Linda Moulton Howe's interview with “Agent Kewper” (1998), part 1: the Eisenhower meeting

0:00 This was at the meeting in Washington, D.C. with President Eisenhower, and Nixon was in on the meeting, and I told President Eisenhower at the time when we showed the various shots that we had that this looked like a German Honda View 2, and he said, I think you're right. At that point, when he said, I think you're right, did he elaborate on this whole issue of what was German and what was not in terms of the disks? No, he didn't. He just agreed with me that that looked like a Honda View 2, and he said yes, it was. So he had to be familiar with the different types of crafts, just from looking at pictures, you know. I always had the feeling that Eisenhower knew more than we knew, and that he knew a lot more than what Nixon knew. Nixon wasn't completely in the loop on this thing, because Nixon was always frustrated that he was on the outside looking in. And what time of day did you travel, and what was the process?

1:01 Yeah, same way. We flew up to Washington, D.C., to see the airport. The limo picked us up, took us to a hotel, stayed overnight. We were told to go to the Capitol building, and that we'd have a meeting in the Capitol building with Eisenhower and Nixon and some other CIA officials from Langland. So we waited in this rotunda, and pretty soon a guard come up to us, and he says, I've gotten a call that they had called and changed the location. And we had the meeting with Nixon and Eisenhower at a meeting room in the FBI building. In that last meeting, we had a few FBI officials that came to the meeting that were involved with the project. No Air Force. They'd already talked to the Air Force and all the other forces the week before. So we had to get back in the limo and go over there. Near the White House? Not too far away, no. So you drove from the Capitol?

2:01 To the FBI headquarters, and they ushered us into the meeting room. It was about the third or fourth floor. We went in, and Eisenhower and Nixon were already there. So he got our information. How many people, and where is Nixon, and where is Eisenhower? When we came in, the room was well lit. It was like a conference room in the FBI headquarters building, and Eisenhower was there, and Nixon was there, both sitting down already at the table. They were discussing some type of paperwork, and the FBI people came in right behind us, three of them. Was J. Edgar Hoover with it? No. No, he was not there. Eisenhower. Nixon are sitting there talking about paperwork. What happened? Eisenhower, he asked the FBI people, do you have much material? They said that they had a reasonably good stack to go over, and they asked us what we had, and we said that we really didn't have

3:03 much. At that time, we probably had ten or a dozen cases to cover, and he said, "We're taking you first. Come forward and show us what you have." So we brought the suitcase up. Ms. Anthony and you, only from the CIA? Yes, and we opened it up, laid it down on the floor, and took out the big folder we had everything in it, and then laid out all the photographs. And that's when the first photograph I showed him was the Argentine one, and I said, "This looks like a hominibu to German craft," and Eisenhower said, "I think you're right." And that's when Nixon looked at Eisenhower, looked at me, and just sort of looked totally stunned. So I have a feeling that Eisenhower kept Nixon out of the loop. When I mentioned the German craft, Eisenhower did not question it, so he already had known about the German space program who knows how long before. Ms. Did Anthony say anything? Mr. Anthony said, "Yes, I agree. This

4:05 resembles the German crafts from Argentina." Ms. And Eisenhower doesn't pick up on this and talk about, "Do we know anything more?" Mr. The only thing he said was, "We have chips down in the area that the CIA had any knowledge about how many of these crafts are being reported coming out of Argentina." And then we gave them that report that we had gotten that our naval vessels had radar screen contacts of saucers coming in from outer space and going into around the crest to the south polar regions and also coming in and down into the Argentine area. Ms. This is Eisenhower saying this? Mr. That was part of a report that we had and that we had radar contacts. Ms. When you said that? Mr. Eisenhower says, "That is to be expected. We expected this." It's something he was already familiar with. He may have gotten a report from CIA

5:05 headquarters on something like that when it first came out. Ms. Or from the National Security Council, from the Majestic 12 people. Mr. Yeah. Everything that came that was reported always mentioned Majestic 12. Ms. Did Eisenhower ever reference Majestic 12? Mr. Yes. At one time, we were looking at the different photographs and he mentioned, he had told Nixon, "This looks familiar. It was an aerial shot over the Netherlands." He said, "Contact Majestic" on this. He said, "Verify if this is the very same thing that they had sent three months ago." Ms. And did Nixon respond? Mr. Yeah, he said, "Okay, I'll do this." Ms. Did anybody ever explain why Majestic? Why the term Majestic? Mr. We knew it was a term for the original people that were digging into the flying saucer episodes. Ms. It sounds like there were parallel tracks of intelligence and that Majestic

