Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast, George
Speaker 1: nor with you. Paul Blake Smith back with Us. Born
Speaker 1: and raised in Cape Girardo, Missouri, he is the product
Speaker 1: of that city's public school system and then attended Southeast
Speaker 1: Missouri State University at the Cape along my son did
Speaker 1: that and also one of my granddaughters. He has a
Speaker 1: four year degree in mass communications with a major with
Speaker 1: an English miner. The grandson of a Cape Girardo attorney
Speaker 1: of fifty plus years and also a US grandson actually
Speaker 1: also a US Commissioner, city attorney, and community leader. Paul
Speaker 1: is the son of a local paralegal and an educator
Speaker 1: who worked in the suspected crash area within neighboring Scott County.
Speaker 1: A fan of American history and popular culture, he now
Speaker 1: lives and works in a city in the western part
Speaker 1: of the showm State, writing original screenplays and other books
Speaker 1: on largely historical non fiction subjects, including a follow up
Speaker 1: to his original fact based publication M forty one, The
Speaker 1: Bombshell Before Roswell. Paul Blake Smith Back on Coast to Coast,
Speaker 1: Hey Paul, welcome back, thanks for having me on, and
Speaker 1: Happy President's Day. Absolutely, my son still raves about Simo
Speaker 1: led that school. It is a good school, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad I went there. It was for me. It was
Speaker 1: a lot like high school in Cape Girardo, only with
Speaker 1: the classes further apart, and you had to walk up
Speaker 1: and down these steep hills in the summertime, you'd work
Speaker 1: up a sweat just getting to your classroom. But otherwise
Speaker 1: it was a great university. I used to drive out
Speaker 1: there a lot to pick him up and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And then one of my granddaughters graduated from there with
Speaker 1: a degree in hotel management. She just loved it, had
Speaker 1: a great time there. How did you get involved in
Speaker 1: these UFO stories? When I was researching the Cape Girardo
Speaker 1: UFO crash of nineteen forty one, I kept happening across
Speaker 1: a story that I had read some years earlier and
Speaker 1: intrigued me this idea that Resident Eisenhower actually met with
Speaker 1: friendly extraterrestrials at an Air Force base, at a hangar
Speaker 1: near a runway. And I always found that very exciting,
Speaker 1: and I thought, has anyone ever researched this early and
Speaker 1: done a book, so I thought, no one has, and
Speaker 1: I wrote that and it came out a few years
Speaker 1: ago and it's done quite well, a lot of good reviews.
Speaker 1: And along the way I found the date February nineteenth
Speaker 1: kept popping up. For example, that's when Eisenhower stuck away
Speaker 1: from his Palm Springs, California vacation to go out to
Speaker 1: Edwards Air Force Base in a pre arranged meeting. And
Speaker 1: ten years later, exactly Lyndon Johnson was president. He was
Speaker 1: on the phone with Eisenhower on that ten year anniversary date.
Speaker 1: LBJ got on a plane and flew right out to
Speaker 1: Eisenhower and met with him a number of times, some
Speaker 1: in private. There's some apps in his schedule, and you
Speaker 1: kind of wonder what the two of them were up
Speaker 1: to that was so very important. They had to meet
Speaker 1: in Palm Springs. There were two Air Force ones on
Speaker 1: the ground at the local airport, even though LBJ did
Speaker 1: not have a vice president. In the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: assassination of President Kennedy and then fourteen years after the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four event, on February nineteenth, LBJ went back
Speaker 1: to Palm Springs and met again with Dwight Eisenhower in
Speaker 1: his retirement, and they played golf together and huddled in private,
Speaker 1: and soon we had a new president, Richard Nixon, and
Speaker 1: so on February nineteenth, nineteen seventy three, it's been alleged
Speaker 1: by Jackie Gleason's wife that Jackie came home one night
Speaker 1: and spilled the beans on just where they were an
Speaker 1: Air Force base with the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: This theme sound familiar, and there were extraterrestrial was involved.
