Article/Document:

UFO Quotes by Government Sources

Mattweb - Ufology Resources

original source | fair use notice

Summary: A collection of UFO-related quotes by various international government officials.

"There are of course many phenomena in this world which are not explained and it is possible to say that the orthodox scientist is the last person to accept that something new (or old) may exist which cannot be explained in accordance with his understanding of natural laws."
-Earl Alexander of Tunis, British Minister of Defense

"I share your concern over the secrecy that continues to shroud our intelligence activities on this subject."
-Congressman Thomas L. Ashley in a letter to NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) on the subject of UFOs.

"Congressional investigations have been held and are still being held on the problem of unidentified flying objects. Since most of the material presented is classified the hearings are never printed."
-Congressman William H. Ayers -(Does anyone know when this was said?)

Former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize

"I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one."

"It was the darndest thing I've ever seen. It was big, it was very bright, it changed colors and it was about the size of the moon.. We watched it for ten minutes, but none of us could figure out what it was. 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." --describing an alleged UFO sighting he had in October of 1969 to reporters while campaigning in 1976.

"Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitude and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."
-Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell, former assistant director of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, in a December, 1952 memo to then-director of the CIA, General Walter B. Smith.

"I've been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are real and interplanetary. In other words we are being watched by beings from outer space."
-Albert M. Chop, deputy public relations director at NASA, and former US Air Force spokesman for Project Blue Book.

"Scientifically we eliminate the simple hypotheses: It's not a plane. It's not a helicopter. It's not a natural phenomenon because the descriptions don't match. Therefor this global phenomenon resists any other explanation. The only remaining hypothesis is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin."
-L. Clerebaut, Secretary General, SOBEPS (Any idea what this stands for? The documentary I got this quote from didn't say.)-In charge of investigating UFO sightings for the Belgian Government.

"As far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. ... If the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it either, and I want to know."
-U.S. President Bill Clinton--In reply to a letter from a child asking about the Roswell Incident.

"In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject."
-Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, while in congress, 1966

U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, retired Air Force Reserve Brigadier General and pilot.

"I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about--and probably never will unless the airforce discloses them."

"I remember the case in Georgia in the 1950's of a National Guard plane going after a UFO and never returning. And I recall the case in Franklin, Kentucky, when four military planes investigated a UFO. One of them exploded in midair and no one knows why." --See quoteby Captain Thomas Mantell.

"Hell no, you can't go. I can't go, and don't ask me again." --Senator Goldwater quoting General Curtis Lamey's response to the senator's request to visit the "Blue Room" at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where, Goldwater claims he was told physical evidence exists confirming the existence of alien spacecraft.

"Yes." --Senator Goldwater's response to Larry King's question: "Do you think our government knows UFOs are real and are keeping this fact from the American public?"

"The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously."
-Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Youth, May 4, 1990)

"I know that neither Russia nor this country has anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers. Behind the scenes high ranking officers are soberly concerned about UFOs, but through official secrecy and ridicule many citizens are led to believe that the unknown flying objects are nonsense. . .To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personell."
-Admiral Roscoe Hillencoter, former director of the CIA, at a 1962 NICAP press conference in Washington D.C.

J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI

"I would do it [aid the Army Air Force in its investigations] but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to the discs recovered. For instance in the LA* case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination." --From a handwritten notation at the bottom of a now declassified memo. (asterisk added, see below)

"[UFOs are] considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces." --From a declassified 1949 FBI document from the San Antonio FBI office, to J. Edgar Hoover.

"An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers. Approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall. Dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots." --From a March 22, 1950 memo to J. Edgar Hoover from the Washington FBI Office, released in 1976 under the freedom of information act.

* -- "LA" in this case may refer to Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were developed. There is some coroboration for this in the newly released, but unofficial MJ-12 documents.

"I feel that the Air Force has not been giving out all the available information on the Unidentified Flying Objects. You cannot disregard so many unimpeachable sources."
-John W. McCormack, Former Speaker of the House, January 1965

"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 9 or 10 o'clock at night. We were near Bakersfield, California when Governor Reagan and the others called my attention to a big light flying a bit behind my 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. Then 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 hot rod, and that's what this was like"
-Bull Paynter, a pilot with thousands of logged hours, in Sacremento California. Also see Reagan's unverified quote.

Nick Pope, headed up the "UFO desk" at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defense from 1991-1994, and has served in other departments of the Ministry of Defense since 1985.

"I concentrate on the science. I'm interested in the UFOs seen by the police and military witnesses. I'm interested in the near misses that pilots report, where their aircraft nearly collide with these things. I'm interested in the visual sightings backed up by radar. I'm interested in the military bases that are overflown by these things. I'm interested in the cases where you have radiation readings on the ground. These are no lights in the sky. These are not misidentifications of fantasy prone individuals. This is a cutting-edge technology being reported by reliable, trained observers, and it is something that goes beyond what we can do. That to me suggests that if it is not ours, it belongs to someone else. If that technology is better than ours, then the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems to me the best explanation."

"Certainly when I socialized with my RAF colleagues, I would find that they were a little bit more receptive to the idea of UFOs--and by that I mean perhaps even an extraterrestrial explanation for this -- than you might have supposed. One of the reasons for that was that so many RAF pilots had actually seen things themselves. Many of them have never made an official report. I had one chap tell me that he had seen something over the North Sea. I asked him why he hadn't reported it, and he said, 'I don't want to be known as Flying Saucer Fred for the rest of my career.'"

"We were asking the Americans, 'Are you operating a prototype aircraft in our airspace?' That, of course, was nonsense. You simply would not do that from a diplomatic and political point of view. It would undermine the entire structure of NATO if you were putting things through someone else's airspace, particularly a close ally, without seeking the proper diplomatic clearance. But we had to ask. And the Americans, having had similar reports, I guess, since the Hudson Valley wave [New York state, mid-1980s], had been quietly asking us if we had some large, triangular shaped object that could go from 0 to Mach 5 in a second. Our response was that we wished we did. This was the bizarre situation: that we were chasing the Americans, and the Americans were chasing us."

"The official line from the Ministry of Defense is, 'Yes, this happened. No, we don't know what it is, but we say that it is of no defense significance.' How can it possibly be of no defense significance when your best jet is left for standing by a UFO? And, again, how can it be of no defense significance when your air defense region is routinely penetrated by structured craft?"

-above excerpts are from a taped interview.

"I occasionally think how quickly our differences, worldwide, would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."
-Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a speech with President Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1988. He made almost exactly the same comment on many occasions. --Also See Unverified Quotes.

"I can assure you the flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth."
-Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman - Press conference, Washington DC, April 4, 1950.