Which US Presidents Know About UFOs?
Did you know that two different presidents have reported UFO sightings? Or that one president campaigned with a promise to open the UFO files? Find out which president is rumored to have attended a meeting with extraterrestrials at an air force base, and which president is reportedly afraid that he’ll be killed if he speaks publicly about UAP.
Truman requests regular briefings on flying saucers
- Truman was president from 1945 to 1953, which means he saw the summer of the saucers in 1947, Roswell, the creation of the Air Force and CIA.
- We’ve talked a bit before about how there seemed to be a regular tug-of-war happening in the Air Force around whether to take UFOs seriously.
- Politico: “One afternoon in 1948, Truman summoned his military aide, Gen. Robert Landry to the Oval Office. Landry said they ‘talked about UFO reports and what might be the meaning for all these rather way-out reports of sightings, and the subject in general… All manner of objects and things were being seen in the sky by people.’”
- “Truman told Landry that he hadn’t given much serious thought to the reports, but was worried about the possibility of new and underestimated threats. The president said ‘If there was any evidence of a strategic threat to national security, the collection and evaluation of UFO data by Central Intelligence warranted more intense study and attention at the highest government level.’”
- “Moving forward, he wanted a quarterly oral report from Landry and the Air Force on whether any of the UFO sightings presented any real danger. Over the rest of Truman’s presidency, Landry regularly provided the briefings, but as he later recalled in an oral history, ‘Nothing of substance considered credible or threatening to the country was ever received from intelligence.’ But the sightings never fully went away and solid explanations never materialized.”
- Besides Roswell, another major UFO incident that happened while Truman was president:
- Holcombe: “In July 1952, Washington, D.C., became the site of one of the most startling UFO events in history. On two successive weekend nights, July 19 and July 26, the sky over D.C., including the restricted airspace over the Capitol and the White House, was flown over by unknown objects and tracked on radar at Washington National Airport and Andrews AFB.”
- “The events of July 19 started at 11:40 P.M. and continued until 5:30 A.M. the following morning. Albert Chop, Air Force and Pentagon spokesman, was alerted, and he called for Air Force jets to be scrambled… but the objects would disappear when the jets arrived, then reappear when the jets returned to base.”
- “The first sighting on July 26 was made at 8:15 P.M. and continued until dawn the next morning. On the twenty-sixth, the objects stayed and seemed to play cat and mouse with the fighters by hovering and then flashing away at speeds estimated to be in excess of seven thousand miles per hour.”
- “The objects were seen by thousands of people in the area. They were photographed and reported around the world. People and politicians alike wanted answers and were exerting heavy pressure on the Air Force for them. At ten o’clock in the morning on the twenty-seventh, General Landry, at the direction of President Truman, called the Pentagon and requested information on the prior night’s events. Hysteria was building rapidly and the president wanted to defuse the situation before it ballooned out of hand.”
- “As a result, on July 29 Air Force generals John Samford and Roger Ramey held a news conference in an attempt to calm public anxiety over the events. It was the largest Air Force news conference since World War I and it achieved the desired results. General Sanford explained that the lights were simply the misidentification of stars and the radar returns were from temperature inversions.”
- “The public and the press accepted this explanation. However, on the inside the explanation was criticized. The radar operators were furious that they had been made to appear as incompetents who couldn’t distinguish a return between a temperature inversion and a hard target. Respected atmospheric physicist Dr. James E. McDonald, from the University of Arizona, felt the explanation ridiculous and physically impossible. Even Air Force Project Blue Book director, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, took issue with the explanation in his book, after retiring from the Air Force.”
- In a post-presidential press conference, he was asked if the Joint Chiefs of Staff talked to him about UFOs: “Oh yes, we discussed it at every conference we had with the military, and they never were able to make me a concrete report. There’s always things like that going on… flying saucers.”
Eisenhower has a secret meeting with aliens
- There is a TON of UFO lore around Truman and Eisenhower’s presidencies, but almost all of it comes from a set of controversial documents called the MJ-12 files, which are a whole topic on their own, and we should probably discuss them at some point. But there is one rumor around Eisenhower’s presidency that I’d like to share: The Holloman AFB story.
- Holcombe: “There is perhaps no stranger story in all of UFOlogy than the rumored meeting between President Eisenhower and extraterrestrials at Holloman Air Force Base sometime around February 11, 1955.”
- “The president’s diary shows that he flew from Washington, D.C., to Georgia on Thursday, February 10, 1955, arriving at 4 P.M. and went quail hunting until 6 P.M. The diary then states that the next morning, Friday, the president went quail hunting again from 9 A.M. to 11 A.M. After that, the president didn’t schedule any activity until Saturday at 4 P.M. …The president was out of the public eye for about forty-two hours.”
- We’ve got several witnesses who claim that the president actually spent Friday at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico at the same time that a UFO landed.
- William Kirklin was stationed at the hospital at Holloman. He said he was asked by his CO if we would like to be part of a military honor guard to welcome President Eisenhower. He declined, and his CO said fine, you’ll be on duty at the hospital, then. Later they were told there would be no ceremonies and to forget whatever they’d heard about a presidential visit.
- “On the morning of February 11, Kirklin was on duty at the hospital when a coworker asked if he had seen the disc hovering over the flight line. “What do you mean ‘hovering’?” Kirklin asked. “It was just hovering about twenty feet off the ground. It must be remote controlled,” his coworker replied. “It was about twenty to thirty feet across… It looked like some kind of shiny metal, like stainless steel or aluminum. Why don’t you go take a look, it’s probably still out there?” …By the time he was able to go outside on break the object had gone.”
- “After his shift he was walking to his quarters behind two Air Force officers who were talking about Eisenhower’s visit that day. Kirklin remembers their discussion in detail.”
- “Did you see the president’s plane?”
- “Yeah, that Connie [Lockheed Super Constellation] is a big bird. Came in on the active runway but didn’t taxi off, just turned around and shut down, closed the runway.”
- “We were told to shut down the radars.”
- “Why?”
- “Don’t know. Rumor is radar fouls them up and that is what brought one down at Roswell some years ago.”
- “Do think the ones today were the same from Palmdale last year?”
- “Could be. I heard there were three and one landed at the monument, but I only saw two. One set down on the runway in front of the Connie and the other hovered above it like it was protecting it. After a few minutes someone left the plane, walked to the disc, a door of some sort opened and the person went inside. He stayed about forty-five minutes then went back to the Connie.”
- “Was it the president?”
- “That’s what I thought but it was on the far runway and I didn’t have binoculars.”
- “At that point Kirklin stepped up behind them and asked, “Are you talking about the president?” One of the officers turned to Kirklin and said, “It’s not important” and covering their name badges they hurried off. Kirklin did see their wings and knew they were pilots.”
- “The president’s diary shows that he flew from Washington, D.C., to Georgia on Thursday, February 10, 1955, arriving at 4 P.M. and went quail hunting until 6 P.M. The diary then states that the next morning, Friday, the president went quail hunting again from 9 A.M. to 11 A.M. After that, the president didn’t schedule any activity until Saturday at 4 P.M. …The president was out of the public eye for about forty-two hours.”
Nixon takes Jackie Gleason to see alien bodies
- By the time Nixon becomes president, UFOs have been successfully turned into a taboo subject, and Project Blue Book has been shuttered. From 1969 to 2017, the official line on UFOs from the government is “nothing to see here.”
- That said, there’s one really interesting story from Nixon’s presidency. He was good friends with comedian Jackie Gleason, who was well-known for his interest in UFOs and the paranormal.
- Holcombe: Gleason’s ex-wife, Beverly McKittrick, told Esquire magazine that Nixon took Gleason to see dead bodies of preserved aliens at an air force base.
- “McKittrick stated that during a round of golf at Gleason’s Inverrary Golf Club, Nixon and Gleason discussed, among other things, UFOs and extraterrestrials. Later that night Nixon showed up at Gleason’s home and whisked him away to Homestead AFB where they entered a hangar in a high-security area containing a crashed UFO and the remains of preserved preserved extraterrestrials.”
- “Gleason returned home in a very disturbed state and eventually told his wife what he saw. McKittrick stated that for three weeks after the alleged late-night trip to Homestead, Gleason ate and slept little, but drank heavier than usual. He couldn’t fathom, according to McKittrick, why the government continued to conceal an extraterrestrial presence.”
- “Shortly thereafter the Gleasons separated and at some point in this time frame the Esquire article came out. In a 2003 telephone interview she stated that when the article was published Gleason called her and was very upset that she told Esquire the Nixon UFO story and what relationship they had still enjoyed was now over. However, he never denied her account of his late-night trip with the president.”
Ford angry about Air Force “swamp gas” coverup
- Now, Gerald Ford never mentioned UFOs after becoming president, but he was pretty outspoken about them while he was serving in Congress as a representative from Michigan.
- Holcombe: “Over a period of six days in March 1966, UFOs were seen by hundreds of people in southern Michigan and Ohio, in an area between and around Toledo and Detroit. On March 14, in the early morning darkness a number of police officers from Washtenaw, Livingston, and Monroe counties viewed objects that darted about the sky moving very fast and making sharp turns. The objects would dive, hover, and shoot straight up while changing colors. Citizens were also seeing the objects and were calling the various police departments to report the sightings. Monroe County sheriff’s office contacted Selfridge Air Force base and was told that the base had uncorrelated targets over Lake Erie.”
