Hi Everyone, 

The recent statement by Dr. Eric Davis regarding the Jimmy Carter UFO Briefing of June 1977 prompted my video for Youtube the other day, and also this discussion I had again with Allan Lavigne. 

Allan, as many of you recall, was an active member of APRO during the late 1970s, knowing Jim and Coral Lorenzen very well. In a previous interview of ours, he also discussed the matter of the UFO Exhibition of 1978 and 1979 as something that he had reason to believe originated from the Carter White House. 

This is not a confirmed element of our history, but Allan makes his case. His reasoning is that the project was far too large, too expensive, and too oddly structured to make sense as a normal commercial undertaking. Moreover, the funding was opaque, APRO was being paid to create serious exhibits for it, and Jim Lorenzen explicitly told him that “the administration” wanted to reveal the history of UFOs, the government, the Air Force, and NASA to the public in a “big reveal.” 

Why would a civilian organization like APRO have such knowledge? Allan believes there were far deeper connections of APRO to the U.S. Government. Ultimately, Allan argues that the plan may not have been merely to house exhibits in Minneapolis, but to use the Bicentennial train model as a way to move the displays across the country under high security, showing the public the evidence directly.

For Allan, the decisive point is that Jim Lorenzen was not speaking as a fantasist or outsider, but as someone Allan believed had deep government and intelligence connections through APRO’s long, unusual relationship with military and intelligence circles.

This would make the exhibit essentially a staging ground or warehouse for a national Carter-era disclosure rollout that never fully came to fruition.

It’s a fascinating possibility. The more I hear him tell this account, the more I am inclined to think it happened just that way. At any rate, this was a fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy. 

And a big thanks to Allan for taking his time to do this one.

Richard 

Nearly five decades after Jimmy Carter entered the White House, a new claim has reignited debate about what U.S. presidents may know about unidentified flying objects. Physicist Dr. Eric Davis recently stated that Carter received a classified UFO briefing in June 1977 that allegedly contained information about contact between the United States government and non-human beings.

The claim, discussed during a podcast conversation involving Davis, Eric Weinstein and host Jesse Michaels, adds fresh details to a long-circulating story about Carter’s early presidency and his interest in the UFO phenomenon. While the claim has not been independently verified, it has drawn renewed attention to a period when UFOs briefly became a subject of serious discussion inside the White House.

According to Davis, the briefing occurred only months after Carter took office in January 1977. What reportedly began as a routine meeting in the National Security Council conference room allegedly shifted location when the topic of UFOs emerged.

Davis claims the discussion moved to the Oval Office, where Carter was informed about classified information regarding UFOs and possible interactions between government agencies and extraterrestrial entities.

Another intriguing detail concerns the documentation of the meeting. Davis says records exist in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library that include an attendee list. All participants are visible in the document except for two individuals whose names and affiliations remain redacted nearly fifty years later.

The existence of those redactions has fueled speculation among UFO researchers about who might have attended the meeting and what agencies they represented.

Davis also stated that the briefing was later confirmed by Alonzo McDonald, who served as a senior staff member in the Carter White House.

According to Davis, McDonald reportedly investigated the matter after hearing about the meeting and spoke directly with Carter and other participants. After doing so, McDonald allegedly concluded that the briefing did indeed occur.

If accurate, this would suggest that discussions about UFOs were occurring at the highest levels of government during Carter’s first year in office.

The story has also been linked to a rumored classified program known as Project Aquarius, a name that has appeared in UFO documents since the early 1980s.

Davis suggested that officials attending the meeting were given briefing documents that had to be returned afterward. Later, some of those participants allegedly reconstructed the briefing from memory. That reconstruction supposedly became known among researchers as the Aquarius document.

The document refers to a highly restricted intelligence program and mentions oversight by a small group sometimes associated with the controversial MJ-12 documents, which have long been debated within UFO research circles.

However, historians note that the Aquarius material may contain a mixture of authentic terminology and deliberate misinformation. Some versions of the documents were clearly altered over time, casting doubt on their reliability.

The renewed attention on the story is partly due to Carter’s own history with UFO sightings.

Before becoming president, Carter publicly reported witnessing a strange object in the sky in 1969 while attending a Lions Club meeting in Georgia. During the 1976 presidential campaign, he spoke openly about the experience and promised that, if elected, he would help release UFO information to scientists and the public.

