THE UFO CHRONICLES


nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
- Knowledge is Power -

     A UFO, described by witnesses as looking like a huge “Dorito” crisp has been filmed over the skies of the Black Country, according to a paranormal group.

A flurry of calls has been made to Stourbridge-based UFO Research Midlands (UFORM) from those claiming to have witnessed the flying object in the sky.

Witnesses say they spotted it in Halesowen heading towards Stourbridge on Wednesday at around 7pm.

UFORM is now appealing for anyone else who saw it to get in touch to help it compile its X-files.

Labels: Britain, Dorito, Halesowen, Triangle, Triangular, UFO

     OCEANSIDE ---- A local motorist ---- who happens to be a high school football coach ---- is seeking more information about a strange object he says he saw in the skies above Camp Pendleton late Tuesday.

Heading south on Interstate 5 at about 10:45 p.m., Tony Paopao said he and his wife saw what appeared to be a large, brightly lit vehicle fly overhead and briefly hover in place, before heading toward the mountains of Camp Pendleton and then out of sight.

"It was about 100 yards up. It was too low to be a plane and it was too fast and too quiet to be a helicopter," Paopao said. "I'm just curious if anybody saw what I saw."

He said he slowed down to get a better look at the mysterious object and saw red brake lights all around on the freeway, indicating that others were also slowing to get a gander.

A football coach for El Camino High School in Oceanside, Paopao said the object appeared to be more than 20 feet long and very quick. He said he reported the sighting to an on-line UFO center.

Reached Tuesday at noon, Sgt. Paul Robbins, a communications officer with Camp Pendleton, said there is no vehicle currently operating on base that is silent and of the size and capabilities described by the football coach.

"We've got things flying all the time, but the Marine Corps doesn't have any aircraft that would stop traffic," Robbins said. "I guess it could be an unmanned aerial vehicle, but those things are tiny."

Labels: Camp Pendleton, I-5 Freeway, Oceanside, Tony Paopao, UFO

     In the last couple of weeks, strange lights have been seen in Santa Cruz County's nighttime sky.

An anonymous caller first contacted the Nogales International Nov. 8 about a sighting the night before. The caller said he and "a bunch" of others in Wal-Mart's parking lot were awestruck by the yellowish-orange lights they observed.

Horne Ford employee Adan Nido was so awestruck that he invited 15 to 20 friends and co-workers, including Carlos Silva and Tony Griffin, to his Rio Rico house Nov. 15, for a sighting carne asada.

"People think you're crazy at first but after they see them, they change their mind," Nido said, adding that this wasn't the first time he's seen the strange phenomenon.

"I started seeing them last year at the same time of year," he said. "And it always seems to be between 8 and 9 at night."

That is when all known accounts of the local mysterious lights have taken place.

According to Larry Tiffin, manager of the Nogales International Airport, though, the lights may not be such a mystery.

Tiffin said he received a bulletin from the Federal Aviation Authority a couple of weeks ago. It advised him that fighter planes from Fort Huachuca would be doing nighttime maneuvers in the restricted air space (military operations area) between their base and Yuma over the next 30 days.

Nido doesn't quite buy that explanation.

"It's something I can't explain, though," he said, "but it's not maneuvers. It's not a plane. It's something out of this place. Those things are not from here. I'm not sure it's aliens, but it's not from here ... unless the government is designing something new."

But the government and military are always a possibility.

That was the official explanation for the "Phoenix Lights" incident, an optical phenomena that took place in the sky over Arizona and Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora on March 13, 1997.

According to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia: "Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., in a space of about 300 miles from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation (which has not been noted in the Nogales sightings) of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area.

"Although the United States Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft which were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range at Luke Air Force Base, some who observed the event believe differently. Notable among those who thought they had observed alien aircraft is Arizona governor at the time of the incident, Fife Symington, and many other high ranking military, aviation and government officials."

All reports of the Nogales Lights seem to be in a straight horizontal line except for Griffin's. The Horne Ford owner said they took a "curved shape ... like the outside edge of a flying saucer" and "moved very erratically at high rates of speed."

Griffin, however, wasn't exactly saying that what he saw was a Martian spacecraft, but "the hair stood up on the back of my neck," he said. "No matter what it was, it was pretty cool."

What puzzles him most about the lights is that "there are so many in such a small section of the sky," he said. "That's why I have a hard time believing they are conventional aircraft."

Silva counted seven of the lights that Griffin spoke about at one time on Nov. 15.

