“There are a number of people here who know everything on that screen was absolutely true,” said the President. A wave of nervous laugher rippled through the White House’s private cinema room. Ronald Reagan, however, never broke a smile, his solemnity immediately silencing the intimate audience of esteemed guests – Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg, high-ranking military personnel and the upper echelons of Nasa among them. It was 1982 and the group had just been treated to a special pre-release screening of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Despite its rather outré nature, this tale is no urban myth – although some details have been embellished over the years. One retelling even has Reagan weeping on Spielberg’s shoulder as ET “went home”. Having since confirmed the event indeed took place, the legendary director has also admitted he remains unsure if Reagan was being honest with his guests – or simply pulling off deadpan surrealism better than Rikki Fulton or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
One thing is incontrovertibly true – if Ronald Reagan had intimate knowledge of extra-terrestrial visitations to Earth, then he certainly knew they weren’t friendly, doe-eyed botanists. Without even taking his bizarre satellite-laser “Star Wars” missile defence system into consideration, Reagan’s numerous mentions of aliens in speeches marked him as a blatant UFO-nut hiding in plain sight. One turning a blind eye to the Pentagon burning through tens of millions of taxpayer dollars investigating “foreign advanced aerospace weapons”.
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