Do US Presidents Know The Truth About Aliens? | Unveiled

Do US Presidents Know the Truth About Aliens?

For decades now, the US government has been extensively investigating UFOs, and the general public has been desperate for answers. But is the truth really out there? And do the people at the top know more than they’re letting on?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; do US presidents know the truth about aliens?

A 2020 poll by the research company Ipsos determined that almost half of Americans believe that aliens have visited Earth. Though UFO sightings do occur all over the world, by far the most happen in the United States, with the majority of the rest happening in other English-speaking countries. It’s thought a leading reason for this is the mainstream popularity of science-fiction… the thinking being that the more movies there are about alien encounters, the more people are supposedly primed to blame various strange phenomena on visitors from outer space. But because so many sightings do come from the US, the president of the United States is in a unique position - as the one person with the authority to investigate and declassify anything they see fit, they potentially have more knowledge about what is (or isn’t) out there than even other world leaders.

Perhaps the first president who might have known a thing or two about aliens was Harry S. Truman. In office from 1945 to 1953, his term coincided with the US government’s earliest investigations, Project Sign and Project Grudge, both of which happened in the late 1940s. Sign and Grudge weren’t particularly successful or noteworthy, but they were followed by arguably the most famous UFO investigation of all: Project Blue Book. Blue Book was officially launched in March 1952, just months before the famous Washington D.C. UFO incident that July, when various flying objects were reported in the sky above the capital, including over the White House. In response, the Robertson Panel was also launched by the CIA, which further reviewed Blue Book to determine whether UFOs really were a threat to national security. Both the Panel and eventually Blue Book itself concluded that they weren’t, with calls for the public to be better educated on aerial phenomena so that there would be less unidentified objects in the future. But America’s interest definitely didn’t stop there.

The most recently declassified UFO investigation we know about is the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which ran from 2007 to 2012 primarily under the Obama administration. Obama himself has commented on UFOs, saying he gets asked about them frequently, and according to an interview he gave to GQ magazine; “the stuff going on that’s top secret isn’t nearly as exciting as you expect”. Regardless of how dull “the truth” supposedly is, however, for as long as the public keeps reporting UFOs, the government looks set to keep investigating them, even if these investigations remain classified for years – and sometimes decades – after the fact. All of which means that there are plenty who believe not only that UFOs have landed, but that there is an enormous conspiracy where the US government and military is covering up the existence of aliens. Before now, as publicly elected figures, many presidential candidates have promised that they will blow the lid off any conspiracy if they reach the Oval Office. But none have. So, what gives?

One such candidate, who pledged to reveal all, was Jimmy Carter - who became president in 1977. The reason Carter is so noteworthy is that he had had a UFO encounter of his own, in 1969. He didn’t get around to reporting it until 1973, but claimed he saw a bright green light in the sky one night, which had no “solid substance” to it and which hovered in the air for roughly ten minutes, changing colour all the while. Carter’s account wasn’t officially investigated until 1976 - seven years after it happened, and one year before he became president - and although it was found that other alleged witnesses didn’t remember the encounter, Carter didn’t let it drop. He promised he would investigate UFOs himself before taking office, so it looked like the American public might finally get answers some thirty years after one of the defining UFO moments, the Roswell Incident. Unfortunately, Carter broke his promise by only vaguely claiming that “defense implications” stopped him from declassifying anything.

But despite Carter’s bad example, many other presidents have harnessed the mystery surrounding aliens, too. Bill Clinton said he reviewed all the files on Area 51 during his time in power, just to be sure that there weren’t any otherworldly creatures there… which, according to him there aren’t, with the Nevada base being used to develop stealth technology instead. This has been the official line on Area 51 since at least its declassification in 2013, too, but that doesn’t mean the extraterrestrial theories have abated at all. In fact, the high security and secrecy around the place almost naturally encourages them. The Air Force takes security so seriously there that when the “storm Area 51” meme went viral in 2019, they released a statement warning any would-be ET liberators to stay well clear of the site. All of which means that Area 51 occupies an unmatched place in modern UFO mythology, even if Clinton insists that it’s the home of human-built stealth planes, only.

Other presidents who have drawn on UFOs include Ronald Reagan, who referenced them at length during a 1987 speech at the UN, to demonstrate how global tensions and differences could vanish in the face of an extraterrestrial threat. During her campaign in 2016, Hillary Clinton also promised to let the public know the truth, as part of a pledge almost identical to the one Jimmy Carter made in the ‘70s – only, she lost the election, so didn’t get the chance to follow through. Similarly, speaking to Joe Rogan in 2019, Bernie Sanders promised to tell us the truth if he got the Democratic nomination and eventually into the White House – but he backed out of his party’s race a year later. Donald Trump, on the other hand, appears to have very little interest in UFOs, once telling ABC News that he doesn’t particularly believe in them. Though, others have argued that his establishing the Space Force might suggest that Trump sees aliens as a bigger threat than he’s publicly letting on.

Finally, though, and regardless of who knows what, it remains unclear why the US government would be so intent, for decades, on keeping the existence of aliens a secret. But there are more than a few theories… one of the most popular being that it’s so the US can harbour powerful alien technology for themselves and reverse-engineer anything from futuristic spaceships to potentially devastating alien weapons. There’s one main issue with this idea, though, because if this was the case then you’d expect America to already be the most technologically advanced country on Earth… But, in fact, according to Bloomberg’s 2020 Innovation Index, the US is only the ninth most innovative country globally, with Germany, South Korea, and Singapore making up the top three. If, then, America does have access to alien technology, then they’re either not the only ones, or so intent on keeping it secret they’re willing to fall behind in the meantime, or the tech’s so advanced that no-one’s yet worked out how to use it.

Whatever the truth, as the commander-in-chief of the United States, able to access all information and declassify at will, many modern presidents certainly will have looked into UFO files. They understand as much as anyone in America could do… but whether the real story is even something worth hearing, or simply too dangerous to become public knowledge, we may never know.