June 18, 2025 • 24 mins
Jackie Gleason of The Honeymooners was obsessed with UFOs. Obsessed! Lucky for him, his golfing buddy just happened to be the leader of the free world — with access to a secret facility in Florida that Gleason said held all the answers he'd been seeking.
*
Hosted by Zaron Burnett, Dana Schwartz, and Jason English
Written by Zaron Burnett
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher
Mixing and Mastering by Josh Fisher
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Voice Actors are Elizabeth Dutton, Katie Mattie, Josh Fisher, and Jonathan Washington
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
Got a question or comment, or an even weirder Nixon legend we should chase down? You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
On November seventh, nineteen seventy two, America went to the polls,
and the nation nearly unanimously voted to re elect President
Richard Nixon. Of the five hundred and thirty eight electoral votes,
Nixon won five hundred and twenty that's ninety six point
five percent of the electoral college vote. The only two
(00:31):
electoral College votes he lost were Massachusetts and the District
of Columbia.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Nixon took the whole map.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It's one of the single greatest electoral victories in US history.
His reelection was more than a mandate. It was self
evident that Richard Nixon was the unchallenged leader of.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The free world. No one was more powerful than Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And then just a few months later, on February nineteenth,
nineteen seventy three, Nixon had the day off. It was
Washington's birthday, a federal holiday, so the president had some
time for himself. That Monday, he was in Florida, where
he spent the day playing eighteen holes at a celebrity
golf tournament. According to his official presidential calendar, Nixon hopped.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Into a chopper and flew to the exclusive.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Country club of Miamia there in the early afternoon, the
President enjoyed the links with David Eisenhower, the son of
former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also happened to be
Nixon's son in law married to his daughter Julie. The
other person golfing with Nixon that fateful day was his
good friend and financial donor of the famous funny man
(01:42):
Jackie Gleeson. Perhaps drunk on his new power, perhaps just
feeling himself because he'd ended the war in Vietnam, or
perhaps it was just that sort of day. Whatever it was,
something happened out there on the golf course because Nixon
decided he would show Jackie Gleeson what the comedian wanted
to see most of all in life. And later that
(02:04):
same day, President Nixon took Jackie Gleeson to a secret
base in Florida because the most powerful man on earth
had promised his friend he would show him the bodies
of dead aliens recovered from a crashed UFO. At least
that's how the story goes. This is very special episodes
(02:27):
and I'm your host, Zarn Burnett. This is the story
of when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson where the aliens are.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Kept Welcome back to very special episodes. My name is
Jason English. I'm solo this week for the banter portion
of our program, the full Team. We'll be back next week.
Dana and Zaren and I have a running joke about
how Richard Nixon seems to appear in every episode we
(02:55):
put out, just in the last couple months. He popped
up in our discussion of Big Bird's diplomatic mission to China.
Saren mentions him briefly in our episode with David Chase
talking about the Lost Wonder Years script. Nixon's name comes
up at the end of last week's episode when we
were talking about my daughter's appearance on The Rachel Ray Show.
(03:16):
We crunched the numbers. Nixon has appeared in forty percent
of our episodes this year, and none of these episodes
are about Richard Nixon. He's just in the background. So
Saren decided to set off and find the strangest story
that actually involves the former president. I will caveat from
the start this story may not be true, but the
(03:37):
people involved all believed that it was.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Did President Nixon show his buddy Jackie Gleeson the secret
facility in Florida, where we're hiding dead aliens, let's discuss.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
In twenty eighteen, a home that once belonged to Jackie
Gleeson came up for sale asking Chrisce twelve million dollars.
The custom built dwelling was situated in a leafy glen
in the Hudson Valley. The home was quite unique. In fact,
it was a complex of structures. Two of them were
built to look like UFOs. There's the main house aka
(04:15):
the Mothership, and there's the guesthouse aka the scout Ship.
The comic had the homes built to his exacting specifications.
The construction took five years. In nineteen fifty nine, when
the builders were done, Jackie Gleeson had a home that
looked like a UFO had landed in the New York Woods.
