The Politics of Disclosure
UFOs Hovered Over the 1976 Election
President Gerald Ford and Governor Jimmy Carter had something in common besides wanting to be president — they each sought the truth about UFOs.
Forty four years ago, incumbent President Gerald Ford stepped on a stage on three different occasions to debate his challenger, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Everyone talked about how different these two men were — the Southern peanut farmer outsider and the Washington power-player insider. They were different politically, no question, but they had one unusual trait very much in common.
Both presidential candidates — the nominees of the two major parties in America — each had an abiding interest in understanding more about the UFO phenomenon, one wanted congressional hearings and the other had seen a UFO with his own eyes.
Gerald Ford Thought There Should Be Hearings
Back in 1966, a full decade before he would be President, running the gauntlet against Reagan, then Carter, there was Representative Gerald Ford, hail-fellow well-met, football quarterbackin’ Congressman from Michigan. This Ford had a lot of angry constituents demanding answers about things they were seeing in the skies, that didn’t look like they belonged. In 1966, he asked:
“Are we to assume that everyone who says he has seen UFOs is an unreliable witness? I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject.”
Ford was in office during the Michigan sightings of 1966, many of which occurred in his home district, all in his home state. These weren’t just lights in the sky. Multiple witnesses described differently. The Ann Arbor News of March 14, 1966 said:
Deputy Buford Bushroe called the objects “the weirdest things I’ve ever seen”… said there was a single red-green object at first, moving at what were described as “fantastic” speeds… The object would zoom straight upward, stop, hover momentarily in the air and then speed straight downward, the deputies reported.
The newspapers were covering the story back then in a big way, and when J. Allen Hynek showed up to investigate for Project Blue Book he found “near hysteria.” He didn’t do much to calm it, however, when he invented the entire lame “swamp gas” explanation. No one ever bought it, and he felt lousy for being the fall guy who had to promote it.
Ford felt the fix was in so, in a letter on March 28, 1966, Gerald Ford told L. Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, that he had taken a “special interest” in these cases:
“Because I think there may be substance to some of these reports and because I believe the American people are entitled to a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force to date, I am proposing that either the Science and Astronautics Committee or the Armed Services Committee of the House, schedule hearings on the subject of UFOs and invite testimony from both the executive branch of the Government and some of the persons who claim to have seen UFOs.”
Ford knew a thing or two about commissions. He’d served on the Warren Commission, a position where he was widely perceived as having given the legitimate investigation into a conspiracy to kill JFK a complete whiff. So, what his motives were in asking for one to tackle the UFO issue, we can’t say. All we know is that we wasn’t shy about the topic.
In any event, Ford never got his congressional investigation, but he continued to serve as House Minority Leader for the Republican party in the U.S. House of Representatives. He became the relief pitcher to take over when Vice President Spiro Agnew was caught taking bribes, and the President of the United States when Richard Nixon resigned to avoid being evicted in an impeachment and trial of his own making.
In 1976, Gerald Ford also had to run against two men who would both soon get the job he was just getting comfortable having.
He was challenged in his own party’s primary by Ronald Reagan who had seen a flying saucer in Southern California in 1950 on his way to a Hollywood party. He’d also seen one in 1974, outside of Bakersfield, and chased after it with four other people in a state-of-the-art Cessna Citation business jet. Reagan came within a few delegates of stealing the nomination from the incumbent Ford.
Ford went on to face a man who promised he’d never lie to the American people, a man who didn’t just have constituents who’d seen a UFO, but who’d seen one himself. James Earl Carter.
Jimmy Carter’s UFO Sighting Enters the 1976 Campaign
During a campaign stop on March 31, 1976, Carter was asked about UFOs and, apparently, came out strongly for the people’s right to know.
“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. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I’ve seen one.“
That’s correct. In the middle of a presidential primary campaign, one candidate not only admits to seeing a UFO, he goes on to win his party’s nomination, and then win a solid victory to become the next president.
The Story, According to Carter
Carter’s sighting happened on January 6, 1969 in Leary, Georgia where he was waiting outside, between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m., waiting for the local Lion’s Club meeting to begin.
In various interviews, Carter described what he saw as a “self-luminous” aircraft that “came close, moved away, came close, then moved away” from between 300 and one-thousand yards. That means that at its closest, it was still three football fields away from him.
He said it was “very bright with changing colors” and somewhat smaller than the apparent size of the moon.” He further reported that “the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the Earth and away before disappearing into the distance.”
Whatever Carter and the others saw was extreme enough that he was convinced it was no regulation aircraft or weather balloon. Carter even filed a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) on September 18, 1973.
Fifteen years ago, former President Carter was interviewed by GQ and it’s a great chance to hear Carter tell us what he saw in his own words. Here’s the excerpt from the GQ article:
One of the other aspects of your life that struck me as a conflict between your experience and your scientific training was that you saw a UFO.
I saw an unidentified flying object. I’ve never believed that it came from Mars. I know enough physics to know that you can’t have vehicles that are tangible in nature flying from Mars, looking around, and then flying back. But I saw an object one night when I was preparing to give a speech to a Lions Club. There were about twenty five of us men standing around. It was almost time for the Lions Club supper to start, which I would eat and then I would give a speech. I was in charge of fifty-six Lions Clubs in southwest Georgia back in the late ’60s.
And all of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, “Look, over in the west!” And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance.
I had a tape recorder — because as I met with members of Lions Clubs, I would dictate their names on the tapes so I could remember them — and I dictated my observations. And when I got home, I wrote them down. So that’s an accurate description of what I saw. It was a flying object that was unidentified. But I have never thought that it was from outer space.
What did he see then? It might have been an experimental aircraft from a nearby military base or some kind of electrical occurrence. Or a cloud of barium from a rocket launched from Elgin Air Force Base on the same day.
The GQ interview continued to offer insight into Carter’s state of mind on this subject:
One of the promises you made in 1976 was that if you were elected, you would look into the reports from Roswell and see if there had been any coverups. Did you look into that?
Well, in a way. I became more aware of what our intelligence services were doing. There was only one instance that I’ll talk about now. We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic — a twin engine plane, small plane. And we couldn’t find it. And so we oriented satellites that were going around the earth every ninety minutes to fly over that spot where we thought it might be and take photographs. We couldn’t find it. So the director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California that claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went in a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.
How did your scientific mind process that?
With skepticism. Whether it was just a gross coincidence or… I don’t know... As far as covering up possible flights from distant satellites or distant heavenly bodies, I don’t believe in that, and there’s no evidence that it was ever covered up. Or extraterrestrial people coming to Earth, I don’t think that’s ever happened.
Here’s my one big factual note on this article. It’s where the interviewer says Carter promised in 1976 to look into Roswell if he was elected.
FACT CHECK: Roswell NEVER came up in the 1976 campaign. Unidentified Flying Objects and Carter’s own sighting did.
FACT CHECK: Roswell was not re-introduced to the American public until 1980, after Stanton Friedman’s investigation led him in 1978 to retired Major Jesse Marcel Sr. The Major went on record about the cover-up of an off-world craft retrieval. Roswell NEVER came up in the 1980 campaign.
I don’t believe that Carter knows more than he has said on the subject. I think he wanted to know more, got shut down, and tried to move on. But if he does know more but was told to shut up about it, former President James Carter of Georgia is a prime candidate for a death bed confession.
What If They Asked About UFOs in the 1976 Debate?
Pivoting back to the 1976 election campaign, it’s important to remember that there were four-and-a-half hours of presidential debates. Both President Ford and Governor Carter had public records on the UFO issue.
What if some brave reporter had asked about it in 1976? Edwin Newman of NBC, Pauline Frederick of NPR, and Barbara Walters of ABC — each of the three moderators had the attention of the nation and of the two men chosen to potentially lead it. It could have been asked so easily. Imagine…
A question for President Ford. Sir, as a congressman you once called for public hearings on the UFO issue. Your opponent, Governor Carter, has admitted seeing a UFO and promised to get the facts to the American people. What will be the Ford Administration policy in a second term?
Of course, such a question was not asked. It’s a shame.
Still. What might they have said in response?
Ford would have probably done the duck-and-cover of saying that the 1966 sightings were a long time ago, that Blue Book had gone out of business since then because they had investigated and found nothing of importance. He would have said that we was just trying to provide help to constituents who felt they deserved answers. He probably would have promised to look into it.
Carter would have been forced to admit that he’d seen one. He would have tried to describe the situation honestly and precisely. It would not have been a good moment for him. He would have sounded like Dennis Kucinich did in a Democratic debate decades later in 2007. People laughed in that debate. It was a joke.
Carter had more to lose at the time. He ended up winning the election by a margin of 50.1% to 48%. If UFOs had come up in that 1976 debate, Carter might have lost the election, and Gerald Ford might have gotten his second term.
The Carter Pledge Fizzles Out
In the beginning, Carter’s pledge of openness generated an enormous amount of mail at the White House, a volume they were unable to process. Quietly, however, Carter’s Press Secretary Jody Powell and Science Advisor Frank Press did nose around, asking both the CIA and the Pentagon if they were withholding documents, but both agencies said they were not. Carter’s men were also told, in frank terms, that military security worked on a “need-to-know” basis, not on simple interest from the president. Carter had apparently already been told this by outgoing CIA director George H.W. Bush as well.
There was one mysterious signal that leaked out of the White House in April 1977, just four months after Carter took office. U.S. News and World Report — the rival to Newsweek and Time — had a political gossip page. It reported:
Before the year is out, the Government — perhaps the President — is expected to make what are described as “unsettling disclosures” about UFOs or unidentified flying objects. Such revelations, based on information from the CIA, would be a reversal of official policy that in the past has downgraded UFO incidents.
Ultimately, this was described as a leak from Jody Powell and denied by the White House as a “misunderstanding.” If it was a trial balloon, it did not fly.
Just three months after this, still in Carter’s first year in office, according to a “well-placed” source as described to historian Richard Dolan, a presidential aide who was “very, very close to Carter” walked into the Oval Office following a briefing that the aide knew was about UFOs. Carter was sobbing, with his head in his hands, nearly on his desk over the contents of said briefing.
Whether that happened or not, President Jimmy Carter’s open flirtation with UFO disclosure seems to have disappeared the further he got into his presidency.
That same month, June 1977, Carter got a chance to speak his mind in another forum. He was asked to contribute a statement to the Voyager spacecraft. No matter how you look at the run-up to it, it still stands as some pretty trippy stuff to come from the office of the President:
“We cast this message into the cosmos…
We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.
This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”
The Story Is Not Over
Three years after writing that prescient letter to accompany the Voyager, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter would face off against former California Governor Ronald Reagan. This is a spectacular moment in UFO history, given that both Carter and Reagan had seen a UFO with their own eyes. More on that soon…