Jimmy Carter: Paranormal AND UFO TALES

Grant Cameron

Introduction .............................................................................1

Carter and Clinton .................................................................. 5

The Stage is Set ...................................................................... 7

The Carter UFO Sighting ....................................................... 9

The UFO Briefing ................................................................ 14

Information on UFO Briefings ................................17

The Carter UFO Briefing .........................................20

Jimmy Carter and UFOs ....................................................... 23

The UFO President .................................................. 23

Campaign UFO Talk ................................................ 24

Jimmy Carter Cries ................................................................ 28

Joseph Stefula ........................................................... 32

The Scott Jones Connection ..................................... 37

Carter Library Archivist Take ................................... 39

The Holloman Film .................................................. 40

The Public Responds to Carter’s Promise .............................. 46

The White House Responds Back ............................. 51

Nine-Thousand UFO Letters .................................... 52

The Marcia Smith Story ......................................................... 71

James Oberg adds Details to the Carter UFO Study

Investigation .......................................................................... 84

The Two Carter UFO/ET Studies; An Interview with Danny

Sheehan ................................................................................. 86

Another Clinton Connection ............................................... 109

The Carter ET Communication SRI Study ........................ 110

Other UFO Studies Under Carter ........................................ 113

The L.A. Study ...................................................... 113

Carter and the FOIA .............................................................116

Spielberg and the Carter Administration ............................ 118

Close Encounters of the Third Kind ...................... 119

Carter and Grenada Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy ............. 129

Jimmy Carter and Shirley Maclaine .................................... 139

Why the Secrecy? ................................................................ 142

Project Snowbird .................................................... 144

Carter Talks UFOs as Ex-President ........................ 146

Jimmy Carter UFOs in Panama ........................................... 151

Jimmy Carter Knows ..............................................152

Jimmy Carter and the Paranormal ....................................... 55

Carter and Uri Geller ............................................. 159

Jimmy Carter and Psi Phenomenon ...................... 162

The Paranormal Race with the Soviet Union ........ 165

Paranormal Ladies in the Carter Administration. .. 166

Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Prize, and ETs ........................... 174

Article: The GQ Magazine Interview .................................. 183

Article: Carter Puts on a Skeptical Face ............................. 186

Jimmy Carter’s Grandson Joins the Sighting Debate ......... 190

The Carter Legacy ............................................................... 194

Appendix 1: The Aquarius Document ................................. 198

Appendix 2 – The Carter Documents ................................. 220

Other Books on ItsAllConnected Publishing ...................... 229

Grant Cameron Bio ............................................................. 230

Endnotes ............................................................................. 232

James Earl Carter, Jr. - 39th President January 21. 1977- January 20, 1981

We cast this message into the cosmos . . . Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, some - - perhaps many - - may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so that 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 goodwill in a vast and awesome universe. President Jimmy Carter's official statement placed on the Voyager spacecraft for its trip outside our solar system, June 16, 1977.

Whatever statement you saw concerning President Carter’s view on UFOs was not exactly what he said. He had seen something that he thought was unexplainable that possibly might have been a UFO, and he will certainly disclose and describe any unusual phenomena he might see. He is committed to the fullest possible openness in government and would support full disclosure of material that was not defense sensitive that might relate to UFOs. He did not, however, pledge to ‘make every piece of information concerning the UFOs available to the public.’ There might be some aspects of some sightings that would have defense implications that possibly should be safe guarded against immediate and full disclosure. Walter Wurfel, Carter Deputy Press Secretary February 28, 1977

Carter Library acknowledges
that the subject of UFOs gets a lot of requests.

Fig This is what they used to send out to people
making UFO reports.

Introduction

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. -Jimmy Carter Talks about his UFO sighting.

One of the legacies of the Carter presidency will always be that he is one of the presidents who admitted to having witnessed saw a UFO. President Ronald Reagan would soon follow.

Jimmy Carter was never proud to be in the UFO club. Surely he would rather be remembered for his humanitarian work with Habitat for Humanity, his Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace to the middle east, his religious faith, and his teaching of Sunday school throughout his life.

After researching Carter and visiting his library, where all his presidential files are kept, I could not help but think I knew the guy very well.

I came away with the same feeling that others have said about Carter. He was a wonderful man who did everything he could to improve the world.

I also realized he was just like any other president I researched; he was just another man. He had his flaws which were generally forgotten by most. In the Bible that Jimmy Carter loved so much, the expression might be, “all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

I think Carter, like most presidents, was an A-type personality with a huge ego and skin like an elephant. This is to be expected. How else could one get through the grueling work required to get into the White House while being attacked every step of the way?

His A-type personality was pointed out to me by the primary clerk I dealt with at the library archive, who knew Carter. She told me that many women who worked under Carter would hide during their lunch at restaurants around 1600 Pennsylvania for fear that they would be discovered drinking or smoking. These, according to her, were things that Carter abhorred and for which one could get fired.

The other impression I got about Carter was pointed out in the Secret Service books. One of those authors was Ronald Kessler. He was a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of books on the White House, Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.¹

Kessler reports on a president who wanted to be portrayed as an average man who would carry his own (mainly empty) luggage, not as a Washington insider. So, once off camera, Carter would drop his luggage, and the Secret Service would pick it up and carry it. Among the other stories told in these books is one where an aide was late to the takeoff of Air Force One. The man was forced to book his own flight as the president’s plane was ordered to take off.

Why does all of this matter? Why hammer some guy after death to point out some of his flaws?

In Carter’s case, the A-type personality is key to dissolving the UFO image that has been portrayed of Carter by most over the years. The story goes that Carter was a religious little peanut farmer who was so sweet and naïve. Unfortunately, this put him in a position where the UFO secret keepers just walked around him like he was standing still.

I came to believe that nothing could be further from the truth. People often ask why the president doesn’t just keep firing people until someone tells him the secret about the UFOs. That was Jimmy Carter. That is what Jimmy Carter would do.

The biggest story was that CIA Director George H.W. Bush refused to show him the UFO files and told Carter he did not have a “need to know.” Suppose that Bush worked for Carter and said that? He would have been fired on the spot. Any CIA Director would also realize he is just a gatherer of facts for the president and his executive branch and would never be openly insubordinate.

The A-type personality tells the true story of the Bush/Carter interaction. George H.W. Bush was Gerald Ford’s CIA Director and briefed the incoming President, Jimmy Carter. He never worked for Carter, even though he begged to be kept on. Carter would later brag that this was good for Bush. If he had not been fired, he would never have become president.

What the reader will find in this book, I think, is a president who did know some things. Having experienced a UFO, there is little chance Carter would not only have asked for information on what the government knew about UFOs but would have also pushed to find out. The intelligence people knew that if the president asked, they would have to move mountains for him. That was their job – to provide intelligence. He had the power to do it, and I am sure he looked.

Another story is about Carter asking for an intelligence briefing before winning the Democratic nomination. First, Bush and the CIA had to determine if they would bend the rules. The first intelligence meeting lasted six hours. One briefing given by Henry Kissinger went on for the entire day. Carter listened, and he asked a lot of questions. “I wanted to know what was going on,” he said.

This compared to the briefings that were given to Reagan, where Nancy warned that Ronnie would later have to take an afternoon nap.

The briefings were about “confidential information concerning Lebanon and the Middle East, Rhodesia, South America, South Africa, and South Korea” and the international relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Did Carter really want this and nothing about UFOs and space?

Later, after he left Washington, he still did not want to talk about UFOs and aliens. It was a different world than it is today. This book follows his later years and the UFO question. Over and over, he reverted to talking about a small American plane in Africa, even though the story had long been made public and everyone knew it was a Soviet spy plane. He stumbled with apparent indications that he would not give up what he knew.

Finally, it is possible that Carter did ask and was told that the phenomenon is real, but we really don’t understand what it is. More and more high-level statements and leaks indicate that this may be the ultimate understanding. This would have allowed Carter to avoid the alien question and feel he would not go to hell for lying.

Carter and Clinton

In regards to the politics of disclosure, and aside from the current President, who, if he so chose, has the power to end the government-imposed truth embargo on the UFO issue, the two most essential presidents (and the most important sections of this book) are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. There is a remarkable similarity between the first terms of these men, and it is well known.

Carter and Clinton arrived in Washington D.C. as former governors of southern states who campaigned as “outsiders” against the “inside the beltway” insiders.²

Neither Clinton nor Carter had served in the House or Senate. They were both liberal democrats with little foreign policy experience. Jimmy Carter taught Sunday School at Plains Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. Clinton attended the Park Place Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The morality issue came up frequently during both campaigns. Carter put his morality forward as a virtue and an asset. Clinton was repeatedly attacked on moral grounds, then turned around and claimed he would make his term in office the most above-reproach presidency in history. While Carter had some cache with the military due to his Naval Academy schooling and service, both men were deeply suspicious of the CIA. They had poor relationships with the intelligence community from day one.

Most importantly, both presidents sent shock waves through the military/intelligence community by showing overt interest in the UFO issue directly and indirectly and initiating studies of the ET question from within the White House. In each instance, shortly after this UFO interest became known to insiders at the Pentagon and the CIA, both presidents came under vicious attacks from all sides.

An attempt was made to associate Carter with a financial scandal centered on close friend and confidant, Georgia banker Bert Lance. Carter had appointed Lance Director of Management and Budget. Clinton was also tied to financial scandals involving a close friend, Arkansas savings and loan owner James McDougal and his wife’s law partner, Webster Hubbell. Clinton had appointed Hubbell Associate Attorney General.

The personal attacks on Carter and Clinton were unrelenting during their first terms. Carter lost his second election primarily due to the Iran hostage crisis. Numerous books have alleged that a deal was struck between the Republican ticket and Iran, delaying the release of the hostages until after the election. This scandal, called the “October Surprise,” has never been resolved. Clinton could win a second term only under his consummate political skills. For his effort, he was rewarded with an escalating series of attacks, eventually leading to impeachment.

One of the great political stories of the 20^th Century waiting to be revealed is the extent of the attacks on Presidents Carter and Clinton. Then later, Obama was motivated by alarm over their UFO interest and whether members of the military/intelligence community broke a long-standing protocol to make available internal dossiers on these men to their political enemies.

Obama has his own story that will be told when the Obama Library reviews and releases the documents that have been requested through FOIA.

The Stage is Set

In any review of President Carter and his White House’s dealings with UFOs, it is essential to note the significance of the time when Carter was president.

