WEBVTT - Richard Nixon's Alien Adventure 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:13.000 On November seventh, nineteen seventy two, America went to the polls, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.840 and the nation nearly unanimously voted to re elect President 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.760 Richard Nixon. Of the five hundred and thirty eight electoral votes, 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:27.760 Nixon won five hundred and twenty that's ninety six point 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.320 five percent of the electoral college vote. The only two 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:35.320 electoral College votes he lost were Massachusetts and the District 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:36.160 of Columbia. 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:38.720 Nixon took the whole map. 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.839 It's one of the single greatest electoral victories in US history. 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.040 His reelection was more than a mandate. It was self 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.960 evident that Richard Nixon was the unchallenged leader of. 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:54.040 The free world. No one was more powerful than Richard Nixon. 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.639 And then just a few months later, on February nineteenth, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.520 nineteen seventy three, Nixon had the day off. It was 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.880 Washington's birthday, a federal holiday, so the president had some 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.440 time for himself. That Monday, he was in Florida, where 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.000 he spent the day playing eighteen holes at a celebrity 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:19.600 golf tournament. According to his official presidential calendar, Nixon hopped. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.040 Into a chopper and flew to the exclusive. 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.240 Country club of Miamia there in the early afternoon, the 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.920 President enjoyed the links with David Eisenhower, the son of 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.360 former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also happened to be 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:36.160 Nixon's son in law married to his daughter Julie. The 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.000 other person golfing with Nixon that fateful day was his 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.400 good friend and financial donor of the famous funny man 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.760 Jackie Gleeson. Perhaps drunk on his new power, perhaps just 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.640 feeling himself because he'd ended the war in Vietnam, or 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.960 perhaps it was just that sort of day. Whatever it was, 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.040 something happened out there on the golf course because Nixon 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.440 decided he would show Jackie Gleeson what the comedian wanted 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.520 to see most of all in life. And later that 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.520 same day, President Nixon took Jackie Gleeson to a secret 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.600 base in Florida because the most powerful man on earth 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.519 had promised his friend he would show him the bodies 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:21.360 of dead aliens recovered from a crashed UFO. At least 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:27.239 that's how the story goes. This is very special episodes 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.360 and I'm your host, Zarn Burnett. This is the story 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:34.600 of when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson where the aliens are. 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:42.720 Kept Welcome back to very special episodes. My name is 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.600 Jason English. I'm solo this week for the banter portion 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.080 of our program, the full Team. We'll be back next week. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.840 Dana and Zaren and I have a running joke about 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.840 how Richard Nixon seems to appear in every episode we 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.680 put out, just in the last couple months. He popped 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:03.120 up in our discussion of Big Bird's diplomatic mission to China. 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.880 Saren mentions him briefly in our episode with David Chase 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.959 talking about the Lost Wonder Years script. Nixon's name comes 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:12.920 up at the end of last week's episode when we 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.000 were talking about my daughter's appearance on The Rachel Ray Show. 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.400 We crunched the numbers. Nixon has appeared in forty percent 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.200 of our episodes this year, and none of these episodes 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.360 are about Richard Nixon. He's just in the background. So 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.240 Saren decided to set off and find the strangest story 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.720 that actually involves the former president. I will caveat from 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.800 the start this story may not be true, but the 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:39.640 people involved all believed that it was. 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:40.160 So. 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:45.080 Did President Nixon show his buddy Jackie Gleeson the secret 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:50.640 facility in Florida, where we're hiding dead aliens, let's discuss. 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.240 In twenty eighteen, a home that once belonged to Jackie 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.880 Gleeson came up for sale asking Chrisce twelve million dollars. 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.600 The custom built dwelling was situated in a leafy glen 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:07.360 in the Hudson Valley. The home was quite unique. In fact, 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.280 it was a complex of structures. Two of them were 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:14.800 built to look like UFOs. There's the main house aka 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:19.279 the Mothership, and there's the guesthouse aka the scout Ship. 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:24.000 The comic had the homes built to his exacting specifications. 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.120 The construction took five years. In nineteen fifty nine, when 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.600 the builders were done, Jackie Gleeson had a home that 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.039 looked like a UFO had landed in the New York Woods. 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.840 Inside the home you would find no right angles, no 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.760 indication it was shaped by human hands. Instead, all the 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.159 angles were rounded, curved, and organic by design. In the 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.919 listing from the real estate agents from Remax, they noted 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.640 that the concept of the home is a musical note, 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.000 hence the roundness of the design. 