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December 12, 2003

Cleveland Plain Dealer

UFO Buffs Sue To Obtain Data On Pa. Fireball 

by Michael Sangiacomo

Elyria - Were the fiery objects that crashed into Elyria 38 years ago Tuesday part of an unidentified flying object that crashed near the western Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg?

Inquiring minds want to know.

A group of UFO enthusiasts, backed by the Sci-Fi Channel, filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking full disclosure of NASA records regarding the crash of a large, fiery object near Kecksburg.

According to a front-page story in The Plain Dealer on Dec. 10, 1965, smaller fireballs also crashed in the Elyria area, setting 10 small grass fires.

Mrs. Ralph Richards of West River Drive in Elyria told the newspaper she saw a "flaming object about the size of a basketball" crash into a field.

Government officials at the time said the main fireball and the smaller pieces came from a meteorite that broke up on entering the Earth's atmosphere.

But the Coalition for Freedom of Information, a group seeking more government information about UFOs, said witnesses reported watching the huge fireball maneuver through the sky before impact, suggesting it was "either a highly advanced space probe" or some other unknown object from outer space.

"Calling it a meteorite does not explain why the U.S. Army cordoned off the area and kept townspeople out of the site," said Larry Landsman of the SciFi Channel headquarters in New York. "The area was practically under martial law. People have reported seeing something hauled away from the scene, but this was always denied by the government."

The suit was filed in Washington, D.C., by Leslie Kean, of San Rafael, Calif., the investigative director of the Coalition for Freedom of Information. She asked that NASA be forced to release all information it has gathered on the Kecksburg crash.

The coalition was formed last year to concentrate on the "government operations relating to the investigation of unidentified flying objects."

According to the lawsuit, Kean filed a Freedom of Information Act request in January for information and was told that no such records exist.

A spokesman for NASA in Washington, D.C., said the agency had heard about the lawsuit but would have no comment.
 

December 12, 2003

China Daily

Focus: Ufology in mysticism

UFOs, flying saucers and ET conjure up images from Hollywood films and blurred photos in tabloid newspapers. But a number of true believers in China, many of them highly educated, see merit in exploring unidentified flying objects and alien encounters scientifically.

Meng Zhaoguo, a 35-year-old tree grower from Wuchang City in Heilongjiang Province, can still vividly describe the Steven Spielberg-type scenario he claims to have witnessed nearly 10 years ago: As he sat in a huge white, gleaming spaceship, a tall creature with a large head and eyes like light bulbs and clad in an inflated seamless rubber suit perched on a metal sheet that hovered in the air. In a metallic-tinged voice, this interplanetary visitor communicated with a man via a television-like screen, predicting a collision between a comet and Jupiter.

As sensational as it sounds, Meng insists he was taken aboard the ship a month after being shocked by some sort of waves emitted by a silver-coloured object on a mountain he and some other villagers attempted to approach in June 1994.

Such accounts have served to shroud ufology - the study of UFOs - in a kind of mysticism, a word often used when referring to the subject.

The Chinese public first learned about UFOs in 1978, when leading State newspaper the People's Daily ran an article about the phenomenon. Although many accounts of UFO sightings have appeared in the media in the ensuing two decades, the voices of doubt are as strong as people's curiosity.

But despite the cynicism, more than 40 ufology associations across the country have registered some 5,000 believers, not including academicians interested in UFOs. With no State funding and little private sponsorship, the community feels discriminated against and excluded from mainstream scientific
circles.

The sceptics's main demand seems simple enough, but satisfying it is harder: Show me the evidence. A photo or video footage, which can be easily fabricated, is not sufficient. They want to see a real object, a flying saucer, something of a mission impossible for ufologists.

Describing ufologists as Rmantics, Sima Nan, a popular science writer and a leading figure in the country's fight against pseudo-science, says the most important thing in scientific research is to base a study on concrete evidence and avoid subjectivism. Those who alleged to have seen UFOs or had extraterrestrial (ET) encounters, be they an innocent child, sincere woman or down-to-earth farmer or a retired cadre, all lack hard evidence to prove their claims via objective and scientific methods.

"Research work based mostly on imagination is not research at all, "says the writer, adding that the standard telescopes and hand-held video cameras commonly used by ufologists cannot meet the stringent demands of scientific research.

Ufologists, however, believe their research to be as significant as the country's space exploration programme, even if it is not currently being taken seriously. If space exploration includes the search for alien civilizations, they argue, UFO research can serve to supplement it.

Tian Daojun, a professor at the Nanjing University of Aviation and Aeronautics, says that human fantasy is not totally meaningless in scientific research, as some UFO sceptics assume, pointing out that the fanciful notions of human beings did eventually put a man on the moon.

The numerous UFO sightings reported should never be ignored or denied, Tian says. Any information gleaned about the way alien spacecraft function might serve to upgrade scientific research, resulting in breakthroughs in aviation and aeronautics technologies on Earth.

But what upsets UFO researchers most is the suggestion that UFOs are nothing but mythology and ufology is just a new form of pseudo-science.

Ji Jianmin, a UFO enthusiast in Feixiang County in northern China's Hebei Province, dismisses such assertions as too opinionated and unfriendly to UFO researchers and criticizes detractors for their own unscientific approach to the subject.

Ji, a former high school art teacher who currently runs a nameplate design service, became interested in UFOs in the 1980s. He firmly believes in the existence of civilizations on other planets as well as the potential for a kind of psychic connection between residents of Earth and aliens.

A graduate from a local vocational teacher training college, Ji admits that his education falls short of arming him to study UFOs scientifically. But, he adds:" that does not necessarily mean I'mnot qualified to do my part. When it comes to UFO research, everyone is a primary-school pupil, from fans with scant education to established experts in various scientific fields."

The controversy surrounding UFOs is very natural, so long as each side does not force its ideas on the other, according to Wu Jialu, a Shanghai aircraft expert.