Speaker 1: So I thought, where's a book on this? There isn't any,
Speaker 1: So I thought I would spend the next few years
Speaker 1: researching and writing it and it should be out in
Speaker 1: late April early May of this year. I thought President's
Speaker 1: Days an excellent time to talk about it, don't you
Speaker 1: perfect timing, And that book's going to be called The
Speaker 1: Nixon Gleason Alien Encounter. That's correct from foundations, and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll get that out before people want to buy a
Speaker 1: book for reading this summer at the beach. But it's
Speaker 1: just an amazing story about what basically boils down to
Speaker 1: Jackie Gleason blurted out to his wife at the time,
Speaker 1: and she told a tabloid in a quick interview one
Speaker 1: year later, when she was separated from Jackie, just what
Speaker 1: her husband came home and said, and Jackie got on
Speaker 1: the phone. He was just livid when he read this
Speaker 1: in a tabloid and said, you know, this was supposed
Speaker 1: to be something you were to tell anyone. And he
Speaker 1: was peppered with questions by some press and people in
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry did this really happen? And he refused
Speaker 1: to give an answer. He just would not comment. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't deny it, though, wouldn't right. He didn't say it
Speaker 1: didn't happen. All he had to do is say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a bunch of bunk and junk. Get out
Speaker 1: of here. I don't want to hear about this. But
Speaker 1: he did not. And one thing I read in Jackie's
Speaker 1: biographies is that he was known as a real straight shooter,
Speaker 1: a very honest man. He didn't make up a lot
Speaker 1: of nonsense. He did do his share of drinking, but
Speaker 1: he didn't start making up tall tales. That he'd liked
Speaker 1: facts and he went really overboard for the facts on
Speaker 1: UFOs from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. He would
Speaker 1: buy up every book and periodically he could get his
Speaker 1: hands on on the subject, and then he would call
Speaker 1: up the authors and quiz them at length about UFOs,
Speaker 1: and even the sub Jack Sue saw UFOs in the books,
Speaker 1: he would meet with them in person and pepper them
Speaker 1: with questions. So he took the subject amazingly seriously. He
Speaker 1: used to listen to the Long John Nebble Show That's right,
Speaker 1: a long, long time ago, which was what I think
Speaker 1: the first of the paranormal genre are radio shows rock
Speaker 1: in the fifties. He was the Art Bell of his time,
Speaker 1: or the George Nori and he would host this New
Speaker 1: York City based show, and Jackie was an insomniac, and
Speaker 1: he would wake up and listen, and then he would
Speaker 1: call in. At times, just as I was finishing some
Speaker 1: research for the book, I found Jackie talking to Frank
Speaker 1: Edwards on the Long John Nables Show, and Jackie said, quote,
Speaker 1: and you can hear this tape online. The sound quality
Speaker 1: is not very good. He said, I just told Edward R.
Speaker 1: Murrow that I think UFOs are the most important subject
Speaker 1: going on in the world today. Seriously. Jackie took it,
Speaker 1: and he actually said this on the air. So in
Speaker 1: his day it was considered still by some a little kookie.
Speaker 1: It was not as mainstream as it is today. He
Speaker 1: went out on a limb to get so heavily involved
Speaker 1: in this subject. Did Nixon go to Gleason or did
Speaker 1: Gleeson go to Nixon when they went down to Homestead
Speaker 1: Air Force Base in Florida. From what I understand, it
Speaker 1: may have been a case of Nixon finally contacting Jackie.
Speaker 1: The two had played golf since their early sixties. For
Speaker 1: over ten years, they were golf buddies in South Florida.
Speaker 1: So you know that Jackie was obsessed with the UFOs.
Speaker 1: He had to have asked Nixon over and over, and
Speaker 1: Nixon would not tell him big state secret. He knew
Speaker 1: he wanted to be president again and would run again.
Speaker 1: He hadn't been president, but he had been vice president
Speaker 1: under Eisenhower, so Nixon had to keep the secrets to himself.
Speaker 1: But by early nineteen seventy three, Nixon was in a bind.
Speaker 1: His henchman had been caught burglarizing the Watergate Hotel and
Speaker 1: Democratic National Headquarters, their offices, Larry O'Brien's office he was toast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they all got caught, and Nixon needed to
Speaker 1: raise hush money and you can hear transcripts or read
Speaker 1: them to this day of Nixon being very upset by
Speaker 1: January of seventy three, saying where are we going to
Speaker 1: get this hush money? Just tearing his hair out over this.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after the Jackie Gleason encounter, Nixon was
Speaker 1: quite calm and said, oh, yes, I know where we
Speaker 1: can get that money. It's not a problem. Now. Jackie
Speaker 1: had been offering on the hair over the years, first
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars to anyone that would produce proof, absolute
Speaker 1: proof of extra terrestrial, and he jacked it up to
Speaker 1: a half a million, and that didn't at him anything,
Speaker 1: so he went up to one million dollars by the
Speaker 1: late sixties. I'll give a million dollars to anyone who
Speaker 1: give me absolute hard proof. So do we have to
Speaker 1: put two and two together or can we add up?
Speaker 1: For so Nixon was the guy. Yeah, Nixon needed the money.
