The Carter UFO initiative, such as it was, quickly approached its climax. Some individuals maintain that the President was given a UFO briefing at the White House on June 14, 1977, and afterwards was bound to secrecy. According to former USAF Captain Robert Collins, “a lone MJ-12 briefing officer” met with the President, accompanied by several independent sources. Together these sources produced a “reconstruction” of what was told to Carter, and this became known as the “Executive Briefing: Project Aquarius” document. It was later leaked to UFO researcher William Moore through a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency known only as the Falcon. Moore said that the notes he received were a typed copy of handwritten notes that had been used by the officer during the briefing. The memo itself gives the (now standard) account of multiple retrievals of alien technology.
Grant Cameron noted that a review of the schedule on June 14, 1977 shows that a meeting in the Cabinet room between 1:35 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., to “discuss appropriations for intelligence affairs in the 1979 Budget of the U.S.” could have been a cover for another meeting which did not appear in the diary of President Carter. However, there remains no hard evidence to support the claims that a briefing took place, and no proof has shown the documents to be either legitimate or a forgery.
In this context, the author [Richard Dolan] can relate an anecdote told to him privately by a well-placed source. In June 1977, a presidential aide who was “very, very close to Carter” walked into the Oval Office following a briefing that the aide knew had concerned the topic of UFOs. Carter was sobbing, with his head in his hands, nearly on his desk. Although the aide did not learn the precise reasons for Carter’s emotional state, he said that a few of Carter’s phrases made it clear he was deeply upset about the topic.