by Charles Lear
From February 17 to February 24, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in Palm Springs, California, on what was described to the public as a “vacation.” On February 20, he disappeared from public view and rumors spread to the point that the headline, “Pres. Eisenhower died tonight of a heart attack in Palm Springs.,” appeared on the Associated Press newswire. The story was removed two minutes later and the AP reported that he was still alive. UFOlogists have speculated on where he was that day, and some have come to the conclusion that Eisenhower went to Muroc Air Force Base for a secret meeting with alien visitors.
The earliest mention of Eisenhower and aliens being at Muroc appears in a letter from Gerald Light to Meade Layne, founder of the Borderland Sciences Research Association. Now a foundation, BSRF has preserved the letter, and the date on the link is April 16, 1954. The letter opens with this:
My Dear Friend:
I have just returned from Muroc. The report is true – devastatingly true! I made the journey in company with Franklin Allen of the Hearst papers and Edwin Mourse of Brookings Institute (Truman’s erstwhile financial advisor), and Bishop MacIntyre of Los Angeles (confidential names for the present, please.)
The mention of aliens, referred to as “Etherians” and their craft is as follows:
During my two days visit I saw five separate and distinct types of aircraft being studied and handled by our Air Force officials – with the assistance and permission of the Etherians! I have no words to express my reactions.
And the reference to Eisenhower is this:
President Eisenhower, as you may already know, was spirited over to Muroc one night during his visit to Palm Springs recently.
Layne commented on the letter in 1958 with this:
The matter of an alleged visit by President Eisenhower to the Muroc Base is clearly reported simply as personal inference and belief. In fact, the Probert Controls have said that the President sent a personal representative, but did not go to the Base himself. There is much guesswork also where the writer of the letter quoted talks about future policies, public reaction, etc. He is not a prophet and I quote him only for the interest of the Muroc affair – concerning which I still get many inquiries.
The “Probert Controls” were the entities BSRA member Mark Probert channeled as a trance medium. He is referred to as the “Telegnostic from San Diego” on the BSRF website.
Michael Salla explored the matter in a research study published on the exoploitics website on January 28, 2004. In his abstract, he tells the story of Eisenhower’s disappearance and how reporters were told that Eisenhower had gone off to have emergency dental treatment. Salla then tells the reader that his paper will explore evidence of “first contact” with “Nordic” ETs, an “agreement” made with them, and a series of meetings leading up to a contract being signed with the “Greys.”
Salla brings up one fact that has helped fuel the alien meeting theory and that is that Eisenhower had just gone on a quail hunting vacation in Georgia a week before. He credits the letter from Light as the “first public source alleging a meeting with extraterrestrials but he doesn’t include Layne’s comment. He cites an essay by William Cooper as his source for the letter and includes Cooper in his list of “whistleblowers” supporting the story. The others are John Lear, Robert Dean, and Phil Schnieder. What these men have in common is that they used their backgrounds in the military and intelligence communities, both real and invented, to give credibility to outlandish tales of alien interactions with government entities. Cooper’s essay is a vivid example.
Also in 2004, Salla published “Exopolitics: Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence,” and Peter Carlson of the Washington Post interviewed Salla about the Eisenhower and aliens story and looked into it himself. After presenting Salla’s version, Carlson explores the dentist theory.
Carlson talked with Eisenhower Library Archivist Herb Pankratz, a specialist in transportation related archival matters. Because UFOs are considered by some to be transportation, Pankratz became the person who dealt with the many questions about the alien meeting as the story entered the popular imagination in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Pankratz believes the dentist theory and cites an article by dental historian James Mixson, “A History of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Oral Health,” published in the November 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry. Using the U.S. surgeon general’s records of Eisenhower’s oral history, Mixson determined that, on the night in question, Eisenhower chipped the cap on his upper right central incisor.
The cap was reportedly repaired by Dr. Francis A. Purcell. Purcell died in 1974 and no record of the repair remains, so belief that the dental emergency was a cover story remains.
The story hit the news again in 2010 when retired New Hampshire State Representative Henry McElroy posted a YouTube video where he claims to have seen a document that supports the alien story. He says this:
The document I saw was an official brief to President Eisenhower. To the best of my memory viagra sans ordonnance this brief was pervaded with a sense of hope, and it informed President Eisenhower of the continued presence of extraterrestrial beings here in the United States of America.
The brief seemed to indicate that a meeting between the President and some of these visitors could be arranged as appropriate if desired.
And why would a state representative have access to what would likely be a classified document that originated in a federal office? McElroy claims that as a member of the State Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs committee it was important that he “be updated on a large number of topics related to the affairs of our People, and our Nation.”
This tale, like many UFO tales, will likely be repeatedly resurrected and re-told. Also, like many UFO tales, this one has been added to. Around 2007, researcher Art Campbell claimed that a witness, identified only by a pseudonym, wrote him a seven-page letter saying that Eisenhower landed at Holloman AFB and met with aliens there during his hunting vacation in Georgia.
Hmm. Holloman. Aliens. That sounds familiar.F