Wu also finds it natural for people to become interested in the mysteries of the universe. It's quite nice that people care about things outside their immediate world, as it shows a willingness to expand their vision, and the exploration of the unknown is, after all, both interesting and important. Even within the UFO community, ufologists differ in their approaches to research, although they all consider alien spacecraft and intelligence to be at the very heart of their research.

One school tends to focus on the more practical aspects. Some, like Wu, expect to get inspiration by contemplating the mechanics of alien spacecraft as a means of improving Earth aircraft or even spaceships. Others, including Su Congbo, a seismologist in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province, are interested in finding out whether there is a connection between UFOs and natural phenomena such as earthquakes.

Beijing-based ufologist Zhang Jingping stands for yet another school of thought in his persistent attempts to prove the existence not only of UFOs but also of alien civilizations.

Zhang, the 30-something owner of an advertising firm who considers ufology his real career, has put a great deal of energy into investigating UFO encounters. A graduate of the Beijing University of Aviation and Aeronautics (BUAA), Zhang says he has no doubt that visitors from other planets have had a considerable amount of contact with people on Earth. Not one to shrink from the courage of his convictions, he even named his advertising company Flying Saucer.

In early September, Zhang invited police technicians and psychologists to subject Meng Zhaoguo to a lie detector test and hypnosis experiments in Beijing. The test results, he says, prove that Meng was telling the truth. Zhang also believes the scars Meng bears from the incident, which doctors said could not possibly have been caused by common injuries or surgery, serve as further evidence of his ET encounter.

But Liu Daoye, a retired expert on national defence based in Nanjing, capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province, contends that a belief cannot be based on something that cannot be explained, such as the scars Meng says were inflicted during his alien adventure. However exciting the reports of UFO witnesses and however sensational the claims of encounters with ETs may be, Liu says, ufologists must base their studies on serious research and concrete evidence to avoid misleading the public.

"I believe in the probability of intelligent life on other planets, but I doubt such beings have ever travelled to Earth," he says. "To date, no one who has claimed to have encountered an ET can produce concrete evidence, so advocating their existence can only lead UFO research towards mysticism." He says that while the reports of experiences similar to Meng's are not necessarily lies, they are more likely the result of some sort of optical illusion.

Zhang does argue, however, that UFO research should not be fettered by the limitations of modern science and technology.  "We need new conceptions in UFO research, as current science and technology theory also need improving." Cao Lixing, a postgraduate student majoring in computer science at BUAA, says proving the existence of UFOs or flying saucers is important to advancing serious study. "As long as the existence of such phenomena remains unproven, UFO research will never escape the bounds of scepticism," he says.

The young man became interested in UFO research after listening to a lecture Zhang and Meng gave in late September. He also accompanied Zhang to Qinhuangdao, a northern coastal city in Hebei, in early October to look for the landing site of a flying saucer in another alleged ET encounter.

Cao says he appreciates Zhang's enthusiasm and devotion, but admits that it is hard for the average person, himself included, to believe any ET story unless they have such an experience themselves.

A farmer with only five years's schooling, Meng Zhaoguo says he had never heard the term "UFO" before researchers visited him after his story was reported.

After his experience, Meng was sought out by some locals hoping he could cure their diseases, as they reckoned his encounter might have given him special powers. Meng says he refused their entreaties. And more business-minded people wanted to advertise Meng as an attraction to encourage tourism to the region.

Acknowledging the overwhelming doubt he sees in people's eyes when he recalls the incident, the farmer, who has participated in more than 100 interviews with the media and researchers, says that UFOs and ufology, which were originally unknown to him, have disrupted his life and made him feel uneasy.

"But ufologists still take great interest in Meng's UFO encounter nine years on. they hope there will be a conclusion to the UFO phenomenon as soon as possible; only then will I feel released," sighs Meng.
 

December 10, 2003

Alberta Airdrie Echo

Researcher Reports More Sightings

by Paul Wells
Echo Editor

Airdrie Echo — Two recent Airdrie Echo articles on UFO sightings in and around Airdrie continue to spur on other residents to come forward with their stories of strange lights in the sky.

And although he’s investigated thousands of sighting reports over the years, Canadian UFO researcher Brian Vike says the local response has been somewhat unusual.

"It is really interesting to see what has been coming in from your area," said Vike, director of British Columbia-based HBCC UFO Research. "What is really interesting is that other papers have run articles and I never heard a peep about any sightings coming in, so to me this shows that people are seeing strange things in certain areas, such as yours."

Here are the most recent reports from the Airdrie area that Vike has received.

Airdrie
Date: Sept. 15, 2003
Time: 11:20 p.m.

"The witness’ e-mail is below: I also called the witness in Airdrie to gather more information on this sighting. My report after talking to her is below also," Vike said.

"A week before the first article came out in the Airdrie Echo newspaper about sightings, I came home from work about 11:20 p.m. and I let the dogs outside and I was also watching a few northern lights off my deck," said the witness in her e-mail. "I live on the east side of Airdrie ... so we have a hill behind my place with a walkway that goes towards the highway. I looked over to my left toward the west – and I know what I saw – it was a big circle of lights twirling around and hovering on the walkway and then it just went down, not up. I grabbed my dogs and headed into the house. The next week, I read the article in the paper."

Vike said that during his phone conversation with the witness, more information was gathered.

"The witness said it could not have been children twirling lights as, for one thing, the circle of lights was very large in size, plus she could not see anyone in the area," Vike said. She also compared the size to a 10- or 12-foot round C-Band satellite dish. She explained that it looked to her as if it was a ring-shaped object with a lot of white lights running all around the outside of it. She also said it appeared that there was not just one set of lights, but layers of them.