Carter entered the White House not long after the end of the Vietnam War and the scandal of Watergate. Part of his presidential campaign was assisted by representing himself as an honest man running against the national disgraces of “Watergate, Vietnam, and the CIA.”

The US News and World Report stirred things up in 1977.
Everyone thinks Carter is about to do something.

It was a time of relative peace and stability. It was also a time when the public was disillusioned with the dishonesty of politicians and military solutions to problems. The public’s tolerance for excessive government secrecy was diminished, and some saw a window of opportunity opening for UFO disclosure.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, the public was willing to trade personal freedoms and openness in government in exchange for security and a victory on the war front.

By the time it was over, American society had been torn apart and had come to question government policy and policymakers to a degree never seen in the 20^th Century. Carter wanted to be the president who never lied to the people.

Years later, this ‘never lie’ was replaced with the concept of winning at all costs. There would be no point telling the truth if you were always on the outside looking in.

The circumstances for a disclosure scenario regarding UFOs were not unfavorable. But most notably, the basis for new optimism regarding disclosure began with “the sighting.”

A president of the United States was about to go public, stating that he, too, had seen a UFO.

The Carter UFO Sighting

Jimmy Carter was the first president to have filed a UFO sighting report. Unfortunately, many specifics of his sighting have been recorded incorrectly in the various accountings over the years. Later, there would be many story retellings, but in the evaluation, many mistakes were made.

One of the many magazines that ran cover stories on the Carter sighting.

The first mistake made in recording Carter’s UFO sighting related to the date the sighting occurred. The sighting was first filed by then Governor Jimmy Carter on September 18, 1973, based upon a request from Hayden C. Hewes, Director of the International UFO Bureau. The date Carter gave in his sighting report was October of 1969. Later research indicated the actual date was more likely January 6, 1969. Some people reporting on Carter’s sighting were also using the 1973 date when Carter filed the details of the sighting as the date for the event.

Others close to the case think the date was even earlier. For example, an archivist at the Carter Library told me the date may have been earlier.

An archivist at the Carter Library raises the point that the Carter
UFO sighting might be much earlier than any of the accounts.

The second mistake was that Carter was the Governor of Georgia at the time of the sighting. He did not become Georgia's 76th Governor until January 12, 1971.

Carter’s UFO sighting began shortly after dark on a windless night. He was standing outside the Lion’s Club in Leary, Georgia, waiting for a meeting to start. Suddenly, he and ten other witnesses spotted a red and green orb radiating in the western sky. Carter described an object that “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,” reported Carter, “it was as bright as the moon and about as big as the moon - maybe a bit smaller.”

In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Carter described the emotional nature of the event. He stated it was a “very remarkable sight.”⁵ This is an important event because many skeptical investigations on the Carter sighting tried to paint the event as a ho-hum occurrence. However, none of the accounts Carter has given of the event have ever described it as ho-hum.

Jimmy Carter’s mother, Lillian, also confirmed Carter had been very impressed by what he had seen. “The UFO made a huge impression on Jimmy,” she stated.

He told me about the sighting many times. He’s always been a down-to-earth, no-nonsense boy, and the sighting by him, as far as I am concerned, is as firm as money in the bank

Carter has described the UFO sighting many times since it occurred. In every instance, including the latest known regaling at Emory University in 1997, Carter has never backed off on the spectacular nature of the event. However, he has also never conceded that what he saw was some misidentification of a natural phenomenon.

Carter estimated the object was three hundred to one thousand yards away. He estimated the event had lasted 10 minutes before the object suddenly disappeared. Carter, so impressed by what he had seen, immediately recorded his impressions of the event on a tape recorder.

In the ensuing years, there has been a great deal of discussion as to what the UFO had been. UFO skeptics such as Robert Sheaffer attempted to explain Jimmy Carter’s sighting away by asserting Carter had observed the planet Venus. Sheaffer, the Vice Chairman of the UFO Subcommittee for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), put forth this assertion in the July 1977 Humanist Magazine. Other UFO researchers joined in, stating Carter had viewed the planet Venus.

But other researchers quickly stepped forward to challenge the accuracy of Shaeffer’s claim. Sheaffer’s response to these challenges took his Venus explanation from the shaky to the bizarre. For example, Sheaffer argued that UFO researchers challenging his conclusions were wrong because they relied on eyewitness testimony, which is unreliable. There are, wrote Sheaffer, “volumes of scientific analysis documenting unreliability of unsubstantiated human eyewitness testimony.”⁷ Yet Sheaffer used eyewitness testimony for one hundred percent of the data he collected to reach his Venus conclusion in his case analysis.

In response to a letter written to the Skeptical Inquirer by Jon Beckjord and published in the winter of 1980-81 in the Skeptical Inquirer, Sheaffer cited four books and articles that Beckjord could refer to that would show that you “can’t take unsubstantiated testimony at face value.”

However, Sheaffer retreated to eyewitness testimony in the following sentence of his reply. “I note that Beckjord fails to mention,” Shaeffer wrote, “that many UFO proponents agree with me that the Carter UFO sighting is a very poor one and that another Georgian standing with Carter, as my Humanist piece makes clear, [was] quite unimpressed with the light they saw in the sky.”⁸ Shaeffer’s Venus conclusion relied on the assumption Carter’s eyewitness testimony was inaccurate, but the other eyewitness account was accurate.

Aside from the witness testimony, it is safe to conclude the object was not Venus for the following reasons:

1. Venus was in the southwestern sky on January 6, 1969, not in the west, as claimed by Sheaffer. However, Carter, who had spent many nights as a navigation officer in the Navy, on watch, in cruisers and destroyers taking star shots with a sextant, stated the object was in the western sky.

2. Carter described the object as being the “size of the moon” or “slightly smaller than the apparent size of the moon.” Venus never appears this large.

3. Venus was between 15 and 21 degrees over the horizon at 7:15 pm. Carter, a trained observer, stated the object was 30 degrees above the horizon or almost twice the height of Venus at the time.

4. Sheaffer described Venus as “being at its brightest” on the date. It wasn’t at its brightest.

5. The witnesses declared the object disappeared after 10 minutes or at 7:25 pm. Venus was visible in the clear sky until 9:20 pm on the evening in question. If it had been Venus, it would still have been visible for another 115 minutes after the witnesses claimed it had disappeared in a clear sky. During these 115 minutes, the planet Venus would have increased in brightness (not disappeared) as it approached the horizon.

Regardless of what the future President saw on that cold, clear night in 1969, it greatly impressed him. Carter spoke of the sighting to many people, including his Press Secretary, Jody Powell. Asked about the UFO event, Powell said:

I do remember Jimmy saying that he did, in fact, see a strange light or object at night in the sky which did not appear to be a star or planet or anything that he could explain. If that’s your definition of an Unidentified Flying Object, then I suppose that is correct... I would venture to say he has probably seen stranger and more unexplainable things than just during his time in government.

Many years after being President, when asked about the sighting by citizens, Carter would still describe in detail the events he witnessed.

For example, on September 24, 1997, Carter spoke at Atlanta's 16th Annual Emory Town Hall Meeting. When the question-and-answer session began, the first question was about the UFO sighting Carter had experienced 28 years before.

As he had on so many previous occasions, Carter described what he had seen in detail. However, concluding the story, he stated he “knew of no extraterrestrials” and “did not think any were on the UFO he saw.”

The UFO Briefing

The Carter Doc is a reconstruction done by certain people attending the briefing. Since note taking etc., was not allowed, certain people were tasked to memorize certain sections of the briefing. Then they all got together afterward and reconstructed the briefing from memory. Robert Collins, The Condor, to Grant Cameron on the Carter briefing.

You can certainly tell others, but I have very little expectation that it will make any difference and zero expectation that it will die. The truth is not appetizing to some and not filling to many. Dr. Scott Jones, tells Hal Puthoff, that as far as he knew, there was no Carter UFO briefing.

I was like, All right, is there a lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and a spaceship? And you know, they did a little bit of research, and the answer was No. Barack Obama confirms he asked and was given an answer.

Maybe. You know my daughters asked the very same question. In reply to a question from TV show host Jimmy Kimmel if he had gone through the secret UFO files after taking office.

Whether or not a sitting US president gets a UFO briefing is one of the most debated things inside the UFO community.

Some believe that constitutionally the president heads up the military, the executive branch of government, and all intelligence agencies and is the head of state. That would give him access and responsibility wherever the UFO secret might be held.

Others, however, believe that the president is treated like a temporary employee who is only part of the government for eight years. Researchers who follow this line of thinking believe that the president of the United States does not have the need to know; he is simply told to mind his own business if he asks to see the UFO crafts and bodies.

Ron Pandolfi was the man who was assigned the UFO briefing for Dr. Jack Gibbons, who was the science advisor to President Clinton.

Gibbons knew he was about to go into a briefing with Laurance Rockefeller and that the subject would be UFOs. He, therefore, asked the CIA to bring him up to speed on the subject.

Pandolfi gave the job to Dr. Bruce Maccabee, a Navy physicist, and friend. This, however, would not have constituted an official briefing as Maccabee was a civilian.

In 2000 Pandolfi’s name came up again. This time it was about a UFO briefing for President-elect Bush. The question of this briefing being done was brought up by Pandolfi’s friend Dan Smith who told me he had at least 1000 conversations with Pandolfi, much having to do with UFOs.

In Smith’s blog on the Open Minds website, Smith wrote what Pandolfi (referred to as CF Catfish) had told him:

I did have three questions for CF (Pandolfi). With regard to the Woolsey (James Woolsey- Clinton’s first CIA director) briefing of GHWB (George Bush), he tells me not to waste my time. The presidents cannot be players. You tell them what you have to tell them and then hope you don't have to put them down. Democracy and capitalism are not the be-all and end-all of human existence.

A few years after Smith wrote this, he was interviewed by George Knapp on Coast-to-Coast AM. Knapp asked about this comment, and Dan said he did not remember writing it.

Many presidents talk big about UFOs before they get into office and then become silent once they assume the president's office.

Gerald Ford, for example, stated that he was willing to put military people under oath to get to the bottom of the UFO story. Once he became president, however, he never used the word UFO again.

One of the people who has pushed this idea that the president does not have a need to know is Ron Pandolfi, who has made several statements.

