WASHINGTON -- Democratic U.S. presidential
hopeful Dennis Kucinich may have been ridiculed
for saying he had seen a UFO, but for some former
military pilots and other observers, unidentified
flying objects are no laughing matter.
An international panel of two dozen former
pilots and government officials called on the U.S.
government on Monday to reopen its generation-old
UFO investigation as a matter of safety and
security given continuing reports about flying
discs, glowing spheres and other strange
sightings.
"Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no
longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ...
which cannot be associated with performances of
existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a
statement released at a news conference.
The panelists from seven countries, including
former senior military officers, said they had
each seen a UFO or conducted an official
investigation into UFO phenomena.
The subject of UFOs grabbed the spotlight in
the U.S. presidential race last month when
Kucinich, a member of Congress from Ohio, said
during a televised debate with other Democratic
candidates that he had seen one.
Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy
Carter are both reported to have claimed UFO
sightings.
Most turn out to be misidentified aircraft,
satellites or meteors. A panelist who once worked
for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5 percent
of incidents cannot be explained.
But the sightings are often dismissed by
authorities without proper investigations, UFO
activists say.
"It's a question of who you going to believe:
your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John
Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration
investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to
hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four
times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska.
The panel, organized by a group dedicated to
winning credibility for the study of UFOs, urged
Washington to resume UFO investigations through
the U.S. Air Force or NASA.
"It would certainly, I think, take a lot of
angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov.
Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who
saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights
silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.
The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports
from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project
Blue Book. Investigators concluded that the
incidents posed no threat and there was no
evidence of space aliens or a super technology in
operation.
"Since the termination of Project Blue Book,
nothing has occurred that would support a
resumption of UFO investigations," the Air Force
said on its Web site.
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