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The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama
The UFO enigma has been part of our culture since the 1940s and building to a worldwide explosion of acceptance today. Now, as governments around the world open their files and records on internal UFO investigations, the US remains steadfast in its denial of interest in the UFO issue. As more of the world's population accepts the possibility of an extraterrestrial presence, the demand is building for disclosure from the United States.
Using newly declassified and Freedom of Information Act documents, eyewitness accounts, interviews, and leaked documents being authenticated, THE PRESIDENTS AND UFOS details the secret history of UFOs and the corresponding presidential administration. Starting in 1941 with the Roosevelt administration, author Larry Holcombe examines the startling discoveries facing a president preoccupied by WWII, the explosion of UFO sightings during the Truman years, first contact during the Eisenhower administration, and the possibility of a UFO connection to the Kennedy assassination. In 1975, the Nixon administration came very close to admitting that UFOs exist by funding a documentary by Robert Emenegger. Almost 40 years later, this book will examine Emenegger's findings.
For the first time, the involvement of all of the modern presidents up to and including President Obama, and the rise and then fall of their influence on UFO issues, are told in one story that is an integral part of the fascinating UFO tapestry.
Using newly declassified and Freedom of Information Act documents, eyewitness accounts, interviews, and leaked documents being authenticated, THE PRESIDENTS AND UFOS details the secret history of UFOs and the corresponding presidential administration. Starting in 1941 with the Roosevelt administration, author Larry Holcombe examines the startling discoveries facing a president preoccupied by WWII, the explosion of UFO sightings during the Truman years, first contact during the Eisenhower administration, and the possibility of a UFO connection to the Kennedy assassination. In 1975, the Nixon administration came very close to admitting that UFOs exist by funding a documentary by Robert Emenegger. Almost 40 years later, this book will examine Emenegger's findings.
For the first time, the involvement of all of the modern presidents up to and including President Obama, and the rise and then fall of their influence on UFO issues, are told in one story that is an integral part of the fascinating UFO tapestry.
334 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2015
84 people are currently reading
766 people want to read
About the author
Larry Holcombe
6 books8 followersI am a new author writing novels in the thriller genre. My first novel, The Great River Disclosure, has just been released by Brandylane Publishers. I majored in journalism at Richmond Professional Institute before starting a forty-year career in construction related sales. In 2006 I took early retirement to fulfill my passion to write. My wife Alice and I live in Virginia's Northern Neck. My second book Satan's Angel has just been completed and a synopsis is on my web site www.larryholcombe.com"
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
October 5, 2017
This book, detailing what evidence exists for presidential involvement with the UFO phenomenon since FDR, would serve as a respectable introduction to the field. The author, an experiencer himself, that being described in the text, carefully distinguishes degrees of certainty while presenting the evidence. Though I would have preferred more documentary footnotes, he does generally give his sources and treats them critically within an overarching theory of what, in fact, elements of the government and military have known and why they have variously chosen to reveal and conceal their data. Interestingly, Nixon is represented as having been the modern president most on top of the evidence and most forthcoming while Carter and Clinton are represented as having been out of the loop.
May 29, 2015
What a great book. Well researched and documented from government files. Helps paint a picture of what each president knew about this controversial topic. The government cover up stories are conflicting and absurd. This evidence leaves no other conclusion, surely, we’ve been contacted. A must read for anyone curious about UFOs.
March 29, 2015
I enjoyed this book immensely. I've always been a very casual follower of UFO and paranormal activities, mainly as an optimistic skeptic. In other words, I WANT TO BELIEVE. This book is convincing enough to direct some of my skepticism in a different direction - toward those who choose to keep things classified as opposed to transparent. There is an obvious glaring exception to this, of course, and that's the possibility that much of what is believed to be extraterrestrial activity is actually highly classified military activity. That's the problem with classified info - we don't know what we don't know. But I've never been one to fear the truth. The truth always comes out in the end. What is hidden in the darkness reaches for the light of day. If they're out there, I wouldn't mind knowing. Or taking a message. Or being the beneficiary of some sort of advanced technology. Thanks, Larry, for a great read!
