Although the United States has had it's share of UFO sightings, we are not the only country to record this phenomenon. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the United States has fewer sightings than some other countries. Worldwide statistics on the number of sightings are difficult to round up and incomplete. Most other countries looked to the United States Air Force to investigate UFOs and did not keep records of their own local sightings. Therefore, we can give only a rough approximation of the number of sightings and the dates of sighting waves around the world. Reports of UFO sightings before the nineteenth century are often filled with unsubstantial information. The further back we go, the less hard data there is to work with, and the more we are forced to speculate. Before the mid0-nineteenth century, most non-scholars would probably have thought that any unusual circumstance in the sky was a religious experience. Many UFO researchers point to the "miracle of Fatima," which occurred in Portugal in 1917, as a perfect example of ascribing religious connotations to a possible UFO sighting. Although controversial, the sighting's circumstances were interesting. An assembled crowd of people, having been told by three little girls that the Virgin Mary would appear on a certain date and at a certain location, witnessed what they described as "the Sun" moving out of it's position , coming close to the Earth, wobbling, moving to and fro, and then retreating back to it's original position. The "miracle" occurred in 1917 with thousands of witnesses, but UFO researchers, historians of religion, and the Catholic Church have not been able to prove exactly what did happen that day, and the controversy continues. If a twentieth-century European sighting can stir debate and controversy, then discovering the facts of earlier sightings of aerial apparitions is virtually impossible. The researcher has to rely on speculation and guesswork, simply because he is ignorant of the facts. The more facts he has, the less he has to rely on speculation. Consequently, sightings of unusual objects in the sky in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be verified much more easily. The first wave of European UFO sightings that we know of occurred in England in 1909. The British reported seeing objects shaped like dirigibles and equipped with strong searchlights, and that performed technologically advanced maneuvers (sharp turns, hovering, ect...). There were even reports of landings and occupants. These reports were similar to a wave of sightings in America in 1896 - 1897. The next wave of UFO sightings came in the early 1930s when reports of mysterious "ghost fliers" in northern Sweden prompted a lively debate in the Swedish press about which pilot was crazy enough to circle a town for hours in a snowstorm without attempting to land, among other foolhardy activities. The "airplanes" that were sighted seemed of "normal" configuration for the time, but their lack of identifying markings, their unusual flight behavior, the beams of light reported to emanate from them, their apparent lack of intent to land, and the inability of the Swedish authorities to identify any of the planes or their pilots after a thorough investigation, all place these sightings squarely in the realm of unidentified flying objects.2 In World War II, strange phenomena occurred in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters of war. Objects known as "foo fighters" caused considerable discussion and anxiety among Allied bomber and fighter pilots. The "foo fighters" were round glowing objects which chased, paced, "played tag with," or circled bombers and fighter planes. Some of the objects were undoubtedly what sailors and astrophysicists call St. Elmo's fire, but many of the sightings were of actual objects that displayed no characteristics of St. Elmo's fire and remain unexplained. These objects would come toward a plane from off in the distance, follow for some time, and finally veer off and leave the area. At first the Allies thought the objects were either German or Japanese secret weapons, depending on where they were seen. But when the objects did not seem hostile, the Allies began to think they were psychological weapons sent up to exasperate Allied pilots. After the war, it was learned that the Germans and the Japanese thought the objects were American secret weapons.3 Swedish "ghost rocket" sightings started in 1946. Thousands of witnesses observed rocket-like objects streaking through the air. The objects followed flat trajectories, and no artifacts or crashed "rockets" were ever found. The United States sent General Doolittle to Sweden to help investigate the sightings, because the Americans felt that the objects might be Russian secret weapons sent from Finland or from the captured German rocket proving ground at Peenemünde. Eventually, the Swedish government decided that, since there were no crashed rockets, the sightings must be considered misidentifications of natural phenomena or the results of mass hallucination. In 1947, the American wave of twentieth-century sightings began. Since these sightings, the world has been continually involved with the UFO enigma.4 UFO sightings occur in waves. The largest and most intense European wave of sightings, and quite possibly the largest wave of UFO sightings ever, took place in France in 1954. These French sightings produced an abundance of reports of landings and occupants - the most recorded for a single area. They were thoroughly investigated by the leading European UFO researcher, Aimé Michel. His two books, published in America as The Truth About Flying Saucers and Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery are considered classics in the field. In Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery, Michel posited the existence of "grid lines" around the world. He felt that the reports of UFOs could be concentrated along these grid lines, although not necessarily chronologically. In other words, UFOs might be sighted within a mile of a straight line across France at different times, even as much as a year apart. He called his theory "orthotony," and this idea has been recently developed by University of Colorado psychologist Davis Saunders, whose statistical studies of orthotony have shown that Michel's work might be of great significance. Recently, France has been having a full-scale scientific debate about UFOs, prompted by the appearance in scientific journals of two articles on the subject by leading French scientists. The furor has led to speculation that the French government is now sponsoring a discreet, low-keyed study of UFOs. In late 1973 and early 1974, there was another heavy wave of UFO sightings in France, and the debate continues.
