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May 29, 2023 12 mins

Guest host George Knapp and UFO researcher Grant Cameron discuss the complicated relationship between America's 39th president and UFO's.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
What do presidents know about UFOs? What are they told?
If anything? Do the Intel agencies and Pentagon hold back
the truth even from their boss? Grant Cameron has probably
dug into presidents and UFOs more than anyone on the planet.
He became involved in ufology back in nineteen seventy five
with a personal sighting of an object which became known
as Charlie Redstar. Those sightings occurred in Manitoba. In the

(00:29):
past few years, he's turned his research interest to the
involvement and actions of the president on the UFO problem.
He's made twenty plus trips to the National Archives to
dig up information and documents. His latest book, or should
I say books plural, Jimmy Carter Paranormal and UFO Tales,
just out now. Grant, so glad to have you back
on the program. It's been a while, George, thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
No joke.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
You've done more research into presidents and UFOs than I
think anyone in the world. And it's a central question,
what did they know? When did they learn it? Do
presidents get a UFO briefing? You know, we've heard more
in the last few years from presidents and ex presidents
than I remember ever hearing. I mean Obama, Bush, Trump, Clinton,
Missus Clinton who ran for president. They're all interested in
the subject. All of them asked questions, I guess when

(01:17):
they could. So we'll dive into the question of briefings
in a bit, but let's start with you when you
started to focus on presidents and why.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, it goes back to my sightings in nineteen seventy five,
where the first one I saw, it was almost like
they wanted to make sure that there was no question
as to what I was looking at. So I never
really went down the path of sightings. I knew exactly
what I had seen. Second night, I think flew right
at me. But as it was flying away the second night,

(01:46):
it came at me and then it made sort of
turn and it sort of flew off, and there was
a bunch of people there and a guy with a
camera and people yelling and screaming. It was like a pandemonium.
And I remember this flying away. I thought, ah could
be extra trestraw. I thought like, wow, it's like being
in the Bible here, and it's like some miracle you
just saw. And then I'm thinking, like, what's it doing?
Like why is it in Carmen, Manitoba. There's nothing there?

(02:09):
And I'm thinking then, So for years it sort of
bothered me. And I got all the sightings together of
this town and half the people in town, over half
the people in town had seen this thing. Nobody wanted
to talk about it, but I eventually would track down
people and they would tell me what they'd seen. So
I put it together in the manuscript, and the local publisher,
who should have published it because this was a big story,
said mister Cameron, you may believe in this kind of stuff,

(02:30):
count me among the unbelievers. And I was shocked. I
just couldn't believe that that, you know, they wouldn't run
with this big story. I thought, this is the biggest
story in the world. That would you know, make million
dollars from this and all this stuff? And it went nowhere.
And so it was that question, like what are you
doing in Carmen, Manitoba. And then it was like, Okay,
I'm just a small guy in Canada and I saw

(02:52):
this thing, and all I want to know is what
was that thing I saw? I know, for a fact
it was. It was like just out of this world.
But the thing was somebody's got to know. So then
I started this proceed So there was a synchronicity event.
My father was a pilot for the Canaane government and
somebody in his office wanted to talk to me at
a UFO siting was a radar tech and he said,

(03:14):
you know, if you really want to know what's going
on with the UFOs, you should see what the Canadan
government was doing back in the nineteen fifties. And I
said really, He said yeah, I worked for the program
And I go, you work for the programmer like that?
I'man fifteen hundred miles away from the capitol and I go,
you worked for the program and said yeah. And he
started telling me the story of Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, who
ran the Canadian government UFO program, and he said he
was the most brilliant engineer of hi met but he's
totally crazy. He was talking to aliens and they were

(03:36):
landing in the backyard and I go, what are you
talking about it? And that's the pursuit started. So I
went after the Canadian government. What did the Canadian government know?
And there was a lot of very interesting stuff. I
picked and I wrote a book on the Canadan government thing.
But we ended up trying to figure out where the
Canadians got the information, because there's the famous top secret memo,
which is one of the only top secret memos ever

