General Curtis LeMay became the youngest four-star general since the Civil War. He personally piloted lead aircraft on combat missions. He built the Strategic Air Command into the most powerful nuclear strike force in human history. And by multiple documented accounts, he had an obsession with UFOs that led him to personally block access to UFO evidence — including from members of Congress who asked to see it.
Liberation Times published a 50,000-word investigation into LeMay’s UFO connection in October 2024, authored by Geoff Cruickshank. It is one of the most comprehensive documents on the intersection of military command culture and UAP secrecy ever published.
LeMay as Commander
Robert McNamara described LeMay as “the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war” — and simultaneously “extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal.” He led by personal example: when bomber abort rates rose due to suspected cowardice, LeMay issued an order that he would personally fly the lead aircraft on every mission, and any crew that aborted would be court-martialled. The abort rate dropped overnight.
During World War Two, LeMay’s crews — like many Allied aviators — encountered what became known as Foo Fighters: unidentified luminous objects that tracked aircraft, sometimes for hours, and could not be explained by any known technology. Cruickshank’s investigation raises the question: did LeMay’s own encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena during combat missions shape his subsequent obsession with UAP secrecy?
Blocking Congressional Access
The documented record shows LeMay personally denied access to UFO evidence to people who had the clearance and authority to demand it. Barry Goldwater — US Senator, Air Force Reserve Brigadier General, and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — asked LeMay repeatedly for access to classified UFO material held at Wright-Patterson AFB. LeMay’s response, in Goldwater’s own account: “Not only can’t you get into it, but don’t you ever mention it to me again.”
LeMay and JFK
LeMay’s relationship with President Kennedy was one of open institutional contempt. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay argued for immediate air strikes while Kennedy sought a diplomatic resolution. He called Kennedy’s blockade decision “the greatest defeat in our history.” The animosity was mutual and documented.
Kennedy was also, separately, documented to have sought access to CIA UFO files. His memo to CIA Director McCone in November 1963 — requesting all UFO information — was sent ten days before his assassination. LeMay was present at Kennedy’s autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a fact documented by multiple witnesses but rarely discussed.
The Oracle Assessment
LeMay is the clearest documented case of a senior military official who knew about UAP, used institutional power to deny access to others, and operated in a way that suggests the information was considered too sensitive for oversight. His confrontational relationship with civilian authority — including the President of the United States — was not incidental to his UAP secrecy. It was an expression of the same worldview: some things are too important to be left to civilians.
Source: Liberation Times, Geoff Cruickshank — October 19, 2024. Barry Goldwater public statements. McNamara, The Fog of War.