Airdrie
Date: Early July 2000
Time: Late evening

According to Vike, "A gentleman called to file a report. He first told me he lives in the next town north of Airdrie (Crossfield). Back in the year 2000, he was living in Calgary and they had just purchased a home north of Airdrie. The fellow works evenings, so one night when he finished off his shift at work, he asked a good friend if he wanted to take a drive and have a look at his new home he had purchased. He told me it was a beautiful evening and they decided to take the trip to look at the new home. They headed out, both men discussing the distance they would be travelling from Calgary to the new home. The driver thought they would be travelling some 40 kilometers, but his friend thought it would be a little further than that. The driver hit the button on the odometer, which set it at zero kilometers. This way they would know just how far they were about to travel one way. The two men arrived safely at their destination and had a look around and took some time talking. It was starting to get later into the evening, so they thought it best to get back on the road heading towards home. The passenger in the vehicle mentioned to the driver that he had in-laws living in Airdrie and would it be OK if they swung by to show the driver their home. As they drove along the highway outside of Airdrie, the driver noticed some very bright lights coming up from behind them. The lights were very bright, and as the passenger turned around to look he commented on the brightness and how fast the lights were approaching them. Both men, thinking this was a vehicle, never gave it a lot of thought, other than these lights were almost blinding to the driver.

"Now here is where the story takes a strange twist. All of a sudden the fellows came upon a large sign. It read Country Hills Boulevard, which is the first exit to Calgary. What is puzzling is that from when the strange lights came up from behind them and to the sign which read Country Hills Boulevard, there is a possibility that some time had gone missing. Both men do not recall driving through Airdrie at all. The driver took a look at the odometer and he noticed they may be missing 20 kilometers.  As he mentioned to me, he never gave any of this much thought, but did find it rather strange. The driver also said he has driven this stretch of highway many times and nothing like this has ever taken place. I asked the man if he or his friend had ever had any vivid dreams and he said no. As far as he knows, nothing out of the ordinary has happened to him other than this one strange event. The driver did mention that his friend did lose a little sleep over the experience."
 

November 26, 2003

Alberta Airdrie Echo

More UFO sightings Reported
Additional witnesses come forward after recent article

Paul Wells
Echo Editor

A British Columbia-based UFO researcher says a story which appeared in the Echo in September regarding sightings in the Airdrie area has spurred others to come forward with their experiences with strange lights in the sky.

Brian Vike, director of HBCC UFO Research and a regular contributor to TV and radio shows as a UFO expert, said numerous sightings of unidentified objects in the area over the past months has ensured that Airdrie has entered the lexicon of the UFO community.

"I do a weekly radio show (in B.C.) and I mentioned to the host that I have received a number of reports from the (Airdrie) area and we talked about the latest one, which came in on air," Vike said.

"I have been doing many radio shows (in Canada and the U.S.) and I always include information about the sightings in your area."

The original article contained a rundown of three of the most recent sightings in the area which occurred from July through September. That article can be found at www.airdrieecho.com under the archive section.

Since that time, Vike has received reports of more sightings which have occurred recently. These include:

o Aug. 18, 2003, 2:30 p.m. According to Vike, a man called HBCC UFO Research s toll-free UFO hotline to report a strange sight he witnessed while driving on Highway 2 from Calgary to Airdrie.

"He watched a small white light cross the highway in the distance ahead of him and the ball of light turned in his direction. The witness said he observed the light getting closer and all of a sudden the object stopped still a ways away from him and changed from a ball of light into a craft of some type. He reported no sound being heard. I asked if he might be able to determine the size of it and he said that when it was in the distance, it could have been approximately the size of his fingernail but when it headed in his direction and got very close, in his words, It was huge. "

The witness said the object came to a complete stop and sat stationary for a period of time before he lost sight of it.

o Sept. 15, 2003, 8:33 p.m. (The following is an e-mail report received by Vike.) "I noticed an article in the Airdrie Echo the other day and wondered if you had an explanation for something my daughter and I saw Friday night (Sept. 26). We were looking west of the Big Dipper and saw what looked like an exceptionally bright star (brighter than anything I have seen before).

"We were trying to figure out if it was a planet or something, and it just dimmed out to nothing in a matter of 10 seconds or less. It didn t move at all, just dimmed to a faint point, then we couldn t see it anymore.

o Oct. 27, 2003, 11 p.m. Vike said a man called him Nov. 3 to make a report after reading the Echo article.

"He was talking to his neighbours and they asked him if he had witnessed anything strange on Oct. 27 at around 11 p.m. He said no and asked what it was these folks saw.

"The couple said they were outside of their home looking west toward the mountains and witnessed five very bright flashes in different parts of the sky. All the flashes that were witnessed were very low in the horizon and at least 100 times brighter than a regular flash one would see from a camera.

"Also, the flashes were very large in size. They also mentioned the lights were at a great distance away from their location."

Having been a UFO researcher for many years, Vike said his routine is to first attempt to offer such rational explanations as weather patterns, satellites or meteors for such sightings.

"I do know that (UFO sightings) is sometimes a very strange topic ... but I honestly do look for rational explanations for such sightings," he said. "Most times, I can offer an explanation of what the folks witnessed, but then I have many cases which also go unsolved."
 

November 21, 2003

Diario El Tribuno (Argentina)

UFO Follows Three Mechanics in Salta for Two Hours

"I'd never been so scared," said one of the protagonists of the strange and extraordinary adventure.

A team of three mechanics from Salta, who had ventured out to rescue a minibus belonging to a Canadian scientific expedition on the Chilean side of the Andean region bordering the provinces of Salta and Jujuy, had an unexpected brush with the unusual: an unidentified flying object (UFO) of considerable size, spherical, and having an "impressive white luminosity" followed them for over two hours on a straight road that links the communities of Susques and Punamarca through the international Jama Pass.

"I'd never been so scared. That thing didn't belong to this world. It moved at an impossible speed and at one point came so close to us we thought it would collide," said Raul Eduardo Oviedo Tomas of the "Forani" mechanic shop in Salta. The North American researchers were stranded at San Pedro de Atacama. Headed by Dr. Randall, the scientists were conducting a survey of Cordilleran flora.

"We left Saturday on 4:45 from Salta toward the Cordillera. I asked two friends--Marco Figueroa and Alejandro--to accompany me so I wouldn't have to do either the work or the journey alone. This was the first time I had driven those roads, and I was truly impressed, not just by the landscape and the desolation, but by the hardship. One has to climb a 70 kilometer-long incline to reach Chile, which can destroy the engine of any unit driven by a inexperienced motorist," said Oviedo Tomas, 37, with an athletic build.

