Future U.S. President Jimmy Carter reports a UFO sighting- September 18th, 1973

On this day in 1973, Jimmy Carter filed a report claiming he had seen an unidentified flying object four years earlier.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that believes there's no time like the present to
learn about the past. I'm Gabeluesier, and today we're talking
about the time when a future US president saw something
he couldn't explain and actually dared to talk about it.

(00:33):
The day was September eighteenth, nineteen seventy three. Jimmy Carter
filed a report claiming he had seen an unidentified flying
object four years earlier. He submitted the report at the
behest of the International UFO Bureau, a non government agency
based in Oklahoma City. He also sent a copy to

(00:55):
the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a nonprofit research
group with ties to the FBI. Carter was serving as
the governor of Georgia at the time he reported his
sighting and went on to become the thirty ninth President
of the United States in nineteen seventy seven. He never
recanted his claim to have seen a UFO in Georgia,

(01:17):
though he did make it clear in later years that
he never believed it to be an alien spaceship. According
to Carter's report, the sighting took place in October of
nineteen sixty nine, though most records indicate it actually occurred
nine months earlier, on January sixth. In either case, the
young politician was waiting for the start of an evening

(01:39):
fundraising event at the Lions Club in Leary, Georgia, when
he spotted a large glowing object.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
In the sky. He said it was witnessed by between
ten to twenty other people and that it had remained
visible for about ten minutes. As Carter put it, quote,
we were standing outside of a little restaurant, I believe
a high school lunch room, and a kind of green
light appeared in the western sky. This was right after sundown.

(02:05):
It got brighter and brighter, and then it eventually disappeared.
It didn't have any solid substance to it. It was
just a very peculiar looking light. None of us could
understand what it was. Carter went on to say that
this massless, self luminous object appeared to be about the
same size and brightness as the full moon, and that

(02:27):
it cycled through a series of colors. The object hovered
about thirty degrees above the horizon, he wrote, and moved
in toward the Earth and away before disappearing into the distance.
Carter didn't submit a formal report of the sighting until
nineteen seventy three, but he was able to recount the
event in vivid detail because he had brought a tape

(02:48):
recorder with him that night and had asked some of
the witnesses to describe what they'd seen. He didn't give
much thought to the incident during his time as Georgia's governor,
but as you might expect, he was asked about it
during his nineteen seventy six presidential campaign. It was the
darnedest thing I've ever seen, he told reporters. One thing's

(03:08):
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. Of course,
Jimmy Carter did go on to win the presidency, but
he never followed through on that pledge. Although he assured

(03:31):
the public there was no government cover up of UFOs
or extraterrestrial visits, he stopped short of releasing official documents
on the subject, claiming that they had defense implications, which
could pose a threat to national security. Carter remained resolute
throughout his presidency and beyond that whatever he saw in
nineteen sixty nine, it was not an alien spacecraft. When

(03:55):
asked about the sighting in two thousand and seven, Carter said, quote,
it was unidentified as far as we were concerned, But
I think it's impossible. In my opinion, some people disagree
to have space people from other planets or other stars
come to us. I don't think that's possible. Nonetheless, speculation

(04:15):
still abounds as to what the President really saw that
night in Georgia. Some investigators thought he may have seen
the planet Venus, which would have been highly visible in
that part of the sky on that night. However, Carter
shot down the notion, saying that as an amateur astronomer,
he would have been able to identify Venus if that's
what he had seen. A more recent and much more

(04:38):
likely explanation was put forward by physics professor Carl Jeer Justice.
According to him, what Carter actually witnessed was a barium
tracer cloud. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, Justice worked
on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper
atmosphere by releasing glowing chemical clouds into the sky. Those

(05:00):
chemical clouds, typically composed of sodium and barium, were produced
by rockets launched from a range in Florida, and on
a dark, clear night, they would have been visible from
ground level even in Leary, Georgia. In twenty twenty, doctor
Justice submitted a report on high altitude barium release clouds
to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and at the time

(05:23):
of recording, his account is considered the most plausible explanation
for what Carter saw. A presidential sighting of a glowing
chemical cloud isn't quite as gripping as Little Green Men
from Mars, but as far as political footnotes go, it's
still a pretty good one. I'm Gabe Bluesyay, and hopefully

(05:44):
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. If you enjoyed today's episode, consider keeping
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HC Show. You can also rate and review the show
on Apple Podcasts, or you can get in touch directly
by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks

(06:07):
to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow
for another day

Speaker 2 (06:15):
In history class.