What Jimmy Carter really thought about UFOs — and why he hid it

It was out of this world, y’all.

In 1969, Jimmy Carter, along with ten others, witnessed what the to-be president called a “very remarkable sight” in the skies over Georgia.

“As bright as the moon and about as big,” he later wrote of the unidentified flying object in a report to the Oklahoma City-based International UFO Bureau, while governor of the Peach State.

“[The object] seemed to move toward us from a distance, stopped, moved partially away, returned, then departed. Bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid,” he wrote descriptively.

The experience stirred the would-be No. 39 to bring UFO’s into the conversation during his campaign in 1976.

“If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information that this country has about UFO sightings available to the public,” he told the American people. “I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.”

Today, Carter’s promise of transparency is considered to have made a major contribution to the conversation surrounding intelligent life beyond Earth — even if he wasn’t always happy he’d stuck his neck out on the subject.

“Jimmy Carter is responsible for releasing about half of the government’s UFO files to the public,” Grant Cameron, author of the new book “Jimmy Carter: Paranormal and UFO Tales,” out Thursday, told The Post.

Cameron, whose book consists of archived information from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and more dated reports of the time, explained that Carter became known as “the UFO president” for the move — a reputation that haunts the humble peanut farmer, now 98, to this day.

“He probably just regrets he ever brought up in his life … it’s not something that he wanted out. It was something was forced upon him by making this statement to a gaggle of reporters,” Cameron said.

Among the thousands of pages openly released were reports from numerous instances of the inexplicable — including two major events involving the United States military and international forces.

One happened over the skies of Tehran, Iran, in 1976 “between Iranian Air Force jets and a UFO,” according to NSA documents on the incident.

The fighters, two F-4 Phantom II jets, reported a UFO playing “cat and mouse” with them, “paralyzing” their weapons and electronics systems when the jets attempted to open fire on it.”

The second event is one that reportedly happened in the United States in 1967 at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base, where Air Force Capt. Robert Salas observed 10 ballistic missiles which suddenly stopped operating in tandem when an unknown glowing red object flying overhead, CBS reported.

There were several other occasions where UFO sightings were said to have coincided with missile malfunction at the base. Similar instances were reported in England and the Soviet Union as well.

While Carter clammed up on the subject after winning the White House, he encouraged others, like actress and close friend Shirley MacLaine, to speak freely on the subject, according to the LA Times.

“He told me many times when I first wrote [my book] ‘Out on a Limb’ that he would support me, that it was true, that there were crafts, that he believed there were occupants,” she said while on the “Larry King Show” in 1995.

Carter might have been a closet fan of extraterrestrial fiction, too.

An archived photocopy of a photo from his presidential library dated August 25, 1978, indicates that Steven Spielberg was invited to — and visited — the White House shortly after he had directed and produced the 1977 science fiction fantasy film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

But, like much else with UFOs, the visit was highly classified, according to Cameron.

“A search was done — with the help of an archivist at the Carter Library — of White House photos taken during August 1978, and turned up no record of the photo being taken,” he wrote.

“More unusual was that, according to records held at the Carter Library, Spielberg was never in the White House. Records further indicated the two never met, corresponded, or talked on the phone.”

The Post reached out to a representative for Carter for comment.

Speculation is that Carter covertly invited Spielberg in to screen the film entirely off the record, Cameron said.

The only public evidence of their meeting is said archived photocopied photo, with a note attached that read: “The President thought that you would enjoy receiving the enclosed photo.”