Disclaimer: I received this book for free, thanks to the author's Goodreads Giveaway. Would I have purchased it anyway? Quite possibly. It's that interesting.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free, thanks to the author's Goodreads Giveaway. Would I have purchased it anyway? Quite possibly. It's that interesting.
December 23, 2015
This one is a mix. Part wild conspiracy, part reference book, part boring text book. The concatenated result is just as mixed up.
The writing is fine, but can be very bland. Early on it seems the writer is concerned with assuring the book reads more like a text book. There is little emotion or opinion, but as the chapters continue on he tends to begin to allow some speculation. By the end he is making purely opinionated statements about situations and people. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is noticeable.
The information presented runs the gamut from original and intriguing to common and mind-numbing. If you have read much about UFOs there is a large part of this book that is regurgitation of some of the most famous incidents. Of course the book also contains some rare and less heard of gems, but you have to fight through the usual stories to get there. There is also a large portion of the book that is about military sightings. These portions feel like reference guides as they quote government document after government document giving you the ability to request the information yourself.
Overall this is an alright book. It has some less talked about information, goes into some detail about debunking debunkers, and an occasional point of humor. But, the main use for this book is a historical log for anyone looking to get into the field of ufology.
Great for the worker of the field, bad for general entertainment.
The writing is fine, but can be very bland. Early on it seems the writer is concerned with assuring the book reads more like a text book. There is little emotion or opinion, but as the chapters continue on he tends to begin to allow some speculation. By the end he is making purely opinionated statements about situations and people. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is noticeable.
The information presented runs the gamut from original and intriguing to common and mind-numbing. If you have read much about UFOs there is a large part of this book that is regurgitation of some of the most famous incidents. Of course the book also contains some rare and less heard of gems, but you have to fight through the usual stories to get there. There is also a large portion of the book that is about military sightings. These portions feel like reference guides as they quote government document after government document giving you the ability to request the information yourself.
Overall this is an alright book. It has some less talked about information, goes into some detail about debunking debunkers, and an occasional point of humor. But, the main use for this book is a historical log for anyone looking to get into the field of ufology.
Great for the worker of the field, bad for general entertainment.
November 9, 2016
I would have better luck consulting a psychic than believing what they would have us know, when they want us to know it.
January 3, 2017
Interesting.
June 9, 2015
I want to believe.
March 31, 2021
A blending of two of my favourite genres - Presidential history and UFO conspiracy - that charts a highly speculative path from the FDR era to the Obama era, "The Presidents and the UFOs" organizes a number of sightings and contact experiences into the U.S. Presidential terms in which they occurred. Readers looking for a book that incorporates all these Presidents into a coherent overarching conspiracy may be disappointed: only FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Clinton are assigned any meaningful involvement (in stories that followers of Ufology will probably already be aware of), and the remaining chapters are flimsily tied to their respective officeholders.
Although it mercifully doesn't adopt the deathly boring tone that is the Ufologist's treasured defense mechanism against mockery, keeping things relatively engaging, the book commits the usual sins of UFO/E.T. advocacy. Eyewitness reports are declared to be "proof"; educational degrees and job titles are cited as unimpeachable evidence of trustworthiness and accuracy (unless they're saying something the author doesn't like, in which case they're simply agents of disinformation); blatant speculation is said to be "almost certain"; skeptics and debunkers are swivel-eyed zealots incapable of reason; and the mere act reporting an incident is often (but not always, to the author's credit) portrayed as the kind of invitation to derision and infamy that no fraudster or fantasist would dare subject themselves to. Such things are to be expected in the genre though.