(04:35):
Inside the home you would find no right angles, no
indication it was shaped by human hands. Instead, all the
angles were rounded, curved, and organic by design. In the
listing from the real estate agents from Remax, they noted
that the concept of the home is a musical note,
hence the roundness of the design.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
As with a note, it never ends.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
If you look at the ceilings, the woodwork looks like rowboats.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
There are the trusses that hold the house up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There are no cross support beams because they would have
had right angles.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The home boasted a hell of a spread.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
There were five bedrooms, six baths, a library, a billiard's room,
a home office, and roughly seventy five hundred square feet
of living space. And Jackie Gleeson often played host at
the home, entertaining his famous friends and colleagues, including Richard Nixon,
which tells us that Richard Nixon was quite familiar with
(05:35):
the fact that his old friend Jackie Gleeson was a
nut for the flying saucermen from Mars. In his custom
spaceship home, Jackie Gleeson kept a library of seventeen hundred
books on the subject, as well as books on parapsychology
and the paranormal. But above it all, Jackie Gleeson was
all about them aliens, UFOs and flying saucers. To read
(06:00):
contemporary stories on the subject, such as the one about
a woman who claimed to be married to a man
from Saturn, he also examined the photographs of any and
all reported UFO sightings. Jackie Gleeson mostly came away unconvinced.
He was a skeptical believer. He wanted to know if
there were aliens out there. He believed there were, but
(06:22):
he really wanted to know for sure. There is a
small and subtle irony that the man who played Ralph
Cramden on the early TV show The Honeymooners, who first
became famous for comically threatening his wife home, was into UFOs.
But the man was a space case, and he also was.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Friends with the most powerful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The keeper of the secrets. Former President Lyndon Johnson, had
died in January, just days after Nixon's second inauguration.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The man who knew.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That Nixon cheated his way into power in the sixty
eight election, who could have revealed what he called Nixon's
quote treason, was gone. So was the once all powerful
head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. He died in
May of seventy two. Also, former President Truman died in
December of that same year, and so in nineteen seventy three,
(07:23):
at the start of his second term, the only one
left still standing is Richard Nixon. He was the only
living president. Nixon was the only keeper of the secrets left,
and there were definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Secrets to keep.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Paul blake Smith wrote the book President Eisenhower's Close Encounters
when Nixon was the vice president.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
To Dwight D.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Eisenhower, he'd learned about the aliens who'd come to Earth.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
According to Paul Blacksmith, the story goes quote, Eisenhower stepped
away from his golf vacation in Palm Springs, California, on
the night of February nineteenth, nineteen fifty four, and went
to Edward's Air Force Base in a pre arranged meeting
to meet some landed friendly extraterrestrials. They were human like,
according to a US test pilot who was there. The
(08:11):
aliens were reportedly fluent English speakers, and they chatted with
President Eisenhower in a relaxed and conversational manner. It seems
that the aliens also liked Ike, but they did ask
Eisenhower to do them one favor, hook him up do
a solid for the et. As Paul Blake Smith tells it,
the aliens told Ike, quote, stop.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Your atomic boom testing program.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So basically it was like a riff on the plot
of the classic sci fi flick The Day of the
Earth Stood Still. But you may be thinking, what about Nixon,
was he also there, We don't know. It's doubtful. When
LBJ was president, exactly ten years later, he took a
trip out to that same top secret base in Palm Springs.
(08:58):
Back to Paul Blake Smith, he claims that he found
evidence that President Johnson also had a secret rendezvous with
the same aliens that Ike spoke to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Apparently on the tenth.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Anniversary of Eisenhower's initial contact with the Flying Saucer Men,
which would make it February nineteenth, nineteen sixty four, then
President Johnson called former President Eisenhower from the White House
and asked him about the aliens, what to do, what
to say, how to chitchat with them? Then he flew
to Pop Springs, where he met with Ike in person
(09:31):
multiple times. Then he went back again four years later
in nineteen sixty eight, and again on the same date,
February nineteenth. As Paul Blake Smith reasons quote, something was up.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Now does that date sound familiar.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's the same day that Nixon went golfing with Jackie Gleeson,
and it's the same day that he took Jackie Gleeson
to see the preserved bodies from a wrecked alien spaceship.
Only now it's five years later. February nineteenth, nineteen seventy three.
That day, Nixon was in Miami to attend Jackie Gleeson's
(10:10):
celebrity golf tournament, which was televised on CBS. At the
golf course, the President's helicopter touchdown, Nixon hopped out a
Marine one. He chatted with the press before the news cameras.
He bantered a bit with Jackie Gleeson. Then he and
his pal hopped in a golf cart and toured the
manicured greens. Their golf outing that day is well documented,
(10:33):
but what's not as well documented is what happened later
that same day when Nixon showed up at Jackie Gleeson's
house alone. I gene with my own jew I In
(10:59):
nineteen fifty, Jackie Gleason was on the radio talking about
his love of all things alien. But he was no
gape mouthed, goable guy. Gleason wasn't there to speculate. He
wasn't there to dream aloud about one day seeing a
flying saucer and those little green men from Mars. No,
he wanted evidence, incontrovertible evidence, and he wanted others in
(11:22):
the community to also demand provable evidence for what he called,
quote the most important story in the world. The radio
show he was on was called The Long John Neville Show.