Others, like Dr. Eric Davis, disagree. He told me I should stop referencing Pandolfi because he was leading people like me into following “do-loops where no real evidence exists.” He wrote:

Grant, you expend a great deal of time on Pandolfi and Smith. Their unfounded claims and assertions OR the unfounded claims and assertions made by others about them are nothing but a diversion of your research efforts away from Presidential UFOs. You’ve fallen into the same trap that many other investigators have fallen into since the 1980s. This is what Jacques Vallée warns against in his series of books, Forbidden Science, whereby serious investigators like yourself get pulled into following dead-end “do-loops” where no real data exists which prevents you from following the real UFO data in your investigations on PresidentialUFOs.

Pandolfi and his mentally ill Twit-Bird Dan Smith had no role in The NY Times article or in Luis Elizondo’s AATIP program at the DoD. My boss and I were subcontractors to BAASS, which was the contractor of record to the Luis’ program. Nobody associated with the program wanted anything to do with Pandolfi before and after he left the CIA. He had a very bad reputation within the IC.

A officer Jim Semivan raises the maHigh this argument. The problem is that it is illegal for a government official (Pandolfi is still with the Department of Defense Intelligence Information System DoDIIS) to run counterintelligence against American citizens.

Semivan pointed out that every decision has to go through lawyers. But, in fact, Pandolfi’s ill Twit-Bird Dan Smith, as Davis described him, did file a complaint with the Inspector General at the CIA in 1991, already asking why Pandolfi, a CIA officer at the time, was talking to him. This would mean that Pandolfi’s statement that Davis, Puthoff, Elizondo, and the others are running a techno-scam would have been approved within the government.

The other bizarre problem with this assessment by Davis is in a leaked email that involved Pandolfi, Hal Puthoff (who Davis worked for), and Kit Green, who was on the Board of NIDS, where Davis was the head scientist.

Information on UFO Briefings

For background, Dr. Ron Pandolfi is the rumored present/former head of the weird desk, or keeper of the weird, otherwise known as the CIA-UFO desk. Rumor has it that Pandolfi does not like either term.

Pandolfi also has the keys to the classified UFO data, illustrated in an email exchange among several aviary-type insiders. Of extreme importance is that the email exchange came the day after the big AATIP news story broke in December 2017.

This date is important because Pandolfi would go on record saying that the whole AATIP story was a Scientology scam headed up by Hal Puthoff, who was in league with Kit Green and others. The email shows that at the same time, he was publicly attacking them; he was talking to them by email.

It is also important because it shows the reaction of highlevel people to a story in The New York Times that the government was covering up the fact they had done a secret UFO investigation.

Robert Collins, who was known as the Condor in the aviary, started the email conversation about The New York Times AATIP news story:

A secret Pentagon UFO program? Another case of the Left lying to the Right: what Conventional lies and thinking with multi-millions wasted: Obviously, Reid wasn't ‘read in’ like Hillary...Rmc¹²

On the same day, a reply came from Kit Green, codename Blue Jay, in the aviary. He replied: “Actually, he was.”

Thirty minutes later, Pandolfi spelled out to the group how classified briefings are done and his role in briefing people like curious politicians on UFOs:

The problem with being ‘read in’ is that it does not include any information, just a key to a place where information might be accessible and a warning that accessing that location could be associated with significant risk. Politicians are extremely risk averse, and accessing the location where the key might have value is extremely difficult. I keep a handful of keys in my pocket for just such an occasion when a politician might demand access. ‘Here you are, sir or madam; you now have a key; use it at great personal risk, or leave that to me.’

Next, Pandolfi pointed out to everyone on the email chain that the e-mail list of 20 names “is a pretty good list of the other poker players in the tournament. They include Rick Doty under many names (Doty had five different emails), so the list is nearly as long as it appears. -Ron”

So, there you see something that makes no sense. Pandolfi is accusing Puthoff and Green of being scam artists, and minutes later, they are on the same email.

An interesting side note – I discovered the existence of Jim Semivan, who initiated the present UFO disclosure and Senate effort to bring openness to the UFO subject. I found Semivan, who was being called “the big man” in 2016, a year before he went public with Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Steve Justice, and others, in the To The Stars News conference on October 11, 2017.

When I discovered him, I asked Dan Smith to ask Pandolfi about him. The word came back that Semivan did not exist. Why would he say this? Why was he covering for Semivan? Was Semivan working for him?

I kept up the pressure and was told he existed, but his name was not Semivan. When I asked for comments on the day Semivan, Puthoff, and the others went public, Pandolfi told Smith he knew all of them. Mellon had been into UFOs since the 1980s, and it was all a techno-scam. As Ron Pandolfi had put it, they had run out of billionaires who would rather get in some free energy scam than pay their taxes.

In the UFO world, it is very hard to tell who to trust and who has an alternative agenda that does not match the disclosure plan.

A prime example concerns three documents I helped get onto the Internet. These three documents were what is known as the Wilson Leak Document, the Alien Autopsy Document, and the Oke Shannon Notes.

When the documents became public, I and others came under attack for hoaxing the documents. Eventually, it was accepted that two of the three documents were legitimate and had come from the files of Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the former Apollo 14 astronaut.

As more and more key researchers conducted interviews and were asked about the document, people started to admit that it was real.

More surprisingly, what became apparent, was that many top UFO researchers had seen the document, had it in their possession, and had it for many years.

Therefore, these researchers doing the UFO circuit and claiming that they were trying to bring disclosure and understanding to the awful mystery were, in fact, sitting on key documents That, like the Wilson leak document, would change the entire disclosure discussion.

The Wilson leaked document was read into the congressional record. It is now a part of America’s history. Had I not leaked this document, most of the UFO community would still be in the dark, swimming around 100 feet under the surface.

People can accuse Pandolfi of playing games and keeping people from the truth. However, let me assure you from personal experience he is only one of many.

The Carter UFO Briefing

Once Carter assumed the Presidency on January 21, 1977, his public statements of support for UFOs dried up. Jimmy Carter stopped talking publicly about the subject. It was as if, after becoming President, he was told something that had changed his mind about the importance of delivering UFO answers to the public.

This briefing was reportedly [source] held on June 14, 1977, at the White House. According to one account by former USAF member Robert Collins, President Carter was briefed “by a lone MJ-12 briefing officer.”

The MJ-12, according to the stories, was a 12-man control group for the UFO subject. Much has been written about them. The most exciting thing related to President Carter is a statement from U.K. researcher Timothy Good who received and then published a supposedly Top-Secret briefing document prepared for President Eisenhower. Good published the document in his 1987 book Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Coverup.

Good said that he had several emails back and forth with Admiral Stansfield Turner after he was out of government. Turner told Good he had not been directly briefed on UFOs when he became CIA Director but later investigated what the agency had on the subject. Good believed Stansfield was open with him on the whole subject except when it came to the subject of MJ-12. This is one question that Turner refused to discuss.

A review of the schedule on June 14, 1976, shows only one event that seems to jump out as a possible event where the briefing might have occurred. The event was a meeting in the Cabinet Room between 1:35 pm and 3:15 pm. The meeting was set up to “discuss appropriations for

intelligence affairs in the 1979 Budget of the U.S.”

Another explanation offered for President Carter’s silence on UFOs is the rumored story Carter had been threatened to keep quiet. It has been repeated often enough to have been included in an article published by UFO Magazine. Editor Bill Birnes wrote:

There is a rumor, and it’s not much more than that, because Carter himself will not confirm it, that after Carter made this promise, a strange individual in a suit walked right into the oval office, past the Secret Service agents on guard, and threatened Carter and his family should he ever attempt any such disclosure.

Another view of what might have contributed to Carter’s public silence on the UFO subject comes from Victor Marchetti, a former CIA agent and author. In 1979 Marchetti went public describing how and why presidents seemingly backed away from campaign promises, such as the UFO pledge by Jimmy Carter:

Every president of the United States, no matter what he says before he becomes president about how he's going to clean things up, once he gets in there and finds out that's ‘his’ agency, that's ‘his’ intelligence community, hey, all bets are off.

Jimmy Carter and UFOs

The UFO President

President Jimmy Carter has often been called the "UFO President" since he publicly claimed to have had a UFO sighting before becoming president. Moreover, he was the only president on record to file a UFO report on his sighting. Thirdly, on at least one occasion while campaigning for president, Carter declared that, if elected, he would "make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and scientists."

Many in the UFO community were optimistic that the election of Jimmy Carter would initiate a period of openness related to the UFO subject where the truth would be given to the public. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

In any review of President Carter and his White House’s dealings with UFOs, it is essential to note the significance of the time when Carter was president. All these timing signals appeared to be positive.

Carter was elected in 1976, just after the end of the Vietnam War and following the scandal of Watergate. Part of his presidential campaign had been aided by representing himself as an honest man running against the national disgraces of "Watergate, Vietnam, and the CIA."

Some minor changes occurred during the Carter years that advanced the cause of UFO openness. One of these changes happened in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) field.

President Carter did have a great deal of UFO documents released during his administration. The period is often called "The Golden Years" within the UFO community.

The release of documents included:

1. In response to a suit filed by William Spaulding and his group, Ground Saucer Watch, the CIA released 892 pages of UFO documents on December 15, 1978.

2. In 1980 the NSA released two documents and made history withholding 135 others on the grounds of “National Security." Its argument was made in a 21-page Top-Secret affidavit presented to the Judge "in-camera." It was so secret that CAUS lawyers were not even allowed to see it.

3. In response to an FOIA filed by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, the FBI released 1600 pages of UFO documents. Later, in response to another FOIA, they released 128 pages on cattle mutilations.

4. Other agencies that released UFO documents in response to FOIAs filed during the Carter administration included State, Army, Navy, USAF, Defense, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Ultimately, UFO secrecy was maintained despite the large number of documents forced out under the Carter FOIA regulations. President Carter had managed to shake some leaves off the tree, but the tree remained standing.

Campaign UFO Talk

At a Southern Governors Conference a few years after the sighting, Carter stated, "I don’t laugh at people any more 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."

In 1975 Carter again mentioned his UFO sighting as he was campaigning for President. He told a Washington Post reporter, "A light appeared and disappeared in the sky. It got brighter and brighter... I have no idea what it was... I think the light was beckoning me to run in the California primary."

In June 1976, Jimmy Carter was quoted by the National Enquirer as promising, "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."

This widely quoted statement led to a deluge of UFO mail into the White House. What was not widely disclosed was the fact that Carter never said this to the National Enquirer reporter Jim McCandlish. McCandlish, a freelancer for the Enquirer, approached Carter on the campaign trail and asked him about his sighting and his plans to deal with UFOs as President. Although Carter was interested in the question, he was "nowhere near as committed as the National Enquirer made it out to be."