(Also, what's with dismissing the theory that the Roswell incident was the result of a Soviet engineering programme employing Nazi scientists? I don't believe that explanation is right, but people just as qualified as some of the authors vaunted witnesses have endorsed it. Even an E.T. advocate like Holcombe should have given it more than a curt sentence..)
I like that the author included his own UFO sighting in the book, even though he's a bit of a drama queen when accusing anyone who scoffs at him and other witnesses of "idiocy." Bear in mind this is a man who says the story of Nixon disclosing evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence to Jackie Gleason during a guided tour "cannot be dismissed." You'd think he'd have thicker skin.
I can't say I believe a lot of what's written in this book. When terms like "probable" and "almost certainly" keep cropping up, you begin to wonder if the lady doth protest too much. The book's still fairly engaging. If, like me, you're sceptical of the E.T. hypothesis for explaining UFO events but enjoy reading about it anyway, you could do much much worse than this.
Although it mercifully doesn't adopt the deathly boring tone that is the Ufologist's treasured defense mechanism against mockery, keeping things relatively engaging, the book commits the usual sins of UFO/E.T. advocacy. Eyewitness reports are declared to be "proof"; educational degrees and job titles are cited as unimpeachable evidence of trustworthiness and accuracy (unless they're saying something the author doesn't like, in which case they're simply agents of disinformation); blatant speculation is said to be "almost certain"; skeptics and debunkers are swivel-eyed zealots incapable of reason; and the mere act reporting an incident is often (but not always, to the author's credit) portrayed as the kind of invitation to derision and infamy that no fraudster or fantasist would dare subject themselves to. Such things are to be expected in the genre though.
(Also, what's with dismissing the theory that the Roswell incident was the result of a Soviet engineering programme employing Nazi scientists? I don't believe that explanation is right, but people just as qualified as some of the authors vaunted witnesses have endorsed it. Even an E.T. advocate like Holcombe should have given it more than a curt sentence..)
I like that the author included his own UFO sighting in the book, even though he's a bit of a drama queen when accusing anyone who scoffs at him and other witnesses of "idiocy." Bear in mind this is a man who says the story of Nixon disclosing evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence to Jackie Gleason during a guided tour "cannot be dismissed." You'd think he'd have thicker skin.
I can't say I believe a lot of what's written in this book. When terms like "probable" and "almost certainly" keep cropping up, you begin to wonder if the lady doth protest too much. The book's still fairly engaging. If, like me, you're sceptical of the E.T. hypothesis for explaining UFO events but enjoy reading about it anyway, you could do much much worse than this.
May 15, 2017
I am calling it history... Holcombe does a lot of research and very careful not to deal with the extreme such. He is credible and lays out some interesting items. Basically somebody knows something and they will not tell.
December 20, 2025
Actually, 2 5 is right down the middle of stars, but I add another .5 simply because the 26 pp. of documented appendices are ontereeting. Bingo! But this book is, I'm sorry to say, poorly written, and the author, Mr. Holcombe, who, he says, has spent his entire adult life tracking down UFO tales and those who have seen them, flies off in his own often very useless digressions, wanders about a great deal, and took what might have been a solid set of stories into a Hell of sideline observations, describing his friends, an occasional wife or two, and a writing style that made my teeth grind.
That said, there's about half a book here that's useful. The Presidents since Truman were either briefed or not on UFOs, Nixon gets the prize for being the most engaged in the UFO briefs (his hanging out with UFO collector Jackie Gleason is well known and still a hoot), covering some useful information, but so much of Holcombe is guessing and discussions and his own guessy opinions (that amounted to hills of beans) and "how long I spent in libraries....etc." made for a great deal of tedium, absolutely needless and deserving a nice spot on the cutting floor for long stretches. (Moreover, Holcombe tags a few former CIA officers - never "agents", thank you - as the wise men, gives a special place, on a guess, for James Jesus Angleton, and greatly overestimates - yes, guessing - the role of CIA.)