Jackie Gleason was a guest along with fellow paranormal researcher.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Gray Barker, and Whoo. Jackie went hard after his fellow believer.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
At one point, the two men get into this heated
exchange about a woman named Marla Baxter who claimed to
be married to a man from Saturn.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Jackie found it laughable.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
He felt this kind of talk was exactly the problem
that was why aliens in flying saucers were considered such
a kooky subject and never taken seriously by serious people.
That night, in nineteen fifty eight, Gleason wondered aloud on
the radio show why aliens always picked such dubious people
(12:17):
to abduct or to give their messages to humanity?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
As Jackie Gleeson put.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
It, why what a space person contact anyone? Well, let's
not say how it's that's dla. Why what a space
person con got any woman being on it? That's what
you think would be, at least according to the people
who claim to be contacted the space people have a.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Message for us.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
At this point, Jackie Gleason asks what that message is,
and more importantly, he asks, if the aliens really want
us to believe their message, and if they do want
us to believe it, then why don't.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
They everdence along with this so that we were believe them.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
This is what drives the funny man crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
If the aliens want to make contact, why do they
always pick the most suspect citizens to convey the information
to Why trust them with their message and then obscure
any evidence that they've been on earth?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
In that same radio show, Jackie Gleeson tells a story
of how two years earlier, back in nineteen fifty six,
he tried to make a documentary about aliens. His partner
in the project was the legendary mid century journalist Edward R.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Murraw.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
As Gleeson tells the story as.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Morrow and I I want to and I sauld I
think the biggest story of the world is flying them.
If they I let you and I do a documentary
fhing what don't If they're off wearing sauce or who telling,
But it's just the full goal, then we should forget
(14:08):
about it. And he says, I got the guy in
general so and so up, and we called the guy
up that the guy said to don't get paying this thing.
I don't want to get pare it. It's too hot
down here. I don't want to handle it. And you
might as well to get about the project. You'll get
no co operation. And I all hung up the phone
(14:30):
and he left that may and he repeated what the
guy said to him on the phone, if I could
pare up the Henry, and he left that they're off wine.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It didn't matter which avenue he attempted. If he partnered
with a respected journalist and tried to ask the important questions,
or if he did late night radio shows the paranormal investigators,
Jackie Gleeson could never get the answers he most desperately desired,
as he mused to Great Darker, the paranormal author and investigator.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
With a client off, a little guy hopping out and say.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
Perios probably wanted to go. And I want to have
that ran down a faceball field in Central Park and
there'll be plenty of people in who were three years
and five minutes, everybody alone, whatever its.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Is, well, Jackie Gleeson didn't know then, But what he
was about to discover was that his friend, the most
powerful man in the world, wanted to share a secret
with him, one that would forever change his life. Jackie
Gleeson met Beverly McKittrick, his second wife, at a country club.
(15:45):
Looking back, much of his life was shaped by country clubs.
The pair married in nineteen seventy. Their marriage didn't last long.
They divorced in nineteen seventy five, but it was an
amicable split. Eight years later, in nineteen eighty three, Beverly
McKittrick shared a very unexpected story from her time being
married to Jackie Gleeson. It was about the time his friend,
(16:08):
the President showed her husband the Flying Saucerman.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
I'll never forget the night in nineteen seventy three my
famous husband came home, slumped white faced in an armchair
and spilled out the incredible story to me. He was late.
It was around eleven thirty pm, and I'd been worried.
As soon as I heard his key turn and the
lock of our golf course home in Invery, Florida, I
jumped to my feet and asked, where have you been.
(16:32):
His reply stunned me.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
I've been at Homestead Air Force Base, and I've seen
the bodies some aliens from out of space. It's top secret.
Only a few people know, but the President arranged for
me to be escorted in there and see them.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
According to mckitchenen, that night, Nixon showed up at their
home alone, driving himself. Now this may sound fetched, but Nixon,
like John F. Kennedy, was known to sneak out of
the White House, and Nixon was even known to give
his Secret service men the slip from time to time.