He added: "We reached San Pedro de Atacama around 14 hours on the same day, but [upon reaching the site] we realized that it would be impossible to tow the Canadian minibus with my S10 Chevy--it weighed over 5000 kilos and one good look at its structure and equipment sufficed to establish that the only way to get it out of there would be using a "mosquito truck" or something similar. We therefore decided to return home."

Without hesitation, taking deep drags of a cigarette, Oviedo Tomas went on: "The road on the Argentinean side is trully horrible, especially when contrasted with the Chilean side, which is like a paved pool table, with signage and road markings. At that point, shortly before reaching Susques, the stones caused us a blowout, which caused us to continue the trip under stress, since there was no other spare tier. We thought to repair it in the little town [Susques] but the tire repairman was on holiday, so we had to continue regardless. It was still Saturday."

"At around 20:00 we left Susques for Punamarca. We were listening to music and remarking about the impressive darkness and loneliness of this area, which is an upland plateau. Suddenly the lights and radio went out. I braked because I couldn't see anything at all due to the darkened. "Stop fooling around!" Alejandro told me from the back seat."

"Meanwhile, I was moving all of the knobs and to see what had happened. Nothing worked, only the engine. Suddenly, on my right and at an [undetermined] distance, I saw a strange light. It was a small sphere that irradiated an intense white light. 'Did you see that?' asked Marcos. I never got to answer, even though I thought [the light] was what they call 'la luz mala' (the evil light), because it started moving swiftly toward us until it became enormous. It stopped and remained static. 'Don't look at it!' I told my friends, although I don't know why. I accelerated and poured on as much speed as possible, however, that 'thing' started to fly again in a perfect straight line. It didn't make a single sound. Suddenly, it gained speed and in less than a second it vanished toward the bottom of the plain."

"We were quiet and didn't make a single remark, although all of us asked each other many times 'Did you see it? Did you see it?'. We went on in silence, although not for long, because other things happened that were truly unbelievable."
 

November 14, 2003

Western Daily Press (UK)

The Boys In Blue & Their Little Green Men

Ello 'ello 'ello, what's goin' on 'ere then? There seem to be rather a lot of spaceships hovering in the West's night skies.  More than 200 police officers have come forward to say they have seen UFOs flying over the British countryside, a detective revealed yesterday.

And according to the bobbies' X-files experiences, for the past 50 years the West has been a buzzing hotspot for extra-terrestrial activity.

One of the first recorded incidents out of the 84 recorded on the Prufos (Police Reporting UFO Sightings) website, comes from 1963 when PC Anthony Penny, on duty and wearing his uniform, saw an orange shape zoom over the sky and disappear into a field.

A few days later, when a large crater was found in the meadow, a bomb disposal team was sent to investigate, and the incident was even mentioned in Parliament.

Det Con Gary Heseltine, who works for the British Transport Police in Leeds and runs the database, feels the sightings are particularly credible because they all come from serving or retired officers.

"To my logical, police-trained mind, the officers provide excellent witness testimony promoting the 'nuts and bolts' evidence that supports the extra-terrestrial hypothesis," he wrote in a special report for this month's UFO Magazine.

And yesterday, the 43-year-old said he believed the sightings were only the tip of the iceberg.

"Many officers are worried about saying anything in case it affects their jobs or careers. That's why many sightings are only reported to me after officers have retired or if there are multiple sightings that several officers have seen," he said.  "The police are trained observers, they are out 24 hours a day."

A firm believer in extra-terrestrial life, Det Con Heseltine has himself had two UFO experiences. But one of the most dramatic brushes with a UFO was reported by two off-duty policemen at dusk on an October day in 1967, in Lytchett Minster, Dorset.

A large cigar-shaped spaceship, that was changing colour and form, was hovering over the village. As they watched, it split in two, disappeared and reappeared, and then shot from view.

And PC Roger Willey was one of two officers in a patrol car who reported giving chase to a cross-shaped spaceship in Okehampton, Devon. Their official report filed after the flying saucer sighting said it hovered over Salisbury in Wiltshire for almost a minute.
 

October 27, 2003

Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville)

Kelly green men documentary filmed this weekend in L.A.

by Michele Carlton

A documentary film featuring the 1955 invasion of "little green men" in the Christian County community of Kelly began filming this weekend in the Angeles National Forest just north of Los Angeles.

Barcon Video Productions, based in Glendale, Calif., filmed the dramatization of the local legend to include as part of a documentary entitled "Monsters of the UFO."

A Barcon production crew conducted eyewitness interviews in Hopkinsville last December to include in the film.

"I've wanted to do this film since I was a teenager," said producer/director Barry Conrad in an interview from Los Angeles last week. "I've wanted to try to bring the Kelly green men legend to life."

The local legend took root when the small town residents reported the landing of a space ship near the home of Cecil "Lucky" Sutton on Old Madisonville Road at the edge of Kelly on Aug. 21, 1955. Sutton and other family members said 12 little men landed in a spaceship and

then battled them at the house for hours.

Although the invaders are now known as the "little green men of Kelly," the original stories reported they were silver.

Actor Paul Clemens portrays Elmer "Lucky" Sutton and Mark Irvingsen plays Billy Ray Taylor in the re-enactment, Conrad said. Other character actors portray other true life persons who were present during the actual alien siege at Kelly.

Conrad said much of the film will be based on rare documents found at the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago created by the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who served as the Air Force's official consultant to the media regarding sightings of UFO's. Dr. Hynek later worked with Steven Spielberg on the 1977 blockbuster documentary, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Bryan Moore, a special effects artist who created many of the monsters used in the old Laurel Entertainment series, "Tales From the Darkside," is designing the aliens to be used in the Kelly story, Conrad said.

The documentary, "Monsters of the UFO," is a one?hour anthology special focusing on three stories involving close encounters with unexplained phenomenon. In addition to the Kelly green men, the film will explore first?hand accounts of the Mothman legend in Point Pleasant, W.Va., and the Flatwoods Monster in Flatwoods, W.Va.