"I saw seven bursts of light," he said. "I don't know what it was ... but it wasn't a plane or a helicopter."

"I wonder why nobody talks about it more," Nido added. "It's something really different."

Most accounts describe the lights as white and yellowish-orange that flash and reappear in a different spot of the sky.

Very small and quicker flashes of white "star-like" sparks have also been noted before and after the bigger, yellowish-orange beams.

Interestingly, Nido even mentioned seeing standard aircraft "observing" the lights from a distance on at least one occasion.

Labels: Lights, Nogales, UFOs

     I'd like to know why this wasn't made public in March, 2002:

I'm an American residing permanently in France. About 7:50 pm CET, my husband and I were on our way to a movie in March, 2002, in Saint-Denis, France, a near-suburb of Paris. We watched some UFOs in the night sky for about ten minutes, then went in to see the movie, which we'd very much wanted to see and had waited for. After the movie we checked, and the UFOs were gone, but we'd seen what we'd seen, and discussed it at length.

The next day, I asked some neighbors and shopkeepers in the vicinity if they'd seen anything, and they sure had! For about 45 minutes, around the same time exactly that we'd seen a spectacular display from town center, the entire neighborhood had observed a HUGE, silent craft hovering over our apartment buildings! It was very low, and enormous, and the neighbors were pretty disturbed by it, as it was clearly something "not of this Earth," or not typical in any way.

What my husband and I saw was a big yellow ball of light, quite clear, about a kilometer away, which was periodically visited by smaller balls of light, which joined up with it then shot away, then returned a few minutes later. "The Mother Ship," if you will, joined by little "shuttle ships." These craft darted about in ways and at speeds not normal for ordinary craft, and we'd never seen such a thing before. For us, it was not a frightening experience, just kind of magical and mysterious, and a LOT of people must have seen this! I wish we'd seen the silent hovering craft over our block of apartment towers, but then again, hearing how frightened and disturbed my neighbors were, perhaps it's just as well we didn't. Several hundred people saw this, and of course, it didn't make the news at all, and should have.

A friend in New York City recently had a spectacular daytime sighting, and is utterly disgusted that not a word of this got into the media, when clearly, thousands of people must have seen the event.

Why so hush-hush? It's really a shame.

Labels: France, Huge, Orbs, Saint Denis, UFO, Yellow

     KIRKSVILLE - As a Missouri State Highway Patrolman, Don Altes has seen some strange things.

But nothing could top what he saw in the north Missouri sky Nov. 18, 1980.

"It was the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen," he said.

Altes was one of hundreds of people from Trenton, Mo., to Edina, Mo., who reported seeing a UFO flying across the sky that Tuesday.

According to an article published in the Daily Express the next day, calls started coming into the Kirksville Police Department around 9 p.m., from people claiming to have seen lights and a strange object traveling from west to east. Many of the callers described the object in the same way, noting it had lights similar to a car's headlights.

Reports of the object were not limited to Kirksville. At approximately 8:30 p.m., residents near Trenton were calling the local radio station to give similar accounts to those in Kirksville.

Shortly after 9 p.m., police in Kirksville contacted the Air Force radar base in Sublette, Mo., seven miles north of town and were told the object was an airplane. More than an hour later, police received a phone call from the radar base saying it was not an airplane.

The FAA in Columbia, Mo., said several private pilots reported seeing some type of lights from an undetermined object.

With that many witnesses there was no doubt something was in the sky that night, but exactly what it was is still up for debate 27 years later.

"Nobody could really explain what it was... but enough people saw something, they couldn't have been dreaming it up," Hank Janssen, the Daily Express reporter who covered the story said. "It shook people up in the area a little bit. It created a buzz for a time."

Altes and his partner received reports over the radio of something odd in the sky and drove west of Trenton to examine it for themselves.

"I know it had a lot of lights, and a lot of different colored lights," he said. "It was really slow moving and then it just took off."

The slow speed of the craft is something that many eyewitnesses noted.

"It was a series of lights and it was slow moving," Charles Cooper said.

At the time Cooper was an Adair County Deputy Sheriff who saw the object north of town when he was called out that night.

"It seemed to me it took quite awhile to move out of the area where we couldn't see it," he said.

Rick Hull, a Truman State University student living in Trenton at the time remembers the same thing.

"It was moving so slowly, and airplanes don't stay in the air and move as slowly as it did," he said.

Hull has some experience in aviation, having spent time flying a crop duster where he says 55 miles per hour is about the slowest speed a plane could travel and still maintain flight.