(17:09):
Guess Old Tricky Dick was also Slippery Dick. So there's
Nixon saigns his secret service guys. When he shows up
at Jackie Gleeson's home and the President tells Jackie he's
got a surprise for him.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Nixon is like, come on, good up, Jackie, put on
your pants, let's go. There's something I want to show you.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Nixon drives them thirty five miles over to Homestead Air
Force Base. Of course, the President's recognized and saluted by
the soldier at the gate, and they're waved onto the base.
Nixon leads Jackie Gleeson to a top secret facility. It
was heavily guarded yet it was a nondescript building. There,
(17:53):
Nixon is waved into the top secret facility because he's
the president, and I guess that includes plus one privileges,
because he was able to get Jackie Gleeson into the
top secret facility with him. Jackie Gleeson's wife McKittrick very
memorably recalls what he told her when he returned home.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
There were a number of labs we passed through first
before we entered a section where Nixon pointed out what
he said was the wreckage from a flying saucer and
closed in several large cases. Next, we went into an
inner chamber, and there were six or eight of what
looked like glass topped coke freezers. Inside them were the
mangled remains of what I took to be children.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's finally happening. The aliens are so close Jackie Gleeson
can almost touch them. One might imagine Gleeson is looking
to Nixon, the President nodding in response, and then Gleeson
looks once again at the fantastically terrific sight before him.
It's easy to imagine Nixon standing there in the top
(18:55):
secret base wearing some awkward, uneasy Nixon smile. As he
tells his good friend Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
Ugh, as you can see they're real.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
There's just a thick piece of glass separating the former
TV star from what he's most always wanted to see,
a real alien from outer space.
Speaker 7 (19:17):
And there were the aliens, lying on four separate tables.
They were tiny, only about two feet tall, with small,
bald heads and disproportionately large eyes. They must have been
dead for some time because they'd been embalmed.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
According to Nixon, the alien's bodies had been pulled from
the wreckage of a spaceship.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No word on if it was the famous crash at Roswell.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
After all those years of searching, after reading all those
thousands of books, attending all the conferences, and listening to
all those late night call in shows, finally Jackie Gleeson
had his evidence of flying saucers and the little Green
men from Mars, and just as Nixon had hoped, it
indeed blew his friend's mind. His wife remembers how after
(20:05):
he returned home, Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Couldn't sleep for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He wanted to know so badly and for so long,
But then when he finally did see an alien in
a spaceship with his own two eyes. It nearly wrecked him.
He didn't know how to process it. However, he did
know he needed to swear his wife to secrecy, so
he did that, and she didn't tell anyone right up
(20:30):
until they got divorced, and then she wrote her tell
All memoir.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Then she told the story to the.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
National Inquirer because Homegirl needed to sell some books, which
immediately undercut her credibility. So what did Jackie Gleason say
about his encounter after his wife spilled the beans and
told his secret to the world.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
He didn't deny it, he didn't dispute it. He also
didn't corroborate it. He didn't say anything. One year before
he passed away, Jackie Gleeson gave an interview to a
fellow ufologist named Larry Warren, and that guy claims that
Jackie Gleeson repeated the same story to him seated there
(21:15):
in his UFO shaped home in the Hudson Valley. Also,
there are some who have claimed to see those very
same aliens in the top secret base in Homestead, Florida,
and one man, a former CIA operative named Chauncey Holt,
claims he was there that very day, February nineteenth, nineteen
(21:36):
seventy three, when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson the small, mangled
bodies of shipwrecked aliens. Yet the question remains, did Richard
Nixon really reveal the greatest secret ever kept? Did the
President take his golf buddy Jackie Gleeson to a top
secret facility and show him the proof he so clearly craved.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Ironically, we have no proof. We just have the stories.
But I like to believe it happened. But I like
to believe aliens are real. I also like to believe
that Jackie Gleeson got what he wanted most out of
this life, that he finally saw a real alien, and
seeing it wiped out everything he'd ever known or believed
to be true, which wrecked him too, the great cost
(22:25):
of innocence lost. I also like to believe that the
most powerful man in the world, Richard Nixon, the master
of secrets, wanted to give his friend the greatest gift
he could think of, but he forgot to tell him
how to live with that truth. There's an irony there too.
The most famous liar in American political history gives his
(22:45):
friend a great hidden truth as a gift, and that
truth damn near kills his friend Nixon.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
But at least Jackie Gleeson got to see the aliens.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That is, if you believe it happened. We just don't know.
But sometimes not knowing is better. We can believe whatever
we want.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode is written by Zaren Burnett. Our show is
hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Schwartz, and Jason English. Our
producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sam designed by Jonathan
Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by Mary Doo. Original music by Alice McCoy.