However, Carter did say something similar during a campaign stop in Appleton, Wisconsin, on March 31, 1976. During a news conference at the airport, Thomas Heiman, Associate Director of the UFO Education Center in Appleton, Wisconsin, asked Carter a question:

Heiman: As President, would you air what’s "behind closed doors" today in regard to UFOs?
Carter: I don’t know what to make of it. However, some of the sightings have been witnessed by 20 to 25 people, law enforcement officers, everyone in the cockpit of a major airplane, and so forth. But I can’t tell you what to make of it. If I knew, I’d be the only one in the world who does. But, yes, I would make these kinds of data available to the public, as President, to help resolve .the mystery about it.
Heiman: On a public basis?
Carter: Yes, on a public basis.

Following the news conference, Jimmy Carter spoke with Heiman. Heiman told Carter of the extensive films and evidence held by the Center. In reply, Carter thanked Heiman for the offer to review the evidence. Further, he told Heiman that "a meeting could be arranged sometime after the election" when he could meet with the group and review their material.

Following Carter’s election, the White House staff moved away from the UFO Education Center. One meeting with the members of the UFO Education Center was held in the Executive Office Building with Richard Reiman from the Office of Public Liaison. Phone calls and letters were exchanged, but even though Carter had promised to meet with the group, in the end, Fran Voorde, the Director of Scheduling for the President, gave the group the kiss-off:

The President is indeed grateful for the willingness of Ms. Blob and her associates to come in and talk with him, to be helpful, and would like to see personally all who now are expressing this desire. If circumstances permitted, he would be glad to meet with them, but, most unfortunately, the heavy demands on his time just will not allow him to do so.

Carter also expressed his view on the UFO problem in a letter to Major Ret. Colman S. Von Keviczky, director of the Intercontinental Galactic Spacecraft Research and Analytic Network. He stated that he "valued" the groups’ "views and recommendations," and their ideas would "be of help to him in further developing his policy position."

Also, according to USAF scientist Robert Collins, several independent sources were present for the briefing, and they together produced a "reconstruction" of what was told to President Carter. This recollection became the "Executive Briefing: Project Aquarius" document. It was leaked to California researcher Bill Moore through a Defense Intelligence Agency member known by the aviary codename Falcon.

Moore stated that the copy of the notes he released was a typed copy from the Carter oral briefing officer, composed as a "memo to file." The officer had used handwritten notes during the briefing as an aide-memoire.

A review of the schedule on June 14, 1977, shows that only one event seemed to jump out as a possible event where the briefing might have taken place. The event was a meeting that occurred in the Cabinet room between 1:35 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. The meeting was set up to "discuss appropriations for intelligence affairs in the 1979 Budget of the U.S."

There is a possibility that another meeting was held and did not appear in the daily diary of President Carter. But, unfortunately, the June 14, 1977, journal does not help confirm whether the briefing occurred.

Another explanation that has been offered for President Carter’s silence on UFOs is the rumored story that Carter had been threatened to keep quiet. It has been repeated often enough that it was included in an article published by UFO magazine:

There is a rumor, and it’s not much more than that, because Carter himself will not confirm it, that after Carter made this promise, a strange individual in a suit walked right into the oval office, past the Secret Service agents on guard, and threatened Carter and his family should he ever attempt any such disclosure.

Another possible thing that might have occurred to change Carter’s public position on the UFO subject is a political phenomenon that Victor Marchetti, a former CIA agent and author, described.

Behind the scenes, however, outside the public eye, it appeared that Carter was trying to get the answer to what UFO information the federal agencies had. Requests were going out from the President to various agencies asking what documents they had and how they dealt with UFO reports. Most of this investigation representing Carter was done by his Press Secretary, Jody Powell.

Jimmy Carter Cries

This is the surreal rumored story of how Jimmy Carter cried when he was briefed on UFOs. The story sounds like total craziness, except we have a name, and the story was first reported in OMNI Magazine, which was quite prominent during the time the article was written.

More importantly, my research showed one key element of the story that appeared true. That piece is that the president of the United States may have been shown a 15minute color film of the Holloman AFB landing in May 1971. (Some claim the date was 1964, but that may be disinformation to get people to fight, confuse the facts, and thus kill an important story).

The man at the center of the story was Harvey J. McGeorge. Below is a business card and some background material from the National Security Archives in Washington, where at least one other was looking into the story.

Secret Service agent Harvey Jack McGeorge told a story about attending the Carter UFO briefing. Reporter Harry Lebelson, then at OMNI magazine, recounted the story. Lebelson heard it from a close friend of McGeorge. McGeorge was a munition counter-weapons specialist.

The story McGeorge tells is that he was in the UFO briefing where Carter was told why the aliens were here, the religious implications, and the fact the aliens were in control. Carter was also reportedly shown the Holloman Air Force Base landing film, which purportedly shows a landing of a UFO at Holloman in May 1971, where aliens get out and are greeted by base officials.

Steven Spielberg later adopted the concept in his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What Spielberg produced was a plot of an awaited landing. The Holloman event supposedly happened in New Mexico at 6:00 am. It was later changed to occur in Wyoming at night.

McGeorge material found in a file at the National Security archives.

The reporter in question was Harry Lebelson at OMNI. Here is what the reporter described on a tape obtained by UFO researcher Bill LaParl who worked with CIA physicist Ron Pandolfi. LaParl's work with Ron was personal.

Here is what Lebelson at OMNI said about McGeorge, what happened in the briefing, and the story of Carter with tears in his eyes 30 minutes after the briefing had concluded:

Jack McGeorge was a member of the Special Forces Green Beret who ran a school for anti-terrorist tactics and for the preparation of presidential bodyguards. I came to know Jack McGeorge vicariously through one of my contacts. This contact, also a member of the Special Forces Green Beret, had been in Vietnam and, when returning from Vietnam after serving his time, went into the reserves. Camp Drum was a location in which members of the Green Beret Special Forces were trained at least twice a year just to keep up their proficiency. It was at one of these training sessions that lasted about two weeks that my contact met Jack Mc George.

Jack McGeorge and he immediately took a liking to each other and became fast friends. They would go out drinking at night. Jack McGeorge held an incredible position in the Carter White House. He was the advisor for National and International Terrorism, and his office was located one floor below that of Jimmy Carter. What’s unique about Jack McGeorge is that he was also a member of the Secret Service, and he was the first member of the Secret Service other than the head of the Secret Service to ever have witnessed a presidential briefing on UFOs.

McGeorge was allowed in the presidential briefing because, during his tenure at the White House, he had struck up a friendship with Jimmy Carter. Carter considered him a close friend and confided in him on confidential matters at least twice a day. So, upon Carter’s insistence, despite protestations from the National Security Agency, McGeorge was admitted to the briefing session on UFOs given to Jimmy Carter. There were two briefings given to President Carter, and Jack McGeorge attended at least the initial briefing.

McGeorge told my contact basically what goes with the briefing, and I would like to give you that information to the best of my ability. Once the President was in the room, seated at a table - McGeorge at another table. A member of the NSA would give an overall briefing on the phenomena stating its historical characteristics and bringing it up to the present time. At that point, a number of documents describing the evolutionary habits of the beings, the reasons they were here, and other matters of that consequence were shown to Jimmy Carter. The next thing to be shown to Jimmy Carter was a 15-minute film taken at Holloman Air Force Base in which UFO inhabitants and military personnel made physical contact. It was a color film. After that, that would be followed by some more briefings and talks by National Security people, and basically, that was the end of the briefing.

McGeorge, being a very observant person, noticed that about a half hour after the briefing, he walked into Carter’s office, and Carter had tears in his eyes.

According to McGeorge, the two main reasons that the government is withholding the truth are the religious questions and the fact that we do not have control over the situation.

The key source to the Graham claim seemed to be Scott Jones, a former aide to Sen. Claiborne Pell. He was known as the Chickadee in an invisible college group of former intelligence, government, and military people calling themselves the Aviary. Scott was extremely well connected with numerous highly placed government sources and former ONI. He ran the well-funded Human Potentials Foundation (Laurance Rockefeller); claims to have information on presidential briefings, including three sources on Carter's UFO briefing. Jones was with Laurance Rockefeller when they briefed Jack Gibbons, the science advisor to President Clinton. Scott told researcher Stefula that Rev. Billy Graham “holds the president’s hands” during UFO briefings. From reporter Gus Russo to Sullivan (Re: preliminary UFO Report) 4/29/94

Joseph Stefula

The Carter briefing and McGeorge story are significant if they are true. The file on it is in the files at the National Security archives. It involved a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Gus Russo. It involved a writer for OMNI magazine. It involved a researcher named Bill LaParl, who had worked with the CIA and dealt with Hillary Clinton.

LaParl alerted me to the Clinton files at the Office of Science and Technology (Science Advisor to the President). I filed an FOIA and got the 1,000 pages of documents, now known as the Rockefeller Initiative documents. It involved a congressional aide who gave a citizen’s briefing to the President’s science advisor.

The next thing I did was to follow up on the role of researcher Joseph Stefula about his role and especially the idea that he was told Billy Graham was also in the briefing. Here is my interview with Stefula, a former Special Agent in US Army Criminal Investigation and the MUFON State Director for New Jersey.

Stefula was skeptical and said everything was bullshit. My research found that there wasn’t any case that Stefula had not been skeptical of, so I didn’t take it too seriously. However, he did confirm the fact that McGeorge existed and that the other names that were being tied in were also correct.

Joseph Stefula Interview

October 7, 2003

Q: I was recently at the National Security Archives and came across a document with your name in it. I would like to clear up one or two things. This has to do with the PBS documentary for Frontline, and they were working on the Carter briefing.

Stefula: Right.

Q: The document seems to say that C.B. Scott Jones talked to you and claimed to have sources for a briefing of Jimmy Carter.

Stefula: Ya, Scott Jones. Let me go back. There was a story that there was a guy… what’s his name?
Q: McGeorge.

Stefula: I tracked him down. Ya. The fact he had (laughs). I had an FBI friend. McGeorge used to be in the Secret Service. Just some background on this guy. There was a mob hit, and the FBI got involved. There were hand grenades used. They tracked the serial number off the spindle on the hand grenade back to grenades that were signed out to –McGeorge was in a Special Forces reserve unit. He was under suspicion about that. That never cleared up. That may have been one of the reasons he was no longer in the secret service.

