Claim: Ronald Reagan warned the world of aliens/alien invasion

[ParanoidSkeptic2]

I'm unsure if this is meant to go here as the claim is very frivolous, however I found that quite many Ufologists believe this to be the case so it may be potentially good to debunk. Apologise if not.

On multiple different occasions, the 40th president of the United states mentioned in his speeches that how the world would unite if the world was facing an extraterrestrial threat.

December 4, 1985
Reagan spoke about his first summit with General Secretary Gorbachev at Fallston High School in Maryland.
He mentioned to the Russian leader during one of his 5-hour private discussions, “…how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries…”

Gorbachev’s Response on February 17, 1987
The Russian leader said to the Central Committee of USSR’s Communist Party at the Kremblin, “At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the éarth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it’s early yet to worry about such an intrusion…”

May 4, 1987
In a Q&A session which the media called “the space invaders speech,” Reagan once more made a response to the question, “What do you consider to be the most important need in international relations?”
Reagan said, “What if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by a powér from outer space, from another planet?”


September 15, 1987
The senior editor of the New Republic, Fred Barnes reported in an article that when the President and Eduard Shevardnatze, the Soviet foreign minister, met to sign to INF Treaty, Reagan wondered aloud what would happen if the world faced an ‘alien threat’ from outer space.
“Don’t you think the United states and the Soviet Union would be together?” Shevardnatze responded in the affirmative and added, “and we wouldn’t need our defense ministers to meet.


September 21, 1987
In his speech to the Forty-Second Session of the United Nations, the President said, “In our obsession with antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.”
Then he went on to pose the question, “And yet, I ask is not an alien force already among us?” Then the President posed the second question, “What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war

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In addition to that, Spielberg's ET was screened in the white house and apparently Reagan told Spielberg that the not many people know the truth

Reagan and a selected audience screened the director Steven Spielberg’s Encounters of the Third Kind and ET, The Extraterrestrial in the Whíte House.
The story goes that at the conclusion of the ET movie, Reagan leaned over to Spielberg and commented, “There are only a handful of people who know the truth about this.”
Surprised, Spielberg started to ask the President what he meant, but was interrupted when the lights came up and several guests approached them. Later the director refused to comment on the incident.

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This seems like a rather dubious manipulation of facts as, whist apparently Spielberg was told something along those lines by Reagan, he (as well as the rest of the room) treated it like a joke

“He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,’ and then he looked around the room and said, And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true,’” Spielberg remembered. “And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it.”
So, did he really believe that the story of the friendly little Reese’s Pieces loving alien and his young friend actually happened?
Maybe, maybe not. But Spielberg thinks it was probably a joke from the actor president. Not that he isn’t hoping otherwise.

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These remarks have been used by Ufologist for a while to prove some of their claims. For example, in the Area 51 Alien interview "documentary", Reagan's speech is used to (allegedly) highlight how the partnership between aliens and US government ended

Source: https://youtu.be/thdzV3VGzwo?t=1253

(Time stamp from 20:53 to 22:33)

I'm not sure why Reagan spoke so much about alien invasion, but it might be to do with the fact that he was into sci-fi films and had an interest in UFOs. One would imagine that, if the threat was real or imminent, Reagan wouldn't be so subtle, in addition to that, no other president has addressed anything like that, quite on the contrary, many president have claimed how the US government is not in contact with ET's.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show on ABC Thursday that he would not be “surprised” if aliens exist, but denied that the U.S. government had stored alien bodies in the now infamous Area 51.
Clinton told the show host that he ordered a probe to find out if aliens were being held in Area 51, a U.S. Air Force installation in Nevada.
“First, I had people look at the record of Area 51, to make sure there are no aliens down there,” Clinton said. He added: “There were no aliens.”