(23:37):
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English.
Our next episode comes out next Friday, June twenty seventh.
We are a Wednesday show, but we need to shift
a couple of days next week because we have a
very exciting interview that will be incorporated in that episode.
So give us a couple of days. It'll be worth it.
(23:59):
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
On November seventh, nineteen seventy two, America went to the polls,
and the nation nearly unanimously voted to re elect President
Richard Nixon. Of the five hundred and thirty eight electoral votes,
Nixon won five hundred and twenty that's ninety six point
five percent of the electoral college vote. The only two
(00:31):
electoral College votes he lost were Massachusetts and the District
of Columbia.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Nixon took the whole map.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It's one of the single greatest electoral victories in US history.
His reelection was more than a mandate. It was self
evident that Richard Nixon was the unchallenged leader of.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The free world. No one was more powerful than Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And then just a few months later, on February nineteenth,
nineteen seventy three, Nixon had the day off. It was
Washington's birthday, a federal holiday, so the president had some
time for himself. That Monday, he was in Florida, where
he spent the day playing eighteen holes at a celebrity
golf tournament. According to his official presidential calendar, Nixon hopped.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Into a chopper and flew to the exclusive.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Country club of Miamia there in the early afternoon, the
President enjoyed the links with David Eisenhower, the son of
former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also happened to be
Nixon's son in law married to his daughter Julie. The
other person golfing with Nixon that fateful day was his
good friend and financial donor of the famous funny man
(01:42):
Jackie Gleeson. Perhaps drunk on his new power, perhaps just
feeling himself because he'd ended the war in Vietnam, or
perhaps it was just that sort of day. Whatever it was,
something happened out there on the golf course because Nixon
decided he would show Jackie Gleeson what the comedian wanted
to see most of all in life. And later that
(02:04):
same day, President Nixon took Jackie Gleeson to a secret
base in Florida because the most powerful man on earth
had promised his friend he would show him the bodies
of dead aliens recovered from a crashed UFO. At least
that's how the story goes. This is very special episodes
(02:27):
and I'm your host, Zarn Burnett. This is the story
of when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson where the aliens are.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Kept Welcome back to very special episodes. My name is
Jason English. I'm solo this week for the banter portion
of our program, the full Team. We'll be back next week.
Dana and Zaren and I have a running joke about
how Richard Nixon seems to appear in every episode we
(02:55):
put out, just in the last couple months. He popped
up in our discussion of Big Bird's diplomatic mission to China.
Saren mentions him briefly in our episode with David Chase
talking about the Lost Wonder Years script. Nixon's name comes
up at the end of last week's episode when we
were talking about my daughter's appearance on The Rachel Ray Show.
(03:16):
We crunched the numbers. Nixon has appeared in forty percent
of our episodes this year, and none of these episodes
are about Richard Nixon. He's just in the background. So
Saren decided to set off and find the strangest story
that actually involves the former president. I will caveat from
the start this story may not be true, but the
(03:37):
people involved all believed that it was.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Did President Nixon show his buddy Jackie Gleeson the secret
facility in Florida, where we're hiding dead aliens, let's discuss.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
In twenty eighteen, a home that once belonged to Jackie
Gleeson came up for sale asking Chrisce twelve million dollars.
The custom built dwelling was situated in a leafy glen
in the Hudson Valley. The home was quite unique. In fact,
it was a complex of structures. Two of them were
built to look like UFOs. There's the main house aka
(04:15):
the Mothership, and there's the guesthouse aka the scout Ship.
The comic had the homes built to his exacting specifications.
The construction took five years. In nineteen fifty nine, when
the builders were done, Jackie Gleeson had a home that
looked like a UFO had landed in the New York Woods.
(04:35):
Inside the home you would find no right angles, no
indication it was shaped by human hands. Instead, all the
angles were rounded, curved, and organic by design. In the
listing from the real estate agents from Remax, they noted
that the concept of the home is a musical note,
hence the roundness of the design.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
As with a note, it never ends.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
If you look at the ceilings, the woodwork looks like rowboats.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
There are the trusses that hold the house up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There are no cross support beams because they would have
had right angles.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The home boasted a hell of a spread.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
There were five bedrooms, six baths, a library, a billiard's room,
a home office, and roughly seventy five hundred square feet
of living space. And Jackie Gleeson often played host at
the home, entertaining his famous friends and colleagues, including Richard Nixon,
which tells us that Richard Nixon was quite familiar with
(05:35):
the fact that his old friend Jackie Gleeson was a
nut for the flying saucermen from Mars. In his custom
spaceship home, Jackie Gleeson kept a library of seventeen hundred
books on the subject, as well as books on parapsychology
and the paranormal. But above it all, Jackie Gleeson was
all about them aliens, UFOs and flying saucers. To read
(06:00):
contemporary stories on the subject, such as the one about
a woman who claimed to be married to a man
from Saturn, he also examined the photographs of any and
all reported UFO sightings. Jackie Gleeson mostly came away unconvinced.
