10 Things you Didn't Know About The Time Jimmy Carter Saw A UFO In 1969

Long before Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States of America he was just another guy in the south who saw an unidentified flying object. Okay so he wasn't just some guy. Carter was running for governor of Georgia at the time, a moment when one might not want to tell everyone that they saw an alien drive-by.

Unlike many UFO sightings, Carter's interaction with a possible extra terrestrial has quite a bit of research around it so we'll be able to figure out what Carter saw and if he actually had an alien interaction.

On one evening in 1969, Carter was pumping himself up to give a speech at a local Lion's Club. Around 7:15 pm, Carter was alerted to an object in the sky just above the horizon to the west. According to Carter the object was bright white like the moon in the middle of the night. The object moved in towards Carter but stopped above a gore of pine trees before changing color from white to blue to red, then back to white before taking off into the night.

It's fair to assume that whatever Carter saw was a craft, bird, or something else that was hit by a beam of light. What else could explain the color change? Carter believes that whatever he saw was self-illuminated, which would make sense with all of the color changes.

In 1973, Carter said:

There were about twenty of us 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. 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.

It's important to remember that Carter didn't just see this thing on his lonesome. While speaking about the UFO in 2005 he kept to the same story he's been telling for nearly 40 years. Something interesting in this version of the story is that Carter notes that there were multiple people outside with him on the evening in question. Carter said:

All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, 'Look, over in the west!' And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don't know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance.

Unfortunately only one member of Carter's crew has come forward to bolster the president's claims throwing this story into even more disarray.

The biggest question surrounding this event - aside from what exactly t was that Carte saw - is when it happened exactly. Carter didn't file a report with the International UFO Bureau until September 14, 1973, four years after the event in question.

Carter claims that he saw the UFO in October of '69, but the leaders at the Lions Club state that their records show Carter speaking at their location on January 6, 1969. It's most likely that the Lions Club is more accurate here because they have documentation but without getting eyes on the paperwork it's hard to know who's telling the truth.

The misinformation surrounding Carter's alleged UFO sighting makes it hard to corroborate exactly what happened, but the most confounding part of the entire investigation is whether or not Carter is telling the truth about who witnessed the mysterious light that evening. Some members of the Lion's Club claim that Carter was on his own that night, but Fred Hart, a member of Carter's entourage claims that he saw the UFO as well, noting:

It seems like there was a little—like a blue light or something or other in the sky that night—like some kind of weather balloon they send out or something... it had been pretty far back in my mind.

As much as we'd love for President Carter to come out and say, "Hey I saw an alien," that's just not the case. The former leader of the free world has been open about the UFO, but he also admits that he doesn't he doesn't think he saw a ship piloted by an alien, simply a real deal unidentified flying object.

If we go off of that Lion's Club record then we know exactly what was happening in the sky on the night of January 6, 1969. There were no clouds that evening and Venus was close to its maximum brightness in the west, the direction described by Carter. It's mostly likely that the color changing object that he saw was the second planet in the solar system, but Carter doesn't think so.

The former president has said that he's seen Venus multiple times and knows what it looks like. He assumes that as it was completely silent that he was looking at a military aircraft of some kind.

Even though he doesn't believe that he saw an alien craft, this run-in with a UFO has inspired Carter to look into extra terrestrial life on our planet. He's said that when he made it into the White House he looked into any kind of government coverup of alien life on Earth and came up short. Not because he found zero proof, but because the CIA refused to give him any information on the subject. Sounds fishy.

After witnessing the UFO outside of Leary, Georgia, President Carter was admirably open about what he saw. While on the campaign trail he told that press that following his election he would make sure to enact a policy of openness around UFOs and possible alien activity, stating:

One thing's 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.

As great as that sounds, Carter actually went the other way once he won the presidency and cited "defense implications" as the reason he couldn't talk about his or any further UFO sightings.