If you must have this book for your UFO library, then you must have this book. I bought it, and I'll keep it. But be prepared, though, for great patches of disappointment amid the occasional useful material.
That said, there's about half a book here that's useful. The Presidents since Truman were either briefed or not on UFOs, Nixon gets the prize for being the most engaged in the UFO briefs (his hanging out with UFO collector Jackie Gleason is well known and still a hoot), covering some useful information, but so much of Holcombe is guessing and discussions and his own guessy opinions (that amounted to hills of beans) and "how long I spent in libraries....etc." made for a great deal of tedium, absolutely needless and deserving a nice spot on the cutting floor for long stretches. (Moreover, Holcombe tags a few former CIA officers - never "agents", thank you - as the wise men, gives a special place, on a guess, for James Jesus Angleton, and greatly overestimates - yes, guessing - the role of CIA.)
If you must have this book for your UFO library, then you must have this book. I bought it, and I'll keep it. But be prepared, though, for great patches of disappointment amid the occasional useful material.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2020
Could use more UFOs, and many more UFO-President connections.
This is another history of UFOs, the twist being the current Presidents are mentioned along with the history. This brings in the stories of UFOs that the Presidents saw (although there's nothing really new about them) and a gauge of how likely the Presidents were to release the backlog of UFO information that is being kept secret (if you believe some conspiracy theories). By far, the President most likely to have released this information was Richard Nixon, who did many other great things during his Presidency (and did one very horrible thing, that overshadowed his accomplishments).
This book was written in 2015, so it ends with Obama. This leaves out Trump (as of this review), but Trump has said he doesn't believe in UFOs, so he's unlikely to do anything. (On the other hand, Hillary Clinton had pledged to declassify everything when she ran in 2016. Coming up for 2020, Bernie Sanders has pledged to do this as well, if he wins, and Joe Biden does not seem to have said anything. This must be taken with a grain of salt, because Ford and Carter both pledged to release information, and nothing came out.)
This is another history of UFOs, the twist being the current Presidents are mentioned along with the history. This brings in the stories of UFOs that the Presidents saw (although there's nothing really new about them) and a gauge of how likely the Presidents were to release the backlog of UFO information that is being kept secret (if you believe some conspiracy theories). By far, the President most likely to have released this information was Richard Nixon, who did many other great things during his Presidency (and did one very horrible thing, that overshadowed his accomplishments).
This book was written in 2015, so it ends with Obama. This leaves out Trump (as of this review), but Trump has said he doesn't believe in UFOs, so he's unlikely to do anything. (On the other hand, Hillary Clinton had pledged to declassify everything when she ran in 2016. Coming up for 2020, Bernie Sanders has pledged to do this as well, if he wins, and Joe Biden does not seem to have said anything. This must be taken with a grain of salt, because Ford and Carter both pledged to release information, and nothing came out.)
May 7, 2023
Rubbish. This was a near DNF but I slogged through the audible, hoping that each next chapter would bring something tangible. Never really happened. Based on the title, I thought this would give more insight into each presidents dealings with the subject of UFOs. But the author only gave vague references to the presidents and simply used each administration as a timeline for selected UFO reportings. And each reporting was very superficial. Little to no details. As an engineer I was looking for some details to convince me there is a possibility... just a possibility, but all arguments were weak. Then the author decided to highlight an alien themed JFK assassination conspiracy and later told us about his own close encounter with a UFO. His introduction and justification for his viewing of a saucer screams of fake publicity in an attempt to give credit to the preceding nonsense. The book also reads like a textbook. Not a story. This was rubbish.
January 30, 2023
4.25 - I saw the author of this book featured on an episode of 'Ancient Aliens' and bought this book immediately. Of all areas of ufology, government involvement fascinates me the most.
The book focuses mainly on 20th-century UFO sightings and the presidents' responses to the UFO situation in general. There was a lot of emphasis on Nixon's and Reagan's terms as well as Project Blue Book. It appears to be very well-researched overall and is an interesting topic.