- “Two police officers saw three or four toplike objects dart about the sky glowing red, white, and green. Another patrolman spotted an object in the sky. He reported that the object, flashing red and green, hovered over a car, then was joined by another object and shot up into the night sky. The county sheriff ordered all deputies to the scene and they later chased an object but were unable to catch up to it.”
- “A local, Frank Mannor, and his family saw the lights from their home and went to investigate. An object appeared to touch down in a nearby swamp. Mannor stated, ‘I got within five hundred yards of the thing and it looked pyramid-shaped. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Mannor said the object appeared to be about the size of a car. It had a haze under it as it hovered then rose to treetop level and came back down while changing colors. The object emitted a noise like a very high-pitched siren. Mannor’s wife called the police.”
- “Police Chief Taylor and Patrolman Lee came to the scene and heard the sounds and saw the object in the sky around 10:30 P.M. Taylor watched the object through binoculars pulsating red with a light on each end. A deputy sheriff also observed the object. ‘It looked like an arc. It was round. We turned around and starting following it through Dexter for five miles. It was headed west and we stopped. We lost it in the trees. Either the lights went off or it took off with a tremendous burst of speed. It was about fifteen hundred feet above the ground. It moved along at about one hundred miles per hour. We were doing seventy before losing it.’”
- Project Blue Book sent one of their consultants, J. Allen Hynek to investigate. Hyneck was pressured by Maj Hector Quintanilla, the head of Blue Book, to come up with a debunking press statement about what the sightings “really” were before the population got too excited.
- “At a news conference after studying the sightings and going to the Mannor farm to view the site where the Mannors said the UFO landed, Hynek opined that swamp gas may be the cause of some of the sightings.”
- “He repeatedly stated that swamp gas was a possible explanation for only a few of the sightings. Hynek’s admonishment that swamp gas was a possible explanation for only a few of the sightings was overlooked and his comments were ridiculed by citizens and scientists alike. The swamp gas fiasco caused worldwide outrage, and brought Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan into the controversy. In 1966, Ford made several passionate radio broadcasts to his constituents that he was pursuing a congressional investigation into the Michigan sightings.”
- All this public pressure eventually led to the Air Force setting up the Condon commision as an impartial study.
- A memo leaked from an assistant dean of the university’s graduate program reassuring administrators that the study would find “no reality to the observations.”
- Condon himself said he thought the subject was nonsense, “but I’m not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.”
Carter saw a UFO and pledged to disclose
- During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO in October 1969. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen” in the sky.
- Politico: “One of Carter’s club colleagues pointed to the horizon, ‘Look, over in the west!’ The men watched a bright light appear to come toward them and then move rapidly away. ‘It was about 30 degrees above the horizon and looked about as large as the moon. It got smaller and changed to a reddish color and then got larger again,’ Carter recalled. At various times, the luminous object appeared more blue, other times more reddish. He estimated the object was perhaps 300 to 1,000 yards away, set against the star-filled night sky, and the group watched it for about 10 to 12 minutes before it seemed to move away and disappear for good.”
- Carter campaigned on it: “One thing’s for sure, I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.”
- After winning the presidency, though, Carter backed away from this pledge, saying that the release of some information might have “defense implications” and pose a threat to national security.
- Rumor is that he asked for UFO info, and was told by CIA Director George HW Bush that he had no need-to-know.
Reagan saw a UFO and talked about alien threats
- Politico: “While serving as governor, Reagan had encountered a UFO while flying in a Cessna Citation near Bakersfield, Calif., in 1974. Reagan’s pilot that night, Bill Paynter, later recounted noticing a strange object several hundred yards behind their plane. ‘It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate. Then it appeared to elongate. Then the light took off. It went up at a 45-degree angle at a high rate of speed. Everyone on the plane was surprised,’ he said. ‘The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly. If you give an airplane power, it will accelerate — but not like a hot rod, and that’s what this was like.’ Reagan was wowed: ‘It went straight up into the heavens.’”
- Holcombe: “Lucille Ball said that Reagan had confided in her that on the way to a party in Los Angeles with wife, Nancy, they encountered a UFO on the ground blocking their car. An alien exited the craft and addressed Reagan telepathically with one message, ‘Leave acting and go into politics.’ Both Ball and entertainer Steve Allen confirmed that when the Reagans appeared at the party late, they appeared shaken and Reagan said they had seen a UFO.”
- Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, shared a story about a conversation he had with Reagan on a private walk in Lake Geneva: “Reagan asked ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’ I said, ‘No doubt about it.’ He said, ‘We too.’ So that’s interesting.”
