CPT640 : THE REAGAN UFO & PHOTO TRIBUTE : Historical Archive Log

Of all the U.S. Presidents, Reagan more than any other President, appeared to be obsessed with the flying saucer topic. Billy Cox, a feature writer with Florida Today, wrote a major story in Florida Today about Reagan. The article looked at a series of alien invasion remarks that had appeared in a number of Reagan's speeches. Cox described the situation as "Ronald Reagan’s abiding fascination with extraterrestrials."

Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis described her father as "fascinated with stories about unidentified flying objects and the possibility of life on other worlds." She compared the "madness" of her father’s inauguration day to "a fifty’s movie in which flying saucers descend on the metropolis."

Reagan may have gained this intense interest from sightings he had while he was Governor of California. Kitty Kelly in her Unauthorized Biography of Nancy Reagan stated Reagan admitted to believing in flying saucers, and "even swore that he had seen a few unidentified flying objects."



Two of these Reagan UFO encounters have become public. The first sighting story was made public by Steve Allen on his WNEW-AM radio show in New York. Allen stated that a well know personality in the entertainment industry had confided a UFO story to him many years before. As the story had already made the rounds in the rumor mill, there was no question the comedian and host was referring to Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy.

Ron and Nancy were expected at a casual dinner party with friends in Hollywood. Except for the Reagans, all the guests had arrived. Ron and Nancy showed up a half hour later quite upset. They stated that they had seen a UFO coming down the coast.



The second sighting occurred in 1974 while Reagan was still Governor. One week after the sighting, Reagan related the story to Norman C. Millar, then Washington Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, later the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Reagan told Millar:

"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.’



The pilot of Governor Reagan plane was Bull Paynter, and he backed up Reagan’s version of the incident with the UFO.

I was the pilot of the plane when we saw the UFO. Also, on board were Governor Reagan and a couple of his security people. We were flying a Cessna Citation. It was maybe nine or ten o’clock at night. We were near Bakersfield when Governor Reagan and the others called my attention to a big light flying a bit behind the plane.

It appeared to be several hundred yards away. It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate, then it appeared to elongate. The light took off. It went up at a 45-degree angle - at a high rate of speed. Everyone on the plane was surprised.

Governor Reagan expressed amazement. I told the others I didn’t know what it was. The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly. If you give an airplane power it will accelerate - but not like a hotrod, and that is what this was like.

We didn’t file a report on the object because for a long time they considered you a nut if you saw a UFO.



Paynter added the UFO incident didn’t stop there. He stated that he and Reagan had discussed their UFO sighting "from time to time" in the years following the incident.

Reagan, in his discussion of the sighting with Norman C. Millar added that he had told Nancy about the UFO he had seen, and they had done personal research on UFOs. This research had uncovered the facts that there were references to UFOs in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Reagan was telling his story in a very animated way. This led Millar to conclude that Reagan seriously believed in UFOs. He asked him, "Governor, are you telling me that you saw a UFO?"

Suddenly, according to Millar, Reagan realized that he was talking to a reporter. "This look crossed his face," recalled Millar, "and he said let’s just say that I’m an agnostic."



Once in the White House it didn’t take Reagan a long time to bring up the UFO subject. Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus described in their book "Landslide" that the Reagan handlers went to great lengths to "conceal" the President’s assertion that he had seen a flying saucer or his belief that there was a ghost in the Lincoln bedroom. There was also an effort to discourage Reagan from talking about two other topics he liked - Armageddon and astrology.

Reagan handlers went to great efforts to protect President Reagan from possibly embarrassing questions by starting up presidential helicopter just before Reagan exited the White House to leave for trips. Nancy Reagan was also part of the protection force surrounding the President. She was often close enough to the President to whisper answers to difficult questions, or to provide corrections to things he had said which were wrong or embarrassing.

The efforts to maintain silence on the subjects of UFOs, ghosts, astrology, and Armageddon by White House staffers, however, were not always successful. Reagan was a big fan of the occult, so from time to time these items would appear in Reagan speeches. In a February 11, 1988 speech called, Remarks at the Annual Conservative Political Action Conference Dinner Reagan was able to get both ghosts and UFOs in the same speech. In the speech written for Reagan by Pulitzer Prize winning speech writer Tony Dolan Reagan said:

"...By the way, something odd happened just before I got here tonight that I think you should know about. I got a message from Dave Keane reminding me that this was the eve of Lincoln's birthday-and suggesting I go upstairs and check on the ghost in Lincoln's bedroom. I did. And what do you know, there was Stan Evans dressed as Abe Lincoln. And he kept saying, "Listen to Jesse Helms.". . . Well, we conservatives have been in Washington now for a while and we occasionally need to remind ourselves what brought us here in the first place: our unshakable, root-deep, all-encompassing skepticism about the capital city's answer to the UFO, that bizarre, ever-tottering but ever-flickering saucer in the sky called "The Prevailing Washington Wisdom."



There were a great number of these UFO, ghost, and Armageddon references written into Reagan speeches. Whether the UFO comments were planned or slips of the tongue by Reagan, the first controversial UFO comment would not be made by Reagan but by a senior member of the National Security Agency, writing on Reagan’s behalf.

On September 28, 1981, President Reagan received a letter from Major Ret. Colman VonKeviczky. VonKeviczky was the Director of the International UFO Galactic Spacecraft Research and Analytic Network (ICUFON). This group held that UFOs "represented an intergalactic task force that will destroy earth unless world leaders band together to end their hostile actions against UFOs."

The subject of secret letters was the same concern that the United States and other nations should acknowledge the existence of the "extraterrestrial UFO Forces" so as to avoid a serious confrontation. It read in part:

...ICUFON Inc. and its joint U.S. and foreign UFO Research Organizations requested that you, as President of the United States, and the Highest Commander of its military forces, take the initial steps for the solution of the decades-long suppressed first and foremost vital international and security problem - THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL UFO FORCES EARTHBOUND OPERATION, - BEING VALIDATED BY THE UNITED STATES and ALL THE NATIONS’ MILITARY FORCES