(03:57):
written about UFOs, where Wilbert Smith says, I to the
Americans and I wanted to see if there was some smoke.
There was a fire. There was smoke, and I was
told by American officials number one flying saucers exist. It's
the most highly classized subject in the United States. There's a
small group headed back doctor van var Bush, and it's
a tremendous significance to the Americans. And then this famous

(04:19):
line that I've used in the last couple of years.
We're also told by American officials that other things might
be associated with the flying sauces, such as mental phenomenon.
So the pursuit was then I'd gotten mostly what Wilbur had,
I'd recovered his files. I talked to his wife. She
told me all these stories and his son and where
the files were and all that sort of stuff. And
then I'm thinking, well, who told Wilbur this thing about

(04:41):
the flying saucers. Exist. It's the most highly classified subject.
And that turned out to be a guy by the
name of doctor Robert Starbacher. And this is in the Canade.
There's some documents where the Canadians are talking in the
Canadian Embassy in Washington and they this Robert Starbacher comes
into the Canayan embassy and interview. Who's Wilbert Smith and

(05:01):
that's he's the guy gave most of that material and
so we went after him. And then he said, well,
I really wasn't involved. I was busy. I was working
on the radar for the Russians and you know, in
ther in Canada to pick up Russian missiles and stuff
like that. The guy you should talk to her He
was a guy in Pennsylvania and that turned out to
be doctor Eric Walker, who was former president of penn

(05:24):
State University, chairman of the board of the Institute for
Defense Analysis military think tank. And I was with a
bunch of researchers and I was sort of instructing them,
and they were giving them names and his number and stuff,
and people are trying to get this guy to talk
and he was basically talking, and he was basically talking
in rhymes and riddles about you know, it's been forty years.
We haven't blow from the world. Leave it alone and

(05:45):
you know, go do something else, and he had. I
was trying to find his files, so I went to
Penn State. I looked at all his files and there
was nothing there, and he had he had died in
I think ninety four. And I found out that his
files when he was a Pentagon and he was the
assistant to the head of weapon research for the Pentagon,

(06:07):
and there was this one year period that he was there,
and he talked that he was going to give the
stuff to the Truman Library. So I went to the
Truman Library, not even thinking about presidents or anything. I
just wanted to get Walker's files and hope that this
material because he basically said he was confronted. We understand
from doctor Starbucker that you attended a set of briefings

(06:27):
at right Patterson Air Force Base in nineteen fifty and
he said, yeah, I was there, So what And I
went and the guy that was interviewing, SOI, what do
you mean? So right, it was the most important subject.
And this is how this discussion started. That he confirmed
that he had been at these briefings. So we thought
that the briefing material might be in these records that
he left with the Truman Library. So I went to
the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and I asked for them,

(06:50):
and there was a couple of files on Walker and
there was really nothing important or whatever. And then I thought, hey, well,
you know, the president is the most important guy in
the world. He's a powerful guy. He's got to know
what's going on. And that's my my question, Like, somebody's
got to know what's going on here. So that's when
I asked the Truman Library. I said, well, what you
got on UFOs And they said, well, they talked about
the overflight nineteen fifty two where the shootdown order was given,

(07:13):
and there's a week between the first sightings and second sightings,
and all these telegrams started to come in to the
White House and they had all these telegrams. So I
was looking through all these telegrams and people were saying, please,
mister President, don't shoot them down, leave them alone, all
this sort of stuff. And then I said, well what
else they got, and they go, well, that's it, that's
all we got to call it. That's all you got.
I mean, this is the most you figured it's the
most important subject, like why would the president not have anything?

(07:36):
So then I figured, well, the Eisenhoewer Library is just
down the road. It's maybe two hours down the road
in Kansas. I'll go to the Eisenhower Library and I'll
find out what they're doing. And they had five documents
and one was the famous Top Secret or the CIA
Robertson Panel report, which had been doone on a Truman
but it appeared in the it was right at the
end of administration, sort of end up in the Eisenhour Library.