Conrad and co-producer Lisa McIntosh are also planning a special DVD release later next year on the legend of the Kelly green men.

The director said to complete the DVD, Barcon needs additional photographs from Hopkinsville and Kelly circa 1955 and old film footage of the area.

"An Unknown Encounter" and "California's Most Haunted" were recently broadcast by the Sci Fi Network. Sci Fi executive Ray Cannella said these two documentaries garnered the highest ratings in the their history for the Tuesday prime time slots featured on its "Tuesday Declassified" series, a Barcon news release said.

Barcon film crews expect to return to Hopkinsville in December to conduct some final research and interviews, Conrad said.  "Monsters of the UFO" will most likely air on the Sci Fi Channel next year.
 

October 27, 2003

New York Post

Sci Fi: We Got Secret UFO Files

by Don Kaplan

THE SCI FI Channel has cracked open the file cabinet containing the real-life version of "The X-Files."

SCI FI pressured NASA into releasing top secret records about a 1965 UFO incident that took place in Kecksburg, Pa. and won.

Now about 36 pages of classified documents that have been kept under lock and key for almost four decades are being exposed to the public.

The release is part of an ongoing effort by SCI FI - along with a D.C. lobbying firm and former Clinton chief of staff, John Podesta - to pressure government agencies into making public top-secret records of various UFO related incidents that are over 25 years old.

"I think its fair to say that we have truly entered the realm of science fiction in Washington, D.C.," said Podesta.

"When it's fair game to disclose the identity of a clandestine CIA agent but not the records of an unexplained crash in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania that occurred 38 years ago."
 

October 14, 2003

Florida Today

UFO Expert Comes To Brevard 

by Billy Cox

George W. Bush raised a few eyebrows during the 2000 presidential campaign when he responded to a question about releasing government files on unidentified flying objects. "It'll be the first thing he (Dick Cheney) will do," Bush said. "He'll get right on it."

Immediately upon assuming office, however, the Bush administration exhibited an impulse for even tighter controls on government information, long before the 9/11 security clampdown. From Bush's immediate suspension of the 1978 Presidential Records Act to Cheney's refusal to comply with a General Accounting Office request for the names of the Vice President's Energy Task Force members, patterns of concealment are consistent. Just last month, Bush signed Executive Order 12958, which gave the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy the unprecedented authority to declare information "Top Secret."

"They didn't explain a rationale for it," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project in Washington, D.C. "The only way to know for sure how significant it is, is to come back a year from now and see how many times it's been exercised."

UFO declassification proponents thought they were building momentum for congressional hearings with a forum of witnesses in May 2001 announcing their willingness to testify. Then, the roof fell in. "The Saudi Arabian flying circus came to town, and the U.S. declared an open-ended war against this term, this noun, called terror," recalls lobbyist Stephen Bassett. "All the attention and all the headlines got sucked up by 9/11, and all the political work went into suspended animation."

But UFO reports never stopped. Nor did calls for government accountability. Friday, one of the leading advocates -- Stanton Friedman -- will discuss what he calls the "Cosmic Watergate" at Brevard Community College's Titusville campus.

Author of "Crash at Corona" and "Top Secret/Majic," Friedman was among the first to revisit the 1947 Roswell Incident, in which military authorities initially announced the recovery of a flying saucer, only to reverse themselves amid the ensuing media clamor. But from his home in New Brunswick, Canada, the American-born researcher blames contemporary media passivity for enabling a cover-up.

"The only way we'll make any progress with this issue is when the press gets off its duff and takes a serious look at all the documents that have been in the public domain for years," says Friedman. His background in nuclear physics landed him 14 years' worth of work on nuclear rockets, much of it classified. "I'd like to see them spend just 10 percent of the energy they invested in covering Gary Condit, Elian Gonzales and Monica Lewinsky."

Friedman contends government documents already in the public domain are loaded with smoking guns, not the least of which is the famous Bolender Memo. In 1969, just as the Air Force was terminating its public investigation of UFOs called Project Blue Book based on their negligible impact on national security, Brig. Gen. C.H. Bolender, deputy director of development for the USAF chief of staff, illuminated a backdoor policy: "Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security. . . . are not part of the Blue Book system."

"The media needs a commitment to the truth and to ignore the crap," says Friedman. "There was a conference in Chicago in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Roswell, and one guy shows up wearing alien antennae on his head. CBS was covering the event and -- wouldn't you know it? -- the guy with the headgear is the one who makes the news that night. This is typical."

Next April, during the presidential primary campaigns, Friedman and a host of investigators will join Bassett, founder of X-PPAC, the Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee, in Washington for yet another effort to forge UFOs into political dialogue. Bassett was on hand in 2001 when an initiative called the Disclosure Project pressed for immunity for whistleblowers whose testimony would violate their security oaths.

Among the most impressive insiders assembled by the Disclosure Project was a retired USAF captain who -- supported by Strategic Air Command documents -- was in a Wyoming ICBM silo in 1967 when a UFO drained the power from launch complexes housing 10 nuclear-tipped warheads. Another was a Federal Aviation Administration accidents division chief who, despite being told by a CIA agent to keep a lid on it, presented a box full of records concerning a harrowing, 30-minute encounter involving a UFO and a Japanese airliner off Alaska in 1986.

Although the Bush presidency apparently has no intention of addressing UFOs, its attitude is part of a bipartisan continuum by chief executives to avoid the issue. Jimmy Carter, for instance, filed a report of his own UFO sighting with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and promised an open investigation during his 1976 campaign. But as president, Carter never followed through. Bill Clinton, according to the memoirs of former deputy Attorney General Webster Hubbell, directed him to get to the bottom of UFOs.  Hubbell failed.

Repeated efforts by Florida Today to interview both Democrats about UFOs have been unsuccessful.

Last year, former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta announced his partnership with the Coalition for Freedom of Information --funded by the Sci Fi Channel, a client of his PodestaMattoon law firm -- to try to end UFO gridlock. For CFI research advisor Ted Roe, the issue is compelling, but so delicate he refers to the mystery in broader terms: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAEs.