This statement created enormous public interest. Once Carter entered office, the White House reportedly received large volumes of letters from citizens asking for UFO disclosure or sharing their own sightings.

Inside the administration, officials explored the possibility of creating a new scientific investigation of UFO sightings. One idea was to have NASA lead a civilian research program that would replace the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which had been shut down in 1969.

The proposal quickly encountered resistance.

NASA officials argued that UFO reports did not justify launching a major research program. According to accounts from the period, intelligence agencies were also reluctant to reopen the issue, and the plan ultimately stalled.

By the end of 1977, the public effort to study UFOs had effectively faded away.

The UFO topic also surfaced in international diplomacy during Carter’s presidency.

In September 1977, Carter met with Eric Gairy, the prime minister of Grenada. Gairy had a personal interest in UFO sightings and proposed that the United Nations create an international investigation into the phenomenon.

Grenada later attempted to push for a UN resolution encouraging global cooperation on UFO research. The initiative failed to gain support, with both the United States and the United Kingdom opposing the effort.

Nevertheless, the episode illustrates how visible the UFO issue had become during Carter’s first year in office.

Despite Carter’s earlier interest, the administration eventually stopped pursuing the issue publicly. Researchers have long wondered why a president who had promised transparency on UFOs appeared to abandon the subject so quickly.

If the briefing described by Eric Davis did occur, it could provide one possible explanation. According to some accounts circulating in UFO research circles, Carter was reportedly deeply troubled after learning classified information about the phenomenon.

However, without official confirmation or newly declassified documents, the true details of what the president may have been told remain unknown.

The recent claims from Dr. Eric Davis have prompted historians and UFO researchers to revisit the events of 1977, a year when the UFO question briefly came close to the center of American political life.

Whether the alleged briefing actually took place remains uncertain. Still, the story highlights how the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena has repeatedly intersected with government secrecy, intelligence agencies, and political decision-making.

With growing public interest in UAPs and ongoing discussions in governments around the world, the Carter era may yet reveal new insights into how leaders have privately confronted one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern age.

In the early morning hours of April 3, 1975, shortly after a violent thunderstorm swept through southeastern North Carolina, police officers in the town of Lumberton began reporting something unusual in the sky.

At first, it appeared to be a strange light near a local water tower. But within minutes, multiple officers on patrol began describing the same object—seen from different locations across the town.

What followed over the next several days would become one of the most unusual law-enforcement UFO cases in the region. According to reports later compiled by investigators with the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), more than thirty law enforcement officers across a seven-county area reported observing a large, silent craft between April 3 and April 9, 1975.

Despite being miles apart, witnesses consistently described the same object: a V-shaped craft lined with red and red-green lights, sometimes accompanied by bright white spotlights, maneuvering silently across the night sky.

The First Police Sightings

The first reports came shortly after 1:45 a.m. on April 3, when three Lumberton patrolmen—Phil Stanton, P.H. Atkinson, and Neil McCormick—noticed a strange light near a water tower behind Lumberton High School while patrolling near Highways 211 and 101.

Officer Atkinson initially assumed the object might be a helicopter. But as the officers watched, the light moved across the sky in a wide arc. When they drove toward Fayetteville Road to get a closer look, the object abruptly vanished from view.

Atkinson later described the light moving across the sky before suddenly disappearing. As he recalled in later interviews, “It just went out.”

Within minutes, other officers began calling in similar sightings from different parts of the area.

As reports began pouring into the Robeson County Sheriff’s Department, dispatchers noticed something striking: witnesses who were miles apart described the same configuration of lights and the same unusual flight behavior.

The object was typically described as V-shaped or triangular, with rows of colored lights along its edges and one or more bright white beams that resembled spotlights.

Even more puzzling to observers was what they did not hear.

Despite appearing to fly at relatively low altitude and, in some cases, directly overhead, the craft was consistently described as completely silent. One officer reportedly remarked that the object passed overhead “without a sound.”

A Multi-County Wave

Over the next several nights, reports spread beyond Lumberton itself.

Officers and residents across seven counties in southeastern North Carolina reported seeing the same unusual craft moving across the region. In many cases, officers who responded to civilian reports observed the object themselves.

