Did President Nixon hide evidence of extraterrestrial life in a time capsule?

Claim:

President Richard Nixon hid a time capsule in the White House containing evidence of extraterrestrial life and human contact with extraterrestrials.

Evaluation:

It is an article of faith among UFO conspiracy theorists that every President of the United States since Franklin Roosevelt has been inaugurated to top-secret evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

According to the 2015 book The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obamavirtually all wanted to go public with knowledge of who (or what) was responsible for the unidentified flying object sightings, but were blocked by intelligence officials.

Richard Nixon – who, according to the book’s author, Larry Holcombe, was convinced that “a limited level of UFO disclosure” would secure its place in history – went to extraordinary lengths to preserve this information for posterity when it more recent reports should give believed.

A March 20, 2018 Article The conspiracy-oriented blog YourNewsWire.com posted quotes from a phone interview with Robert Merritt, an occasional police informant and – according to him – an undercover domestic intelligence operative for the Nixon administration, in which he says he was shown evidence of extraterrestrial life during a face-to-face meeting with the President:

… In a seemingly startling new twist, Merritt Liszt reveals that he has met with President Nixon three times in a “deep underground location beneath the White House”. The first time, Nixon read him a letter stating that the US would protect him if he was an extraterrestrial being and that scientists at Los Alamos were able to communicate with him and obtain “advanced technology and science”.

Nixon then sealed the letter in a “time capsule” that he hid somewhere in the White House.

At another meeting, Merritt said Nixon told him to give National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger a copy of the letter (which Nixon allegedly taped to Merritt’s stomach) and not tell anyone. Now, Merritt says co-author Douglas Caddy has informed the National Archives that Nixon’s so-called time capsule is still in the White House, and that he (Caddy) will reveal the location if the National Archives agree to read the letter to the public.

It’s more than a little absurd. We listened to the entire 75-minute interview with Merritt, conducted by self-proclaimed “dark journalist” Daniel Liszt, hoping we could understand it better.

We could not. The absurdities and contradictions are too blatant and too numerous.

Merritt says the last of his three face-to-face meetings with Richard Nixon took place in July 1972, shortly after news of the Watergate burglary broke. He found Nixon in tears, fearing for the survival of his presidency. But that wasn’t why Nixon asked him there. He wanted to talk about aliens. This is from a part copy of the interview from EarthFiles.com:

MERRITT: He had this letter. He pulled it out and read me this one piece of paper. And then he put that letter in a Manila envelope, and he put a gold seal over the middle, and then he put a piece of tape over it, and on the front it handwritten, “To Henry Kissinger.” He asked for it to be delivered in person or to be mailed, whichever was best or safest.

LISZT: Well, that letter was very important. Can you describe the letter to me?

MERRITT: There were two red lines. They looked like a scientific formula with letters, numbers, and other scientific symbols that would be used, like chemistry symbols. He said, “We have the knowledge and we have in our protection,” and he said, “Subjects from Planet X.” And I asked him a question, and he didn’t seem to like what I asked him, but I said, “Are those things in Mexico or Area 51?” He seemed offended by the fact that I might know that.

LISZT: Okay, now on this last meeting with Nixon, he reads you this letter, he shows you this formula, and he now mentions an alien that you’re protecting, and he’s a little annoyed that you mentioned that the being was or is being held in custody.

Merritt: Yes. The word he used was protected, not captive, not captive. He didn’t use words that would mean against the will. You know that as well as I do, if we had such a being, yes, it would be in captivity. I don’t think we would run it on the street.

LISZT: You said he mentioned that scientists at Los Alamos learned to communicate with this being. What did he say to that?

MERRITT: That we have attained a very great amount of knowledge, very powerful, to possess that knowledge and be able to learn from it, would be the most powerful nation or government in the entire world and could rule the world.