But he’s done stuff for CNN – a terrorist advisor. This guy is unbelievable. Anyway, back to this part of the story – the UFO story. Supposedly he heard part of this or overheard this briefing or was there the day it occurred. I talked to him, and he denied any of this was true. This was all bullshit. The only thing he said that he did when Carter was President, he was more of a tech guy. He was installing some devices in the oval office, and he spilled a picture of water on the floor, and it took him half the night with a fan to dry it up, and Carter came in the next day and raised hell about it, but that’s the extent. And his name surfaced, and he was curious how it came about. Right now, I can’t remember how his name came about. It was from some source or something.

Q: Ya, there is – Lebelson. He was a researcher out of Florida.

Stefula: Gus Russo is a reporter for Frontline. He’s written a couple of books. Gus had been working with some Frontline people to do a story. Gus – like he said – now Gus had access to a lot of guys. He wrote a book about the CIA, and the Mob and Kennedy and Cuba and that stuff. Gus has a lot of sources. In fact, he knows some retired CIA directors personally. He had a source of this guy who claimed to be a steward on Air Force One and overheard Kennedy saying something about UFOs, and the guy – you hear the whole guy’s story, and it's bullshit. He also had some Secret Service guys tell him the story that there was some site in Virginia that the President goes to, and they are not even allowed to have access to when he’s there. He’s never got anything firm that you could do an hour on. Frontline does not fool around with bullshit. You must have on the record sources or documents that you can trace back to their origin and stuff.

Q: That’s what I think I was looking at. They were files. Gus Russo was sending stuff in, and the other guy was Scott Malone.

Stefula: Malone was his partner.

Q: It never went forward, but I saw all the notes that they had, and part of it was this Harvey Jack McGeorge story. One of the things they stated here – I’ll quote to you. This is from Russo writing to Sullivan, who is guess was the Executive Producer for the show. "Scott Jones told Stefula that Reverend Billy Graham holds president’s hands during UFO briefings.” Did that come from McGeorge, or where did that come from?

Stefula: No, that didn’t come from McGeorge (laughs). Rich Butler and I went down, and we interviewed Scott Jones. You probably know that Scott Jones had a falling out with Rockefeller, and his funding was pulled.

Q: Yes. I’m familiar with that.

Stefula: Well, this is before that happened. We were down there for some weekend. We met him at his little office in Alexandria. I think that is where it was located. He was telling us a bunch of shit, which I thought was all bullshit. Like sources, he can’t name. UFO people, like man, after a while, you just shake your head, like Doty and his claim to fame.

Jim Schnabel, who wrote that book on remote viewing, got involved in this too. He was doing research with Hal Puthoff for an article about Puthoff for Discovery Magazine, and Puthoff claimed the fact that the story of the crashed saucer was true and the right guy looking into it could make a ton of money with a good book, so Jim was looking into it. Puthoff refers him to Scott Jones.

Jones sets him up with a meeting in a diner down there in Maryland and who shows up as the main source, but Rick Doty (long laugh) I said this is like a circle jerk with Doty in the middle. That’s all it is. He whispers to one guy, and it makes the UFO rumor mill. You know what I mean. He’s slick, you know. He made this claim to me about all these medals he won, and I said don’t bullshit me, Doty. I’ve done 25 years, and I’m retired. I earned all my medals. You almost get court marshaled. You’re lucky you’re not in God-damn jail. You’re lucky that you get a pension from the Air Force. Doty likes to play games. He’ll go on the net under different names and out himself. “I know this guy Rick Doty is a government agent in charge of UFOs. The guy’s slick. That whole thing about Carter, as far as I am concerned, is total bullshit.

George Filer knows a sheriff down in one of those counties in Georgia. He is a MUFON member. Carter lives down there in Georgia. He told Filer that he approached Carter about it, and Carter and Carter basically said, “All I know I have already made public. I’m not keeping any secrets or anything like that.”

(This, I believe, is a reference to Tom Sheets, who claimed to have foiled an abduction of Amy Carter – my recollection was that he contacted Carter by mail and did not receive a reply) So as far as I am concerned, that should be the end of it, but UFO people will never take no for an answer. With that logic, you can never win if you get involved with them. I just blow off that whole Scott Jones, Carter – all that is just bullshit.

Q: But you did talk to McGeorge.

Stefula: I talked to him on the phone.

Q: He’s back in the news again (I mention the recent articles about Iraq weapons inspections etc.

Stefula: I didn’t know that, but he’s a total bullshit character. How he ever got on CNN as a terrorist expert beats the hell out of me. The guy is a bullshitter. His main concern – he denied everything and told me the story about the water in the White House and wanted to know how his name surfaced and stuff like that. Frankly, I can’t remember. I just said it came out that you were there and Carter. I think it tied into that briefing shit that Bill Moore had – the Aquarius documents. All that stuff was tied in, but as far as I know, this is all total bullshit, or the Aviary, that whole group of people spinning tall tales left and right.

Q: I mention the three-page document found in Malone’s files about McGeorge.
Stefula: This McGeorge is such a character. I would have no doubt that he might have told that story to impress someone – when some legitimate guy who doesn’t take his bullshit asks, he would deny it.

Q: I think you’ve cleared it up for me. Thanks

The Scott Jones Connection

Scott Jones was identified as a key figure in what happened inside the Carter briefing. Jones became famous later because he worked for Senator Claiborne Pell on paranormal research, and Laurance Rockefeller funded him. He and Rockefeller made an approach to the Clinton administration for UFO disclosure.

Jones was also recognized as one of the Aviary, the invisible college-type group created by UFO researcher Bill Moore in the 1980s.

Jones was asked about the Carter briefing, and he killed the story. Asked if he was involved, he stated:

False. I have no knowledge of a Carter briefing. The only thing I can think of is that this ‘idea’ grows out of the fact that I designed a strategy that resulted in a meeting with Jack Gibbons, Carter’s science advisor. Rockefeller met with Jack on at least two occasions and then, according to stories I heard, met with Carter out in Wyoming.

This sounds well and good, except that Gibbons worked for Clinton, not Carter, and Rockefeller met with Clinton, not Carter, in Wyoming. You can see how the rumors get all messed up when the people in the rumor confuse the characters in their own stories.

Another key figure at this time was another Aviary member Bob Collins, known as the Condor in the Aviary.

After Bill Moore left the UFO field in disgust in 1989, Collins was asked in 2003 by researcher Bill Hamilton if he thought Bill “knows the truth now.”

Collins summed up how frustrating it can be to unravel the true UFO story:

Moore does not know more than us right now. He did meet Mr. X (Falcon in the Aviary) back in 1979, and also, Mr. X gave him a copy of that reconstructed Carter (briefing) document to take snapshots of in the hotel room. Like in the case of our Dan Burisch, everything was always Cloak and Dagger and Mystery. Secret meetings, cryptic messages, you name it. Personally, I got sick of it, all those games and no meat. So, I decided to do my own things. Both Bill (Moore) and Jamie (Shandera) hated me for that. Bill predicted I would have a nervous breakdown. Said when it happened, we should meet and talk about it. Well, still kicking, but just barely.

Carter Library Archivist Take

I had a few conversations with the archivist at the Carter Library, who addressed my questions over the years. He is the same guy who thought the date for the sighting might be earlier based on his contacts in college with Carter’s son Chip. I was told that Carter met with:

Billy Graham met 9 or 10 times at congressional prayer breakfasts, etc., but his only White House contact was on November 1, 1979, in a dinner with religious leaders and on November 2, 1979, with religious leaders. Carter was not especially close to Graham, and their religious views and feelings were not that close either. I have a hard time believing that Jimmy Carter would call Graham in for a hand-holding for a UFO briefing, which would be a national security issue for Carter and not a religious one.

Carter was not one of those literal-minded fundamentalists who would freak out with the idea that there is life elsewhere in the universe. For the same reason, I was instantly doubtful of the story you sent yesterday about McGeorge seeing Carter teary-eyed after a UFO briefing. Jeez Louise, Carter was an Annapolis grad, an engineer, studied nuclear physics, had no trouble with evolution, and had a very sophisticated trilateral view of geopolitics.

Just because he has talked openly about his religious beliefs, people tend to jump to the conclusion that he was some simpleminded superstitious ignoramus... Carter kept out of religious controversies and was a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but this urban legend sounds like something the public thought he would do--like to weep and hold hands with Billy Graham at a UFO briefing. People think in such stereotypes.

The Holloman Film

Hal tells me he has sources who tracked down two people who claim they were at Holloman Air Force Base in 1964 and did witness a saucer landing. A pilot saw it from above and gave a report to APRO. The rumor states that a Holloman Secretary filled out a form for the transfer of the saucer... to Canada. Jacques Vallée

Now this all sounds like a bunch of loonie-tune rumors, but here is part of the true and significant story. It has to do with the part of the story claiming Carter was shown a 15minute color film of a UFO landing. As mentioned earlier, Spielberg supposedly based Close Encounters of the Third Kind on the landing film from Holloman AFB. My friend Bob Emenegger provided Spielberg with a documentary based on the film.

Emenegger and his partner Allen Sandler claimed they had it in their hands for some time. They were ordered to return the film to the Pentagon by Bill Coleman. Coleman stated that the time was not right, and the film could not be released.

Later, Emenegger questioned Coleman about the real reason the film was pulled, and Coleman allowed him to play 20 questions. When he had run out of questions, he was no closer to the answer. At that point, Coleman said he could take Emenegger out into the Gulf of Mexico and tell him, but then he would have to kill him. It was meant to be a joke.

Later, however, I discovered and Emenegger confirmed that 8 seconds of the Holloman film had been put in his documentary. I questioned why this had been allowed, as the story was that the film had been driven back across the country to the Pentagon.

Emenegger told me that the 8 seconds of film was just background. I questioned him about what this was supposed to mean. He told me that part of the film did not show the craft up close or the entities.

A frame from the 8 seconds of the Hollman Air Force Base film that was

allowed in the 1975 documentary UFOs, Past, Present, and Future

When I mentioned to Emenegger that the Holloman film story sounds much like Close Encounters of the Third Kind except for the time and place, he said, “I didn’t tell you?

“You didn’t tell me what?” I said.

“I didn’t tell you I gave a copy to Steven Spielberg?”

“No, you did not tell me that,” I replied.

“I told you Annie Spielberg, Steven’s sister worked as a line producer for us. She said Steven would like to get a copy of the documentary, so she took it to him.”

