Hangar 18 — Senator Barry Goldwater and General Curtis LeMay

Hangar 18 — Senator Barry Goldwater and General Curtis LeMay

Barry Goldwater: Profile

Field	Detail
Full name	Barry Morris Goldwater
Born	January 1, 1909, Phoenix, Arizona Territory
Died	May 29, 1998, Scottsdale, Arizona
Political office	U.S. Senator (R-Arizona), 1953–1965; 1969–1987
Presidential candidacy	Republican nominee, 1964 (lost to Lyndon B. Johnson)
Military rank	Major General, U.S. Air Force Reserve
Military service	World War II ferry pilot; Cold War reserve service
Interest in UFOs	Long-standing; described as a serious personal interest rather than a political position
Key UFO statement	Multiple public statements about being denied access to the Blue Room at Wright-Patterson by General LeMay

Barry Goldwater was one of the most prominent and respected political figures of twentieth-century American conservatism. His interest in UFOs was not the fringe hobby of an eccentric — it was a serious, sustained inquiry by a man with extensive military connections and the institutional access to pursue it through official channels.

Goldwater's Attempts to Access the Blue Room

Goldwater made repeated attempts over multiple decades to gain access to classified UFO information at Wright-Patterson. He was repeatedly denied. His attempts included:

• Direct requests to the Air Force through his positions on the Senate Armed Services Committee
• Personal requests to senior Air Force officers with whom he had established relationships through his reserve service
• The direct, personal confrontation with General Curtis LeMay

The LeMay Incident

General Curtis LeMay was, at the time of Goldwater's request, one of the most powerful military figures in American history — the architect of American strategic airpower and the longest-serving Air Force Chief of Staff. His response to Goldwater's request for Blue Room access has been described by Goldwater on multiple occasions:

In a 1975 letter: "I was refused access to the so-called 'Blue Room' at Wright-Patterson, which is alleged to contain UFO material. I was told that the material there was highly classified, above Top Secret, and that I could not see it without a specific need-to-know."

In a later interview, he sharpened the account of LeMay's personal response: "He said, 'Not only can you not get in there, but don't you ever mention it to me again.'"

LeMay's response is significant in several ways:

• The phrase "above Top Secret" implies a classification level that exists outside the standard clearance hierarchy — consistent with a Special Access Program (SAP) with no oversight through normal channels
• The instruction never to ask again implies that the request itself was considered dangerous or inappropriate — not merely that the information was classified, but that the inquiry was unwelcome
• LeMay's furious response to a sitting U.S. Senator and Air Force Reserve Major General — someone who would normally be in the category of people who could be told something — implies the existence of something extraordinary worth protecting

Public Statements

Goldwater made his Blue Room accounts public on multiple platforms over his career:

• The 1975 letter to UFO researcher Shlomo Arnon
• A 1979 letter in which he wrote: "I have long ago given up acquiring access to the so-called 'Blue Room' at Wright-Patterson"
• A 1988 appearance on The Larry King Live program where he described the LeMay encounter
• Multiple other interviews and correspondence throughout the 1970s and 1980s

In 1994, near the end of his life, Goldwater told author Timothy Good: "I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about, and I am not entirely sure that we are privy to all the facts."

Curtis LeMay: Profile

Field	Detail
Full name	Curtis Emerson LeMay
Born	November 15, 1906, Columbus, Ohio
Died	October 1, 1990, March Air Force Base, California
Rank	General of the Air Force (retired)
Positions	Commanding General, Strategic Air Command (1948–1957); Air Force Chief of Staff (1961–1965)
WWII role	Commanded B-29 strategic bombing campaign against Japan; architect of firebombing campaign
Cold War role	Creator of SAC as the primary nuclear deterrent force; established the culture of extreme operational security that characterized the early Cold War Air Force
Goldwater relationship	Personal acquaintance; both senior figures in Air Force circles
Response to Goldwater	Emphatic refusal; warning never to ask again; cited by multiple researchers as the most significant political witness account for Hangar 18

LeMay's response to Goldwater is credible precisely because of who LeMay was: a man not given to excessive caution, someone who was willing to advocate for preemptive nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and someone whose personal manner was described by virtually all who knew him as blunt, direct, and intolerant of weakness. That such a man would react with emphatic fury to a request from a colleague senator about a location at an Air Force base — rather than a dismissive "that's classified" — implies genuine institutional sensitivity about what that location contained.