Happy Presidents’ Day Weekend, Everyone! To celebrate, Kelly’s Cryptids & Conspiracies wanted to give you all a little background on the historical relationship between a number of our country’s Commanders in Chief and the fascinating world of Roswell and Skinny Bob. So, while the lucky ones among you are enjoying a day off, and the rest of you are trying to avoid work like me, learn a bit about one of the most interesting responsibilities of our great country’s highest elected office – diplomatic extraterrestrial relations.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
As a five-star general, President Eisenhower likely had more familiarity with top-secret information than any president prior or since his two terms in office. Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that there are more alien and UFO stories surrounding Eisenhower than any other United States President. One story about his encounter with a UFO was published in the New York Post in 1997. According to crew member who was also a witness, President Eisenhower was aboard the USS FDR in 1952 during a training exercise when he, along with a dozen other men, watched as a ufo dropped down within 100 feet of the water and hovered for about 10 minutes. After the object shot up into the sky, Ike told the men to ‘forget about it for now’ and left them to investigate. Adding even more intrigue to the tale, the USS FDR was equipped with nuclear weapons only two years prior to this incident, and this story is merely one of dozens that involve ufos interacting with the ship during the 1950s. This video from 2010 shows former New Hampshire State Representative Henry W. McElroy Jr. discussing a document he saw while serving on the Veteran’s Affairs committee of his state legislature. McElroy claims that this document – an official brief to President Eisenhower – discussed, “…the continued presence of extraterrestrial beings here in the United States of America,” and the possibility of arranging a meeting between the President and these beings. Whether McElroy’s story is seen as fact or fiction, it is only one of many accounts of direct interactions between Eisenhower and ETs.
John F. Kennedy
In recent years, one of the most interesting Kennedy Assassination theories has emerged. Thanks to wikileaks, a memo written by JFK mere days before his death has surfaced; this memo lead some to believe that the president was actually killed because of his interest in – and intent to share information about – UFOs. An image of this memo can be seen here. As part of his efforts to establish peaceful relations with Russia through joint space exploration, Kennedy made it clear that he would be sharing the CIAs information about UFOs with our Cold War nemeses. Was this enough to bring about his assassination? Read more in this UFO Blogger article.
Ronald Reagan
Like other presidents, there are multiple stories regarding Reagan and UFOs. While he was still Governor of California, he was aboard a small plane with a number of security people and a pilot, and saw a strange object flying behind them. Very shortly after the incident, Reagan told the story to Norman C. Millar, who was Washington Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal at the time, and eventually became editor of the Los Angeles Times. Reagan supposedly said, “I was in a plane last week when I looked out the window and saw this white light. It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, ‘Have you seen anything like that before?’ He was shocked and said, ‘Nope.’ And I said to him: ‘Let’s follow it!’ We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When we got off the plane, I told Nancy all about it.” One of my personal favorite stories about presidents and UFOs involves a conversation between Stephen Spielberg and Ronald Reagan during a screening of ET: The Extraterrestrial at the White House. According to an 2011 interview with Spielberg in Ain’t It Cool News, Reagan had some interesting comments after the movie. “He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,’ and then he looked around the room and said, ‘And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.’ And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it.” To make the story even better, first thing the next morning Reagan met with his Chief of Staff, Counselor, and Deputy Chief of Staff briefly in the oval office. Immediately following this meeting, they went to the White House Situation Room for a briefing of the U.S. Space Program – with the NSC, NSA, but NOT NASA. Very interesting…