speech he heard from Dr. Brock Chisholm, the Canadian physician and former major general who later became the first director-general of the World Health Organization. Dr. Chisholm warned that bacteriological warfare (“BW”) would prove even more destabilizing than the atomic bomb. Dr. Chisholm claimed in his speech that hostile foreign governments lacking the resources to build nuclear weapons could nonetheless easily inflict catastrophic destruction with only a handful of determined agents—a rather specific allegation coming weeks after the Aztec, NM, crash retrieval on March 25, 1948. Conant left the meeting feeling so disturbed that he immediately wrote Dr. Vannevar Bush, his closest confidant for years.

But the letter’s real historical importance extends beyond Chisholm’s speech. It reveals the authority Dr. Conant believed Dr. Bush possessed, and the scientific machinery governing the apex of the American national-security state. Conant’s declaration was categorical:

“You are the one person in a position to evaluate the whole field, with the aid of some tough-minded, unprejudiced experts.”