Public Letter Record

"Extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews."

Letter to Ambassador Eric Gairy, Permanent Mission of Grenada to the UN
9 November 1978

In the late 1970s, Sir Eric Gairy, the Prime Minister of Grenada and concurrently his country's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was pursuing a proposal for the General Assembly to establish a UN agency dedicated to the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. The proposal had circulated through the General Assembly and the Special Political Committee during 1977 and 1978. In support of the proposal, Sir Eric solicited written endorsements from credentialed witnesses. Among those who replied was Colonel L. Gordon Cooper, the Mercury 9 and Gemini 5 astronaut, the youngest of the original Mercury Seven, a man who had personally orbited the Earth twenty-two times and who had spent the rest of his career inside the operational US Air Force and NASA. His letter was dated 9 November 1978 and was entered into the UN archive.

9 November 1978Letter date
UN Mission of GrenadaRecipient
Sir Eric GairyRecipient ambassador
22 orbitsCooper's Faith 7 solo Mercury flight, May 1963

The Statement

The central passage of the letter, addressed to Ambassador Gairy and entered into the United Nations archive.

I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on earth.
Col. L. Gordon Cooper, Letter to Ambassador Eric Gairy, 9 November 1978

The Witness

Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1927. He flew with the United States Marine Corps in the immediate postwar period, transferred to the Air Force, and was selected as one of the original seven Mercury astronauts in April 1959. He flew the Faith 7 mission in May 1963 as the last and longest of the Mercury single-astronaut flights, twenty-two orbits across thirty-four hours. He commanded the Gemini 5 mission with Pete Conrad in August 1965 for an eight-day flight that set the duration record at the time. He retired from NASA in 1970 and from the United States Air Force at the rank of colonel.

Cooper had spoken publicly about anomalous aerial observations from his career on multiple occasions before the 1978 UN letter. He had described an alleged 1951 multi-pilot intercept of unidentified objects over Germany while flying F-86 Sabres. He had referenced a 1957 incident at Edwards Air Force Base in which film footage of a disc-shaped object landing on a dry lake bed was reportedly recorded by an Air Force camera crew under his command. The UN letter was the first occasion on which Cooper placed his position on the public record in an institutional setting, with diplomatic correspondence rather than journalistic statement.

The Context

Sir Eric Gairy had personally addressed the UN General Assembly on the UFO question on 7 October 1977. His proposal called for the establishment of an Agency or Department within the United Nations to study unidentified flying objects and related phenomena, with appropriate scientific and diplomatic mechanisms. The proposal was referred to the Special Political Committee and circulated for member-state response. Gairy's correspondence campaign sought endorsements from credentialed witnesses to strengthen the case for institutional support.

Cooper's response was one of several Gairy received. The full text of the letter included Cooper's proposal that the United Nations establish "a top level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion." Cooper also noted in the letter that "most astronauts are very reluctant to even discuss UFOs due to the great numbers of people who have indiscriminately sold fake stories and forged documents abusing their names and reputations without hesitation. Those few astronauts who have continued to have a participation in the UFO field have had to do so very cautiously."

Aftermath

The Gairy proposal did not survive the political upheaval that followed. On 13 March 1979 the New Jewel Movement under Maurice Bishop seized power in Grenada in a bloodless coup while Gairy was abroad. Gairy never returned to power. The UN UFO proposal lost its lead diplomatic sponsor and lapsed without coming to a General Assembly vote.

Cooper continued to speak publicly on the subject through the rest of his life. He addressed UFO conferences in the 1990s and made multiple media appearances. He died in Ventura, California on 4 October 2004 at the age of 77. The 1978 letter remains his most formal and best-documented statement of position. The original is held in the United Nations archive in New York; multiple secondary reproductions have circulated in the UFO documentary literature, including in the holdings of NICAP, MUFON, and the Disclosure Project.

Source and Provenance

Primary source

Letter from Col. L. Gordon Cooper to Ambassador Eric Gairy, Permanent Mission of Grenada to the United Nations, dated 9 November 1978. Two pages, typescript on Cooper's personal letterhead. Submitted in support of Sir Eric Gairy's UN agency proposal.

Archival holding

United Nations archive, New York. Multiple secondary holdings including UFO Evidence (online), MUFON archives, and reproductions in the contemporary Disclosure Project documentation.

Context document

Sir Eric Gairy address to the UN General Assembly, 7 October 1977, proposing a UN Agency for the study of unidentified flying objects.