"I have still yet to see an airplane stay in the air at 25 miles per hour, especially one as big as it was."

Some reports have estimated the craft to be the size of a football field.

Most of the visual interpretations all describe the same characteristics, noting the lights, and referring to the object as triangular, diamond-shaped, or kite-like, and having a domed top.

Mike Leavene, another trooper stationed near Edina has developed his own theory.

"I can remember seeing what I thought was cabin lights that look like today's B-2 stealth bombers," he said. "After all these years, it is my opinion it was some sort of stealth technology."

Missouri's own Whiteman Air Force Base is the home of the B-2 stealth bomber today, but 509th Bomb Wing Historian Dr. Margaret DePalma said the plane didn't arrive there until 1993.

That's not to say stealth technology was not around earlier. The dream of stealth aircraft was a goal of the military as far back as the 1940s.

"The idea was always there but the actual technology began in the 1960s," DePalma said.

Have Blue, the program that would eventually lead to the development of today's modern stealth fighters and bombers began in 1974. By 1978, full-scale development of stealth aircraft was underway.

The first recorded flight of the F-117 stealth fighter occurred in 1981, and while the B-2 did not become a reality until later in the decade, plans for the plane where announced by President Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential campaign.

"I would definitely say that it was some kind of experimental aircraft," Cooper said.

He also cites the conflicting reports from the radar station that maybe members of the Air Force knew more about the situation than they were admitting at the time.

DePalma said it's logical to assume some form of early stealth technology might have been in the sky that night. And even though early stealth programs were located in California, if would not be uncommon to test fly a plane all the way to Missouri.

"That would probably be par for the course," DePalma said. "You're testing the plane and testing the pilots."

FAA officials at the time said no military aircraft was scheduled to be in the area at the time of the event. Leavene said it was not unusual for the military to contact local law enforcement to inform them when low-level bombers would make test flights, but there is no indication of that happening on the night in question.

"Military said nothing with that kind of lighting configuration matched up with anything they had," Janssen said.

Altes still doesn't know what to make of the craft after all of these years. He said he has been to some football games where the B-2's have made flyovers and that does not make him think that's what he saw back in 1980.

Even after his close-encounter, Altes is not convinced he saw something extra-terrestrial.

"I have a hard time believing in them, but I have a hard time not believing in them," he said

Labels: 1980, Edina, Missouri, Trenton, Triangular, UFO

Labels: AZTEC UFO 08, TRUCK RAFFLE

Labels: HAPPY THANKSGIVING

     A UFO spotter from Felpham has appealed to anyone else who saw the objects to contact him. Leo Lindsay and his wife, Rosie, watched the visitors from outer space from a bedroom window.

Mr Lindsay has since had unofficial confirmation from the Ministry of Defence that two RAF planes were sent up to investigate the phenomenon.

"The RAF don't do that unless there is a real reason," he stated. "I can't believe no one else saw the objects. I would estimate they were each about the size of a house.

"Anyone walking along Felpham seafront at that time would not have been able to miss them. I hope they will let me know on 01243 855728."

Mr Lindsay estimates the objects must have been above Felpham seafront in a beautiful light blue sky with white puffy clouds. He was looking out of a bedroom window in his home in Roundle Avenue at about 6pm on October 4 when he saw 'two round football-shaped objects' coming over the trees high in the sky.

He went downstairs to tell his wife. He watched as the objects changed to become 'multi-faceted diamond shaped discs which moved further apart'.

The fighter planes appeared on the scene ten minutes later. Two aunts staying with the couple also saw the incident.

Labels: Chase, Felpham, Fighter Planes, Leo Lindsay, MoD, UFO

     EAST AMWELL, N.J. - Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.

Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates.


It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption?

According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up.

Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet."

Life free from the power grid
Strizki lives with his wife in a rural section of Central New Jersey. His 12-acre property is surrounded by trees and his gravel driveway leads to a winding country road. His 3,500-square-foot house has all the amenities, including a hot tub and a big-screen TV.

It was here, four years ago, that Strizki set out to do something that's never been done in this country – power his home completely through a combination of solar and hydrogen. "My motivation was, I saw what fossil fuels were doing to the environment," he says.

Strizki works for a company that installs solar panels. In previous jobs, he's helped integrate hydrogen fuel cells into cars, a boat, a fire truck, and an airplane. His latest project, the one involving his house, is an extension of that expertise.

The solar-hydrogen house took longer to complete than Strizki expected – a strict local zoning officer and the state permitting process caused delays, he says – but in October 2006, the system finally went online. The total cost, $500,000, was paid for in part with a $250,000 grant from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

Labels: Electrolyzer, House, Mike Strizki, Solar-Hydrogen

     Retired Air Force veteran Milton Sprouse clearly remembers the summer day in 1947 when he returned to Roswell Army Air Field aboard the B-29 bomber Dave's Dream from a three-day maneuver in Florida.

Sprouse, then a corporal and engine mechanic in the Army Air Forces, could not believe what his ground crew was telling him: A UFO had crashed in the New Mexico desert, on a ranch 70 miles away.

The story made the front page of the Roswell Daily Record: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer," read the headline.

According to the July 8 story, "the intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced ... that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer."

The craft supposedly had been recovered after the ranch owner notified the sheriff's department, who sent Maj. Jesse Marcel and a team to investigate.

"Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk," the story stated. "After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters."

The next day, the paper retracted the story, claiming that the recovered object was a weather balloon - an account the government stuck with until 1995. It was then announced that the weather balloon story had been fabricated to cover up Project Mogul, a top-secret project involving two-dozen high-altitude neoprene balloons designed to detect Russian nuclear explosions.

According to Sprouse, five of his crew were called to the site to collect the remaining debris and load it onto a flatbed truck. Sprouse was ordered to stay with Dave's Dream in case the military should suddenly need the craft.

"I had reservations of what all they were telling me, because each one of them told something different," he said. "I thought, 'I don't know.' ... Later on, when it all started coming out in piecemeal, you could put it together and tell what they said was true."

As years passed, Sprouse grew more comfortable talking about the Roswell Incident.

Author and ufologist Thomas J. Carey interviewed Sprouse three times with co-author Donald Schmitt. Sprouse is mentioned on page 233 of their new book, "Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up."

During his first interview, videotaped at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, Sprouse was reluctant to talk about the incident, Carey said.

"He was a career Air Force guy, and they're the least likely to speak because of their pensions," Carey said. "When I interviewed him over the phone in 2001, I got a little more information, and then I interviewed him again last year and got even more. It was an evolution of coming forward."

Today, as Sprouse recounts the incident, he leans forward in earnest, a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes.

About 500 soldiers sent to the crash site were lined shoulder to shoulder and ordered to scour the property for debris, he said.

"They lined them up and then said, 'We want you to go through this ranch the way you're facing until we tell you to stop, and we want you to pick up everything unnatural,'" Sprouse said.

"When my crew got back (from the crash site), we talked for weeks," he said. "They told me everything and I believe them. ... They told me, 'Milt, it's true.'"

Among the material discovered was a malleable, foil-like material that could be laid flat with no creases after being squashed into a ball.

Whether fact or lore, one of the most intriguing pieces of the puzzle are reports of five diminutive green bodies allegedly recovered with the UFO. Sprouse believes it.

A staff sergeant in his barracks was called to the hospital shortly after the crash, he said.

"He and two doctors and two nurses were in the emergency room, and they brought in one of those five humanoid bodies that they had recovered," he said. "They said, 'We want this dissected and we want a complete history of how it functions and the parts and everything.'"

The next day, the man from his barracks was transferred from the base, Sprouse said.

"We never heard from him again," he said. "We asked and (they said), 'Oh, we don't know nothing about it.' ... I heard later that both nurses and both doctors were shipped different directions and nobody ever knew where they went."

Sprouse recalled an interesting conversation with the owner of a funeral home in Roswell several years later.

"We had some friend of ours that died, and he said, 'Hey Milt, I want to talk to you,'" he said. "He says, 'You know the base come to me and wanted five children's caskets.' That was two or three days after the crash. I said, 'No kidding.' He says, 'I only had one, and I told them that.' They said, 'One won't do us very good,' and they went somewhere else and got them."

The day the UFO story ran, the debris was allegedly loaded onto two B-29 bombers, one of them Dave's Dream, and sent to a base in Fort Worth, Texas.

Sprouse and Carey believe the material was then shipped to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where they say it remains today.

"We believe some of the stuff was loaned around, but the main repository was the foreign technology division at Wright-Patterson," said Carey, who holds a master's degree in anthropology and served briefly in the Air Force. "We've heard stories over the years of people who say that they're still trying to figure out what that stuff is."

Various rumors suggest that pieces of the ship and the bodies were stored in a mysterious Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson.

Derek Kaufman, who works in Wright-Patterson's public affairs office, was tentative when broaching the subject of Roswell and Hangar 18. He said the base tracks all such phone inquiries.

