Reagan asked Soviets to help defeat alien invasion

Reagan asked Soviets to help defeat alien invasion

Ronald Reagan believed aliens would conquer Earth and stunned Mikhail Gorbachev by asking for Soviet help to defeat the invasion, a new book reveals.

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Reagan wanted to believe in UFOs

The US president went off script ­during a summit to warn of the threat, to the horror of aides and the bemusement of the Soviet leader.

The former B-movie actor became an avid science fiction fan while working in Hollywood. He confessed his favourite story was “the invasion from outer space that prompts earthlings to put aside nationalistic quarrels and band together to fight the alien invader”. Reagan even arranged a private screening of Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind at the White House in 1982 for top judges, astronauts and other VIPs. The book reveals he turned around as the credits rolled and told his audience: “There are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is true.”

Reagan was to go even further when he met Gorbachev for the first time at a summit in Geneva in 1985, according to the book, How UFOs Conquered The World, to be published next month.

Author Dr David Clarke said: “He ­surprised Gorby by saying he was sure the two superpowers would co-operate if Earth was threatened by alien invasion. Taken aback, the Soviet leader politely changed the subject.”

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Deputy national security adviser Colin Powell was horrified, particularly when Reagan repeated the story to Maryland high school students after his return to the US. Powell went through the president’s speeches deleting “interplanetary references” until his final months in office. When Reagan continued to harp on about the threat of alien invasion, Powell would roll his eyes and tell staff: “Here come the Little Green Men again.”

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Reagan was upfront with the Soviet leader about the alien invasion

The book suggests Reagan was secretly appalled by nuclear weapons and his approach to Gorbachev may have been inspired by the 1951 movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. In the film, an interplanetary peace-keeping force lands on Earth using a giant robot to force the warring nuclear powers to put aside their differences. Dr Clarke said: “For a generation that lived in fear of the bomb, this message of salvation from the stars, delivered by technological angels, was a welcome alternative to the Cold War stalemate.

“Ronald Reagan was a born-again Christian and saw no contradiction between his faith and a belief in aliens.”

The Sheffield-based X-files expert believes the president may also have been convinced he was speaking for the US public after an opinion poll showed 57 per cent of Americans believed UFOs were real.

Dr Clarke added: “Reagan’s comments to Gorbachev at the 1985 summit imply he might have believed the real threat came not from behind the Iron Curtain but from hostile extra-terrestrials.”