It was out of this world, y’all.
In 1969, Jimmy Carter, along with ten others, witnessed what the future president called a “very remarkable sight” in the skies over Georgia.
“As bright as the moon and almost as big,” he later wrote of the unidentified flying object in a report to the Oklahoma City-based International UFO Bureau while he was governor of Peach State.
“[The object] It seemed to move towards us from a distance, stopped, partly moved away, came back, and then was gone. Bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid,” she wrote descriptively.
The experience prompted the No. 39 contender to bring UFOs into the conversation during his campaign in 1976.
“If I become president, I will make all the information this country has on UFO sightings available to the public,” he told the American people. “I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.”
Today, Carter’s promise of transparency is seen as making an important contribution to the conversation around intelligent life beyond Earth, even if he wasn’t always happy to take a chance on the subject.
“Jimmy Carter is responsible for releasing about half of the government’s UFO files,” Grant Cameron, author of the new book “Jimmy Carter: Paranormal and UFO Tales,” published Thursday, told The Post.
Cameron, whose book consists of archived information from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and more up-to-date reports from the time, explained that Carter became known as “the UFO President” because of the move, a reputation that haunts the humble peanut farmer, now 98 years old. , for this day.
“He probably just regrets mentioning it once in his life…it’s not something he wanted to give up. It was something that was forced upon him by making this statement to a group of reporters,” Cameron said.
Among the thousands of openly published pages were reports of numerous instances of the unexplained, including two major events involving the United States military and international forces.
One occurred over the skies of Tehran, Iran, in 1976 “between Iranian Air Force planes and a UFO,” according to NSA documents on the incident.
The fighters, two F-4 Phantom II jets, reported a UFO playing “cat and mouse” with them, “crippling” their weapons and electronic systems when the jets tried to open fire on them.”
The second event is one that allegedly occurred in the United States in 1967 at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base, where Air Force Captain Robert Salas observed 10 ballistic missiles suddenly stop operating in tandem when a bright red object unknown was flying overhead, CBS reported.
There were several other occasions where UFO sightings were said to have coincided with a missile malfunction at the base. Similar cases were also reported in England and the Soviet Union.
While Carter kept quiet on the issue after winning the White House, he encouraged others, like actress and close friend Shirley MacLaine, to speak freely on the issue, according to the LA Times.
“He told me many times when I first wrote [my book] ‘Out on a Limb’ that he would support me, that it was true, that there were crafts, that he believed there were occupants,” he said on the “Larry King Show” in 1995.
Carter could also have been a fan of alien fiction.
An archived photocopy of a photo from his presidential library dated August 25, 1978 indicates that Steven Spielberg was invited to and visited the White House shortly after he directed and produced the 1977 sci-fi fantasy film, “Close Encounters of the Third World.” Gentle.”
But, like many other things with UFOs, the visit was highly classified, according to Cameron.
“A search was made, with the assistance of a Carter Library archivist, of White House photos taken during August 1978, and no record of the photo taken was found,” he wrote.
“More unusual was that, according to Carter Library records, Spielberg was never in the White House. Records further indicated that the two never met, corresponded or spoke on the phone.”
The Post reached out to a representative for Carter for comment.
Speculation is that Carter covertly invited Spielberg to screen the film completely off the record, Cameron said.
The only public evidence of their meeting is said photocopied photo on file, with an attached note that read: “The president thought you would like to receive the accompanying photo.”