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.679 As with a note, it never ends. 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.920 If you look at the ceilings, the woodwork looks like rowboats. 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.720 There are the trusses that hold the house up. 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.240 There are no cross support beams because they would have 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:11.359 had right angles. 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.159 The home boasted a hell of a spread. 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.920 There were five bedrooms, six baths, a library, a billiard's room, 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.680 a home office, and roughly seventy five hundred square feet 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.640 of living space. And Jackie Gleeson often played host at 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:32.479 the home, entertaining his famous friends and colleagues, including Richard Nixon, 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.640 which tells us that Richard Nixon was quite familiar with 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:38.320 the fact that his old friend Jackie Gleeson was a 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:43.239 nut for the flying saucermen from Mars. In his custom 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:47.680 spaceship home, Jackie Gleeson kept a library of seventeen hundred 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.320 books on the subject, as well as books on parapsychology 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.159 and the paranormal. But above it all, Jackie Gleeson was 0:05:55.200 --> 0:06:00.640 all about them aliens, UFOs and flying saucers. To read 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.240 contemporary stories on the subject, such as the one about 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:06.200 a woman who claimed to be married to a man 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.680 from Saturn, he also examined the photographs of any and 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:15.280 all reported UFO sightings. Jackie Gleeson mostly came away unconvinced. 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.320 He was a skeptical believer. He wanted to know if 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:22.240 there were aliens out there. He believed there were, but 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.200 he really wanted to know for sure. There is a 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:29.159 small and subtle irony that the man who played Ralph 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.520 Cramden on the early TV show The Honeymooners, who first 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:41.120 became famous for comically threatening his wife home, was into UFOs. 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:45.440 But the man was a space case, and he also was. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.880 Friends with the most powerful man in the world. 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:54.000 The keeper of the secrets. Former President Lyndon Johnson, had 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.520 died in January, just days after Nixon's second inauguration. 0:06:58.080 --> 0:06:59.880 The man who knew. 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.960 That Nixon cheated his way into power in the sixty 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.560 eight election, who could have revealed what he called Nixon's 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:11.480 quote treason, was gone. So was the once all powerful 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:15.000 head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. He died in 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:19.040 May of seventy two. Also, former President Truman died in 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:23.400 December of that same year, and so in nineteen seventy three, 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.240 at the start of his second term, the only one 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.560 left still standing is Richard Nixon. He was the only 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:35.560 living president. Nixon was the only keeper of the secrets left, 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:37.640 and there were definitely. 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:38.320 Secrets to keep. 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:43.320 Paul blake Smith wrote the book President Eisenhower's Close Encounters 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.520 when Nixon was the vice president. 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:46.120 To Dwight D. 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.760 Eisenhower, he'd learned about the aliens who'd come to Earth. 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.400 According to Paul Blacksmith, the story goes quote, Eisenhower stepped 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.160 away from his golf vacation in Palm Springs, California, on 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.360 the night of February nineteenth, nineteen fifty four, and went 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.200 to Edward's Air Force Base in a pre arranged meeting 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:07.880 to meet some landed friendly extraterrestrials. They were human like, 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.840 according to a US test pilot who was there. The 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:16.600 aliens were reportedly fluent English speakers, and they chatted with 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.760 President Eisenhower in a relaxed and conversational manner. It seems 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.440 that the aliens also liked Ike, but they did ask 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.760 Eisenhower to do them one favor, hook him up do 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.400 a solid for the et. As Paul Blake Smith tells it, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.680 the aliens told Ike, quote, stop. 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.359 Your atomic boom testing program. 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.240 So basically it was like a riff on the plot 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.280 of the classic sci fi flick The Day of the 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:46.000 Earth Stood Still. But you may be thinking, what about Nixon, 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:50.360 was he also there, We don't know. It's doubtful. When 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.000 LBJ was president, exactly ten years later, he took a 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.880 trip out to that same top secret base in Palm Springs. 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.319 Back to Paul Blake Smith, he claims that he found 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.880 evidence that President Johnson also had a secret rendezvous with 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:06.880 the same aliens that Ike spoke to. 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:08.960 Apparently on the tenth. 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:13.280 Anniversary of Eisenhower's initial contact with the Flying Saucer Men, 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.080 which would make it February nineteenth, nineteen sixty four, then 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:21.280 President Johnson called former President Eisenhower from the White House 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:24.360 and asked him about the aliens, what to do, what 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.920 to say, how to chitchat with them? Then he flew 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.360 to Pop Springs, where he met with Ike in person 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.960 multiple times. Then he went back again four years later 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.520 in nineteen sixty eight, and again on the same date, 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:46.240 February nineteenth. As Paul Blake Smith reasons quote, something was up. 