Jimmy Carter, United States president from 1977 until 1981, reported seeing an unidentified flying object while at Leary, Georgia, in 1969.
[2][3] One evening in 1969, two years before he became Governor of Georgia, Carter was preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting.
[1][3] In 1973, Carter reiterated: 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.
[5] According to a meeting report that he filed with the Lions Club, Carter gave his Leary speech on January 6, 1969, not in October.
According to Fred Hart, the only guest contacted who remembered seeing the object: "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.
[3] On January 6, 1969, the sky was clear in Leary and the planet Venus was near its maximum brightness and in the direction described by Carter.
In the podcast interview, he also stated he knows of no government cover-up of extraterrestrial visits and that the rumors that the CIA refused to give him information about UFOs are not true.
In Carter's official 1973 UFO report, as given in the Rhodes book, he stated that he had seen the phenomenon in October, 1969, at 7:15 pm EST.
However, it has been determined from Lions Club records that Carter must have seen the "UFO" when he spoke to their Leary, GA Chapter on January 6, 1969.
The report "U.S. Space Science Program Report to COSPAR, 1970" (QB504.U54, Appendix I, page 154) documents that there was a barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB (Rocket Number AG7.626) and released on January 6, 1969 at 7:35 pm EST (January 7, 1969, 0035 UTC) [COSPAR stands for Committee on Space Research].
I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO "appeared from West".
[12]In 2020, Justus completed an extensive study of the high-altitude barium release clouds, concluding that what Carter saw was "totally consistent" with what was launched that evening from Eglin AFB.
[13] Justus described several physical aspects supporting consistency, and submitted a copy of the report for archival at the Jimmy Carter Library.
[14]Despite his earlier pledge, once elected, Carter distanced himself from disclosure, citing "defense implications" as being behind his decision.