Emenegger confirmed this by telling me the story of Spielberg’s mother talking to him about Close Encounters. She said, “Bob. I have seen your version of the landing (told in the 1975 documentary UFOs, Past, Present, and Future), and I have seen Steven’s version of the landing. I like Steven’s version better.”

If this whole Carter briefing story was nonsense, how did the people who started the rumor know about the landing film being shown to the president during his UFO intelligence briefing?

I had heard the rumor that the president was shown the Holloman film, but no one else that I know of did. I also knew the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), run by Bob Bigelow, was investigating where the Holloman landing film was. They were, in fact, about to interview Paul Shartle, who was the security manager at Norton Air Force Base. He was the one that was issuing the film for the documentary. He also told Emenegger and Sandler that the government wanted the 1975 UFO documentary done and proposed a second documentary to “get out the film” in 1983.

Most importantly, he was the one who actually saw the film and talked about it publicly in the 1988 documentary UFO Coverup Live, a documentary released during the last days of the Ronald Reagan presidency.

The NIDS people, especially Puthoff, were desperate to locate the film. But, unfortunately, I was told two weeks before Shartle was to fly to Vegas to talk to NIDS that he died in a rollover car accident.

How do I know all this? I was contacted because I was good friends with Emenegger and had discussed all the films that he and Sandler had been given access to.

As a part of that, I was asked, “Do you have Jimmy Carter’s phone number?”

I replied that I didn’t. I was a Canadian, and it wouldn’t make sense that I would.

Vallée has partly outed the story in his book, Forbidden Science Volume 5, so I feel it is time to tell my story. But first, let me quote what Vallée has written about this:

Hal and I had taken early flights in order to meet at the airport before the others arrived. Without a preamble, he told me Eric’s story. Eric was the person who interviewed Wilson in the EG&G parking lot. He’d contacted the admiral about his project to restart a chapter of AFIO (Association of Former Intelligence Officers) in Las Vegas, and the topic drifted to ufology.

Eric is now in touch with the vice-chairman of the association, who is none other than former president George Bush, Sr. They’ve spoken twice on the phone. The first phone call was initiated by Bush, who gave Eric some advice about AFIO and his future career.

Eric told him about his interest in the Corso revelations: ‘Could it be that Corso was mistaken in dealing with the material he was handling? Could that have been Nazi hardware?’ Eric asked.

‘Impossible,’ replied Bush. ‘The two topics were clearly separated. By that time (1947), all German secrets had been processed and filed away; they were not used as cover for anything else.'

Bush remembered General Trudeau. He showed interest in pursuing the discussion, asking Eric for his recent physics papers. He knew of the remote viewing project but didn’t recall Hal’s name.

The second conversation was more interesting because it got into the Holloman film, which remains a fixation for Hal, Eric, and me. The former President was aware of it. Was it a training film, a special ops exercise? No, he replied, ‘it was ‘the real thing.’ There was a secret project, and the security was ‘obscene.’

Eric Davis phoned me about the same time and wanted to talk to Carter about seeing the Holloman landing film during his UFO intelligence briefing. In addition, he also wanted to know if I had Carter’s phone number. He had already had conversations with two presidents about the Holloman film he contacted through the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Unfortunately, Carter had never been in intelligence and therefore had no phone number contact.

I was told that two presidents had been talked to:

• Gerald Ford, who confirmed he had seen the film during his presidency. When asked when this occurred, Ford said he was not going to reveal that.

• George Bush Sr. confirmed he had seen the Holloman film as CIA director but not in any presidential briefing.

As I recall, each had been asked about the cover stories for this being an actual video of a UFO landing at Holloman and aliens being greeted as they exited the craft.

These cover stories included that the film represented a psychological training film, a disinformation effort, and a flame-out of an A-12. (This A-12 cover story was what Col. Bill Coleman was pushing Emenegger, and later gave it to John Alexander to spread around).

Emenegger knew better as Shartle had viewed the film. Some even still think that Emenegger and Sandler saw it, but that was never confirmed.

Bush denied it was any of these but would not confirm it was an alien landing film. I never heard if Davis ever talked to Carter.

As for the Holloman film, in the days after the 1988 UFO Coverup Live documentary, Senator Christopher Dodd pushed for an answer about the film and was told it was in a Navy Sync (sp?).

The fact that the McGeorge story included a short color film being shown has always made me wonder if the rest of the story wasn’t true. Unfortunately, not many people knew about the Holloman/presidential briefing story.

The second thing that rings true about the briefing story is that on the same day of the supposed UFO briefing, Carter did at least one other thing (in his schedule).

If Carter was involved, he seemed to have operated through others to keep his fingerprints off what he was doing. He used Frank Press, his science advisor, to try and get a new UFO investigation inside NASA. He had a lawyer pressuring the CIA to produce all UFO documents in response to a filed FOIA. This is where researcher Nick Redfern made a discovery. He pointed out:

June 14, 1977, was also the date that Jay Cochran, Jr, Assistant Director FBI, Technical Services Division was contacted by Stanley Schneider of the office of Science and Technology (President’s Science Advisor) at the White House and asked about the FBI's procedures for handling UFO data.

Jody Powell had brought up the question. Powell was Carter’s Press Secretary, and he was pressuring the FBI to produce UFO documents for an FOIA that had been filed. One thousand five hundred pages were eventually released. The response was that a UFO report would be forwarded to

the USAF without any action taken by the FBI.”

The Public Responds to Carter’s Promise

He (Carter) is committed to the fullest possible openness in government and would support full disclosure of material that was not defense sensitive that might relate to UFOs. He did not, however, pledge to 'make every piece of information concerning the UFOs available to the public.’ There might be some aspects of some sightings that would have defense implications that possibly should be safeguarded against immediate and full disclosure. Carter’s Deputy Press Secretary Walter Wurfel

Carter’s campaign admission of witnessing a UFO created a big problem for the White House, which claimed to be the White House of the common people. Carter took office in late January, and by July of 1977, so many UFO inquiry letters were coming into the White House Carter’s science officials labeled the situation a “nightmare.” The White House press office, looking to deal with all the UFO letters, approached Carter’s Science Advisor, Frank Press, to see if he could solve the problem.

Frank Press’s office conducted a quick investigation into UFOs, confirming that the number of sightings and the public interest in the subject had risen. Moreover, the press was after the White House for a comment regarding the growing public interest in UFOs. “Popular interest in this (UFO subject) has been brewing for several months, slowly building up,” Stanley D. Schneider, an aide to Frank Press, responded to an inquiry from the New York Times. “It was getting more than we could handle.”

Schneider further stated the letters to the Carter administration asking about UFOs had begun right after Carter was elected. Schneider attributed this influx of mail partly to the fact that Jimmy Carter had a UFO sighting and partly to the fact that he had made UFOs a public issue before becoming President. However, Schneider forgot that Carter promised to make all UFO information public if elected. Most of the letters were written not about UFOs but about the UFO information Carter had promised to deliver if he won the election. The journal Science described the dilemma:

During his presidential campaign, Carter is said to have promised he would release all government information concerning UFOs - a promise which UFO buffs have not let him forget because of their fervent belief that for many years the government has been covering up its encounters of the third kind.

Schneider also told the New York Times he believed the sudden interest in UFOs was partly caused by the release of Star Wars a year earlier. According to Star Wars promoters, they had sold 400 million tickets (the actual number was 338,400,000) for the movie by early 1977. In 1977, there were only 200 million people in the United States. Schneider also mentioned that the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was about to be released, and Schneider believed it would increase interest in UFOs even more.28

It only got worse when Carter’s UFO encounter was written up in The National Enquirer on June 8, 1976, while Carter was still campaigning for the White House.

With a weekly sales figure at The National Enquirer at the time of five million and a readership estimated at double or triple this figure, the short couple of hundred-word articles initiated a deluge of UFO letters into the White House. People from all walks of life wrote these letters, from children to military old-timers, homemakers to professionals. Some had written to express their opinion. Some had written to tell the President that he was not alone - they, too, had experienced a UFO sighting. However, most people wrote asking about President Carter’s campaign promise to reveal the government’s knowledge about UFOs.

Initially, Frank Moore, the Assistant to the President for Congressional Liaison, handled the letters. Moore was a part of the “Georgia Carter Clan” that came to Washington following Carter’s election. He had been with Carter since working as a campaign aide with Carter during his 1966 gubernatorial campaign.

Among the letters about UFOs was one from researcher Larry W. Bryant, who by 1977 had already been regularly writing letters about the UFO issue to Presidents and others in the Washington political elite for 20 years. Bryant worked in the Pentagon as a writer and editor for U.S. Army publications.

He wrote his letter to the newly elected Jimmy Carter on February 6, 1977. Placing the letter in the mailbox, Bryant was not optimistic. “After all,” he wrote:

…considering my then-already 20 years of needling officialdom... how could I expect to receive any more than the dismissive, formula response that I’ve always received? I had expected no substantive reply. I wasn’t disappointed.

In his letter to President Carter, Bryant stated he realized his was only one of the thousands of letters to Carter regarding UFOs due to Carter’s public admission he had witnessed a UFO. Therefore, he understood his letter, along with the others, would be:

Referred by your office to Headquarters, Department of the Air Force, for direct reply — despite the fact that the Air Force disavows its continued, formal involvement in the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of the UFO-sighting reports; and despite the fact that back in the days of its UFO public-relations instrument known as Project Blue Book, it persistently denied to newsmen and to other private citizens that Blue Book managers were arbitrarily and systematically withholding reports from public scrutiny...

In his letter, Bryant encouraged Carter to investigate the roles of the FBI, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Council in the UFO cover-up. He encouraged Carter to publish his study of his findings:

As a longtime critic of the “politics of Ufology,” I’m hoping that your examination of these roles would culminate in a formal report of your findings to the public, in the course of which you are undoubtedly will have fulfilled your campaign promise to disclose all UFO data now being kept secret by the federal government.

As expected, Bryant’s letter was replied to on February 16 by the Air Force on behalf of President Carter. It was the standard letter every UFO researcher had received many times. Colonel L.E. Seminare, Jr. wrote that the Air Force was no longer in the UFO business, but all the records of Project Blue Book could be viewed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Further, Seminare wrote that the Air Force was not covering up anything, and there is no evidence to indicate the Air Force should do any further study concerning the phenomena. Moreover, if there were reason to continue the study, Seminare stated there was no money because of the “present constraints on available resources.”

