: Joining us now is the 39th president of the United States, president Jimmy Carter. Mr. President, welcome to the Skeptic's Guide.
Carter : It's a pleasure.
: So you were actually put in... this interview was setup by your grandson, George Carter, who's a fine young man... He wanted to give us the opportunity to set the record straight regarding your eyewitness account for a UFO back in 1969. Can you first just start by telling us about what you saw?
Carter : Well back in those days I was the district governor for 56 Lions clubs. I had to visit each one of those during my year of service. And I was in a small south georgia town, one night outside the school house, waiting to eat supper and then talk to them, and all of us - that was 26 men I believe, if I remember right - all of us saw a very bright light in the western sky, and it was bright enough to attract our attention, much brighter than a star. And it got closer and closer and then it seemed to stop in its proximity to us, and then the color of it changed from white to blue, to red, and it stayed there for a while all of us were gasped [???] at what we were saying, couldn't figure it out. And then the light - that all I could see, not a solid object - the light then slowly disappeared back into the direction from which it came. So I'm a scientist by training, and I've never talked about extraterrestrial beings on a, you know, a ship from outer space or anything, but, it was an Unidentified Flying Object : it was obviously unidentified, it was flying, and it was an object. And so, that's the limit of my experience with the so-called UFOs.
: And even in this retrospect now... do you have any ideas of what you think that was, what you think you saw ?
Carter : I don't really know. A very large military base, Fort Benning, an army base, training paratroopers and doing various kinds of military experiments, in the general direction from where the light came, and most of those men - most of us former or small ... men ... ordinary ... in the lions club - ... just surmised that it might be a... some kind of our device that was being tested or something like that. We never heard anything, not an helicopter motor, we not even heard an engine. We have just surmised that it was an helicopter sound. We never heard anything, there was a silence. And so I've never been able to assess, even in all the years that have passed, exactly what it might have been.
: And have you ever heard the speculation and what do you think about the idea that perhaps it was the planet Venus, which sometimes may have a halo all around it
Carter : No, it was much... no no. We were... you know all of us outdoors, men that was there, we know what Venus looks like, we know what Mars looks like, we can distinguish with Sarturn, and so forth. Some of us even have, like I do, have amateur telescopes, small telescopes, so we were fairly familiar with Venus as it changes from the morning star to the evening star. It was not Venus.
: Ok, you're confident about that.
Carter : Oh yeah.
: Have any of you have a question?
: Yes I do. President Carter, in 1973, by request, you filled out a eyewitness report for a UFO group called the International UFO Bureau, Inc.
Carter : Yes.
: Can you tell us why you did that or felt the need to do that?
Carter : Why I did it out... this was in 1973... I was governor then... of Georgia. And maybe they have questionned... oh (laugh) maybe one my interested sons ; I'd have to ask them... I don't know. I don't remember that.
: Right, that was just a request ... much... by the time.
Carter : No I don't remember... I would presume it was of my descendance. Did not mentionned... I didn't mentionned it at all, but I had 3 sons who were keen interested.
: And... what... Part of the reason why we interroged this interview is, because of all of these events, you occupy now a place in UFO folklore, and...
Carter : (laugh)
: ...one of the aspects...
Carter : (laugh) It's not the place that I have thought !
: Right... Of course.
: Right... it is trusted upon like many things - and this... Part of the folklore now is that : prior to becoming president, you promised to get to the bottom of government's involvement with UFOs and aliens and spacecraft. So this is another thing I think has installed a tremendous number of rumours about... there's a lot of conspiracy theories about that... When you were president, did you pursue the government's knowledge of UFOs, and if so, how far did you get with that ?
Carter : Well I can freely respond to that. There was a lot of things going on within the federal government. Not that was direct orders from me. The only strange and inexplicable event that I have... that has been discussed probably, is... one time we had a small plane go down somewhere in Africa. And we needed very much to find out where that plane had crashed. And we were not able to find it by surveillance from our satellites. So, the director of the CIA - he was also director of all the intelligence agencies - heard about a woman in California that was a medium or something - I don't know the title for - and he contacted her and she gave him the latitude and longitude of the plane's whereabouts. And the next time one of our space satellites went over that area we located the plane where she said it was ; and that's the only fact that I experienced that was inexplicable when I was president. But I have never had any "thought" - no in that vast distances involved in space - that United States were visited by creatures, intelligent creatures from other... I would say... other bodies in space.
: You don't take we're being visited by aliens right now.
Carter : No I don't.
: And, again just to be clear...
Carter : ..Yes..
: ...to your knowledge, the government is not hiding secret information about aliens or spacecrafts or visitations.
Carter : So what I know... they're not hiding information... there might be some... there may be reports from different sources. I would say... I put in... I had read reports... unconfirmed reports from different sources who claim that they have witnessed, you know, extraterritorial visits and I presume that there is a agency in the federal government that would accept those reports and then file them somewhere and maybe there are some reports that have been made public, I would presume that they are... to prevent ... or to prevent embarassement of people that would made ridiculous report. But... So I can say they are no reports they would have been revealed. But I think I can assure you... you're knowledgeable enough to know that, there wouldn't have been any substantial reports of extraterritorial... extraterrestrial visits that wouldn't have been reported.
: President Carter, in my research of comical rumours of in the UFO community that you asked CIA directory George H. W. Bush for access CIA UFO files, and he refused. Is there any truth to this ?
Carter: No.
: (stunned)
: So that's a...
: Ok.
Carter : I'm sorry ?
: That's a just completly fabricated rumour in the UFO community.
Carter : Mystified.
: Ok.
Carter : Well I don't know... I don't say that's a rumour from the us... I've never heard before.
: Yeah...
Carter : But It's not true.
: That what we wanted to hear from the source itself. So it doesn't...
Carter : No that's not true, but I don't claim the UFO community is fabricating...
: Again... We'll verify that... I mean, on the Internet, there are many websites on which... they made that very specific claim. we're just trying to get the...
Carter : That is not true.
: Excellent. The other topic that I was hoping to talk to you briefly about today is your stance on evolutionism and creationism. Particularly .. several occasions the state of Georgia has made moves to either include teaching of creationsim in public schools or recently remove the teaching of evolution of evolution... world evolution ... science standards.
Carter: Well... that was not made ...