Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev spent an hour with Charlie Rose and Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz recently. The three discussed many topics including a conversation between Reagan and Gorbachev about uniting against visitors from outer space.
(Jake Turcotte)Photos (1 of 1)
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to fight UFOs
By Jimmy Orr | 04.24.09
This is a perfect one for Friday night.
Charlie Rose had the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz on his program this past Tuesday night. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Gorbachev got a laugh when he said he wasn’t all that impressed with Reagan’s historic challenge to “tear down this wall”. But went on to say that he believed Reagan “was a great president.”
Shultz was talking about the Lake Geneva summit and mentioned the two leaders ducked out of a meeting to take a walk to a nearby cabin.
“I wasn’t there…,” Shultz said before Gorbachev cut him off.
“From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’
“I said, ‘No doubt about it.’”
“He said, ‘We too.’”
“So that’s interesting,” Gorbachev said to much laughter.
He then said to Shultz, “I’m sorry for having interrupted you, but it was an interesting moment.”
Rose concurred.
Scroll down to watch the video.
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2. Ray C | 04.26.09
It was not the first, or only time President Reagan brought up the scenario of an alien invasion. He mentioned it again in a speech to the UN, where he asked if everyone there would band together against such a threat. He is also known to have made other disquieting comments regarding “aliens” off the record. Considering he was President of what was then the most technologically advanced space fairing nation in the world, he may just have been privy to information that is not quite as hilarious as Mr. Gorbachev and his admirers think.
3. KT | 04.26.09
Thanks for posting this, Jimmy. I saw it on PBS last week and was blown away. Very interesting thinking on Reagan’s part about the Cold War being rather artificial, and it seemed to intrigue Gorbachev, eh? Credit to Gorbachev to reveal it.
4. Issam Ahmed | 04.26.09
So wait, you mean the main narrative arc for the X-Files is true? What else aren’t they telling us… 
5. Lynexus | 04.26.09
This would be great, except we simply do not have the technology to fight UFOs. Haven’t you noticed their ships really don’t seem to be designed to blast through space? Well, that’s because they travel by tesseract. You don’t streak from point a to point b in any sort of line like our space missions do. You tesseract from one place and pop out in another. The alloys their ships are made of is impermeable to any sort of weapon we may be able to invent for hundreds of years. Nukes wouldn’t even affect it, and their ships computers are biomechanical, a virus uploaded from a Mac won’t do it. All we can do is learn to protect ourselves by learning their vulnerabilities and acting accordingly.
6. John G | 04.27.09
President Reagan either found an interesting tactic of rhetoric by which common ground could be forged between any divergent government power and the United States, or he was convinced a threat was lurking. How many other world leaders did he pose this question to, outside of the now famous U.N reference and was this an undeclared aspect to his “star wars” policy?
7. Bill Simpson of Slidell | 04.27.09
My nextdoor neighbors in eastern New Orleans for 45 years were Alfred & Flora Bayhi. He was a WW II vet & she a school teacher for many years on Grand Isle. One night while visiting friends near Amite La. they witnessed a bright light approaching the farmhouse. As they watched,it seemed to get closer & closer. Eventually ,they got so scared they all ran into the house. While walking through a nearby,freshly plowed field the next day, Alfred found several, evenly spaced indentations in the soil. When he related the story to me, I asked him why he didn’t make a cast of them as he showed me a drawing of their shape. He said that he intended to, but that it rained before he could get to the hardware store. Since they were honest, normal people, I had no reason to doubt them. It happened in the late 1960’s. Unfortunately, they are both now deceased and are greatly missed.
8. donald Hinkle | 04.27.09
Reagan was trying to establish a moment of agreement, a common cause through an allegory. It was far-fetched, but effective. And, despite Gorby saying he didn’t take it seriously, Reagan’s “tear down this wall” challenge was effective too. Strange, I woke up this morning (before reading this story) and was thinking about that historical moment and felt certain that the spoken challenge had a grand effect.
9. Suzette | 04.27.09
I’ve been having an email convo with a friend in Germany–both of us are worried about how invasive our governments have become and we agree that a left-wing dictator is just as bad as a right wing one, and vice versa. Obama will release every top secret doc we have, reveal the location and home addresses of spies, and so forth. He will not release the UFO documents, though.
Professional courtesy, you know.
10. Aegus | 04.27.09
I think Reagan was utilizing an excellent rhetorical tool to find common ground with Gorby. Another way of stating Reagan’s argument would be, “Look, we are all human, why do we bicker over ideology when there are larger problems to solve.”
This wasn’t evidence of Reagan’s belief in UFOs; this was Reagan’s simple approach to finding commonalities amongst two leaders whose only differences were on political grounds.
