Jimmy Carter's Sighting

In 1969, Jimmy Carter, then a former state senator preparing a gubernatorial run, watched an unidentified light in the evening sky before a Lions Club meeting in Leary, Georgia. About ten witnesses stood with him. In 1973 he filed a report with the International UFO Bureau, and during his 1976 presidential campaign he said he would make government UFO information public. The sighting made him the highest-profile UFO witness in American politics.

Carter described a self-luminous object about 30 degrees above the horizon that appeared to approach, recede, change from white to blue to red, and vary in apparent size over about ten minutes before departing. He consistently said it was unidentified, not that it was a spacecraft, and later remarked that having seen one, he could never ridicule people who report them.

Carter's written report and recollections; no photographs. The date he recorded (October 1969) conflicts with Lions Club records placing the Leary meeting in January 1969, a discrepancy central to the explanation.

None; Blue Book was closing. As president, Carter's staff explored a UFO study with NASA, which declined absent physical evidence. His administration's era did see substantial FOIA releases of UFO-related documents from the CIA and other agencies.

Investigator Robert Sheaffer identified the object as the planet Venus, which on the January 1969 date stood exactly where Carter reported the object, at matching brightness; the color changes and size shifts match well-documented Venus misperceptions that have fooled pilots and police. Carter's estimated details (size, distance, closeness) are the standard errors of a bright point source. Others note Carter, a trained nuclear-program officer, rejected the Venus identification informally. The case is cited on both sides: proof that anyone can be fooled, or proof that anyone can be a witness.