Barry Goldwater

Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term U.S. Senator from Arizona, the 1964 Republican nominee for President of the United States, and a retired major general in the United States Air Force Reserve. Widely regarded as the father of modern American conservatism and the intellectual architect of the movement that later propelled Ronald Reagan to the presidency, Goldwater was also one of the most prominent American political figures of the twentieth century to state publicly that the U.S. government was withholding information about unidentified flying objects, and his repeated, unsuccessful attempts to access classified UFO-related materials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base became a defining anecdote in the history of the UFO secrecy debate.

Early life and family

Goldwater was born in Phoenix in the Arizona Territory to Baron M. Goldwater, a merchant of Polish Jewish descent, and Hattie Josephine "JoJo" Williams, a New Englander of colonial stock whose ancestors reportedly included the theologian Roger Williams. His paternal grandfather, Michel Goldwasser, had been born in 1821 in Konin in Congress Poland, emigrated to London following the Revolutions of 1848, and anglicized his name to Michael Goldwater after marrying Sarah Nathan at the Great Synagogue of London. Michael later relocated to the United States, settled briefly in San Francisco and then in Arizona, and founded the merchant business that his sons — Henry, Baron, and Morris — would expand into the Goldwater's department store chain, a major commercial institution in territorial and early-state Arizona. His uncle Morris Goldwater served as an Arizona territorial legislator, mayor of Prescott, delegate to the Arizona Constitutional Convention, and president of the Arizona State Senate.

Although his father was Jewish, Goldwater was raised in his mother's Episcopal faith and identified throughout his life as Episcopalian, while occasionally invoking his Jewish heritage in public remarks. His first cousin Julius Goldwater was a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist priest who ministered to interned Japanese Americans during World War II.

After poor academic performance as a freshman, Goldwater's parents sent him to Staunton Military Academy in Staunton, Virginia, where he played varsity football, basketball, track, and swimming, served as senior class treasurer, and graduated in 1928 as a cadet captain. He enrolled at the University of Arizona but left after a single year, following his father's death, to help run the family department store. Goldwater would later become the most recent non-college graduate to be nominated for the presidency by a major American party.

Goldwater developed a lifelong passion for aviation and became an accomplished amateur pilot, eventually flying more than 165 aircraft types over his career, including early jets and the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane. His combination of business background, aviation expertise, and deep familiarity with the American Southwest shaped both his political outlook and his later access to military aviation figures; his extensive contacts in the U.S. Air Force, dating from his wartime service and postwar Air National Guard command, gave him unusual access to senior military officers throughout his career.

Military service

Following U.S. entry into World War II, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the Army Air Forces, trained as a pilot, and was assigned to the Ferry Command. He spent most of the war flying supply and delivery routes between the United States and India, including over The Hump — the perilous trans-Himalayan route used to supply the Republic of China — as well as routes through the Azores, North Africa, Nigeria, and Central Africa.

In 1946, at the rank of colonel, Goldwater founded the Arizona Air National Guard and ordered its racial integration two years before President Truman's desegregation order for the armed forces. He remained an active Air Reserve officer for the next two decades, reaching the rank of major general as a command pilot while commanding the 9999th Air Reserve Squadron in the early 1960s and pressing the Pentagon to complete desegregation of the armed forces. He also advocated for the creation of the United States Air Force Academy and later served on its Board of Visitors; the visitor center bears his name. He retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1967.

Political career

First Senate term (1953–1965)

Goldwater was elected to the United States Senate from Arizona in 1952, narrowly unseating Democratic Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland in an upset fueled by large margins in Maricopa County. He won re-election over McFarland by a wider margin in 1958, becoming the first Arizona Republican to win a second Senate term, and did so in a year that otherwise saw Democrats gain thirteen Senate seats. On the Senate floor and in committee he became a leading voice for limited government, anti-communism, and opposition to the New Deal administrative state.

In his first year, Goldwater insisted that his Black legislative assistant, Katherine Maxwell, be served in the Senate cafeteria alongside other Senate employees, helping drive its desegregation. A lifetime NAACP member who had helped found the organization's Arizona chapter, he had already integrated the Goldwater's department store upon taking it over in the 1930s and had pushed for the integration of Phoenix public schools a year before Brown v. Board of Education. He voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Twenty-fourth Amendment, and would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1960 had he not been absent.

Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, objecting to Titles II and VII on federalism grounds while supporting the bill's broader purpose. He later called the vote one of his greatest regrets. Martin Luther King Jr. famously remarked that Goldwater, "while not himself a racist,... articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists."

Goldwater's 1960 tract The Conscience of a Conservative, ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell Jr., sold in the millions and introduced a generation of American conservatives to a coherent ideological framework, making Goldwater the leading spokesman for the party's conservative wing.