A side note: I was impressed to see that this book mentions Dorothy Kilgallen as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death/connection to the JFK assassination case. I'd never heard anything about her thoughts on UFOs and the like, so it was interesting to make that connection as well. Not many people seem to remember her despite being one of the top journalists in America for decades.
The book focuses mainly on 20th-century UFO sightings and the presidents' responses to the UFO situation in general. There was a lot of emphasis on Nixon's and Reagan's terms as well as Project Blue Book. It appears to be very well-researched overall and is an interesting topic.
A side note: I was impressed to see that this book mentions Dorothy Kilgallen as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death/connection to the JFK assassination case. I'd never heard anything about her thoughts on UFOs and the like, so it was interesting to make that connection as well. Not many people seem to remember her despite being one of the top journalists in America for decades.
December 25, 2018
It's really a primer-history of the UFO situation since WWII. Yes, an organizing framework is each successive US president, but it's more of an overview of the field & major sightings. Very measured, lots of doubt and 'well, probably not' - as you find in the UFO field as a whole. Skepticism and a lot of effort going into identifying the thousands and thousands of fakes.
I thought it was a great, book and it was perfect for me because I just want an overview of the field.
I thought it was a great, book and it was perfect for me because I just want an overview of the field.
April 21, 2020
Nothing new here, hardened UFOnauts will have read most of this info elsewhere, it does do a good job of compiling cases with a certain slant, though. In a nutshell, a good read, but if you are a long standing UFO enthusiast then its probably not quite essential. Borrow rather than buy, if you can. If you are new to the subject then you can add a fourth star as there is plenty of good cases contained within, just nothing hot off the press, as it were.
January 14, 2021
The title is more exciting than the book itself. It serves as a general overview of UFO events in the last 100 years with vague connections to presidential administrations. If this were the first UFO book you'd read, it would be overwhelming. As someone who's read a bunch, it's lacking good storytelling and compelling evidence. We must wait for disclosure and then we will learn what the presidents knew!
March 18, 2022
I was quite skeptical that the author could fill a whole chapter for each of the presidents included. But he choses not to pad when there is minimal information available. The evidence presented is primarily FOIA documents. If genuine, they would provide a compelling case. Well organized and published by a traditional publisher.
August 8, 2023
A well written examination that offers a well researched overview of famous purported UFO/UAP phenomena. Well organized historically, with links provided so it isn’t just a series of occurrences but rather an evolution of the phenomenon, primarily, but not exclusively in the United States. It’s an excellent document.
March 11, 2018
Interesting information but disorganized in the presentation.
April 2, 2019
Good and short read
September 11, 2019
Great read
Well researched and written.
Well past the time for full disclosure. Love to this man speak. Continue the great work.
Well researched and written.
Well past the time for full disclosure. Love to this man speak. Continue the great work.
October 14, 2019
This was a pretty interesting read. I definitely liked the author's writing style and tone. Lots of interesting things to ponder and discuss, really.
August 13, 2020
Tantalizing title, but this book is not a 'secret history.' It is a readable summary of some of the most high-profile UFO cases in American history organized chronologically (or for the purposes of the title, by Presidential administration). Otherwise, lots of speculation.
September 16, 2020
Some interesting historical bits in this but also a lot of conjecture. If you like the show Ancient Aliens, you'll likely find it interesting.
July 28, 2021
I would give it no stars but that wasn't an option.
October 9, 2022
Supports what is true. Debunks what's not real, disappointing some but that's what it takes to be rigorous with the truth.
May 25, 2023
Big if true
May 26, 2025
Fascinating and chilling. A well researched and balanced summary of UFO activities since the 1940s, especially government involvement. Highly recommend for anyone interested in the subject.
June 8, 2025
This is a fun book. I like it. It is even original as it goes along
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews