On 12 December 1960, FBI Special Agents interviewed former President Harry Truman at the request of President Elect Kennedy and was “cordial until purpose of interview explained, whereupon his manner became brusque”. Was he asked the embarrassing question “did you authorize Operation Majestic 12?”

The following document is from the FBI Vault archive:

Record of Interview of former President Harry S. Truman

From the interview body, It appears that the incoming administration of President Elect John F. Kennedy requested the Special Agent in Charge of the Kansas City FBI Office to interview former President Harry S. Truman over a “Special Inquiry Matter”. Truman is clearly upset at the line of inquiry and eventually terminates it, after his opinions were asked about certain people that were to hold high level positions in his government. As the Director of Central Intelligence is a political appointee, I believe one of those people was the incumbent DCI at the time, Allen W. Dulles. Truman appointed Dulles as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in 1951, and tells the FBI Special Agent he is “All right”. The other person that Truman claims “I never heard of him” may have been the CIA Director of Counterintelligence, James Angleton who was appointed to that position after Truman had left office. Kennedy may have heard bad things about these two gentlemen through his friend James Forrestal, whose defenestration in 1949 haunted Kennedy for the rest of his life.

Interestingly, another reference to Truman being interviewed by FBI Special Agents regarding “Special Inquiry Matters” comes from the Majestic Documents via Source S-1, whom I believe to be CIA CI Special Investigations Group Director Newton “Scotty” Miler. In this interview, Truman is asked directly “Did you authorize Operation Majestic 12?” Truman is initially coy in his response until he is shown the documents with his signature on them – supplied to the FBI by the CIA. He then proceeds to expand on the reasons why it was created and how Congress had no idea of the monster they had all created. Miler supplied his essay “UFOs, CIA and Congress” to researcher Timothy Cooper in 1999, and the discrepancy in the years may have been due to a lapse of his memory.

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The original FBI record of interview file can be found on page 54 of this FBI Vault archive:

Records: The Vault — Harry S. Truman Part 02 of 03

The essay “UFOs, CIA and Congress” can be found here:

s-cia-congress-s1-00.pdf (majesticdocuments.com)