1964 presidential campaign

Goldwater won the 1964 Republican presidential nomination after a bruising primary fight against the party's moderate Eastern establishment, drawing heavy support from Southern and Western delegations organized by Birmingham attorney John Grenier. At the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, he delivered the acceptance speech — chiefly drafted by Karl Hess, with the central antithesis suggested by Harry V. Jaffa — that included his best-remembered line: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" He was the first candidate of Jewish descent, through his father, to be nominated for the presidency by a major American party.

Goldwater chose RNC chairman William E. Miller as his running mate, reportedly joking that Miller's presence "drives Johnson nuts." His general-election campaign against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson was defined by the claim that Goldwater's anti-communist militancy risked nuclear war — a charge amplified by remarks Goldwater had made about giving theater commanders authority to use tactical nuclear weapons and by the "Daisy" advertisement produced by the Johnson campaign. The Fact magazine issue "The Unconscious of a Conservative," claiming on the basis of an unsolicited psychiatric survey that Goldwater was mentally unfit, later resulted in the Goldwater v. Ginzburg libel verdict and helped prompt the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater rule against diagnosing public figures at a distance.

The campaign mobilized a conservative grassroots movement, introduced Ronald Reagan to national politics through his televised address A Time for Choosing, and laid the organizational infrastructure for the conservative takeover of the Republican Party. The election itself was a landslide defeat: Goldwater carried only Arizona and five Deep South states — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina — but his strong performance in the South foreshadowed the long-term regional realignment that would eventually make the South a Republican bastion.

Return to the Senate (1969–1987)

Returned to the Senate in 1968 after a single term out of office, Goldwater concentrated increasingly on military affairs and on the preservation of Senate institutional prerogatives. Although he had endorsed Richard Nixon in 1968, he privately disliked him — later calling Nixon "the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life" — and on August 7, 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Goldwater led a delegation with House Republican Leader John Jacob Rhodes and Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott that informed Nixon he had almost no support left in the Senate. Nixon announced his resignation the following evening.

In 1979, Goldwater led a Supreme Court challenge in Goldwater v. Carter to President Jimmy Carter's unilateral termination of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China on Taiwan; the Court dismissed the case as a political question. He won a narrow re-election in 1980, trailing Democratic challenger Bill Schulz through much of election night before absentee ballots delivered him a 49.5%–48.4% victory.

In the new Republican majority of 1981 Goldwater became chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In April 1984 he clashed publicly with the Reagan administration after learning that the CIA had been mining the harbors of Nicaragua without having properly briefed the committee. In a letter to CIA director William Casey he denounced the action as "an act of war" and wrote, "this is no way to run a railroad," subsequently apologizing to the Senate for having been kept in the dark and voting for a resolution condemning the mining.

From 1985 to his 1987 retirement Goldwater chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, where his most consequential legislative achievement was the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, which reorganized the senior command structure of the U.S. military and strengthened civilian authority within the Department of Defense. He also introduced the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, supported ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty, and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Reagan on May 12, 1986. After the Iran–Contra affair broke publicly in late 1986, Goldwater told journalist Robert MacNeil he considered it "the god-damned stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made."

In his later years Goldwater became notably libertarian, supporting abortion rights, gay rights — including military service and adoption rights for same-sex couples — environmental protection, and the legalization of marijuana, and sharply criticizing the influence of the Christian right in Republican politics. Responding to Jerry Falwell's opposition to the Sandra Day O'Connor Supreme Court nomination, he declared: "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."

UFO interest and the Blue Room at Wright-Patterson

Goldwater's interest in UFOs was rooted in his aviation background, his extensive Air Force contacts, and a longstanding conviction that the U.S. government was withholding significant information from the American public on the subject. Over multiple decades, he repeatedly requested access to the classified UFO-related materials allegedly stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in a facility colloquially known as the Blue Room or Hangar 18.

As early as August 31, 1957, while still in his first Senate term, Goldwater wrote to a constituent that "I, frankly, feel there is a great deal to this" — a letter documented by historian Richard Dolan in his research on early congressional UFO interest. In January 1958, Air Force Assistant Secretary Richard Horner assured Goldwater that allegations of information being withheld about UFOs were "entirely in error."

The most famous of Goldwater's requests was directed at General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff who had commanded the strategic bombing campaign against Japan in World War II and later served as a principal architect of Strategic Air Command and U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy. LeMay was among the most powerful military officers in American history, a figure whose institutional authority over Air Force matters was nearly absolute during his peak influence; he was also Goldwater's first choice for running mate in 1964 before LeMay declined, and later ran as vice-presidential candidate on George Wallace's American Independent Party ticket in 1968. Goldwater reportedly asked LeMay on multiple occasions over the years for permission to see the classified UFO materials.

Goldwater described LeMay's response as among the most vehement and dismissive he had ever received from any person on any subject. LeMay reportedly told Goldwater in the strongest terms — including profanity — that he could not and would not have access to the materials, and that Goldwater should never raise the subject again. LeMay's reaction, according to Goldwater's own subsequent accounts, was so unusually intense that it actually increased his suspicion that the facility contained something of extraordinary significance: the vehemence of a denial from a man not known for excessive reaction suggested to Goldwater that there was something worth protecting.