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.120 Now does that date sound familiar. 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.440 It's the same day that Nixon went golfing with Jackie Gleeson, 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:56.480 and it's the same day that he took Jackie Gleeson 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.680 to see the preserved bodies from a wrecked alien spaceship. 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.800 Only now it's five years later. February nineteenth, nineteen seventy three. 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:10.400 That day, Nixon was in Miami to attend Jackie Gleeson's 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:14.480 celebrity golf tournament, which was televised on CBS. At the 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.720 golf course, the President's helicopter touchdown, Nixon hopped out a 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.720 Marine one. He chatted with the press before the news cameras. 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.000 He bantered a bit with Jackie Gleeson. Then he and 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.720 his pal hopped in a golf cart and toured the 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:33.160 manicured greens. Their golf outing that day is well documented, 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.880 but what's not as well documented is what happened later 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.760 that same day when Nixon showed up at Jackie Gleeson's 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:59.040 house alone. I gene with my own jew I In 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.560 nineteen fifty, Jackie Gleason was on the radio talking about 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.800 his love of all things alien. But he was no 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:10.200 gape mouthed, goable guy. Gleason wasn't there to speculate. He 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.120 wasn't there to dream aloud about one day seeing a 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.040 flying saucer and those little green men from Mars. No, 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:22.480 he wanted evidence, incontrovertible evidence, and he wanted others in 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:27.280 the community to also demand provable evidence for what he called, 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:32.080 quote the most important story in the world. The radio 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.720 show he was on was called The Long John Neville Show. 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:41.120 Jackie Gleason was a guest along with fellow paranormal researcher. 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:45.760 Gray Barker, and Whoo. Jackie went hard after his fellow believer. 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.160 At one point, the two men get into this heated 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.560 exchange about a woman named Marla Baxter who claimed to 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:54.160 be married to a man from Saturn. 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:56.439 Jackie found it laughable. 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.560 He felt this kind of talk was exactly the problem 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.120 that was why aliens in flying saucers were considered such 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:08.520 a kooky subject and never taken seriously by serious people. 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.880 That night, in nineteen fifty eight, Gleason wondered aloud on 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:17.280 the radio show why aliens always picked such dubious people 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.880 to abduct or to give their messages to humanity? 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.000 As Jackie Gleeson put. 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:30.480 It, why what a space person contact anyone? Well, let's 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.040 not say how it's that's dla. Why what a space 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.319 person con got any woman being on it? That's what 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.440 you think would be, at least according to the people 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.040 who claim to be contacted the space people have a. 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:46.199 Message for us. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.360 At this point, Jackie Gleason asks what that message is, 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.320 and more importantly, he asks, if the aliens really want 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:56.800 us to believe their message, and if they do want 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.359 us to believe it, then why don't. 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:04.120 They everdence along with this so that we were believe them. 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.600 This is what drives the funny man crazy. 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.080 If the aliens want to make contact, why do they 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:18.240 always pick the most suspect citizens to convey the information 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:23.559 to Why trust them with their message and then obscure 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:25.680 any evidence that they've been on earth? 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:27.600 It makes no sense. 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.959 In that same radio show, Jackie Gleeson tells a story 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.040 of how two years earlier, back in nineteen fifty six, 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.959 he tried to make a documentary about aliens. His partner 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.720 in the project was the legendary mid century journalist Edward R. 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:43.120 Murraw. 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.439 As Gleeson tells the story as. 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:48.640 Morrow and I I want to and I sauld I 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.080 think the biggest story of the world is flying them. 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:56.199 If they I let you and I do a documentary 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:03.280 fhing what don't If they're off wearing sauce or who telling, 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:08.000 But it's just the full goal, then we should forget 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.240 about it. And he says, I got the guy in 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.200 general so and so up, and we called the guy 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:18.920 up that the guy said to don't get paying this thing. 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.120 I don't want to get pare it. It's too hot 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.600 down here. I don't want to handle it. And you 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:25.640 might as well to get about the project. You'll get 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:30.080 no co operation. And I all hung up the phone 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.160 and he left that may and he repeated what the 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:33.920 guy said to him on the phone, if I could 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:39.280 pare up the Henry, and he left that they're off wine. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.560 It didn't matter which avenue he attempted. If he partnered 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.200 with a respected journalist and tried to ask the important questions, 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:53.680 or if he did late night radio shows the paranormal investigators, 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:58.120 Jackie Gleeson could never get the answers he most desperately desired, 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:03.280 as he mused to Great Darker, the paranormal author and investigator. 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.680 With a client off, a little guy hopping out and say. 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:12.440 Perios probably wanted to go. And I want to have 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:15.600 that ran down a faceball field in Central Park and 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:17.840 there'll be plenty of people in who were three years 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:22.280 and five minutes, everybody alone, whatever its. 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.760 Is, well, Jackie Gleeson didn't know then, But what he 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.400 was about to discover was that his friend, the most 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.680 powerful man in the world, wanted to share a secret 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:41.160 with him, one that would forever change his life. Jackie 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.760 Gleeson met Beverly McKittrick, his second wife, at a country club. 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.760 Looking back, much of his life was shaped by country clubs. 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:53.000 The pair married in nineteen seventy. Their marriage didn't last long. 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:56.200 They divorced in nineteen seventy five, but it was an 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.600 amicable split. Eight years later, in nineteen eighty three, Beverly 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:04.760 McKittrick shared a very unexpected story from her time being 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.880 married to Jackie Gleeson. It was about the time his friend, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.400 the President showed her husband the Flying Saucerman. 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.680 I'll never forget the night in nineteen seventy three my 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.200 famous husband came home, slumped white faced in an armchair 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.280 and spilled out the incredible story to me. He was late. 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.080 It was around eleven thirty pm, and I'd been worried. 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:26.560 As soon as I heard his key turn and the 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.200 lock of our golf course home in Invery, Florida, I 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:31.440 jumped to my feet and asked, where have you been. 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:33.200 His reply stunned me. 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.040 I've been at Homestead Air Force Base, and I've seen 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:41.160 the bodies some aliens from out of space. It's top secret. 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:44.840 Only a few people know, but the President arranged for 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.240 me to be escorted in there and see them. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.400 According to mckitchenen, that night, Nixon showed up at their 0:16:52.440 --> 0:17:01.200 home alone, driving himself. Now this may sound fetched, but Nixon, 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.600 like John F. Kennedy, was known to sneak out of 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.600 the White House, and Nixon was even known to give 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.560 his Secret service men the slip from time to time. 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.919 Guess Old Tricky Dick was also Slippery Dick. So there's 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.880 Nixon saigns his secret service guys. When he shows up 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:22.200 at Jackie Gleeson's home and the President tells Jackie he's 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:23.640 got a surprise for him. 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:28.119 Nixon is like, come on, good up, Jackie, put on 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:31.840 your pants, let's go. There's something I want to show you. 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.880 Nixon drives them thirty five miles over to Homestead Air 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.960 Force Base. Of course, the President's recognized and saluted by 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:43.840 the soldier at the gate, and they're waved onto the base. 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:48.560 Nixon leads Jackie Gleeson to a top secret facility. It 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:53.040 was heavily guarded yet it was a nondescript building. There, 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:57.240 Nixon is waved into the top secret facility because he's 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.639 the president, and I guess that includes plus one privileges, 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.879 because he was able to get Jackie Gleeson into the 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:08.720 top secret facility with him. Jackie Gleeson's wife McKittrick very 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:12.440 memorably recalls what he told her when he returned home. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.720 There were a number of labs we passed through first 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.239 before we entered a section where Nixon pointed out what 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.000 he said was the wreckage from a flying saucer and 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.479 closed in several large cases. Next, we went into an 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:26.840 inner chamber, and there were six or eight of what 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:30.600 looked like glass topped coke freezers. Inside them were the 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:32.720 mangled remains of what I took to be children. 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:38.880 It's finally happening. The aliens are so close Jackie Gleeson 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.879 can almost touch them. One might imagine Gleeson is looking 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:47.160 to Nixon, the President nodding in response, and then Gleeson 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.600 looks once again at the fantastically terrific sight before him. 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.960 It's easy to imagine Nixon standing there in the top 0:18:55.000 --> 0:19:00.520 secret base wearing some awkward, uneasy Nixon smile. As he 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.080 tells his good friend Jackie Gleeson. 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.679 Ugh, as you can see they're real. 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.840 There's just a thick piece of glass separating the former 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.800 TV star from what he's most always wanted to see, 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.720 a real alien from outer space. 