In this episode I explore Jimmy Carters UFO encounter.
In this episode I explore Jimmy Carters UFO encounter.
Ep 43 Jimmy Carter
Hello and welcome back to the UFO and Aliens Podcast. I’m your host Rick Black. I hope everyone is doing well. It’s starting to warm up here. We’re in our last few weeks of great weather and then it’s going to be crazy hot and humid and that’s going to last until next November. We have two seasons here. Fall/Spring and Summer. Or the wet season and the dry season. When it gets hot the only time I can walk Charlie is in the early morning. It’s just too hot after that for my black lab.
Today we’re going to talk about our former 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who, at the time of this podcast is the oldest living and actually the oldest ever former president at 99. I remember when he was president, my family was travelling through Georgia on the way to my aunt’s house in Atlanta and we took a little detour so we could go through Plains Georgia where the peanut farmer turned President was from. There is a picture of me in an ugly striped tank top sitting on a bench in Plains Georgia. If I can find that picture at my mother’s house, I may have to post that somewhere.
Well, maybe you’ve heard, and maybe you haven’t, but when Jimmy Carter was the Governor of Georgia, he saw a UFO. Now any public figure who admits that he’s seen a UFO goes public with that information, they can usually kiss their political career goodbye. That didn’t happen here. Here’s the story:
One evening in 1969, he put October in his report, but it was probably January 6th 1969 according to Grant Cameron, Jimmy Carter was preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting. This was two years before he would become the 76th Governor of Georgia. He was standing outside the Lion’s Club in Leary, Georgia waiting for the meeting to start. Suddenly, he and ten or more witnesses saw a red and green orb radiating in the western sky. Carter described an object that “seemed move towards us from a distance, stop, move partially away, return, then depart. Bluish at first; then reddish – luminous – not solid.” He said “at times it was as bright as the moon, and about as big as the moon-maybe a bit smaller. The object was luminous; not solid.”
In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Carter described the moving nature of the event. He described the sighting as a “very remarkable sight.” According to Cameron this is an important event, because many of the skeptical investigations done on the Carter sighting, have tried to paint the event as a “ho-hum occurrence.” None of the descriptions Carter has made of the event have ever described it as ho-hum.
Jimmy Carter’s mother Lillian also confirmed that Carter had been very impressed by what he had seen. She said “The UFO made a huge impression on Jimmy, 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 had, in fact, described the UFO sighting many times in the years since it occurred. In every instance, including the latest known telling of the story at Emory University in 1997, Carter has never backed off on the spectacular nature of the event. He has also never conceded that what he saw was some misidentification of a natural phenomena.
Carter estimated that the object was three hundred to one thousand yards away. He estimated that the event had lasted 10 minutes. Then the object disappeared. Carter was so impressed by what he had seen, he recorded him impressions of the event on a tape recorder at the time.
In the ensuing years, there has been a great deal of discussion as to what the UFO had been. Skeptical UFO buffs, such as Robert Sheaffer, struggling to explain Jimmy Carter’s sighting away, by stating that Carter had viewed the planet Venus. Sheaffer, the vice-chairman of the UFO subcommittee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, wrote up his guess as to what the object Carter and the others had seen in the July 1977 Humanist Magazine. Many UFO ‘researchers’ wanting to show that they, too, can be “discriminating” joined in stating Carter had viewed the planet Venus.
Others stepped forward quickly to challenge the accuracy of Shaeffer’s claim. Shaeffer’s response to these challenges ended up taking his Venus explanation from the shaky to the bizarre. For example, Sheaffer argued UFO researchers challenging his conclusions were wrong because they relied on eyewitness testimony, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable. There are, Sheaffer wrote, “volumes of scientific analysis documenting unreliability of unsubstantiated human eyewitness testimony.” Yet Sheaffer, in his own analysis of the case, had used eyewitness testimony for one hundred percent of the date that he collected to come to his Venus conclusion.
In a response to a letter written to the Skeptical Inquirer by Jon Beckjord, published in the Winter 1980-1981 Skeptical Inquirer, Sheaffer cited four books and articles Beckjord could refer to that would show you “can’t take unsubstantiated testimony at face value.”
In the very next sentence of his reply, however Sheaffer retreated to eyewitness testimony. “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.” Shaeffer’s Venus conclusion relied on the assumption that Carter’s eyewitness testimony was inaccurate, but the other eyewitness accounts were accurate.