He was a skeptical believer. He wanted to know if
there were aliens out there. He believed there were, but
(06:22):
he really wanted to know for sure. There is a
small and subtle irony that the man who played Ralph
Cramden on the early TV show The Honeymooners, who first
became famous for comically threatening his wife home, was into UFOs.
But the man was a space case, and he also was.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Friends with the most powerful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The keeper of the secrets. Former President Lyndon Johnson, had
died in January, just days after Nixon's second inauguration.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The man who knew.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That Nixon cheated his way into power in the sixty
eight election, who could have revealed what he called Nixon's
quote treason, was gone. So was the once all powerful
head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. He died in
May of seventy two. Also, former President Truman died in
December of that same year, and so in nineteen seventy three,
(07:23):
at the start of his second term, the only one
left still standing is Richard Nixon. He was the only
living president. Nixon was the only keeper of the secrets left,
and there were definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Secrets to keep.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Paul blake Smith wrote the book President Eisenhower's Close Encounters
when Nixon was the vice president.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
To Dwight D.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Eisenhower, he'd learned about the aliens who'd come to Earth.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
According to Paul Blacksmith, the story goes quote, Eisenhower stepped
away from his golf vacation in Palm Springs, California, on
the night of February nineteenth, nineteen fifty four, and went
to Edward's Air Force Base in a pre arranged meeting
to meet some landed friendly extraterrestrials. They were human like,
according to a US test pilot who was there. The
(08:11):
aliens were reportedly fluent English speakers, and they chatted with
President Eisenhower in a relaxed and conversational manner. It seems
that the aliens also liked Ike, but they did ask
Eisenhower to do them one favor, hook him up do
a solid for the et. As Paul Blake Smith tells it,
the aliens told Ike, quote, stop.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Your atomic boom testing program.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So basically it was like a riff on the plot
of the classic sci fi flick The Day of the
Earth Stood Still. But you may be thinking, what about Nixon,
was he also there, We don't know. It's doubtful. When
LBJ was president, exactly ten years later, he took a
trip out to that same top secret base in Palm Springs.
(08:58):
Back to Paul Blake Smith, he claims that he found
evidence that President Johnson also had a secret rendezvous with
the same aliens that Ike spoke to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Apparently on the tenth.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Anniversary of Eisenhower's initial contact with the Flying Saucer Men,
which would make it February nineteenth, nineteen sixty four, then
President Johnson called former President Eisenhower from the White House
and asked him about the aliens, what to do, what
to say, how to chitchat with them? Then he flew
to Pop Springs, where he met with Ike in person
(09:31):
multiple times. Then he went back again four years later
in nineteen sixty eight, and again on the same date,
February nineteenth. As Paul Blake Smith reasons quote, something was up.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Now does that date sound familiar.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's the same day that Nixon went golfing with Jackie Gleeson,
and it's the same day that he took Jackie Gleeson
to see the preserved bodies from a wrecked alien spaceship.
Only now it's five years later. February nineteenth, nineteen seventy three.
That day, Nixon was in Miami to attend Jackie Gleeson's
(10:10):
celebrity golf tournament, which was televised on CBS. At the
golf course, the President's helicopter touchdown, Nixon hopped out a
Marine one. He chatted with the press before the news cameras.
He bantered a bit with Jackie Gleeson. Then he and
his pal hopped in a golf cart and toured the
manicured greens. Their golf outing that day is well documented,
(10:33):
but what's not as well documented is what happened later
that same day when Nixon showed up at Jackie Gleeson's
house alone. I gene with my own jew I In
(10:59):
nineteen fifty, Jackie Gleason was on the radio talking about
his love of all things alien. But he was no
gape mouthed, goable guy. Gleason wasn't there to speculate. He
wasn't there to dream aloud about one day seeing a
flying saucer and those little green men from Mars. No,
he wanted evidence, incontrovertible evidence, and he wanted others in
(11:22):
the community to also demand provable evidence for what he called,
quote the most important story in the world. The radio
show he was on was called The Long John Neville Show.