Roe is the executive director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP) in Vallejo, Calif. In order to improve flight safety, NARCAP, a private outfit, collects data on everything from ball lightning to plasma disturbances, as reported by pilots, radar operators and air traffic controllers. But getting these sources to cooperate is dicey, due to the exotic nature of many UAEs.

"The really strange ones involve cylinders, discs, spheres, red lights and white lights, V-shaped or boomerang-shaped objects. Some of them are huge," says Roe, whose colleague, Dr. Richard Haines, authored a controversial report in 2000 analyzing more than 100 incidents, entitled "Aviation Safety in America."

"Some of them seem to demonstrate an alteration of magnetic fields, which can cause compasses to turn up to 20 degrees off direction. They can have transient or permanent effects on avionics systems, such as shutting off transmitters."

In early September 2001, NARCAP sent survey questionnaires on UAEs to 300 pilots of a major airline carrier. "We couldn't have picked a worse week," says Roe. "Two days later, the (World Trade Center) towers fell." Still, NARCAP got a 24 percent response, with one of every six subjects reporting having seen something so bizarre they couldn't identify it. "But not a one of them reported it to management," Roe adds.

Roe says retirees are more likely to talk than active pilots, which isn't a surprise. "The airline facilitator who was trying to promote our survey wound up getting two psychiatric evaluations," he says. "There are 500,000 people in our target culture, the aviation community, who are very interested in this subject. But these experiences become toxic when they manifest into (pilots') environment."

Only constant media pressure, says Friedman, will force authorities to respond to public curiosity. After all, 72 percent of Americans responding to a Roper Poll conducted last year believes the government isn't telling everything it knows about UFOs.

"I read that with Watergate, the Washington Post had something like 16 people working that story at one time," says Friedman, who'll also be signing copies of his work at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Merritt Island on 7 p.m. Thursday. "It's going to require that sort of effort. You can have all the seminars and lectures in the world, but if the press doesn't come and follow it up, then you haven't had much of an impact."
 

October 10, 2003

Mississippi Press (Pascagoula)

Observers Question UFO Experience

by Donna Harris

MOSS POINT -- More than a decade before Charles Hickson claimed an intergalactic encounter, Fritz Breland had his own brush with an object of an unidentified sort.

"You could feel the hair rise up on the back of your head," said, Breland, an 80-year-old retired commercial fisherman from Moss Point.

Even though the Moss Point man has his own UFO story, he's not sure if he can believe Hickson's claim. However, he doesn't want to call him a liar either.

"I don't dispute people's word if they have anything to say," he said. "Evidently, I saw something and he did too."

Breland's tale, so far untold, started on Gray Bayou on Three River Lakes in the 1950s. He was casting for bass on the bow of his boat, when he noticed the trees on the right side of the Pascagoula River had lost their leaves. That's when he noticed three objects, like blurry clouds, speeding through the sky.

"I don't know how I saw it because it was moving so fast," he said. "I couldn't swear to it, but it sounded like it made a swooshing sound."

Breland fished with his father as a child, and continues his treks on the water today. Never in all that time has he seen that sight repeated, he said.

"I saw that one thing that I couldn't explain, but I never saw anything else. And I didn't tell anybody about it," he said.

When Hickson's story made the national news, Breland thought about his own sighting.

"To this day I'm not sure what I saw," he said.

Hurley resident Lynn McCoy, a tour guide on the Pascagoula River, never saw a UFO near the water. Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster have been no-shows too, but McCoy said that doesn't mean they don't exist. They could be out there, he said, so he shouldn't doubt their existence, just because he hasn't seen them.

"I never really looked for them either," he said.

McCoy thinks Hickson and his fishing buddy, Calvin Parker, may have seen a UFO that night. "I ain't never seen nothing like
that," he said. "I believe something happened. I don't know what happened though. I heard they were really shook up."

McCoy has spent hundreds of nights on the river without extraterrestrial interference. "I've never seen anything I couldn't explain," he said. "I ain't saying they ain't there, but I've never seen them."

He still looks into the night sky though, wondering if he might catch a glimpse of a hint of another world. "Oh yeah. I guess we all do that sometimes," he said.

When Hickson went public with his story, Regina Hines of Ocean Springs, now a columnist for The Mississippi Press, was the first to land an interview with him. She met the shipyard worker soon after his abduction and wrote about the encounter.

"I don't know what happened, but I really think something did happen to them," she said. "I can't say if it was extraterrestrial or not, though."

She said she doesn't know if she fully believes that Hickson and Parker were abducted by aliens.

"Those were two pretty frightened men," she said. "I can't say it was a UFO, but it was something."

Donna Harris can be reached at 934-1495 or at
 

October 5, 2003

Sun Herald (Gulfport, MS)

Pascagoula UFOs

PASCAGOULA - Thirty years ago this week, UFO pandemonium broke out.

Folks feared an invasion from outer space. Others thought there was much ado about nothing. Everybody wanted more information.

From a newsman's view, I have never seen before or since so many people caught up in such a frenzy. It was over a report by Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker that a spacecraft had landed on the banks of the Pascagoula River and taken them onboard briefly.

"Everybody was seeing UFOs," recalled retired Mississippi Press Managing Editor Don Broadus.

A Pascagoula city councilman said he saw a luminous UFO the same night of Hickson's and Parker's report on the way to a church service in Vancleave.

"That's our story and we're stuck with it," E. P. Sigalas said.

Pascagoula Patrolman Bill Gennaro stopped on Beach Boulevard to talk with a group of people and they saw an oblong-shaped, blue-haze object zip to the north.

About 3,000 motorists from Mobile blocked Interstate 10 when they heard of a possible rendezvous with UFOs at the Mississippi line.

A cab driver in Biloxi said a UFO caused his taxi to stall out on U.S. 90.

Ocean Springs aldermen failed to pass a motion to make it illegal for a UFO to land in the city. Mayor Tom Stennis broke a 2-2 tie, saying, "Let's welcome them."