In a 1988 letter, Goldwater wrote: "I think at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, there is a facility where they store information and I think there are some retrieval-related items there." In a 1994 interview with Larry King, Goldwater stated that he believed the U.S. government was covering up information about UFOs and that LeMay had been furious when asked about the subject. Goldwater said he had been given a "cussing out" the likes of which he had never received before when he raised the question with LeMay.

Steven Greer recounted visiting Goldwater at his home in Arizona after the senator had left office, where Goldwater allegedly told him directly that he had asked Curtis LeMay to gain access to the Blue Room and that LeMay had responded with a threat of court-martial from the Air Force Reserves — despite Goldwater being both a sitting senator and a personal friend. Greer quoted Goldwater as telling him: "It was a goddamn mistake then; it's a goddamn mistake now that this was ever kept secret."

Goldwater also stated publicly that he believed UFOs were real and that the government was covering up information about them. He was asked repeatedly in his later Senate years and after retirement whether he had ever seen classified UFO materials, and consistently said he had not been able to gain access, despite his membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee and his extensive military contacts. The fact that a sitting senator with his clearances, connections, and political stature could not obtain such access was itself cited by Goldwater as evidence of the program's extraordinary compartmentalization.

Relationship with Curtis LeMay

The relationship between Goldwater and Curtis LeMay was complex. The two men shared deep anti-communist convictions, a love of aviation, and a preoccupation with American military strength. Their personal and political alignment made LeMay's refusal on the UFO question all the more striking to Goldwater: here was a man he considered a friend and ally, whose reaction to a simple inquiry about UFO materials was explosive and absolute. The episode illustrated a pattern that other senior political figures would later describe, in which certain compartmentalized programs relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena were reportedly insulated not only from the general public but from elected officials and senior military officers who were not specifically read into those programs, regardless of their clearance levels, rank, or political standing.

Documentary record: Goldwater's UFO letters

Richard Dolan's historical research documents a series of letters Goldwater wrote to constituents on the UFO subject across multiple decades. In March 1975, Goldwater wrote: "The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret." By 1981, Goldwater's letters had become more resigned: "I have long ago given up acquiring access to the so-called blue room at Wright-Patterson … this thing has gotten so highly classified … it is just impossible to get anything on it." Dolan contextualizes the letters: "Back in 1964, which was around the time he tried to learn the Air Force's UFO secrets, Goldwater was a military-friendly Republican Party candidate for President. And yet he still was denied access. The person who blocked him was his friend, USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay. Goldwater referred to the UFO subject as 'above Top Secret.'"

Personal life

Marriages and family

Goldwater married Margaret "Peggy" Johnson in 1934; she died in 1985 after more than five decades of marriage. He married Susan Wechsler in 1992. He had four children, including former U.S. Representative Barry Goldwater Jr. of California.

Hobbies

Beyond politics and aviation, Goldwater was widely known as an accomplished amateur photographer, particularly of the American Southwest and of Navajo and Hopi subjects; a serious collector of kachina dolls; and a dedicated amateur radio operator, holding the callsign K7UGA for the bulk of his life and using radio to patch deployed servicemembers through to their families during the Vietnam War. He maintained an office sign that read: "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots."

Death and memorials

Goldwater died of complications from a stroke on May 29, 1998, at his home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at age 89. He is interred at Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley. His name is attached to Barry Goldwater High School in Phoenix, the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in southern Arizona, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, the Goldwater Institute, the Goldwater rule in psychiatry, and a statue in the U.S. Capitol area.

Legacy

Goldwater's public statements on UFOs and government secrecy placed him in a small group of senior political figures — alongside Gerald Ford's 1966 congressional UFO inquiry and the later disclosures prompted by the Disclosure Project — who treated the question as a serious matter of public governance rather than a marginal curiosity. His willingness to speak publicly about LeMay's reaction and his own belief in government concealment gave the issue credibility it would not otherwise have had, coming from a former presidential nominee and long-serving senator who could not be dismissed as a fringe figure.

In mainstream conservative politics, Goldwater's legacy is as the ideological founder of the movement that produced Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and the modern Republican right. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, reflecting on Congress in past decades, counted Goldwater among the "true independent thinkers, true intellectuals" who had been "giants on Capitol Hill" in the 1970s and 1980s — a standard he considered no longer met by their successors. His 1964 campaign, though a landslide defeat, is studied as a template for insurgent ideological politics within major parties, and the arc from The Conscience of a Conservative to the Reagan revolution remains one of the central narratives of postwar American political history.

See also

• Hangar 18
• UAP disclosure
• Project Blue Book
• Curtis LeMay
• Goldwater–Nichols Act

References

This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article "Barry Goldwater", as of an unknown date, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.