In the end, it is sage to conclude that the object was not Venus, no matter how bad witness testimony might have been. A review of the evidence would show:
-Venus was in the southwestern sky on January 6th 1969, not in the west as claimed by Sheaffer. Carter who had spent watches, while in the Navy doing watches in cruisers and destroyers, as a navigation officer, taking star shots with a sextant, stated the object was in the western sky.
-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 way.
-Venus at the time was at between 15 and 21 degrees over the horizon at 7:15 p.m. Carter, a trained observer stated the object was 30 degrees above the horizon, or almost double the height of Venus at the time.
-Sheaffer described Venus as “being at it’s brightest” on the date in question. It wasn’t at its brightest.
-The witnesses declared that the object disappeared after 10 minutes or at 7:25 p.m. Venus, on the evening in question, was visible in the clear sky till 9:20 p.m. 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. Venus does not disappear, and would have been eliminated as a suspect by a grade six astronomy class investigation.
Regardless of what the future President saw on that cold clear night in 1969, it greatly impressed him. He 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 that 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 that he witnessed. On September 24, 1997, for example, Carter spoke at the 16th annual Emory town Hall Meeting in Atlanta. When the question-and-answer session began, the first question was about the UFO sighting that Carter had experienced 28 years before. As he had on so many previous occasions Carter described in detail what he had seen. Inconclusion to the story he stated that “he knew of no extraterrestrials, and he did “not think any were on the UFO he saw.”
At the Southern Governors Conference a few years after the sighting
Carter said “I don’t laugh at people anymore when they say they’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen one myself. It was the darndest thing I have ever seen. It was bit, it was bright, it changed colors and it was about the size of the moon.”
In 1975 Carter again mentioned the UFO 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.”
He probably should have left that last comment out. It sounds a little bonkers. Maybe he just said that for the press, who knows.
Here’s the best comment of the whole thing. 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.”
The powers that be, whoever they are were alerted by this comment and there was no way that Jimmy Carter as going to be able to fulfill that last promise. It was not up to him, even as president of the United States.
A former Defense Intelligence Agency official, a senior Stanford Research Institute policy analyst and famed constitutional attorney Daniel Sheehan have all confirmed that President Carter’s attempts to obtain UFO information was thwarted by illegal actions by roque military and intelligence entities. Makes you wonder who’s in charge doesn’t it. It certainly isn’t the president. If you’ve seen the movie “Dave” with Kevin Kline, then you remember he’s acting as president. But he wasn’t in charge of anything. I think that part is closer to reality than we really want it to be.
The Disclosure Project, which is a nonprofit research interest group based in Charlottesville Virginia, obtained testimony from multiple, independent corroborating sources that President Carter was denied access to sensitive UFO files.
Mr. John Maynard, Defense Intelligence Agency, ret said “I’m a retired intelligence analyst…was in the military for 21 years andmstarted off with the Army intelligence Security Agency as an analyst. I went to work for several different organizations with the military and ended up with the DIA… in charge of…the documents for the Requirements and Evaluation division. In Europe, I researched these UFO reports and we got quite a bit of information about the sightings….drawings of what the vehicles looked like, whether they landed or not, whether they saw any…extraterrestrials…it made for an exciting career. They [the reports] were going to the CIA…the DIA…the Air Force Office of Special Intelligence…But as far as UFO and intelligence and extraterrestrial matters go, it’s right at the top – and I would say that the president has limited knowledge of it. I know that Carter did not have any knowledge whatsoever. And I worked there with….President Carter’s organization.”
Dr. Alfred Weber, Senior Policy Analyst said “I hold a BS degree from Yale…a law degree from Yale Law School….a Master’s of Education in Counseling from UT…I was a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Study of Social Policy at Stanford Research Institute [SRI]. I worked on the 1977 Carter White House Extraterrestrial Communication Project. The goal of the study was to fill the knowledge gap on this subject…and would include data on UFOs and EBEs [Extraterrestrial Biological Entities], of which there have been many sightings. It would have gone to as many foreign countries as possible; France…the then Soviet Union…China…under the aegis of the National Science Foundation. But…The project was terminated. They [management of SRI] had received direct communications from the Pentagon that if the study went forward, SRIs contracts with the Pentagon [which were many] would be terminated. He [my SRI Pentagon liaison] stated that the project, that had just been approved by the White House, was terminated because, and I am quoting him, ‘There are no UFOs’.”