6:06 would have been working through the NSC. The CIA would have been doing its intelligence, the FBI doing its intelligence, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and that all these parallel tracks and sometimes investigating each other. And I know the Navy has tried to get into CIA files. I've talked with a man who said how hard they tried and how they were blocked. Ms. Did Eisenhower in that meeting say anything about an understanding about whether or not he was perceiving that there was ally or threat or any interpretation? Mr. No. In fact, Nixon said that Eisenhower had just told him that we're not gaining enough ground on this thing, that we need new blood, especially the Air Force. Ms. Did Eisenhower in this meeting in the spring of 1959, is that when he said that he didn't understand why no one was getting to the bottom? Mr. That was a quote I had mentioned earlier

7:06 that it was Nixon that said Ike is really disappointed in this thing and that he said that we need new blood involved in this thing to try to move it along because we're not really accomplishing that much. And he said that was Ike's word. And then when we walked out, the Air Force colonel had said to us, "Boy, it looks like I'm out of a job." Ms. Is Eisenhower saying anything with impatience, with anger, with anything that would give insight that he had any sense of whether there was hostility, any interpretation given at that meeting about these crafts and these beings? Mr. The only thing he asked us, he says, "Do you have any pictures with aliens?" Mr. Similar to what you had before and everything, and we told him no, that we did not have anything with aliens. I think we sat there about 15 minutes with him. He looked at all of them and we told him that all the interviews that we had overseas with people that had taken the pictures. We had

8:07 this one picture we showed him that was from Holland where this thing hovered over this little town area. Ms. Triangle. Mr. No, that was the round one. And that eventually went and started going up and then just darted and shot away at high speed. But he mentioned alien saucer. Ms. There has been a story that has floated for years that Eisenhower went to see one of the live beings in California, and that it was covered on his daily travel schedule as going to a dentist, but that he actually went to see a being somewhere in China Lake. Mr. I never saw anything like that, any material like that or any word during the meeting we had. Nothing like that was ever brought up that he had seen an alien or spoke with an alien, whatever he might have done. Mr. Did Nixon say anything specifically at that meeting in April? Mr. No, very, very little. He said, "In your

9:07 FBI report, is there anything unusual in that that would be interesting to CIA as far as looking for unusual type of crafts overseas?" And then they told us that they had a lot of sightings. They said, "We have some abductions. We have..." Mr. They said that? The FBI? Mr. Yes. Mr. They said they had... Mr. We were investigating two abductions that people claimed that they were up in the saucer and came back. They had a neighbor that had taken a picture of the craft, and this one woman was abducted. So it tied together with two people. They said it's probably accurate. Mr. Then they said, "But outside of that, we have some more cattle mutilations." Mr. Did Eisenhower ask any questions about mutilations and abductions? Mr. No. So he's very familiar with that, apparently. Mr. Nixon or the President didn't seem like surprised. Mr. The question is, what did they know about who, what, why?

10:08 Mr. I had a feeling that Eisenhower knew a lot more, and that Mr. Nixon kind of knew the basics, but not in detail. Mr. And you guys were treated only as a need to know. Mr. Yes. Mr. And the President said, "If it's foreign," he said, "and something is hot," he says, "Call Richard," because he's handling anything on the foreign affairs bit. He said, "He's my right-hand man on foreign affairs." Mr. Did you, or Angie, when you got back to Fort, were you able to find out information about what the FBI's abduction cases were about? Mr. We had a few, and we asked the CIA headquarters to give us a rundown on that particular case that was brought out in this meeting, but we never got it back. Mr. In terms of any of the discussion with Nixon or anybody else in Washington about abductions, do you remember anybody making the comment of any interpretation or anything about what

11:10 the abductions could mean? Mr. Well, we had gotten paperwork earlier about an abduction, and the people, the ones that were abducted were a bright light came in their bedroom, and they floated out the windows and up into this craft, and then they were operated on or had like a physical, and they woke up in the morning and they were back in their beds. Mr. Well, we had gotten paperwork earlier about an abduction, and the people, the ones that were abducted,