Speaker 1: He knew Jackie had this obsession, and all he had
Speaker 1: to do was show him something real quick. At Homestead
Speaker 1: Air Force Base, where Nixon had been in and out
Speaker 1: fifty five times, Nixon flew down to keybis Cane to
Speaker 1: his beach house during his presidency and he would always
Speaker 1: use Homestead Air Force Base. He was there a lot,
Speaker 1: so something was brought in or was there, and that's
Speaker 1: how he picked up Jackie, I believe by helicopter. They
Speaker 1: went to the base directly, and Nixon finally gave Jackie
Speaker 1: what he wanted, satisfied his curiosity. And since they shared
Speaker 1: the same lawyer, a man named Herbert Comback, I think
Speaker 1: the financial arrangement was very likely put together off the books,
Speaker 1: as Nixon was quite fond of doing so that he
Speaker 1: could have the money to pay the Watergate defendants who
Speaker 1: broke in and did the burglary and their legal fees
Speaker 1: and pay for their families and their kids. So there
Speaker 1: was a real motive for both of them to go
Speaker 1: ahead and do this. You think Jackie actually had the
Speaker 1: money that he really thought that somebody was going to
Speaker 1: come forward and give him the information. Believe it or not. Yes,
Speaker 1: he made a ton of money and he spent it
Speaker 1: very freely. He would make up to like fourteen million
Speaker 1: per year from his movies, TV's, record albums, personal appearances.
Speaker 1: He was immensely wealthy and a lot of money back then,
Speaker 1: a fortune. Yeah, and so he spent it quite freely,
Speaker 1: and a million dollars was nothing to him. He had
Speaker 1: to have this proof. He was the king of TV
Speaker 1: and king of movies, and he always got whatever he wanted,
Speaker 1: and he was very frustrated that he couldn't see a
Speaker 1: UFO and that he wanted that proof, even though he
Speaker 1: read all of these books and heard about other people
Speaker 1: seeing UFOs or maybe even an extraterrestrial allegedly, I could
Speaker 1: see Nixon telling Jackie right now, I'm going to show
Speaker 1: you a U. Yeah. Another factor was Jackie's birthday was
Speaker 1: coming up in just about nine days from the nineteenth
Speaker 1: I think it was, or now that's my birthday. Actually
Speaker 1: it was nine days after the nineteenth. Jackie's I think
Speaker 1: was the twenty sixth of February. But anyway, what do
Speaker 1: you get Jackie, the man who has everything but yearns
Speaker 1: for this one thing that's always been out of his reach.
Speaker 1: What did Nixon reportedly show him? Paul? According to Beverley Gleason,
Speaker 1: Jackie's wife at the time, he came home and said,
Speaker 1: I just saw the bodies of four dead aliens. President
Speaker 1: Nixon showed me at Homestead Air Force Base, and he
Speaker 1: said that he apparently didn't give a color of their skin.
Speaker 1: But he said they were about two feet in height,
Speaker 1: maybe a little more a little less, stretched out on
Speaker 1: four tables, examining tables in this kind of laboratory, so
Speaker 1: that you had to have imagine Jackie's reaction to this.
Speaker 1: He must have been absolutely staggered. But here was finally
Speaker 1: the proof. He said. They looked like they had been embalmed.
Speaker 1: And when you go back to the old nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five Hopkinsville, Kentucky case, you know, the family out in
Speaker 1: the country that felt they were under sea by aliens,
Speaker 1: the descriptions match perfectly. He said. They had big ears
Speaker 1: and pretty big eyes and were about two feet tall,
Speaker 1: so maybe it was the same race. He seemed quite
Speaker 1: serious about it, his wife said, and this was not
Speaker 1: a joke. She said, he was really shook up. Were
Speaker 1: these from Roswell Cape Girardo? Where do you think? Yeah?
Speaker 1: She didn't say if, he said. I wonder how much
Speaker 1: he withheld from his wife. That night, he was hosting
Speaker 1: a golf tournament and he just seemed to disappear one evening,
Speaker 1: and when he came back close to midnight, she said
Speaker 1: he was pale and trembling, and he looked Haggard, and
Speaker 1: he had really been through quite a shocking experience, so
Speaker 1: he didn't really say too many details, or he didn't
Speaker 1: want to. He was either too traumatized. He did say
Speaker 1: he was sworn to secrecy, so he immediately broke some
Speaker 1: of that hope as soon as he got home. But
Speaker 1: it's only natural if you're in a legal case. They
Speaker 1: called out an excited utterance when you're in the traumatic
Speaker 1: experience of something that happened in a legal sense. Well,
Speaker 1: in this sense, Jackie was all shook up when he
Speaker 1: got home and he blurted out. But I think is
Speaker 1: the truth. On the nineteenth, the anniversary of contact from Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: Nixon's old boss, we're talking with Paul Blake Smith. His
Speaker 1: book that's coming out is called The Nixon Gleason Alien Encounter.
