In September 1973, while serving as governor of Georgia and before becoming President, Jimmy Carter filed a report with the International UFO Bureau describing an unidentified object he had seen several years earlier. Carter wrote on the report that the sighting happened in October 1969.
However, later research using Lions Club records indicates that his visit to the Leary, Georgia, club most likely took place on January 6, 1969. Along with other witnesses, Carter saw a bright object that changed colors, appeared to move closer and farther away, and eventually disappeared. The experience made Carter sympathetic toward people who reported UFO sightings, and during his 1976 presidential campaign he promised to make available government information about UFO sightings to the public and scientists.
“He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called ‘the darndest thing I’ve ever seen’ in the sky.” Along with 10 to 12 other witnesses, Carter observed a bright object in the sky, which was about the size of the moon.
“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,” Carter told GQ in 2005. The object reportedly hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon, moved towards and away from the Earth, and eventually disappeared into the distance. Carter’s experience led him to make a vow to never again ridicule individuals who claimed to have seen a UFO.
“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,” Carter said.
As for the object Carter saw, atmospheric scientist Carl G. “Jere” Justus later proposed a strong conventional explanation. Using the January 6, 1969 date, Justus found that a high-altitude barium cloud had been released from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida that evening. He argued that the timing, direction, estimated elevation and color changes closely matched Carter’s description. This was a later scientific reconstruction, however, not an official identification made at the time.
Carter also made an important distinction about his sighting. In his 2005 GQ interview, he said, “I have never thought that it was from outer space,” and added that he did not believe extraterrestrial visitors had come to Earth or that such visits had been covered up. After winning the presidency, Carter did not carry out the sweeping UFO disclosure he had promised during the campaign, citing possible defense and national-security implications for some information. His documented sighting and later change in approach to disclosure have nevertheless remained central to decades of speculation about what he may have learned after entering the White House.
President Carter’s Disturbing Briefing on UFOs and Religion
One of the most dramatic versions of the Carter briefing story comes from Ed Harris, described in UFO discussions as a former NASA researcher. Harris wrote on Quora that he believed the story of Carter crying after receiving classified UFO information was accepted by serious researchers. In Harris’ version, U.S. presidents were supposedly given only a limited overview of the subject, with deeper information controlled on a “need to know” basis.
Harris further claimed that Carter was eventually given “the talk,” after which he reportedly put his head in his hands, sobbed and remained visibly disturbed. Harris’ account then makes a much more extraordinary claim: that Carter was told major religions, including Christianity, had been created by extraterrestrials, that these beings had made humanity, and that religion was being used to keep humans from destroying themselves while experiments were conducted on them.
There is no public primary document establishing that Carter was told this. The religion claim is specific to Harris’ version of the story and should not be confused with the narrower accounts later discussed by Richard Dolan, Eric Davis or Tim Burchett, none of whom has publicly established that this was the content of Carter’s alleged briefing.
Below you can read Ed Harris’ statement on the subject that he wrote on Quora:
Yes, the incident of Jimmy Carter crying after being briefed about classified information regarding UFO’s is largely believed to be true by the serious researchers on the subject. As a forewarning, the following information is very unsettling and will explain why Carter never “kept his promise” of revealing classified UFO information to the public.
According to the story that was corroborated by more than one witness, U.S. presidents are only given a cursory overview of the subject. Apparently, the CIA runs the program, only provide information to the President on a need to know basis, and do not consider presidential curiosity as sufficient need to know. This was implemented after Kennedy, and all presidents after him have been given only summary briefings.
Okay on to your question. President Carter is a deeply religious man who had also witnessed a UFO with 6 other people. Everyone thought that he would be the one to finally release UFO info to the public but as the story goes, he was repeatedly stonewalled. Eventually, the CIA had “the talk” with him, and afterward it was reported that he sunk his head in his hands and not only began to deeply sob, but was visibly disturbed for some weeks afterward.
What was he told and shown?
He was told that the major religions including Christianity were programs created by extraterrestrials to prevent us from destroying ourselves while they ran their experiments on us – and that they made us. At this moment it became clear to Carter that such information could cause tremendous economic and social upheaval. I should add that I am not only a Christian but a clergyman, so I am in no way attempting to promote atheism here. In fact, how God fits into this might be an interesting separate post. Nevertheless, these are the facts as I know them to be.
Author and UFO historian Richard Dolan has discussed a narrower version of the Carter story for years, including in his book “UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-Up Exposed.”
A short clip of Dolan discussing the story was reposted on February 20, 2023. In that account, Dolan said a “very well-placed” individual had told him years earlier that Carter was indeed briefed on UFOs on June 14, 1977. Dolan was careful to say that his source was not in the room and did not know the contents of the briefing. According to Dolan, the source learned through a direct connection close to the event that Carter was seen afterward either sobbing or nearly sobbing and was deeply upset. Dolan said people could only speculate about what Carter had actually been told.