Then-Sheriff Fred Diamond's view: "Those men saw something. They underwent a dreadful experience."

UFO enthusiasts and news crews from all over the world called and many came to Pascagoula to gather more information about the stunning visit by a spacecraft.

"I estimate that we have received more than 2,000 telephone calls from news reporters from around the world wanting information, and from people in the area who wanted to report a sighting," Diamond said.

It was a media frenzy. Networks and national publications showed up. The reports got wild and woolly. It was too much for two shipbuilders who had never been in such demand. They put out a memo: No more personal interviews. Our attorney, Joe Colingo, will arrange a news conference next week.

The space encounter was in the news for weeks. Hickson went on talk shows such as "The Dick Cavett Show." Parker went into seclusion.

I've followed the UFO account for 30 years and am amazed that Hickson and Parker have been so consistent with their account of what happened Oct. 11, 1973. Being a typical newsperson-skeptic, it's still too much to fathom.
 

October 4, 2003

Houston Chronicle

Scientist says UFO tales far out
Saucer-buster's research data material finds home at Texas A&M

by Allan Turner

First came the UFO, a massive, saucer-shaped craft hovering low over the Pacific Northwest in the spring of 1967. Then, two days later, came the beeping - a steady, two-beeps-to-the-second sound coming from no discernible source. Locals, some bearing rifles, flocked to the woods to hear, to puzzle, to perhaps solve the mystery.

The night-time beeping continued for weeks. Police even thought they heard it on their radios. When the beeping began, cows and dogs grew agitated, then quiet. Even the loud-mouthed frogs shut up. Civil defense experts prowled the woods to no avail. Bird-call experts analyzed poor-quality tapes of the sound and came up blank. Finally, at wit's end, local authorities turned to their last hope: the crack saucer-busters at the University of Colorado.

Within days, physical scientist Roy Craig, an investigator with the university's Air Force-financed Condon Project - the nation's largest, most systematic investigation of UFOs to date - was dispatched to the scene.

What he found was the stuff of history.

Now, for the first time, scholars and others interested in the data that led Craig and other Condon Project scientists to conclude flying saucers probably don't exist can peruse Craig's field notes at Texas A&M University's Cushing Memorial Library.

Included in nine boxes of files are Craig's investigative jottings, correspondence and photographs as well as popular and scientific articles related to alleged visits by space aliens. Also available for examination are objects - aluminum shavings, globs of metal and a lawn mower muffler - found at the sites of purported UFO landings. Craig's papers join material on ranching, military, poetry and one of the nation's top science-fiction collections at the Cushing. And part of their value lies in the scientific insight they can provide students of  science fiction. "If you say the Condon report is absolute foolishness, that there's nothing behind it, well we have nine boxes behind it," said Hal W. Hall, curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection at A&M. Thirty-five years after its release, the Condon Project report, compiled under the supervision of respected University of Colorado physicist Edward U. Condon, continues to generate controversy. In 1969, the year man first set foot on the moon, the Air Force used the report as the basis for its decision to stop monitoring reported UFO sightings.

Despite the study's thumbs down on verifiable visits by space creatures, interest in extraterrestrials, fueled by movies and other media, remains high. An Internet search for UFO-related Web sites last week turned up more than 64,000 entries. An estimated 1.5 million viewers recently tuned in to a television special on the purported 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M.

"UFOs are popular things," Craig said in a telephone interview from his Ignacio, Colo., home. "I think UFOs really have had an impact on our culture. I'm not unhappy about that. I think that's fine."

Craig, 79, who was co-author of the three-volume Condon report, abides the controversy, which labels him an instrument in an egregious government cover-up, with good humor.

Once, Craig was visited by a UFO researcher who was certain the preserved bodies of 16 space creatures removed from a flying saucer said to have crashed at Aztec, N.M. - a short distance from Ignacio - were stored at the scientist's ranch.

All the visitor found were several dozen llamas Craig raises for the pet market. But the visitor was undaunted." 'If it weren't true, why would Roy Craig be here?'" Craig recalled. "I confirmed all of his suspicions. He wrote a 500-page book about it."

Craig is not above having fun with folks from outer space. Shortly after the university report's release, he authored a tongue-in-cheek psuedo-folk song dealing with flying saucers. Above an accompaniment of guitar and beeps and whines, a syrupy-voiced songstress intones the virtues of galactic travelers to
Earth.

Craig also is author of UFOs: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence, published by University of North Texas Press.

Craig admits that he entered the Condon Project hoping to find persuasive evidence that space creatures have visited Earth. "I was looking for physical evidence," he said. "I was hoping that it was more than just something in somebody's mind. I would like to have found a vehicle or some strange alien. But it didn't turn out that way."

Although the Condon Project report is more than three decades old, Craig said he doesn't think there's a need for a new, comprehensive probe. "Not unless something different happens. The report's not really outdated. It's pretty firm," he said.

Colm Kelleher, administrator of the Las Vegas-based National Institute for Discovery Science, sharply disagreed. "I do believe the UFO phenomenon is still with us and worth an impartial investigation using scientific methodology," he said.

In some ways, Kelleher's organization is a privately funded version of the Condon Project.

In 1999, the group set up a UFO hot line, receiving more than 5,000 accounts of purported encounters with space vehicles.

"We very quickly discarded 80 to 90 percent of them as not worthy of investigation - Vandenberg Air Force Base launches,  space shuttles, Venus low on the horizon. You name it and people will report it," Kelleher said. But some of the remaining cases proved tantalizing.

"We haven't found any smoking guns," Kelleher said. "But with sufficient resources and sufficient persistence, scientific investigation will eventually yield results. It's a slow process. We think true believers and debunkers are in the same camp. Neither produces anything particularly useful. The true scientific approach is to focus on the data rather than the interpretation. We are drowning in way too much interpretation with very little data."

In his investigations, Craig encountered a wide variety of people. "They were all over the spectrum," he said. "Some were businessmen. Some of them held dependable, responsible jobs and they seemed like normal people. They generally seemed to believe what they were saying."

