Obama Becomes First President to Acknowledge Existence of Area 51

“I think I just became the first president to ever publicly mention Area 51,” President Barack Obama joked at Sunday night’s Kennedy Center Honors event at The White House. The line got a big laugh from the audience in attendance, but he may have been telling the truth.

This year’s honorees included Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, and Billy Joel. But it was during his remarks about actress Shirley MacLaine, who wrote about her own UFO sightings in her memoir Sage-ing While Age-ing that the president brought up the top secret military base in southern Nevada.

“Now, when you first become president, one of the questions that people ask you is what’s really going on in Area 51,” Obama said. “When I wanted to know, I called Shirley MacLaine. I think I just became the first president to ever publicly mention Area 51. How’s that, Shirley?”

According to NPR’s Adam Wollner, the closest any other U.S. president has come to discussing Area 51 was when President Bill Clinton issued a presidential determination exempting the site from environmental disclosure laws. But that document only referred to the base as “the Air Force’s operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada.” The CIA did not acknowledge its existence until last year.

Watch video below, via The White House:

[photo via screengrab]

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