We may, however, have to thank UFOs for the peace that resulted.
11. TOM FROM LONESTAR | 04.27.09
This story has been going around for years now. It’s entirely possible that Reagan was using a verbal ploy to seek common ground on defense matters.
He may have substituted “Aliens” for “Chinese”, knowing full well that sooner or later, the topic of conversation would leak out as it now has.
On the other hand, Presidents and other world leaders are in fact privy to information that their fellow countrymen don’t know.
Most, if not all of the U.F.O. sightings around the U.S. are, in fact our own military aircraft, experimental and otherwise.
The U.S., and many other countries are experimenting with anti-gravity devices, stealth invisibility, time shifting and travel, etc.
Not to worry, however. If the “aliens” know anything about what’s happening down here, they’ll avoid us like cancer.
12. buckheaddad | 04.27.09
WHAT do you think would happen to all the “hocus-pocus” of organized religion
if real aliens were to appear and give us their “take” on HISTORY?
Sure would put a lot of preachers (of all faiths) out-of-a-job.
JUST A THOUGHT . . . . . . . . .
13. Herman King | 04.27.09
Reagan’s question to Gorbachev was probably hypothetical. Or did he know something else? Why doesn’t the damned government tell us?
14. CJ Roth | 04.27.09
Thank you everyone who pointed out the rhetorical mechanism of using a hypothetical. I couldn’t agree more that the question put forth by Reagan was most likely a way for Reagan to find a common ground.
15. filmlab | 04.27.09
I think Reagan was probing Gorbachev to find out if spaceships from Reagan’s home planet would be in danger of attack from the USSR.
16. Rico | 04.27.09
HEY I believe there are UFOS because an astronaut said so. Now, was that the one who drove cross-country in a diaper to kill an ex-lover, or the one who flew drunk?
17. Dylon20 | 04.27.09
The reality is UFO are out there and we are not the only intelligent creatures in the universe.
18. Matthew Kelly | 04.27.09
I am really not worried about their weapons, but can they lend us some money.
19. Dan | 04.28.09
At the time the CFR and Company was still using the Club of Romes first idea to form a global one world government - aliens bad = one world government good. Later the Club of Rome came up with another idea to build a global government - Global warming based on human cause. Charle Rose is an insider who steers the herd in the direction the global elite want - just as all of the other talking heads do. This is just one more topic to discuss and fill our minds with junk - hard to think about what is real when you are busy thinking about everything else.
20. Jamie | 04.28.09
Granted the news cycles are full lately with following the meandering “downturn” and latest frightful pandemic; but what about stories like this, or the recent discovery of hundreds of square miles of symmetrical square/rectangular lines on the Atlantic sea-floor discovered precisely where Atlantis was said to exist? These raise so many substantive questions and get little to no coverage.
21. andy | 04.28.09
Ronald Reagan, US President from 1980 to 1988, “I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ He was shocked and he said, ‘nope.’ And I said to him: ‘Let’s follow it!’ We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR’s last head of state: “The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.”
Professor Stephen Hawking: “Of course it is possible that UFO’s really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the Government is hushing it up.”
Richard Nixon, US President from 1969 to 1974: “I’m not at liberty to discuss the government’s knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO’s at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject.”
22. carey | 04.28.09
They are here. Reagan is on record for having seen a UFO. Reagan did have extreme interest in this issue. Nixon is on record stating her was briefed on ET/UFO matters and is not at liberty to disclose the information. All you need to do is start getting the facts that are available and omit the laugh factor and misinformation provided by the media/government.
23. carol | 04.28.09
It’s easier to dismiss the UFO phenomenon, then put in the effort to REALLY investigate it. It’s good to be skeptical, but debunking extraterrestrial life because we’re afraid to challenge our conventional paradigm - that’s a different story. “…we’ll let you know when the next UFO attack is.” ? I expect more from the Christian Science Monitor than a snicker on a topic for which there’s some impressive evidence, and that many are taking seriously. How about a thoughtful and mature article on the subject instead, including interviews from some of the honorable, experienced researchers in the field -those who’ve undergone enough ridicule for their honest beliefs to at least be given a fair hearing?
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. amanda irvine | 04.26.09
I think this highlights the problem with our species.
If another species has the technology to travel the vast distances involved in space travel overcoming all the hazards this would entail, do you really think they would be worried about any weapon the human race has ? Attempting to “fight” them would only result the the obliteration of mankind (if not our entire planet).
Wake up !!!! If (when?) we are visited we better take a very humble approach and be very welcoming, our we could find ourselves being swatted like flies.