"We might get a couple of queries a month related to strange phenomena. ... Someone who believes that they've seen something very unusual - low-flying, strange aircraft or something along those lines," Kaufman said. "Folks who are UFO enthusiasts are typically the people that inquire about Hangar 18 or about Roswell, but a lot of them don't seem to be credible queries. They seem to be folks bordering on the fanatic. ... I'm hard-pressed to describe where Hangar 18 even is located."

Asked if there was any material from Roswell transferred to the base in 1947, Kaufman said, "I'll just defer to what reports have been exhaustively investigated and are now available to the general public."

Wright-Patterson's Web site includes a section titled "UFOs and other strange phenomena" that includes links to the Air Force Freedom of Information Act Web site and a 993-page document titled "The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert." In the report, the government meticulously makes its case debunking the Roswell Incident.

According to the report, the bodies recovered at the site were not alien beings, but crash-test dummies used to test high-altitude parachutes.

UFO enthusiasts say they couldn't have been dummies because the parachute tests weren't conducted until nearly a decade later.

"That's a non-starter because that project didn't get under way until the mid-'50s," Carey said. "These mannequins were a good 6 feet tall, they looked human and they were in regular flight suits. There's no way you confuse those for little aliens with big heads."

Asked if there are any remnants of the mysterious event stored at Roswell, Rob Young, a historian with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson, answered, "I would not know. I've never seen anything like that. ... To my knowledge there is not."

Sprouse believes the Roswell Incident is a far-reaching cover-up that leads as far as the White House.

"The presidents are briefed on everything ... classified, unclassified, whether they'll acknowledge it or not," Sprouse said. "Clinton, says, 'I don't know nothing.' Carter says, 'I don't know nothing about that.' Bush won't even talk about it."

Sprouse's wife, Peggy, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is skeptical about the UFO story. She's been to Roswell with her husband and said once was enough.

"Been there, done that," she said. "I never did believe it and still don't believe it."

Sprouse seems to be enjoying his part in keeping the story alive.

Has the government ever asked him not to speak about Roswell?

"No, but I worry about it," he said. "I'm getting all these telephone calls on that report, and I often wonder if it's somebody looking into this."

Labels: 1947, 393rd Bomb Squadron, Big Stink, Dave's Dream, Escondido Resident, Flying Saucer, Humanoid, Local Vet, Milton Sprouse, Roswell, UFO, Witness To Roswell

Labels: 11-12-07, CFI, Declaration, UFO Conference

     By now most folks who have an interest in UFOs or those who are just plain “news junkies” have probably heard about the “press conference” held in Washington D.C. at the “National Press Club on Monday, entitled, “”UFO Close Encounters.” The event was sponsored by FCZ which is co-owned by James Fox, documentary filmmaker and co-producer of “Out of The Blue—The Definitive Investigation of The UFO Phenomenon.”

Teaming up with Fox in this effort was investigative journalist, “Leslie Kean.” Kean is known for her fait accompli regarding the “Coalition for Freedom of Information” (CFI) and its work. In part the organization’s mission is to:

“Achieve scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of unexplained aerial phenomena while working for the release of official information and physical evidence.”

Monday's press conference was indeed a step in that direction.

Over the years, the neomedia has often erroneously melded Ufology with “blurry pictures, lights in the sky, drunks and jobbernowls. More often then not any coverage of the phenomenon is framed wearing those glasses.

The consensus is, “give us something we can sink our teeth in,” “show us the money!” Now, assuming the ideology (and “I” do) that a small percentage of UFOs reported are in fact “nuts & bolts craft,” and these craft behave and exhibit characteristics beyond that of “man-made technology,” obviously the dope would be “one of those craft,” and or its “pilot(s).” In that vein, and much like anything else that falls from the sky, e.g., satellites, space junk, ours and or “foreign,” the “powers-that-be” are reluctant (to put it mildly) to share the gist of these matters with the American public, much less that of any peoples of any other country.

How often do we read, watch or hear about a “spy satellite” crashing to earth, or its recovery, foreign or domestic, and see it displayed and or recognized by the government? The answer is zip, nil, nada!

Yet the media uses that as a weapon (the unwillingness of the government/military to show its hand) in its quest to pollute public thinking in regards to “proof,” or more accurately what the
pyrrhonists say is the “lack of proof” in regards to UFOs and their genesis.

With that in mind, what would be the “next best thing” in regards to “proof” that some UFOs are indeed of extraterrestrial origin? How about an assemblage of “former High Level Government and Military Officials” sharing personal and insider information on the matter?