- Reagan in a speech to the United Nations: “Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”
- Politico: “Reagan’s frequent references to the alien invasions did not sit well with all his staff. According to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, National Security Advisor Colin Powell ‘would roll his eyes and say to his staff, ‘Here come the little green men again.’’”
Clinton asked for UFO files
- Cliton’s chief of staff, John Podesta, was heavily involved in UFO stuff, and even worked with Tom Delonge, which we discussed WAY back at the start of the podcast. We’re running out of time, so I’ll just refer you back to our Tom Delonge episode if you want more info about Podesta’s involvement in UFO stuff surging back into the forefront.
- Clinton has publicly acknowledged that he tried to look into UFOs, but wasn’t able to get any answers.
- Politico: “When Webb Hubbell, Clinton’s longtime friend, started as the associate attorney general, Clinton gave him specific marching orders: ‘Webb, if I put you over at Justice, I want you to find the answers to two questions for me. One, who killed JFK? And two, are there UFOs?’ (‘He was dead serious,’ Hubbell later wrote in his memoir.’“I had looked into both, but wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was getting.”)’
- Speaking to a student who asked him about Roswell, he said "No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it, either, and I want to know."
- Asked about UFOs while promoting his book: “There are things flying around up there that we haven’t fully identified yet.”
Obama asked for UFO files
- When asked by Jimmy Kimmel if he looked into UFOs:
- Obama: “I can’t reveal anything.”
- Kimmel: “Clinton said he did go looking and there was nothing.”
- Obama: “That’s what we’re instructed to say.”
- Speaking to James Corden: “When I came into office, I asked. I was like ‘All right, is there the lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?’ And you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was ‘no.’ But what is true — and I’m actually being serious here — is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern.”
Trump was briefed on UFOs
- Trump has repeatedly claimed he was briefed on UFOs while president
- In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he said "I did have one very brief meeting on it… Do I believe it? Not particularly."
- Asked about Roswell by Don Jr: “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”
- To podcaster Hugh Hewitt: “I will tell you, I interviewed a couple people from the Air Force, and these guys were central casting, perfect guys with their crew cuts. And they walked in and they were handsome as hell, and I said what do you think, and they believe it. I mean, they believe it. They said they saw it. And he’s not the kind of guy that’s going to lie.”
- On Logan Paul’s podcast, Trump was asked about UFOs: “I met with pilots, like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller. Handsome, perfect people. Not conspiratorial, not crazy, and they tell me stories that they’ve seen things you wouldn't believe. ‘Sir, there was something there that was round in form and going, like, four times faster than my super jet fighter plane.’ And they really mean it. Am I a believer? No, I can’t say that I am. But I have met with people that are serious people that say there's some really strange things that they see flying around out there.”
- Ross Coulthart claims that Trump has been briefed, but Trump fears for his life if he reveals what he knows to the public
- “I’ve been told by three sources now that Donald Trump was briefed as president in early 2020, into what I’m talking about today. I’m told that he was given a qualified briefing, not as much as other presidents have been told, about the crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. Do you know what’s going on? He’s scared. He’s scared they’re going to kill him if he reveals what he knows. That’s what I’ve been told. You have a situation where your potential president is terrified of speaking about the UAP issue because he’s scared they’re going to knock him. I’m not kidding you. I’m not making this up.”
References
- Larry Holcombe: The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama
- Politico: Which Presidents Have Seen UFOs? Yep, It’s More Than One.
- Newsweek: What Trump, Obama and Clinton Have Said About UFOs
- Flatland: Truman, Eisenhower and the Endless Pursuit of UFOs
- NBC News: Is that JFK memo to the CIA about UFOs real?
- Intelligencer: Jimmy Carter Saw a UFO on This Day in 1973
- Jimmy Kimmel: President George W. Bush on Government Secrets
- Kelly & Ryan: President Clinton on UFOs
- Politico: How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream
- Jimmy Kimmel: President Barack Obama Denies Knowledge of Aliens
- James Corden: Reggie Watts to Barack Obama: What's w/ Dem Aliens?
- NBC News: Trump says he's heard 'very interesting' things about Roswell
- ABC News: Trump says he doesn't particularly believe in unidentified flying objects
- Salon: Trump says pilots, "like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller," told him UFOs exist
- NewsNation: Trump claims he was briefed on UFOs during his presidency
- NewsNation: Pence says he's been briefed on UFOs
- Ross Coulthart: Trump and Obama have been briefed on UFOs
- Ross Coulthart: Trump is scared they’re going to kill him if he talks about UFOs
Episode 47, posted on