Jackie Gleason was a guest along with fellow paranormal researcher.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Gray Barker, and Whoo. Jackie went hard after his fellow believer.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
At one point, the two men get into this heated
exchange about a woman named Marla Baxter who claimed to
be married to a man from Saturn.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Jackie found it laughable.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
He felt this kind of talk was exactly the problem
that was why aliens in flying saucers were considered such
a kooky subject and never taken seriously by serious people.
That night, in nineteen fifty eight, Gleason wondered aloud on
the radio show why aliens always picked such dubious people
(12:17):
to abduct or to give their messages to humanity?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
As Jackie Gleeson put.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
It, why what a space person contact anyone? Well, let's
not say how it's that's dla. Why what a space
person con got any woman being on it? That's what
you think would be, at least according to the people
who claim to be contacted the space people have a.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Message for us.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
At this point, Jackie Gleason asks what that message is,
and more importantly, he asks, if the aliens really want
us to believe their message, and if they do want
us to believe it, then why don't.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
They everdence along with this so that we were believe them.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
This is what drives the funny man crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
If the aliens want to make contact, why do they
always pick the most suspect citizens to convey the information
to Why trust them with their message and then obscure
any evidence that they've been on earth?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
In that same radio show, Jackie Gleeson tells a story
of how two years earlier, back in nineteen fifty six,
he tried to make a documentary about aliens. His partner
in the project was the legendary mid century journalist Edward R.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Murraw.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
As Gleeson tells the story as.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Morrow and I I want to and I sauld I
think the biggest story of the world is flying them.
If they I let you and I do a documentary
fhing what don't If they're off wearing sauce or who telling,
But it's just the full goal, then we should forget
(14:08):
about it. And he says, I got the guy in
general so and so up, and we called the guy
up that the guy said to don't get paying this thing.
I don't want to get pare it. It's too hot
down here. I don't want to handle it. And you
might as well to get about the project. You'll get
no co operation. And I all hung up the phone
(14:30):
and he left that may and he repeated what the
guy said to him on the phone, if I could
pare up the Henry, and he left that they're off wine.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It didn't matter which avenue he attempted. If he partnered
with a respected journalist and tried to ask the important questions,
or if he did late night radio shows the paranormal investigators,
Jackie Gleeson could never get the answers he most desperately desired,
as he mused to Great Darker, the paranormal author and investigator.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
With a client off, a little guy hopping out and say.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
Perios probably wanted to go. And I want to have
that ran down a faceball field in Central Park and
there'll be plenty of people in who were three years
and five minutes, everybody alone, whatever its.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Is, well, Jackie Gleeson didn't know then, But what he
was about to discover was that his friend, the most
powerful man in the world, wanted to share a secret
with him, one that would forever change his life. Jackie
Gleeson met Beverly McKittrick, his second wife, at a country club.
(15:45):
Looking back, much of his life was shaped by country clubs.
The pair married in nineteen seventy. Their marriage didn't last long.
They divorced in nineteen seventy five, but it was an
amicable split. Eight years later, in nineteen eighty three, Beverly
McKittrick shared a very unexpected story from her time being
married to Jackie Gleeson. It was about the time his friend,
(16:08):
the President showed her husband the Flying Saucerman.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
I'll never forget the night in nineteen seventy three my
famous husband came home, slumped white faced in an armchair
and spilled out the incredible story to me. He was late.
It was around eleven thirty pm, and I'd been worried.
As soon as I heard his key turn and the
lock of our golf course home in Invery, Florida, I
jumped to my feet and asked, where have you been.
(16:32):
His reply stunned me.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
I've been at Homestead Air Force Base, and I've seen
the bodies some aliens from out of space. It's top secret.
Only a few people know, but the President arranged for
me to be escorted in there and see them.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
According to mckitchenen, that night, Nixon showed up at their
home alone, driving himself. Now this may sound fetched, but Nixon,
like John F. Kennedy, was known to sneak out of
the White House, and Nixon was even known to give
his Secret service men the slip from time to time.
(17:09):
Guess Old Tricky Dick was also Slippery Dick. So there's
Nixon saigns his secret service guys. When he shows up
at Jackie Gleeson's home and the President tells Jackie he's
got a surprise for him.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Nixon is like, come on, good up, Jackie, put on
your pants, let's go. There's something I want to show you.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Nixon drives them thirty five miles over to Homestead Air
Force Base. Of course, the President's recognized and saluted by
the soldier at the gate, and they're waved onto the base.
