Jimmy Carter and UFOs

From TinWiki.org

Jimmy Carter

Perhaps more than any other American president, Jimmy Carter, known as "the UFO president," was very interested in the subject of UFOs and, despite disappointing results, did work for disclosure to the public of secret government UFO information.

1 Carter's UFO
- 1.1 Skeptics’ opinion
2 Carter’s promise
- 2.1 A promise broken
3 Evidence of good intentions
- 3.1 Carter approaches NASA
4 United Nations gets involved
5 Carter's evaluation
6 External links

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Carter's UFO

On January 6, 1969, two years before becoming governor of Georgia, Carter witnessed a UFO. The sighting lasted about 10 minutes while standing outside the Leary, Georgia Lion’s Club while he and about ten others were waiting for a meeting to begin. Carter said they sighted a red and green orb shining in the western sky at an altitude of about 30 degrees above the horizon. “It seemed to move towards us from a distance, stop, move partially away, return, then depart. Bluish at first; then reddish—luminous—not solid. At times it was as bright as the moon, and about as big as the moon—maybe a bit smaller.“

In a subsequent interview he described it as a “very remarkable sight.” His mother, Lillian, said, “The UFO made a huge impression on Jimmy. He told me about the sighting many times.”

In the ensuing years, Carter has never indicated that it was a misidentification of a natural phenomenon. In 1975 at a Southern Governors Conference he said, “I don’t laugh at people anymore when they say they’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen one myself. It was the darndest thing I have ever seen. It was big, it was bright, it changed colors and it was about the size of the moon.”

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Skeptics’ opinion

Robert Sheaffer and other skeptics unimaginatively claimed that Carter and the others were looking at Venus. Many others, however, were quick to point out the inconsistencies with that evaluation. Carter, a trained naval observer, said the object was in the west at 30 degrees above the horizon. At the time, Venus was in the southwest at half that altitude. Furthermore, the object disappeared in ten minutes, at 7:25. But Venus was still visible in the clear skies of that night until 9:20. Also, Venus never appears even close to the size of the moon.

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Carter’s promise

In 1976, Carter promised, “If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.”

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A promise broken

However, once he was elected, public comments from the administration and Carter about UFOs stopped. It has been theorized that once he was briefed on the subject, Carter was bound to secrecy and unable to comment publicly. Another theory is that he simply was never able to gain access to classified information.

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Evidence of good intentions

Despite a perceived lack of responsiveness to the issue, Carter’s Press Secretary, Jody Powell, was heading attempts to obtain information, and a variety of federal agencies were being sent requests for pertinent documents.

Further evidence of Carter’s attempts was in the firing of George H. W. Bush as director of the CIA, replacing him with Carter’s friend Stansfield Turner.

Marcia S. Smith, Director of the Library of Congress’s Science and Technology Division of the Congressional Research Service, said Carter told Bush, “I want to have the information that we have on UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence. I want to know about this as President.” According to Smith, Bush replied, “no...that he wasn’t going to give this to him...that this was information that existed on a need to know basis only. Simple curiosity on the part of the President wasn’t adequate.”

Years later, Carter told UFO researcher Stanton Friedman at Boston’s Logan airport that he fired Bush to gain access to key intelligence questions. Despite Bush's firing, however, no disclosures were forthcoming.

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Carter approaches NASA

Carter’s Science Advisor, Frank Press, wrote to NASA Administrator Dr. Robert Frosch about reopening a UFO investigation. Frosch wrote back, saying in part:

“I do not feel that we should mount a research effort without a better starting point than we have been able to identify thus far. I would therefore propose that NASA take no steps to establish a research activity in this area or to convene a symposium on this subject.”

Press accepted NASA’s evaluation, and that marked the end of the Administration’s attempts at UFO disclosure. However, during the Carter presidency, over 2,500 CIA and FBI documents were released due to an executive order signed by Carter that loosened the criteria for release of FOIA documents.

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United Nations gets involved

Sir Eric M. Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada and himself a UFO witness, had for years pressed for a Department of UFOs in the United Nations. He met with Carter on September 9, 1977. (The NSC documents from the files of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who attended that meeting, are still classified.) On November 28, Gairy’s UN delegate, Wellington Friday, addressed the assembly about the need for a debate on UFOs and the part the UN could play in researching the subject.

A year later in December 1978, Gairy successfully placed on the UN agenda Draft 33/426, titled “Establishment of an agency or a department of the United Nations for undertaking, coordinating and disseminating the results of research into unidentified flying objects and related phenomena.”

Gairy, accompanied by UFO experts J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee and Lt. Col. Larry Coyne, made a presentation before the UN’s Special Political Committee. The committee subsequently recommended to the General Assembly “to take appropriate steps to coordinate, on a national level, scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects.”

Unfortunately, in March 1979, the Gairy government was overthrown and Gairy went into exile, as did his attempts at establishing a United Nations UFO study and disclosure.

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Carter's evaluation

In 1997 during an interview on the British television show The Paranormal World of Paul McKenna, Carter was asked whether he felt he was successful in releasing information to the public regarding UFOs.

Carter replied, “I’m not sure, but we did release a lot of information,” and then added, “but I don’t know how much was not released.”

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