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This overall claim that Reagan knew about either aliens or an alien invasion holds no ground as it's a claim based on speeches that were directed at the cold war, however, ufologists still claim that there is more to meet the eye towards the speeches, however, they've not shown anything to prove this claim, they only use baseless belief to hold Reagan's remarks as "evidence." I saw on reddit that people to this day use this as evidence that US is aware of aliens as well as prominent ufologists use this to further their claims, like Scott C Waring

... one person believes President Reagan was trying to subtly warn the public of aliens.
Prominent conspiracy theorist Scott C Waring wrote on his blog ET Database: "He really tried hard to inform the public, even when he knew it was against national security to do so.
"On Sept 16, 1983, US President Ronald Reagan gave a memorable speech in front of the United Nations. In it, he subtly suggests that aliens exist and that all of humanity could be lost if they decide to attack.
"Of course President Reagan had inside information from the CIA and NASA and was told that aliens do exist.
"But he couldn't just come out and say so without breaking national security rules.
"So instead, he subtly hinted to the rest of the world leaders about what he had learned from the CIA and NASA. He also knows that a small percentage of the other presidents at the United Nations meeting also knew about the existence of aliens.
"Now pondering about world peace is nice, but I feel that President Reagan felt a weight on his shoulders, a burden of carrying this knowledge of the existence of aliens.
"Remember its was the 1980s and back they the technology was very inferior to today tech marvels. It must have been very frightening for him to know that aliens existed, but to have so few people he could sit down and talk about this subject openly."

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So what do you guys think? Do you think Reagan was warning of aliens, or, more logically, was he just using a hypothetical situation based on his own interests? This "evidence" doesn't seem to even qualify as evidence, so why do people use it as proof for their fringe theories?

 

[deirdre]

None of that sounds like warning. maybe wishful thinking. or paranoia.

This "evidence" doesn't seem to even qualify as evidence, so why do people use it as proof for their fringe theories?

The vast majority of "evidence" conspiracy theorists or woo believers use doesn't qualify as evidence. Hence the analogy of Rabbit Hole.

Shultz was talking about the Lake Geneva summit and mentioned the two leaders ducked out of a meeting to take a walk to a nearby cabin.

"I wasn't there...," Shultz said before Gorbachev cut him off.

"From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?'

"I said, 'No doubt about it.'"

"He said, 'We too.'"

"So that's interesting," Gorbachev said to much laughter

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...pause-cold-war-case-alien-invasion-180957402/

"On Sept 16, 1983, US President Ronald Reagan gave a memorable speech in front of the United Nations. In it, he subtly suggests that aliens exist and that all of humanity could be lost if they decide to attack.
"Of course President Reagan had inside information from the CIA and NASA and was told that aliens do exist.
"But he couldn't just come out and say so without breaking national security rules.
"So instead, he subtly hinted to the rest of the world leaders about what he had learned from the CIA and NASA. He also knows that a small percentage of the other presidents at the United Nations meeting also knew about the existence of aliens.

no he didnt. not september 16th anyway or the 25th or 26th. not that i see anyway (transcripts reaganlibrary link, vids on youtube) https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/september-1983

on september 26 he gave a speech:
it is an anti-war speech. and anti-nuclear war. and pro-arms control. you don't implement arms control if you think aliens are gonna attack.
(note ET came out before this speech. )

i'm not giving timestamps as the whole speech is important.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKMOPjkuMPE

 

[ParanoidSkeptic2]

None of that sounds like warning. maybe wishful thinking. or paranoia.

Yeah, like you said, probably just wishful thinking or paranoia. It just seem like it was his favourite analogy, but conspiracy theorists will grab on to anything no matter how much of non-evidence it is I guess

 

[Mick West]

I think it's more just the observation that people in a situation who might be natural competitors will naturally band together against an external enemy.

Our dogs fight each other sometimes - usually over resources (food, couch space), but when someone knocks on the door they are suddenly on the same team.

When we are talking about geopolitics, an external enemy would be aliens. Of course, you could also have more likely things like asteroids, or climate change, but it's a less effective thought experiment.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

It strikes me as both deeply cynical and very hopeful at the same time. On one hand, the only thing that could get us to actual band together is a threat so vast as to threaten the entire world. But, on the other, that we'd do that means there's a slight glimmer of hope that cooperation isn't completely out of the picture.