Daniel Sheehan, Attorney said “I’m a 1967 graduate of Harvard Law School …studied American government and constitutional law…served as general counsel and co-counsel for the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and was involved in briefing and arguing the case in front of the US Supreme Court….represented James McCord in the Watergate burglary..I subsequently attended the Harvard Divinity school in Judeo-Christian social ethics in public policy…did my masters and PHD work there…I became the general counsel for the US Jesuit headquarters in D.C. in 1977, I was contacted by the director of the Science and Technology Division of the Congressional Research Service. She informed me She informed me that President Carter had held a meeting with the director of the CIA, George Bush Sr, and demanded that he [Bush] turn over to the President the classified information about UFOs and the information that was in the possession of the US intelligence community concerning the existence of ET intelligence. This information was refused to the President of the United States by the director of the CIA. The DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] suspected that the president was preparing to reveal this information to the American public.”
This Disclosure Project’s director, Steven M. Greer MD, is calling for open Congressional hearings into the UFO matter to explore this and other issues. Dr. Greer states; ‘There are ongoing illegal covert programs that consider themselves above the law and have deliberately acted outside of constitutionally required control and oversight. These programs deal with UFO and extraterrestrial matters and new energy and propulsion technologies. They have consistently denied Congress and US Presidents access to these programs and constitute a grave threat to US national security.”
Jimmy Carter wasn’t the only president that dealt with the UFO topic. He was stone walled. He couldn’t get anywhere because the people, the intelligence pentagon people knew that he was going to go public with the information that he got. So they weren’t going to give him anything. President Gerald Ford, when he was House Minority Leader, called for Congressional Inquiries into the nature of UFO sightings, but he did nothing on the subject while he was President. But while he was a Michigan Congressman he got his inquiry. On April 5th, 1966, Congress held an open hearing on UFOs, which at the time was an unprecedented move. While the hearing failed to accomplish as much as it might have, it produced an Air Force promise that arrangements would be made for an impartial, civilian investigation.
On October 7th 1966, the Air Force announced that the University of Colorado would undertake an open-ended UFO study, free of government influence.
All of this was sparked by the UFO sighting in Dexter Michigan where J. Allen Hynek was told to explain the UFO away as swamp gas. Ford wanted to get to the bottom of it. But it looks like he was played.
In the May 14th 1968 issue of Look Magazine, author John G. Fuller exposed the Colorado University ‘investigation” as the farce that it actually was. Fuller, leaving no room for doubt, listed so much evidence of the absurdities and ever-present negative attitude of the supposedly open-minded Project Director (the late Dr. Edward U. Condon), that a total waste of over a half million tax dollars was obvious.
The Look piece, entitled “Flying Saucer Fiasco,” also included a statement by the then-Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (a civilian UFO agency), Maj. Donald E Keyhoe (USMC, ret.) Keyhoe announced that NICAP would no longer support Colorado’s work because of its apparent bias against the UFO subject.
Gerald Ford was familiar with the Look article and he, like many disillusioned Americans, fully realized that the UFO investigation he worked so diligently to get was in serious trouble.
That was it. Later Ford became president of the United States and he no longer seemed to be interested in finding the truth about UFOs. Or did he get a UFO briefing when he became President and like all U.S. Presidents clammed up. Only Carter promised to tell the American people everything the government knows about UFOs and Extraterrestrials and he was denied everything.
Does the government have crashed UFOs? Does the government have ETs? Is the government in communication with extraterrestrial races? So I found this article where Chuck Schumer introduced a UFO transparency bill after retired air force officer David Grusch came forward with his UFO stories. According to the article by Trevor Timm, it was thwarted by a small group of republicans. So, no transparency. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to wade through that mess. I don’t know Trevor Timm, but I do know how the press works and I know how congress works and I don’t believe anything politicians say. I don’t want this to be even remotely political. So, I will just leave it there.
I truly believe that the government knows a lot about ETs. I believe that they mix lies with the truth to keep the truth from coming out. I believe that they have used UFO stories to hide secret military projects. Have they reverse engineered alien technology in military weapons? Has the military used private contractors to reverse engineer alien technology? In return for helping with this has the government given private contractors some of that technology? Like the technology to make these incredible cell phones that people are walking around with. I like to think that all of that was created using human ingenuity. But, you never know. And It doesn’t look like the government is going to admit anything to us any time soon. So there it is.
What did we do before cell phones? How did we get anywhere? I remember going on long trips through multiple states using these huge foldy paper things called maps. And having no way to communicate with anyone outside the car to let them know I made it or how far away I was. I had to listen to the radio to get information like the weather, or the scores for the games. And I had to listen to the DJ to find out what song I was listening to. What if I was watching a movie and wanted to know who that actor was. I would have to want to know so bad, that I had to watch all of the credits.
All of this technology came really fast. How did that happen? What do you believe?
Remember, Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read.
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