Speaker 1: Will also talk about President Eisenhower's close encounters after the
Speaker 1: break and then the situation in Cape Girardo that is
Speaker 1: a bombshell before Roswell happened in nineteen forty one. Roswell
Speaker 1: was nineteen forty seven. Of course, I would have loved
Speaker 1: to have interviewed Jackie Gleason there. I don't know what
Speaker 1: he would have said, but it would have been worth it.
Speaker 1: He was amazingly talented. If you ever ran down a
Speaker 1: list of his skills, he could do pantomime, sketches, stand
Speaker 1: up comedy. He could dance, he could sing, he could
Speaker 1: play the trumpet. He created his own music. He was
Speaker 1: like an orchestral score director. He was the choreographer of
Speaker 1: his show. He would just throw himself into every performance,
Speaker 1: and on the sidelines he was actually sucking on oxygen.
Speaker 1: He was so out of breath. He was such a big,
Speaker 1: heavy man. But he was a most well read, intelligent
Speaker 1: and fun. He did smoke and drink a lot, but
Speaker 1: that was not uncommon back then. He used to say,
Speaker 1: how sweet it is, and it certainly was. He lived
Speaker 1: the highlife in every sense. He really had a great
Speaker 1: time in life. What do you think idem interested in
Speaker 1: U falls? You know, that's a really good question, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. However, the Eisenhower encounter happened in February
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty four, on the nineteenth. It was around
Speaker 1: that time that suddenly Jackie got this obsession with building
Speaker 1: a UFO house in New York State, just about thirty
Speaker 1: five forty miles outside of New York, where he lived
Speaker 1: in an apartment in Manhattan, and so he had custom
Speaker 1: built this spaceship, this circular house that overlooked the overlooked
Speaker 1: the side of this valley. It was on the edge
Speaker 1: of a cliff sort of and with big bay windows,
Speaker 1: and he filled it with telescopes and a Tesla coil
Speaker 1: that he felt that Nicola Tesla, the inventor used to
Speaker 1: try to contact aliens. And it's a little known fact.
Speaker 1: Jackie was also an avid Ham radio operator. And he
Speaker 1: kept turning the dials listening in, you know, almost as
Speaker 1: if he expected to catch an alien broadcast or something.
Speaker 1: That's how obsessed he was. So, at least as far
Speaker 1: back as fifty four. And you know what, in my
Speaker 1: research I found there was a man named Everett Gleeson
Speaker 1: who was Dwight Eisenhower's national security advisor, and he met
Speaker 1: with Eisenhower just before he took off for Palm Springs
Speaker 1: and record show. Everett Gleason met with Eisenhower as soon
Speaker 1: as he got back to the lighthouse. So Everett Everett
Speaker 1: Gleason was born in Brooklyn, just ten years before Jackie.
Speaker 1: And you've got to wonder, is this some sort of
Speaker 1: relative who could have tipped Jackie off to this amazing
Speaker 1: encounter in person in southern California in fifty four, and
Speaker 1: Jackie just went ballistic and had to have his own
Speaker 1: spaceship house and pretend like he's living in one, and
Speaker 1: he held parties there over the years. He had a
Speaker 1: custom built in an airplane hangar, of all places, you know,
Speaker 1: Eisenhower met with aliens in an airplane hangar. So it's
Speaker 1: just really strange and how the two stories kind of
Speaker 1: fit together. If Gleason was told by Nixon and seventy three,
Speaker 1: then he should have been married to Beverly McKittrick at
Speaker 1: that time. That is correct. She was his wife for
Speaker 1: the past few years. When she gave that statement to
Speaker 1: a tabloid reporter in seventy four, they had been separated
Speaker 1: and Jackie was so furious they split up. That was
Speaker 1: the end of their relationship. So she went one step
Speaker 1: further in nineteen eighty three. She's still alive. I believe
Speaker 1: she is. I can't find her. I enlisted another investigator.
Speaker 1: He can't find her either. She would be about eighty
Speaker 1: nine years old right now, but a great interview that
Speaker 1: would be. Oh yeah. She has avoided the press strenuously.
Speaker 1: She doesn't seem to want to talk about it or
Speaker 1: write a tell all book either. Listen to more Coast
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