The Fact-Checker, by Michael Dobbs

Candidate Watch

Aliens Support Clinton, Richardson

Dream presidential ticket for UFO believers.

"The federal government has not come clean on all that it knows...They don't produce documents on this, they should get it all out...The government has not handled this well over the years, that is a historical fact."

--Bill Richardson, interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, claiming that the US government is witholding information on UFOs, October 30, 2007.

Last week's media excitement over the claim by Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to have personally seen a UFO obscured a much more newsworthy story. Bill Richardson alleges UFO coverup! Archives officials wonder if New Mexico governor is living on a different planet!! Top UFO researcher endorses Clinton-Richardson presidential ticket, predicts Democrats will end "UFO truth embargo"!!! The Fact Checker investigates!

The Facts

Kucinich may be grabbing the headlines, but it turns out that Richardson is the sleeper UFO candidate. The New Mexico governor has long insisted that the U.S. government has failed to disclose "everything it knows" about a 1947 flying saucer "sighting" in Roswell, N.M., that he has helped to transform into a worldwide tourist attraction. In 2004, Richardson wrote a foreward to a book entitled "The Roswell Dig Diaries" calling for "full disclosure."

"The American people can handle the truth--no matter how bizarre or mundane," the governor wrote.

Officials at the National Archives took umbrage at Richardson's suggestions of a coverup. "What records is he talking about exactly?" asked Tim Nenninger, head of the Archives modern military records branch, who supervises Air Force records of UFO sightings, known as Project Blue Book. "We are unaware of any large collection of UFO records that have not been declassified."

The largest body of UFO records was declassified in the early to mid-1970s, and is now available for research at the Archives facility in College Park, MD. A finding aid for Project Blue Book is available here. In 1994, the Air Force wrote a study optimistically entitled "Roswell Report: Case Closed", which has also been declassified and is available here.

Nenninger that some "UFO-related documents" that are part of other collections are awaiting declassification under the Freedom of Information Act, but the main bodies of records have been released. According to Archives officials, a UFO researcher named Grant Cameron was the first person to file a Freedom of Information Act request to the Clinton presidential library, putting him in the queue ahead of other researchers who are demanding the release of millions of pages of Hillary Clinton records as First Lady.

A July 1995 report by the General Accounting Office found nothing to support claims of a government coverup into the 1947 UFO sighting in Roswell. Like other official investigations, it concluded that the "flying saucer" was, in fact, a military research balloon launched to monitor Soviet atomic tests.

Rightly or wrongly, UFO researchers see Hillary Clinton as a possible ally in the fight to declassify government records on alien activity. Stephen Bassett, founder of the Paradigm Research Group, said that UFO researchers were hoping for a Clinton-Richardson ticket, as the best combination to "end the truth embargo" on UFO sightings. He expressed disappointment at Dennis Kucinich, saying that the Ohio congressmen had failed to reveal "everything he knows" about his encounter with a UFO in the early 1980s at the home of actress Shirley Maclaine.

A spokesman for Richardson, Tom Reynolds, noted that the governor had "a grin on his face" when he replied to the UFO question from Matthews on MSNBC, and "made clear that he was promoting New Mexico tourism." "The governor never alleged that there is any sort of coverup," Reynolds said. "He was speaking to the overclassification of documents. It seems there is an air of secrecy around the Roswell issue that we would like to see pulled back."

While we are addressing this subject, we must note that Kucinich used a false statistic in claiming that "more people in this country have seen UFOs than...approve of George Bush's presidency." See video here. Just for the record, according to a pre-Halloween Associated Press poll, 14 per cent of Americans say they have seen a UFO. The president's current approval rating is currently hovering around 34 per cent.

The Pinocchio Test

We understand why the governor of New Mexico wants to promote tourism in his state, but he should put up or shut up. If he has evidence that the government is withholding information, he should produce it. One Pinocchio.

Three Pinocchios for Congressman Kucinich, and his false claim that more Americans have seen UFOs than approve of President Bush.

(About our rating scale.)

Posted on November 6, 2007 at 6:00 AM ET  | Category: 1 Pinocchio, 3 Pinocchios, Bill Richardson, Candidate Record, Candidate Watch, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Rodham Clinton, History
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