In the fall of 1967, Craig interviewed a man who claimed his car stopped suddenly, its radio and lights failing, as a flying saucer passed overhead early one morning as he traveled a lonely rural road.

Craig ultimately dismissed the middle-age businessman's claims, though, when scientific tests showed the auto had not been subjected to a strong magnetic field and that its chipping paint and pitted windshield could be logically explained. Craig's conclusion was buttressed by inconsistencies in the man's story.

In the summer of 1967, a 50-year-old general machine handyman and his 11-year-old son told Craig they had snapped two Polaroid photos of a spacecraft after a strange noise attracted their attention.

"They looked in the direction of the noise and saw a UFO about 60 feet in diameter some 500 feet away, moving about 30 to 40
mph at an altitude of 500-600 feet," Craig wrote later. "Mr. A snapped two pictures during the 15-20 seconds before the object departed at a speed estimated to be 2,000 mph."

Craig noted that the spacecraft in the photos strongly resembled a pot lid atop a pie plate.

Careful examination of the photos, measuring the size of the UFO's image and factoring in the degree of focus of other objects in the picture, indicated the spaceship had not been 60 feet in diameter as claimed - but about the size of a pie plate.

Time and again Craig's hopes would rise when he learned of a promising UFO sighting, only to be dashed when he investigated. Was he ever almost convinced of the reality of UFOs?

"I don't think you could say I was ever `almost convinced' in any of these cases," Craig said. "There was always some discrepancy that just didn't add up."

In the case of the mysterious beeps, Craig said, researchers quickly dismissed the reported UFO sightings as insubstantial. But the strange noises were another matter.

Arming themselves with an array of high-tech gadgetry --military infrared sniper scope; tape recorders; directional microphone audio detector; and cameras loaded with infrared, ultraviolet and conventional high-speed film - Craig and his colleagues staked out the woods.

Throughout the night they heard the beeps.

"It lasted not more than 10 seconds and seemed to come from a direction different from its usual location," a clearly perplexed Craig wrote.

The next night, Craig and his team packed their gear to another wooded spot.

Nary a sound was heard.

A morning chat with the sheriff solved the mystery.

Sometime in the night, a local farmer, alarmed at the endless beeping around his house, blasted into the treetops - and brought down an owl. Recorded calls of the elusive saw-whet owl matched perfectly the recorded mystery beeps.

The tiny owl, only 6 inches long, easily was overlooked in dense forest foliage, Craig noted in his report, allowing beep hunters "to conclude that the sound came from a point in space that was not occupied by a physical object."
 

October 3, 2003

Portland Tribune

Reach Out And Touch The Extraterrestrial

by Eric Bartels 

The difference between the now-defunct 24 Hour Church of Elvis and the Portland Alien Museum is that nobody at the church really believed Elvis was alive.

Museum Director Lawrence Johns, on the other hand, doesn't just accept the existence of extraterrestrial life. He's preparing for contact.

"We're trying to build up a database," Johns says of the museum's Center for Alien Studies. "It's becoming more mainstream, the whole idea of making contact."

In June, Johns and business partner Stephen Hanns opened the museum in a Craftsman-style home off Northeast Sandy Boulevard in the Hollywood district. "There are over 150,000 people in this country who believe that UFOs are real," Johns says. "There's a tremendous interest in UFO information.

"There are some fascinating stories coming into the museum. It becomes a meeting point for people. A lot of people have experiences, and they've been afraid to talk about it.

"We've had a good number of people from the military come by," Johns adds, refusing to elaborate. "In this field, one has to protect confidences. We're a serious research facility, but it's surrounded by a unique and interesting attraction."

Unique indeed. Several "contact-inspired" artworks with four-and five-figure price tags hang within reach of plastic "E.T." dolls. With bare spots separating eclectic exhibits, the former gallery space manages to look both Spartan and haphazard at the same time.

In other words, precisely the kind of attraction that could become a local institution, like the Church of Elvis.

"Portland has a national reputation for being a little offbeat," says Deborah Wakefield, director of public communications for the Portland Oregon Visitors Bureau. "This may be one of those quirky things that makes Portland fun."

Museum visitors watch themselves shrink in the world's first artificial vortex and enjoy a new display on different types of aliens. The museum's library features a reference section, an impressive collection of vintage sci-fi magazines and comics, and assorted television and movie props, including a phaser weapon that Johns says was used in the original "Star Trek" series.

The 3-D video thrill ride, in the "theater," was an immediate hit, Johns says.

A kitchen was converted into a children's play "wing," replete with two old school desks, a smattering of action figures and a 13-inch television.

There, writer Nick Nelson fiddled with a device designed to produce "Mars water." It consists of a small funnel and tube passing through what looks like a petrified bagel. "There is water on the surface of Mars," Nelson says. "There used to be a civilization. NASA's covering it up."

The author of the 2000 book "The Golden Vortex," Nelson was in town for a speaking engagement at the museum. "About 20 years ago I came up with a theory of natural portals that UFOs may or may not be using," he says. "If there are UFOs out there, they're probably using the planet Earth the way people in Washington use Oregon to get to California."

Inside the front door of the museum, a full-color poster depicts the fleet of saucers that streaked past Mount Rainier in 1950, just off the left wing of pilot Kenneth Arnold's plane. Arnold's book, "Behind the Flying Saucers," rests in a display case.

On another wall is a reproduced front page of the McMinnville Telephone Register from June 8, 1950. A banner headline reads: "At Long Last -- Authentic Photographs of Flying Saucer (?)." Below it are two famous photos taken by Yamhill County farmer Paul Trent that capture a tilting, silvery disc an indeterminate distance from his barn. The Life magazine issue with a one-page story on the incident is nearby.

"This was and is the hotbed for sightings," says Randy Haragan, owner of theufostore.com, the Beaverton-based Internet vendor that consigns items to the museum's gift shop. "With the UFO history in the Northwest, it's a natural thing to open some sort of museum."

Contact Eric Bartels at: ebartels@portlandtribune.com