Nixon leads Jackie Gleeson to a top secret facility. It
was heavily guarded yet it was a nondescript building. There,
(17:53):
Nixon is waved into the top secret facility because he's
the president, and I guess that includes plus one privileges,
because he was able to get Jackie Gleeson into the
top secret facility with him. Jackie Gleeson's wife McKittrick very
memorably recalls what he told her when he returned home.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
There were a number of labs we passed through first
before we entered a section where Nixon pointed out what
he said was the wreckage from a flying saucer and
closed in several large cases. Next, we went into an
inner chamber, and there were six or eight of what
looked like glass topped coke freezers. Inside them were the
mangled remains of what I took to be children.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's finally happening. The aliens are so close Jackie Gleeson
can almost touch them. One might imagine Gleeson is looking
to Nixon, the President nodding in response, and then Gleeson
looks once again at the fantastically terrific sight before him.
It's easy to imagine Nixon standing there in the top
(18:55):
secret base wearing some awkward, uneasy Nixon smile. As he
tells his good friend Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
Ugh, as you can see they're real.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
There's just a thick piece of glass separating the former
TV star from what he's most always wanted to see,
a real alien from outer space.
Speaker 7 (19:17):
And there were the aliens, lying on four separate tables.
They were tiny, only about two feet tall, with small,
bald heads and disproportionately large eyes. They must have been
dead for some time because they'd been embalmed.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
According to Nixon, the alien's bodies had been pulled from
the wreckage of a spaceship.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No word on if it was the famous crash at Roswell.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
After all those years of searching, after reading all those
thousands of books, attending all the conferences, and listening to
all those late night call in shows, finally Jackie Gleeson
had his evidence of flying saucers and the little Green
men from Mars, and just as Nixon had hoped, it
indeed blew his friend's mind. His wife remembers how after
(20:05):
he returned home, Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Couldn't sleep for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He wanted to know so badly and for so long,
But then when he finally did see an alien in
a spaceship with his own two eyes. It nearly wrecked him.
He didn't know how to process it. However, he did
know he needed to swear his wife to secrecy, so
he did that, and she didn't tell anyone right up
(20:30):
until they got divorced, and then she wrote her tell
All memoir.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Then she told the story to the.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
National Inquirer because Homegirl needed to sell some books, which
immediately undercut her credibility. So what did Jackie Gleason say
about his encounter after his wife spilled the beans and
told his secret to the world.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
He didn't deny it, he didn't dispute it. He also
didn't corroborate it. He didn't say anything. One year before
he passed away, Jackie Gleeson gave an interview to a
fellow ufologist named Larry Warren, and that guy claims that
Jackie Gleeson repeated the same story to him seated there
(21:15):
in his UFO shaped home in the Hudson Valley. Also,
there are some who have claimed to see those very
same aliens in the top secret base in Homestead, Florida,
and one man, a former CIA operative named Chauncey Holt,
claims he was there that very day, February nineteenth, nineteen
(21:36):
seventy three, when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson the small, mangled
bodies of shipwrecked aliens. Yet the question remains, did Richard
Nixon really reveal the greatest secret ever kept? Did the
President take his golf buddy Jackie Gleeson to a top
secret facility and show him the proof he so clearly craved.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Ironically, we have no proof. We just have the stories.
But I like to believe it happened. But I like
to believe aliens are real. I also like to believe
that Jackie Gleeson got what he wanted most out of
this life, that he finally saw a real alien, and
seeing it wiped out everything he'd ever known or believed
to be true, which wrecked him too, the great cost
(22:25):
of innocence lost. I also like to believe that the
most powerful man in the world, Richard Nixon, the master
of secrets, wanted to give his friend the greatest gift
he could think of, but he forgot to tell him
how to live with that truth. There's an irony there too.
The most famous liar in American political history gives his
(22:45):
friend a great hidden truth as a gift, and that
truth damn near kills his friend Nixon.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
But at least Jackie Gleeson got to see the aliens.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That is, if you believe it happened. We just don't know.
But sometimes not knowing is better. We can believe whatever
we want.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode is written by Zaren Burnett. Our show is
hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Schwartz, and Jason English. Our
producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sam designed by Jonathan
Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by Mary Doo. Original music by Alice McCoy.
(23:37):
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English.
Our next episode comes out next Friday, June twenty seventh.
We are a Wednesday show, but we need to shift
a couple of days next week because we have a
very exciting interview that will be incorporated in that episode.
So give us a couple of days. It'll be worth it.
(23:59):
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Dana Schwartz
Jason English
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