(07:59):
So that's when I said to the archives, because there
you have to you know, everyone's got a suit on
and it's all very formal, and they you got to
do a review and be interviewed before you can research there.
And I said, you know, you've got five documents and
one was a telegram from one of the contactes and stuff.
And then I said, how many pages as he documents
you got and he said twenty eight million pages. Anyway,

(08:19):
you got five on UFO. And that's when I've got
something's wrong here like is. And then I determined to
go to all of the presidents and find out what
the presidents had known and basically it would be a
very you know, slow day because you take four days
to go to the Eisnar Library, And within about two
and a half hours I was finished all the UFO documents.
And then for the rest of the week, I was
just sitting there reading oral histories from different people and

(08:42):
and you know, trying to find something to interest myself
because there's really no documents. And that's when sort of
puzzled me, like why are there no documents in the
the the libraries. And I guess it all comes summed
up by there's an oral history interview that was done
by General Landry, who was Air advisor to Truman. It
was in the Truman Library, and he talks about the

(09:04):
briefing that when he came in in nineteen forty eight,
he had been told by Truman, I want you to
brief me on UFO was every three months, I want
you to go to the CIA, get all the material
and brief me. So we figured there was about fifteen
or sixteen briefings that was given to the president, but
they were all done orally, so in nineteen forty eight
they already knew don't put it on paper. It was
all done early and That's what I believe is if

(09:26):
this subject is handled by the president, is not handled
on paper, and it's I guess what Bill Clinton would
call this is story. Whitley Strieber tells that he said
he talked to Rockefeller, Lawrence Rockefeller, who had gone to
the Clintons, and he got the Clintons at his ranch
in Wyoming, and Bill didn't come down for the briefing,

(09:48):
and so just Hillary was there. And so then they're
going for a walk and that's when Bill Clinton says
to Rockefeller, said, the UFO issue, it's, you know, the
story of the Arkansas atar baby and Rockefellers. So yeah,
he said, this is the Arkansas tar baby. You don't
touch it. He said, you touch it, you're going to
get stuck to it. And this is the story about
the Arkansas tar baby where the catch bar rabbit. He

(10:08):
sees this tar baby and the tar baby doesn't talk back.
It's sitting on the side of the road, set up
by the fox. And he gets mad and he punches
the tar baby and he gets stuck with his hand,
and then he puts the other hand and gets stuck,
and then his feeter gets stuck. And that's what Clinton says,
this is the subject the president cannot touch. This is
a tar baby story, and you don't touch it. So
I think that's what it is. So when I went

(10:30):
after the Carter material, I basically my end conclusion was
that he had made this promise to the National Choir.
There was a scrum of reporters in nineteen seventy six
when he was running and he was asked by the
National Choir, you know you saw UFO, and would you
release the UFO files. And that's when he made this

(10:51):
famous claim that if I get in, I will release
all the UFO files to the people, except for unless
it has to do with military secrecy. And that was
the big catch. So he made this promise, and then
when he got in, he didn't say anything. He never
used the word UFO, the same as Gerald Ford before

(11:11):
he was running for when he was running for president,
he was saying, or when he was a congressman, he said,
not only do I want this thing opened up, I
want to get the military people put the mind our
oath and forced them to testify to tell us what's
going on. And when he got the White House, he
never used the word UFO either, Like Jimmy Carter used
it before and after president, but he never used the

(11:32):
word when he was in there. And what I came
to conclusion was he made this promise and he did
a bunch of stuff, but it was all done without
his fingerprints. So he had other people doing things for him.
He had, for example, Jody Powell. Jody Powell was the
guy that forced the documents out of the FBI. He
said the FBI was under big pressure. And then you know,

(11:53):
McCabe wrote the book. I think it was fifteen hundred
pages released under Jimmy Carter, and he had the CIA.
There was a story that ciad fourteen thousand pages. There
was an FOIA. It was big at the time. Fois
Jimmy Carter talked about open government and the Sunshine Law
and all this kind of stuff and getting openness, and

(12:14):
there was there was a strumored story. There was a
girl that was working on behalf of the White House,
a lawyer at the CIA, and they were hiding the
documents and there was supposed to fourteen thousand and that
turn was only one thousand, and she was crying because
they were they were playing these games and she got
so frustrated with what was going on.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
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