Given the erroneous, disingenuous, incompetent flapdoodle that the neomedia tries to pass off as journalism in regards to the subject of UFOs, as well as their unfair criticisms concerning evidence, and their ignorance of it, obviously they would “covet” such a contingency!

This being the logical assumption, I personally monitored the news (all day Monday), specifically "CNN" in great anticipation of the “announcement(s)” of such a “monumental event!” I didn’t have to wait long, as the first “blurb” about the event came in the morning; however, it was to no surprise that the talking heads gave no special attention to this “historical gathering.” In fact, it just “blended in” with the day’s news, and came with the usual “giggle factor” injected; the “wink-wink, and “poke in the ribs” commentary was in full force.

This particular minutiae was repeated a couple of times in the morning and early afternoon; following these snippets was a slightly longer citation on what CNN has dubbed, “The Situation Room” with commentator, Wolf Blitzer.”

The opening remarks seemed promising, but then a familiar name was heard; Blitzer announced to his audience that, “Gary Tuchman” was the “boots on the ground” reporter for the conference. At this point I let my breath out; Tuchman’s “biased reporting” became evident when he covered the
“O’Hare Incident,” which quite frankly was contemptible.

The first word out of Tuchman’s mouth, were:

“ Well Wolf, it's most interesting; a panel discussion within the beltway about what might be taking place in the Milky Way and beyond.”

Followed By:

“Well, 14 men from seven different countries participated in a panel discussion described why they believe UFOs visited earth. These are not guys they picked up off the street.”

Tuchman didn’t use “an obvious” sardonic tone, nor did he need to when he began to “color” the event; the “Milky Way comment” and the inference of what the witnesses “believed” happened to them, rather then “what” happened was enough.

After some video and sound bites from a couple of the witnesses Tuchman further reported:

“We've covered a few of these kinds of stories before, Wolf, and one thing that we always mentioned to the enthusiasts is if one of these crafts came down to earth and did an interview with one of us, the debate would be over. But that hasn't happened yet.”

Note how Tuchman “degrades” former “government & military officials” of multiple countries to “UFO enthusiasts”; followed by his “now evident” sardonic tone, making the cockamamie, “if I could interview the aliens” statement and inferring that the “UFO Conference” was a debate of some sort.

Remember gentle readers this is what CNN calls “reporting the news.” Now, if Tuchman’s flapdoodle wasn’t enough, the segment ends with correspondent Jack Cafferty stating:

“No, Wolf. And Gary Tuchman is one of the most distinguished and capable reporters in this business and that's not the culmination of a fine career being sent to cover the UFO convention, OK.”

No need to highlight the sarcastic innuendo in that statement; just take a moment and reread it; remember that this is from the same media that says UFOs are about “blurry pictures, distant lights and “questionable” witnesses.

Could there be a pattern here? Why is it that no matter what “evidence is thrown at CNN the reporting remains the same? How is it that Tuchman didn’t emphasize the fact that a few of the witnesses were from a nuclear capable Air Force base, and one of the men “touched” a downed craft? Why wasn’t there focus on the “caliber” of these witnesses, that more then one of the witnesses was an “insider” for the government, e.g., “Nick Pope” who actually investigated the UFO phenomenon for Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD). How is it that “what makes this story newsworthy” is overlooked, and replaced with sarcasm, innuendo, misrepresentation and censorship? This is reminiscent of the days that the CIA and other “covert agencies” manipulated the media (regarding the UFO phenomenon) . . . is this “still” happening!?

At this point in the day the hopes for a “neutral unbiased news report” were all but gone; the only thing to be culled from CNN’s attention to the matter, was the fact that many millions of people heard about the event and perhaps they could “glean” the significant parts of it even through CNN’s parody.

Sadly, CNN wasn’t done yet; the coverage of one of the most significant moments in history would culminate later that evening with, “Anderson Cooper 360º.”

Labels: Anderson Cooper, CNN, FCZ, Gary Tuchman, James Fox, Leslie Kean, National Press Club, UFO Close Encounters

     In my 50 years of more or less active involvement with the UFO subject I have been present or a participant in numerous press conferences, private and public meetings with high-level people present...you name it.

This press conference was one of the most impressive experiences I have ever had just sitting in the audience, though I did get a chance to chat with various of the witnesses eventually. The affair was beautifully planned and well-conducted. To me, it struck just exactly the right note...which I will get to in a minute.

First I must say that some people who outspokenly demand alien bodies on a gurney or a crashed saucer with the hull still warm be displayed