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.960 And there were the aliens, lying on four separate tables. 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:25.040 They were tiny, only about two feet tall, with small, 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:29.320 bald heads and disproportionately large eyes. They must have been 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:31.359 dead for some time because they'd been embalmed. 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.400 According to Nixon, the alien's bodies had been pulled from 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.359 the wreckage of a spaceship. 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:40.639 No word on if it was the famous crash at Roswell. 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:44.640 After all those years of searching, after reading all those 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.679 thousands of books, attending all the conferences, and listening to 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:53.560 all those late night call in shows, finally Jackie Gleeson 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.560 had his evidence of flying saucers and the little Green 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.399 men from Mars, and just as Nixon had hoped, it 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:05.760 indeed blew his friend's mind. His wife remembers how after 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:07.720 he returned home, Jackie Gleeson. 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.560 Couldn't sleep for two weeks. 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.399 He wanted to know so badly and for so long, 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.280 But then when he finally did see an alien in 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.240 a spaceship with his own two eyes. It nearly wrecked him. 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:24.040 He didn't know how to process it. However, he did 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.199 know he needed to swear his wife to secrecy, so 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.800 he did that, and she didn't tell anyone right up 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:33.480 until they got divorced, and then she wrote her tell 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:34.160 All memoir. 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:36.199 Then she told the story to the. 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.600 National Inquirer because Homegirl needed to sell some books, which 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:46.160 immediately undercut her credibility. So what did Jackie Gleason say 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.439 about his encounter after his wife spilled the beans and 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:50.720 told his secret to the world. 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:53.800 Nothing. 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.920 He didn't deny it, he didn't dispute it. He also 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:03.679 didn't corroborate it. He didn't say anything. One year before 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.320 he passed away, Jackie Gleeson gave an interview to a 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:11.199 fellow ufologist named Larry Warren, and that guy claims that 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.359 Jackie Gleeson repeated the same story to him seated there 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.480 in his UFO shaped home in the Hudson Valley. Also, 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.280 there are some who have claimed to see those very 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.520 same aliens in the top secret base in Homestead, Florida, 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:31.440 and one man, a former CIA operative named Chauncey Holt, 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:36.720 claims he was there that very day, February nineteenth, nineteen 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:42.119 seventy three, when Nixon showed Jackie Gleeson the small, mangled 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:47.679 bodies of shipwrecked aliens. Yet the question remains, did Richard 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:51.760 Nixon really reveal the greatest secret ever kept? Did the 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.800 President take his golf buddy Jackie Gleeson to a top 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:59.560 secret facility and show him the proof he so clearly craved. 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:00.760 We don't know. 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.680 Ironically, we have no proof. We just have the stories. 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.560 But I like to believe it happened. But I like 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:10.240 to believe aliens are real. I also like to believe 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.800 that Jackie Gleeson got what he wanted most out of 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:16.800 this life, that he finally saw a real alien, and 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.400 seeing it wiped out everything he'd ever known or believed 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:24.840 to be true, which wrecked him too, the great cost 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.720 of innocence lost. I also like to believe that the 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.840 most powerful man in the world, Richard Nixon, the master 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.520 of secrets, wanted to give his friend the greatest gift 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.120 he could think of, but he forgot to tell him 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.680 how to live with that truth. There's an irony there too. 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:45.439 The most famous liar in American political history gives his 0:22:45.520 --> 0:22:49.320 friend a great hidden truth as a gift, and that 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.480 truth damn near kills his friend Nixon. 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:55.399 But at least Jackie Gleeson got to see the aliens. 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.560 That is, if you believe it happened. We just don't know. 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:04.000 But sometimes not knowing is better. We can believe whatever 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:04.520 we want. 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:06.080 Thanks for listening. 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:15.000 Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:18.600 Today's episode is written by Zaren Burnett. Our show is 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:22.399 hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Schwartz, and Jason English. Our 0:23:22.440 --> 0:23:26.440 producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sam designed by Jonathan 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:30.640 Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:36.120 Additional editing by Mary Doo. Original music by Alice McCoy. 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:41.680 Show logo by Lucy Kintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English. 0:23:42.400 --> 0:23:47.240 Our next episode comes out next Friday, June twenty seventh. 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:50.119 We are a Wednesday show, but we need to shift 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:52.560 a couple of days next week because we have a 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:56.040 very exciting interview that will be incorporated in that episode. 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.600 So give us a couple of days. It'll be worth it. 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:07.159 Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.