by Charles Lear
Throughout the history of UFOs there are stories that become well known throughout the UFO community and beyond, and more often than not, their origins can be found in archives available online. Sometimes a story that becomes popular and accepted as plausible can be found to have had dubious origins. If enough people choose to believe it and trusted researchers champion it, a story can become so embedded in the mythos that it will repeatedly rise from the dead no matter how many knives get stuck in it. Then, there are stories that never go beyond their original report and remain as a single mention in the records.
Tucked away in the Archives For the Unexplained collection is a March 1, 1974 edition of UFO POTPOURIE, a collection of news clippings put out by John Schuessler “In cooperation with: The Mutual UFO Network Inc. (MOFON) [sic]” and “ The UFO Study Group of Greater St. Louis, Inc.” Schuessler was one of the founding members of MUFON in 1969 and was a principle investigator of the Cash-Landrum case in the 1980s. He became the international director of MUFON in 2000.
Among the news clippings in that issue of UFO POTPOURIE is an article from the September 22, 1974 edition of the tabloid News Extra. It’s headlined, “UFO Lands at White House, Scares Nixon Into Quitting.” The subheading explains further: “UFO Landed at White House Just Before Nixon Resigned… Sighting was ‘the Last Straw’ for Troubled Ex-President.” The story was written by Barney McGruder and doesn’t seem to have gone any further beyond this one report. This might be because McGruder made the story up, and the first indication of this is that McGruder cites a “highly placed” individual, a “trusted aide” and a “White House guard” as his sources, but fails to name them. Even so, this writer finds it interesting that it hasn’t shown up in any of the literature regarding UFOs and U.S. Presidents where this sort of alternate history abounds.
According to McGruder, in mid-July of 1974, a UFO was seen flying towards Washington by a United Airlines pilot and was tracked by civilian and military radar. Nixon was working late, and at around 2:00 a.m., he saw a “glowing red light outside the Oval Office window.” According to “a White House source,” the sight “scared the hell out him…” and caused him to drop to the floor and crawl “across the office to telephone the Secret Service guard.” According to McGruder, the guards were already aware of the UFO, having seen it “seconds before Nixon saw it.”
McGruder presents the testimony of “a White House guard” as a detailed witness account. According to the account, the incident only lasted about 10 seconds. The UFO came in slowly, “low from the west.” It hovered over the White House and “then dropped, light as a feather to the lawn.” The “guard” reportedly said he drew his pistol but didn’t know if he “should shoot it or not.”
According to the description, the UFO was silver with portholes that glowed red all around it. It was about 30 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick. It sat silent on the ground for 3-4 seconds. It then made a whining sound, glowed more brightly, and “went straight up and just as fast as lightning.”
Another indication that McGruder made the story up is that a UFO in restricted airspace in Washington, D.C., is a major national security issue, and if he was able to find sources for such a story, it’s more than likely that others would have found them as well. In 1952, over two weekends in July, UFOs were seen visually, on radar, and were chased by military jets. The incident was carried in papers all over the country. Reporters got the story at the largest press conference held in the United States since WWII. That being said, this writer couldn’t find any other mention of the incident involving Nixon in newspapers or in the publications put out by the prominent UFO investigators of the day. There were, however, two other cases from the December 16, 1973 News Extra described in the October 1974 edition of Flying Saucer Review in the U.S.A. section of its “World round-up.” This shows that News Extra stories weren’t routinely ignored by Flying Saucer Review, and it’s noteworthy that the one about Nixon from that same September was.
Arguably, the most prominent UFO organization in the United States in 1974 was the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. Jim Lorenzen was the director at the time, and McGruder uses quotes from a speech Lorenzen gave at a symposium in Littleton, Colorado. He makes note of a statement Lorenzen made saying that a landing at the White House might be an “overt act” by extraterrestrials seeking official recognition.
Lorenzen references the symposium and the inaccuracies in the reporting on his speech in the July-August 1974 APRO Bulletin. He wrote that it was reported that he had “predicted a government turnaround on the UFO question.” He continued:
“Some versions had me predicting a government announcement of a policy reversal. This I did not do. I expect a policy reversal to be implemented quietly through gradual release of UFO information.”
McGruder, without directly quoting Lorenzen, attributes him as saying THE GOVERNMENT (caps in original) has “hard evidence” that flying saucers exist, knows where they are from, and why they are here. Considering Lorenzen’s record of making statements about UFOs only when he had evidence to support them, this seems highly unlikely.
A UFO story that has Nixon taking his golfing buddy, Jackie Gleason, to Homestead AFB in Florida to show him some alien bodies has stuck around, as its source was Gleason’s ex-wife, Beverly Gleason. It showed up on page 2 of the August 16, 1983 National Enquirer. She is attributed as the author of the article and wrote that at 11:30 p.m. one night in 1973 “my famous husband came home, slumped white-faced in an armchair and spilled out the incredible story to me.”
According to her she had been worried and asked where he’d been, and his story was his explanation. She wrote that he told her of seeing four tables, each supporting a two feet tall dead alien with a small, bald head “and disproportionately large ears.”
In 2003, Kenny Young interviewed Beverly and she told him that she began to wonder over the years whether Jackie might have made up the story because he’d actually “been ‘out’ with someone” (according to her, their marriage was pretty much over by then).
An article on snopes.com looks into a more recent claim that Nixon hid a document proving the existence of alien life. The claim originated with Robert Merritt who was, according to the Snopes article, “a sometime police informant – and according to him – covert domestic intelligence operative for the Nixon administration…” In a phone interview with a writer for the Dark Journalist website, Merritt described meeting with Nixon three times in a “deep underground location beneath the White House.” According to Merritt, during the first meeting, Nixon read him a letter stating that a live alien was being kept at Los Alamos and that scientists there had learned to communicate with it. He said that in another meeting, Nixon gave him the letter, told him to deliver it to Henry Kissinger, and then taped the letter to Merritt’s stomach.
According to the Snopes article, which also brings up the Gleason tale, Nixon “confidant” Frank Gannon, who interviewed Nixon extensively while helping him with his memoirs, reported that:
“At one point during our labors in San Clemente, I asked RN if he believed in UFOs and if there was anything to the whole Roswell Area 51 business. He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes and I moved right on to the next subject.”