Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. He led the country through the end of World War II, including the decision to use the atomic bomb, and into the early Cold War, with the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Korean War. The National Security Act of 1947, which he signed, created the CIA and the independent Air Force.

His presidency overlapped the first wave of flying saucer reports in 1947 and the 1952 Washington, D.C., sightings, when his Air Force aide phoned the head of Project Blue Book for an explanation.

Truman's name also appears on one of the so-called MJ-12 documents, a memo dated September 24, 1947, supposedly setting up a secret committee to study a recovered craft. The FBI labeled the papers bogus, an Air Force investigation found the briefing document fake, and critics noted that the Truman signature looked like a pasted-on copy of a genuine one. Mainstream historians do not accept the memo as real.