Dolan revisited the story in much greater detail on March 10, 2026, after physicist Eric Davis discussed the alleged Carter briefing. According to Dolan’s summary of Davis’ account, a June 1977 meeting began as a routine National Security Council economic-policy session and later moved into the Oval Office. Davis claimed Carter was told that the U.S. government had been in contact with alien beings. He also claimed documentation of the meeting exists in the Carter Presidential Library and that an attendee list contains two redacted individuals and their organizations.
Dolan said the Davis account caught his attention because it overlapped with what his own anonymous national-security source had told him almost 20 years earlier about a UFO-related briefing during Carter’s first year in office. In the 2026 discussion, Dolan also raised the possibility that Carter may have been praying rather than crying after the meeting. He described that as plausible and again stressed that his original source did not know what Carter had been told.
A real Presidential Daily Diary for June 14, 1977 is preserved in the Carter Presidential Library records. Its existence makes the date researchable, but it does not by itself prove that a classified UFO briefing occurred or establish the contents of any such meeting.
Older versions of the story have also been connected to disputed MJ-12 and “Project Aquarius” material, including documents describing alleged retrievals of alien technology. These documents have a long history of authenticity disputes and cannot be treated as proof of what Carter was told. Dolan himself noted in his March 2026 discussion that the Aquarius material became entangled with controversial UFO disinformation episodes involving William Moore and Air Force Office of Special Investigations figure Richard Doty. The more limited claim from Dolan’s anonymous source is simply that Carter received a UFO-related briefing and was later seen deeply upset; the source did not know the briefing’s contents.
Tim Burchett Discusses Jimmy Carter on Joe Rogan
On May 7, 2026, Rep. Tim Burchett appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience episode #2495 and discussed secrecy surrounding UAP information. (Source) Burchett said that in one government meeting he asked about a president’s access to sensitive information and was told by a federal employee that “the president’s on the need to know basis.” Burchett said he was astonished by the idea that someone inside the government could possess information that the president was not automatically allowed to see.
During the same conversation, Joe Rogan described a story he said Hal Puthoff had told him about scientists and specialists being asked during the George W. Bush administration to consider the possible consequences of disclosure. In Rogan’s retelling, the hypothetical disclosure involved visits by highly intelligent beings, recovered vehicles and biological remains, and the group was asked to assess possible effects on government, the economy, religion and society. Rogan said the negative consequences were judged to outweigh the positives. Burchett responded that he did not accept that as a reason to keep information from the public, saying people should be told and allowed to decide for themselves.
The conversation then turned to Jimmy Carter. Burchett said he had heard the story that Carter cried after being told something about UFOs. More importantly, Burchett said he had personally been in a meeting where the Carter story was brought up. According to Burchett, the person being questioned supplied the date of Carter’s meeting and said researchers could go to the Carter Library and pull up that date. Burchett said the record allegedly showed the meeting and where Carter was when he received the briefing, while one person’s name had been omitted.
Burchett did not claim to know what Carter was told, and he immediately added that he did not know whether the story was true. His account therefore does not verify the Ed Harris claim about religion or prove that Carter was briefed about extraterrestrials. It does, however, add another public claim pointing researchers toward a specific date and records at the Carter Presidential Library.
Carter Administration & Project Blue Book
Daniel Sheehan, a Harvard-educated Constitutional Trial Lawyer and Appellate Attorney, has worked on many high-profile cases in his career. Sheehan has claimed that in 1977 he became involved in a Congressional Research Service effort connected to Carter’s interest in UFOs. According to Sheehan, Carter had sought classified UFO information and George H. W. Bush, then CIA director during the 1976 transition, refused to provide UFO-specific material on a “need to know” basis.
That claim remains contested and should not be treated as established fact. CIA historical records show that Bush personally briefed Carter repeatedly during the 1976 campaign and transition, bringing other officers to help answer Carter’s intelligence questions. Those records do not establish whether any separate, deeply compartmentalized UFO information was withheld.
Sheehan says he tried to obtain information on the UFO phenomenon and extraterrestrials from the Vatican Library but was unsuccessful. He further claims that, through the 1977 research effort, he was given limited access to classified material associated with the Air Force’s Project Blue Book and saw documents and photographs of what appeared to him to be a crashed UFO being investigated by Air Force personnel. This remains Sheehan’s testimony and has not been independently confirmed through the publicly available Project Blue Book archive.
“There were these photographs of unmistakable — of a UFO sitting on the ground. It had crashed,” Sheehan said. “Apparently, it had hit into this field and had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field,” he paused for a second.
“It was wedged into the side of this bank,” he said after taking a deep breath. “There was snow all around the picture. The vehicle was wedged into the side of this mud-like embankment — kind of up at an angle. There was Air Force personnel. As I cranked the little handle and looked at additional photos, these Air Force people were taking pictures.”
When Mr. Sheehan left the room, the guard asked to see his yellow legal pad and flipped through the pages, missing the alien hieroglyphs Sheehan had copied on the back of the pad. Sheehan offered to share this information with the religious establishment; they told him they were not interested.