Merritt would have us believe that almost half a century ago Nixon had earth-shattering evidence that the US government had advanced scientific knowledge collected from extraterrestrials (knowledge that made the TV show star trek “antiquated,” the President reportedly said), and what he intended to do with it was hide it in a time capsule that Nixon never spoke of again.

Moreover, Nixon reportedly shared this revelation with only two other people: Merritt, a shadowy dirty-tricks agent whom the president barely knew, and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who never spoke on the matter himself.

Nixon said any nation possessing this advanced knowledge could “govern the world.” What became of it? What became of the aliens? What became of their supposed home planet?Planet X” (which, in the parlance of astronomers, refers to a hypothetical, yet to discover planet beyond Pluto’s orbit)? What became of the manila envelope taped to Merritt’s stomach?

Actually, we know what became of the latter. According to Merritt, he dropped it in a mailbox. (So ​​much for Nixon’s duct-taped espionage.) The rest is a mystery wrapped in a riddle in a bad sci-fi novel.

Merritt is undoubtedly a colorful figure and no stranger to conspiracy theories. His earlier claim to fame was a 2010 book co-written with Douglas Caddy, a lawyer who briefly represented the Watergate burglars in 1972, billed as an “exposé” of the Watergate scandal. Merritt claims Nixon was innocently involved in the burglary and cover-up. Instead, he was allegedly “engineered” by conspirators within the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who orchestrated the scandal to bring down the president. The historical record says otherwise.

As for Richard Nixon’s alleged interest in and knowledge of extraterrestrial life, apart from unsourced quotes cited by UFO enthusiasts and a dubious supermarket tabloid Story Released in 1983, there is little evidence that he even gave it any thought.

Said story that was notoriously unreliable National Investigator describes, under the heading of Beverly Gleason (the ex-wife of TV comedian Jackie Gleason), an incident that allegedly happened ten years earlier:

Aliens exist! Ask Jackie Gleason – he actually saw her.

I will never forget the night in 1973 when my famous husband came home, face pale, slumped in a chair and told me the incredible story.

He was late. It was around 11:30pm and I was worried. As soon as I heard his key turn in the lock of our golf course home in Inverary, Florida, I jumped up and asked, “Where have you been?”

His answer amazed me:

“I was at Homestead Air Force Base – and I saw the bodies of some aliens from space.

“It’s top secret. Few people know. But the President arranged for me to be escorted in and see her.”

[…]

“And there were the aliens, lying on four separate tables.

“They were tiny – only about two feet tall – with small bald heads and disproportionately large years.

“They must have been dead for some time because they were embalmed.”

Gleason’s story was indeed incredible – if not too incredible to be published in the National Investigator, whose pages were often filled with strange accounts of supernatural events. There’s little reason to believe it’s anything but a tall tale.

An entry in the daily newspaper by Richard Nixon diary confirms he was at a celebrity golf tournament in Lauderhill, Florida on February 19, 1973 with Jackie Gleason. However, the President’s tight schedule left no room for a side trip to marvel at alien corpses. At 12.10pm he was helicoptered to Inverrary Golf and Country Club where he was greeted by Jackie Gleason. After Gleason drove a golf cart to the 18th green, Gleason introduced the President to the assembled guests, with whom he spoke for about 10 minutes. By 12:30 p.m., Nixon was back at the helipad and en route to his Key Biscayne compound. We have found no further record of the 1973 meeting between Nixon and Gleason.

In fact, according to Nixon confidante Frank Gannon, who spent many hours interviewing him and editing his memoirs in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the ex-president is shown no interest in UFOs or extraterrestrial life at all:

At one point during our work in San Clemente, I asked RN if he believed in UFOs and if there was anything to the whole Roswell Area 51 business. He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes and I went straight to the next topic.

In a coda on the history of the ET time capsule, Douglas Caddy, co-author with Robert Merritt, wrote a February 2018 Write to the National Archives and Records Administration, which offered to reveal the location of Nixon’s secret letter on the condition that its contents – “if the document is discovered” – be made public. He has yet to accept the offer.