“Hopefully,” Seminare concluded, “the forgoing information will clarify the Air Force position on this matter.”

No one was spared this standard response or no response, no matter how important the person’s writing was. Tom Sheets, for example, wrote President Carter and did not receive a reply. Sheets was at one time the Chief of Police in College Park, Georgia. He was also an avid UFO investigator, serving as the State Director of Georgia’s MUFON. Sheets importance to President Carter was this: he had actually foiled an attempt by a man to abduct the President’s daughter Amy Carter.32

Sometimes it took more than one letter to President Carter to get a “kiss-of” letter from the Air Force. A telegram from Larry McCann, the producer of a new television show in New York called UFO Update, was a prime example. A few months after Carter took office, McCann wrote to ask for more details on the UFO sighting Carter had experienced and about his campaign promise to disclose everything the government knew about UFOs. McCann waited and received no reply.

On July 26, 1977, McCann wrote again. However, this time his letter was a lot less friendly. In addition to repeating his request for information about Carter’s campaign promise, McCann referred to Air Force Officers losing their lives chasing UFOs. McCann took this allegation from Air Force General Benjamin Chicklaw in the book Situation Red, which had just been published.33

The new approach worked, but not well enough to get a reply from Carter. Once again, Air Force Col. Seminare was answering President Carter’s mail. The letter was the standard Air Force UFO denial letter, as received by Larry Bryant. Except this time, there was a strong denial about Air Force pilots dying while pursuing UFOs. “Further,” wrote Seminare, “the United States military has no record of any military aircraft ever engaging in combat with a so-called UFO.”34

One letter sent in the first few months of the Carter Presidency was from four House of Representatives in Puerto Rico, who were inspired by Carter’s openness regarding his sighting and his pro-UFO statements. The four members wrote:

Inspired by your views on this interesting matter we… introduced a resolution - - H.R. 151 - - whose sole purpose is to create a House committee to gather statements from citizens who may have evidence of the existence of this type of scientific phenomenon.

Eventually, President Carter got help from NASA in answering the avalanche of UFO letters being mailed in. Those tasked to respond to the letters were provided a NASA fact sheet on UFOs. It stated that no government agency was “involved with or responsible for investigations into the possibility of advanced alien civilizations on other planets or for investigating Unidentified Flying Objects.”

Further, the NASA fact sheet informed UFO letter writers:

NASA was asked to examine the possibility of resuming UFO investigations. After studying all the facts available, it was determined that nothing would be gained by further investigation since there was an absence of tangible evidence.

The Carter presidency started the most optimistic period for possible disclosure of UFOs. But ultimately, it turned out to be a presidency that was forced to hide behind one of its agencies to avoid addressing the countless letters asking for responsible action on the subject.

The White House Responds Back

The full story of the response of the White House to the massive public interest in UFOs directed at Carter has only recently come to light.

What the political media in 1977 did not know, or knew and refused to report on, was that Jimmy Carter signed off on at least two attempts to initiate reinvestigations of the UFO and extraterrestrial intelligence issues shortly after taking office. Behind-the-scenes accounts of these studies became available when legal activist Daniel Sheehan decided to speak out in 2000, beginning with an address to the Los Angeles Chapter of MUFON. Attorney and futurist Alfred Webre published Sheehan’s speech in his book, Exopolitics.

So, it was in the very first weeks of the Carter administration that two processes were coinciding. At the forefront, the administration was trying to deal with the enormous amount of mail pouring into the White House on the UFO issue. But, in the background, the White House moved unilaterally to initiate two UFO/ET studies.

Nine-Thousand UFO Letters

The flood of letters and telegrams that poured into the White House following Carter’s inauguration further encouraged Carter to try to end the secrecy and release the documents held by the Defense Department, the USAF, and the CIA.

Press’s office wrote to the Defense Department and the CIA to inquire whether documents were being withheld, which both agencies claimed were not. The Pentagon even informed the White House that they had provided ALL USAF UFO files to the National Archives. Any citizen who wanted to see them could visit the archives or buy a copy of the microfilm.

Now, even though White House staff were publicly talking about the Close Encounters movie and Carter’s sightings as the cause of the deluge of mail, behind the scenes, they knew exactly why the mail was pouring in. On June 8, 1976, the National Enquirer published a story detailing Carter’s sighting of a UFO.

The story was entitled: "Jimmy Carter: The Night I Saw a UFO." In the article, Carter said, "If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists."

On May 3, 1977, The Star, a national tabloid, also ran a story about the 1969 sighting and the UFO actions of the new administration. This article was one of the articles that started a second, more significant wave of mail into the Carter White House about UFOs.

Frank Moore’s office handled the mail pouring in. Moore, the Director of the Congressional Liaison Office, had been given the job of collecting and answering constituent letters. Before it was over, Moore had 9,000 letters. Billy Shaddix, a White House photographer, was called in to take photos of all the mail. The piles of UFO mail had become an event worth photographing.

Frank Press was pulled in to aid the situation. First, he set up an investigation while answering all the mail. While conducting the investigation, he came across a second more serious problem – what to tell the senders. Press’ initial investigation indicated that inquiries from people interested in UFOs get "the run around." Each federal agency's letter provided a different answer to the UFO question. Meanwhile, the Air Force, which had formally overseen the investigation of UFOs, had developed yet another form letter for UFO inquiries.

The Carter White House is Flooded with UFO Mail

Frank Press contacted the Pentagon to solicit its help in answering the considerable amount of mail because of the problems the Pentagon had created through its fragmented approach to answering UFO-related inquiries.

Carter had appeared in the National Enquirer as the honest President who had seen a flying saucer and would end the cover-up. On the other hand, the Pentagon sent out a form letter from the Secretary of the Air Force as a response to the sincere UFO inquiries. In the form letter, they reverted to the standard Air Force line: nothing is being withheld, there is no threat to National Security, there is no evidence the objects are extraterrestrial, and nothing is worth studying.

Angry respondents were writing back to the Carter White House, upset that their letters to Carter were being diverted to the Air Force, which everyone knew had been covering up the UFO mystery for 30 years. They were also sending letters to their senators and congress members complaining about being misled yet again. Carter’s people quickly abandoned the practice of using the Pentagon.

Larry Bryant book dealing with the UFO mail.

Another problem that existed from the influx of mail was that Press’ office discovered that the Air Force classified some of its inquiries of sightings made "near military bases, and by men trained to watch the skies, and a few of which are investigated by Air Force men going up in planes."

The White House was expected to answer the UFO inquiries, yet they lacked all the necessary information. The problem was that military security works on a need-to-know basis. The President is not told if the military sensors determine if the White House has a need to know or not.

Press’s office claimed, through statements made to the respected magazine Science, classification of UFO data was one of the things that "keep alive this belief in the cover-up. Policies like these ... need review and perhaps changing." The President’s Science Advisor’s investigation seemed to confirm what UFOlogists had been saying for thirty years. There was a cover-up.

For the skeptical UFO buff Philip Klass, the Science magazine states that the Air Force classified UFO reports as more than he could handle. He contacted Deborah Shapley, who had written the Science article, and asked her if she had checked out the claim that the Air Force was classifying UFO reports. Klass firmly believed in the long-held Air Force statement that the Air Force had released all the information it had to the public. Shapley told Klass that she hadn’t checked the statement. President Carter's Scientific Advisor’s office gave her the information she had used. This confirmed Klass told Shapley that "he believed" she had been "badly misinformed."

The public release of a claim about an Air Force coverup in a major scientific journal, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was not the only faith-shattering disclosure keeping the skeptical Klass awake at night.

As reported earlier in the book, By April 1977, the White House had determined, through questions put to the CIA, that a great deal of information about UFOs was being withheld. Then, using the office of the Press secretary Jody Powell, the White House released a bombshell about possibly revealing some of the secrets. Through a background briefing with U.S. News & World Report, the White House leaked the following information:

Before the year is out, the Government - perhaps the President - is expected to make what is described as ‘unsettling disclosures’ about UFOs – 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.

White House internal memo responding to the
National Enquirer UFO media question

White House internal memo regarding UFO policy.

The U.S. News & World Report disclosure led to another wave of letters, including an offer from UFO researcher Bill Pitts in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Pitts traveled to Washington and, during a visit to Dr. Press’ office, offered to do anything he could to assist the White House in their plan to release the hidden information.

The skeptical Klass read the article about the possible CIA disclosures of information. He moved quickly to bolster his faith that the USAF and CIA had not lied. He then attacked the U.S. News and World Report statement before it could be accepted as true. Klass wrote to U.S. News & World Report and offered 100:1 odds that there would be no "unsettling disclosures" on UFOs before December 31, 1977. However, the U.S. News & World Report magazine ignored Klass’ challenge.

Todd Zechel, then the Director of Ground Saucer Watch, a group formed to fight the classification of UFO documents by the government, was also interested in the U.S. News story of a possible UFO disclosure by the Carter White House. He headed to Washington for a visit with his telephone conversation acquaintance, Arthur Lundahl, a former high-ranking official with the CIA and a person who reportedly had been a UFO briefer to at least three presidents.

Zechel had discussed the U.S. News report on the phone with Lundahl, and Lundahl had promised to check with " the boys." (Zechel assumed the boys to be former CIA Directors William Colby and Richard Helms, both close friends of Lundahl’s).

After a cat-and-mouse game with Mr. Lundahl for most of the day they spent together, they finally got down to a oneon-one discussion about UFOs and the rumored startling discoveries predicted by U.S. News. Other than "two interesting revelations" about the nature of UFOs, Lundahl, according to Zechel, "did not pry loose much specific information of the CIA’s involvement with UFOs." The Carter disclosure to U.S. News & World Report remained elusive.

By September 1977, Carter’s Administration had asked NASA to help with the incoming UFO mail. In a September 14 letter, Dr. Press wrote to the NASA administrator, Dr. Robert Frosch, asking for help with the UFO mail problem but also suggesting it might be time for another study of the UFO issue. Press indicated that a panel of prominent scientists such as Carl Sagan might "investigate the validity and significance of UFO reports."

NASA, however, was not receptive to the idea or even to the idea of having been asked. It presented several problems for their agency:

1. UFOs were an issue that had caused the USAF a lot of public grief before they could unload the responsibility in 1969. Taking up the UFO issue for the White House would be to take on something that was a “no-win situation."

2. The public view being put out by NASA was that UFOs were not worthy of study and that many UFO witnesses were simply misinterpreting natural phenomena or were hoaxing their experiences. As the President claimed to be one of these witnesses, NASA would be stuck putting down UFOs without trying to offend the

President.