Investigators later noted that witnesses consistently described similar characteristics, including a large V-shaped craft, rows of red and red-green lights, bright white spotlights directed toward the ground, sudden turns and hovering movements, and the absence of any audible engine or rotor noise.

These similarities appeared in reports from witnesses who often had no contact with each other at the time of observation.

Key Events During the Sightings Wave

• April 3, ~1:45 a.m. – Three Lumberton police officers observe a strange light moving near a water tower behind Lumberton High School.
• Soon after, additional officers across the area began reporting a similarly described object moving through the sky.
• Following nights (April 3–9) – Sightings are reported across multiple counties in southeastern North Carolina. Officers sometimes respond to civilian calls and then observe the object themselves.
• Early April – A United Press International (UPI) story about the sightings circulates nationally, drawing attention from journalists and UFO investigators.
• Shortly afterward, reporter and investigator Lee Speigel travels to the region to interview witnesses and examine the case firsthand.

Speigel’s Investigation — and His Own Sighting

When journalist and UFO investigator Lee Speigel first learned of the Lumberton sightings through a UPI news release, he initially assumed the case might have a conventional explanation.

Accompanied by a reporter from the National Star, Speigel traveled to North Carolina to investigate the reports personally. Flying into Fayetteville, about forty miles north of Lumberton, he looked down at the landscape where the sightings had been occurring.

From the air, he could see miles of swamps, rivers, farmland, and forests stretching toward the Atlantic coast—a remote, sparsely populated region.

He approached the case with the expectation that a logical explanation would likely emerge once he spoke with witnesses and examined the circumstances. But during his visit, Speigel himself reported witnessing the object.

While observing the sky with local officers during the investigation, he saw what appeared to be the same unusual craft reported throughout the region. The object moved silently across the sky, displaying multiple lights and a shape that appeared structured rather than star-like.

According to his account, the craft maneuvered in ways that seemed inconsistent with ordinary aircraft. Watching the object move through the sky, Spiegel later wrote, made it far more difficult to dismiss the officers’ reports as simple misidentifications.

What had begun as a journalistic investigation had unexpectedly placed him among the witnesses.

Watch Speigel discuss his encounter at this link.

An Unresolved Case

The sightings eventually drew the attention of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who had served as scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book and who later founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).

Researchers working with CUFOS, including investigator Jennie Zeidman, compiled witness interviews, timelines, maps, and news coverage into what became known as The Lumberton Report.

Despite the large number of witnesses and the consistency of their descriptions, no definitive explanation was identified.

Possible explanations, including helicopters, aircraft, or astronomical objects, were considered, but none appeared to fully account for the reported characteristics, particularly the silent operation and abrupt maneuverability described by observers.

Nearly fifty years later, the Lumberton sightings remain a relatively little-known but notable case in UFO research—one involving dozens of trained law enforcement witnesses reporting the same unusual craft across multiple counties over several nights.

As with many UFO cases from the era before widespread video recording and satellite tracking, the evidence ultimately rests on eyewitness testimony. Yet the consistency of those accounts and the involvement of so many police officers continue to make the 1975 Lumberton UFO wave one of the more intriguing law-enforcement UFO cases in the historical record.

Special thanks to David Marler of the National UFO Historical Records Center for providing the Lumberton Report, news clippings, and other documents, and to Lee Spiegel for providing his report and information about his personal encounter.

Hi Everyone, 

I just recorded this today, as well as a 70 minute interview with Allan Lavigne on related matters. That will come out tomorrow. Meanwhile, this is what I wrote for the Youtube description:

Physicist Dr. Eric Davis recently claimed that President Jimmy Carter received a classified UFO briefing in June 1977, during which he was told that the United States government had been in contact with alien beings. Davis says documentation of the meeting exists in the Carter Presidential Library, including an attendee list with two names still redacted nearly fifty years later.

In this video Richard Dolan examines Davis’s claim, relates it to a version of the same story he heard from a well-placed source nearly twenty years ago, and reviews the remarkable but largely forgotten effort by the Carter White House in 1977 to reopen the UFO question — including the failed attempt to involve NASA and the international push at the United Nations led by Grenada’s Prime Minister Eric Gairy.

Personally, I have little doubt in the truth of what Davis has said. It accords very closely with what I was told nearly twenty years ago. There is most certainly a deeper UFO story connected with him. 

Richard