3. Turning down the White House's offer to help with the UFO problem would put the agency in a position to make yet further cuts in funding – at a time when budgets of many departments and agencies were being slashed.

4. NASA Administrator Robert Frosch was very aware of the bitter internal battles that came with investigating UFOs. He had previous involvement being head of the Naval Research and Development during a controversy where Dr. James McDonald was accused of using ONR funds to do his UFO research.

5. "The CIA’s advice to NASA was to stay out of UFOs (sic)." In a March 21, 1977, letter to President Carter’s science advisor, Robert Frosch stated, "NASA knew of no tangible evidence of UFO reality based on a check with the CIA." Later, in a letter from Kenneth Chapman, Associate Administrator for External Relations, regarding a report called "UFO Study Considerations," Chapman stated, "We specifically queried the CIA by telephone as to whether they were aware of any tangible or physical UFO evidence that could be analyzed..." The UFO report became suspect for its joint production through the CIA and NASA.

The importance of the NASA phone call to the CIA on UFOs is based on the fact that the CIA had previously clearly stated, "At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel (January 1953), and subsequent to the issuance of the panel’s report, has the CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomena."

If NASA took up the new investigation, every time NASA faced a decision about the UFO phenomena, they would be forced to check with the CIA to ensure they were not crossing over into someone else’s jurisdiction.

The Air Force was advising NASA not to help Carter investigate UFOs.

There were a couple of other factors increasing the pressure on Frank Press. First, Peter A. Sturrock, a Stanford University astrophysicist, had just completed a survey of 1,356 American Astronomical Society responding members. In the survey, Sturrock had found that 53% of these trained astronomical observers stated there "certainly" or "probably" should be further investigation of the UFO phenomena. The overall conclusion of the survey was that the USAF’s study from 1947-1969 had not adequately done the job and that another study should be done.

More pressure on the White House was also coming from Sir Eric M. Gairy, who had been asking for years for the United Nations to establish a UFO department. Finally, on September 9, Gairy met in the White House with President Jimmy Carter. In this meeting, he was inspired to pressure the United Nations to investigate the UFO situation.

In October and November 1977, Gairy and his United Nations delegate, Wellington Friday, began pressuring the United Nations. Finally, on November 28, Friday spoke at the United Nations before the United Nations General Assembly’s Special Political Committee on UFOs, and "it started a debate on UFOs and how the United Nations could contribute to research on the subject."

Friday stated in his speech that the U.N. Committee should study physical sightings of alien objects, contacts with the objects, and physical exchanges with the aliens. The delegates sat "subdued," and most agreed that there would have to be a debate on the issue.

In light of all the pressure for answers to the UFOs being demanded of the White House by the public, Frank Press decided it might be time for another investigation into UFOs.

The White House concluded that NASA should be the agency tasked to do another UFO investigation. So on July 21, 1977, Carter’s science advisor, Frank Press, wrote a letter to Dr. Robert Frosch, NASA administrator, asking for a new inquiry and a couple of other things. The letter read:

Dear Bob,

We have discovered that the White House is becoming the focal point for an increasing number of inquiries concerning UFOs. As you know, there appears to be a national revival of interest in the matter, with a younger generation becoming

involved. Those of us in the Executive Office are illequipped to handle these kinds of inquiries.

It seems to me that the focal point of the UFO question ought to be in NASA. I recommend two things: since it has been nearly a decade since the Condon (sic) report (see University of Colorado UFO Project), I believe that a small panel of inquiry could be formed to see if there are any new significant findings. Since this is a public relations problem as much as anything else, people who are known to be interested in the problem and also highly known, such as Carl Sagan, ought to be involved. This is a panel of inquiry that could be formed by NASA.

The second thing that I would like to suggest is that NASA become the focal point for general correspondence and those inquiries which come to the White House be sent to the designated desk at NASA.

Writer and prominent UFO researcher Jacques Vallée met with Dr. Schneider, assistant to President Carter’s Science Advisor Frank Press, shortly after Press made the request to NASA. Vallée asked Schneider why NASA had been chosen over other agencies. Formally the UFO investigation had been the responsibility of the Air Force.

The Air Force’s role is to protect U.S. airspace, which is how they dealt with the phenomena. They evaluated whether or not the UFO phenomena were a threat to the United States. In the final report of Project Blue Book, they concluded that there was no threat and were no longer interested.

Vallée, therefore, asked, "NASA deals exclusively with space technology. Has the Science Advisor’s office already established that the UFO phenomenon is technological in nature and originates in space? Or is this choice merely a response to the perceptions of the public and the media?"

Dr. Schneider responded to Vallée that in the mind of the public, the UFO problem has to do with space, and therefore NASA is the appropriate agency to look at the problem.

Vallée asked whether this meant that the move to ask NASA to take up the UFO investigation was a public relations move and would have nothing to do with science. Would there be another Condon-type report? If this was what Schneider was planning, Vallée stated that his circumspect "Invisible College" (a network of scientists privately investigating the mystery) would not participate.

The reaction of NASA to being chosen to take on the UFO problem for the President was not positive. NASA was also viewed as a political hot potato that the White House was trying to pawn off to another agency.

The NASA budget had suffered from years of cutbacks, and it appeared President Carter would cut even further. In addition, NASA was concerned with its image and didn’t want to get involved in a controversial issue such as UFOs, which offered only a public relations nightmare. NASA wished only to return to the glory days of Apollo and the seemingly unlimited budgets that came with the moon missions.

The NASA project officer, reviewing UFO reports to see if the panel of inquiry (requested by President Carter) was justified, gave the scientific reasons why a new UFO investigation was a bad idea. He told the Christian Science Monitor:

To do the research, we have to have a starting point. What we are dealing with is a reportorial phenomenon, not hard facts.

We don’t know how to do research on this; we’re not parapsychologists. We can’t interface with the public with lie detectors. NASA would agree that some phenomena are extremely real to the people that experience them. But it’s not proper to judge another person’s reaction.

Give me one little green man – not the theory or memory of one – and we can have a multibilliondollar program. It’s a scientific dilemma. How do you prove that something doesn’t exist?

Dave Williamson, who was NASA’s assistant for special projects, further told the New York Times that NASA was "not anxious" to get into the controversy because "it’s not wise to do research on something that is not a measurable phenomenon" (sic).

Williamson had been NASA’s UFO point man for many years. "I’ve been involved, from NASA’s point of view, from the early 60s, when people have had questions or when studies have been done." Williamson headed the group to decide whether NASA would take up President Carter’s request to head up a new UFO investigation.

"There is no measurable UFO evidence such as a piece of metal, flesh, or cloth," Williamson commented. "We don’t even have any radio signals. A photograph is not a measurement.”

Some bureaucrats inside NASA were less diplomatic about the request for NASA to re-open the investigation of UFO sightings. One was quoted as saying: "All of these people seeing objects in the sky are probably a little touched in the head ..."

Even the Air Force, which had been out of the investigation of UFOs since 1969, weighed in on whether or not NASA should take up a new investigation. This advice came in response to a letter written by NASA’s Lieutenant General Duward L. Crow. He had written to the Air Force to obtain a UFO fact sheet and received the standard UFO response used by the Air Force for UFO inquiries from the public.

Crow was writing to get the official Air Force position on the UFO problem to help decide whether to reopen the investigation. Crow also requested the standard Air Force UFO response letter, as the White House had requested help with answering all the UFO mail, and Crow wanted to see what the Air Force was telling the public in UFO inquiries made to the Air Force.

Colonel Charles Senn, Chief of the Community Relations Division at the Air Force, wrote back to Lieutenant General Crow. In his September 1, 1977, reply letter, Senn wrote, "I sincerely hope that you are successful in preventing a reopening of UFO investigations."

The FBI was also aware of the Air Force involving them in the decision NASA was about to make on a possible new government UFO investigation project. According to William Sessions, head of the FBI, in a letter to someone writing about the NASA situation: "After studying all the facts available, it (NASA) decided that nothing would be gained by further investigation, and the Department of the Air Force Agreed with that decision."

CIA letter warning NASA to stay out of UFOs.

By December 1977, NASA had decided on its course of action. On December 21, 1977, NASA’s Dr. Frosch wrote President Carter’s Science Advisor to inform the White House of his decision to take up the job of another UFO investigation. The decision was made to help with the mail but to decline the new UFO investigation:

Dear Frank:

In response to your letter of September 14, 1977, regarding NASA’s possible role in UFO matters, we are fully prepared at this time to continue responding to public inquiries along the same line as we have done in the past. If some new element of hard evidence is brought to our attention in the future, it would be entirely appropriate for some NASA laboratory to analyze and report upon an otherwise unexplained organic or inorganic sample. We stand ready to respond to any bona fide physical evidence from credible sources. We intend to leave the door clearly open to such a possibility. We’ve given considerable thought to the question of what else the United States might and should do in the area of UFO research. There is an absence of tangible or physical evidence for thorough laboratory analysis. And because of the absence of such evidence, we have not been able to devise a sound scientific procedure for investigating these phenomena. To proceed with a research task without a disciplinary framework and an exploratory technique in mind would be wasteful and probably unproductive.

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.

I wish in no way to indicate that NASA has come to any conclusion about these phenomena as such. Institutionally we retain an open mind, a keen sense of scientific curiosity, and a willingness to analyze technical problems within our competence.

Here is one NASA document discussing the possibility
of handling claimed UFO hardware.

In response to the Frosch letter, Frank Press said he would accept the NASA evaluation of the situation. Therefore, there would be no UFO investigation, and the White House would pursue the UFO issue no further. Like the release of the closing of the U.S.A.F. Project Blue Book, the decision that NASA would not take up the UFO issue (and that the White House had agreed) was left to a December 27 press release. Carter’s promise to do something about the UFO situation was now effectively dead.

This decision to drop the UFO issue was a controversial one that could backfire on the White House. However, insiders know the time to make tough, unpopular decisions is in late December. Therefore, the White House decision was released after Christmas when at least half the capitol’s employees were on holiday. In addition, Congress and its aides have gone home for holidays, and along with them, the reporters and watchdog groups cover the politicians.

While these studies were being put together, the White House attempted to deal with UFO mail. The storm of letters and telegrams poured into the White House following Carter’s inauguration had augmented Carter’s basic instinct to try to end the secrecy and release the documents held by the Defense Department, the USAF, and the CIA.

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