Latin Americais the international leader in sightings. Brazil, probably because of the size of the country, accounts for the majority of Latin American UFO reports, followed by Argentina, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay. The tremendous number of sightings that these countries have recorded has led to a much more casual acceptance by the general populace of the idea of extraterrestrial visitation. That is not to say, however, that the scientific and academic community takes the subject seriously; there is still a tremendous stigma attached to the scientific study of UFOs in all countries. In Brazil, recently, a potentially significant case occurred and is still under investigation. Sensational and bizarre as it may seem, it falls into a definite pattern of UFO close-encounter-physical-effect cases, and it has circumstantial evidence to increase it's credibility. Nonetheless, the careful investigator cannot make a judgment on this case until all the facts have been thoroughly checked. This case was filed with the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization by Brazilian UFO investigator Mrs. Irene Granchi.5 The case begins in a routine manner. At about 3:00 A.M. on May 22, 1973, Onilson Papero - forty-one years old, married, two daughters; Organizer of Public Libraries for the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil - was driving to his home in Catanduva. He had dropped off a hitchhiker a few miles north of the town. It was raining that night, and Papero was traveling around 55 miles per hour. His radio was on, and as he approached the slope of a hill, the radio began to fade. He turned it on and off to try to steady it. At the same time, his car engine started to sputter and miss, so he geared down to second for more power. As soon as he had done this he looked over and saw a bright blue circle of light, about 20 centimeters in diameter inside the car. The light moved slowly across his instrument panel, across the seat, a locked suitcase (which contained personal papers), the car floor, and Papero's legs. When the light was on the instrument panel, Papero had the impression of being able to see right through the circle of light to the engine. Puzzled, he immediately began to search for "normal" answers to this abnormal circumstance by wondering how the Moon could present such a strange optical illusion. Then he remembered that there was no Moon that night because of the rain and clouds. As he was thinking this, he suddenly noticed a bright blue luminous line of light directed at him from the top of the hill he was going up. The origin of the light seemed to be rapidly approaching and growing brighter. Papero immediately thought that this must be a truck coming towards him; he pulled off to the shoulder of the road and flashed his lights at the truck to help prevent a collision. The light, however, was unaffected and continued to approach his car. So, anticipating an accident, he took off his glasses and bent down in the car, shielding his head with his arms and hands. He stayed like this for a moment and then, realizing the truck had not passed, looked up and immediately saw an object hovering about thirty-five feet in the sky and fifty feet away from him. This must be a helicopter in the process of landing, Papero thought. He began to feel very hot and stuffy; he needed air. He opened the door and got out of the car for relief, but it was just as hot outside, with the same sensation of the lack of adequate air. He looked up again and heard a buzzing sound. At this point Papero realized that he was not observing a helicopter. The object looked like "two upside-down soup plates" about twenty-five feet thick and thirty-six feet wide. It was dull-dark gray, but Papero could not make out structural details. The entire area was illuminated, but Papero could not see the source of the light. He still felt the heat and stuffiness. As he watched the object, he noticed a "transparent curtain" slowly encircling the object from the right side to the left. When it completely encircled the object, the sensation of heat and lack of air ended. As this occurred, a "tube" came out of the object's bottom and stretched towards the ground. The thought suddenly went through Papero's mind that might be kidnapped. He panicked and began to run away from the object into the woods. He had run about a hundred feet when he felt something was holding him back. It was like a "rubber lasso" around him. He frantically tried to get away from the thing holding him back by waving his arms in back of him, but when he did this he found that there was nothing physical behind him. He turned and looked back at his car. A "blue tube-like torch of light" about seven inches in diameter was coming from the bottom of the object's "brim." When the light struck Papero's car, it seemed to become transparent. He claimed to be able to see the engine, the seats, and all other parts of his car. Papero's mind raced. Unable to grasp what he was seeing, he automatically began to think "mundane" thoughts - his car might be "melted," and he had not finished the payments on it yet. Either because of what he saw was too much for his mind to accept or because of a physical reason, Papero fainted. An hour later, two young men in their early twenties drove by in their Volkswagen station wagon. They saw Papero lying face down in the rushing water created by the rain. They saw the car with it's headlights on and the right front door open; thinking that there had possibly been a murder or assault, they did not stop but drove straight through to Catanduva. When they arrived, they went directly to a policeman and told him what they had seen. The officer went with them back to the scene. When they arrived at around 5:00 A.M., Papero was still lying unconscious in the rain. They found a road map of northern Brazil on the ground in front of the car. Inside the car they discovered that Papero's suitcase was now open, with the contents - checks, photographs, papers, ect... - strewn about inside the car. They went over to examine Papero and found no evidence of wounds on him. They turned him over and Papero regained consciousness. When he awoke he was panicky and began to struggle with the three men, probably believing them to be the kidnappers. When he was calmed he told them what had happened and confirmed the fact that the map, checks, papers, and photographs had been inside his locked suitcase and the key was still in his pocket. Nothing had been stolen, and his car operated normally. The officer took Papero to a local hospital in Catanduva. He spent the day there under observation but nothing appeared to be wrong, so the doctor sent him home that evening after prescribing a sedative. That same afternoon, however, while Papero was still in the hospital, he noticed a slight itch on his back and stomach. The next day, the skin areas that had itched began to turn into irregularly shaped, painless, purplish-blue spots. They were large and especially visible on his buttocks and hips. Later, the spots began to turn yellowish - much like bruises. Papero eventually went to São Paulo to undergo a complete medical examination. Dr. Max Berezonski conducted the examination and stated that Papero's mental attitude and ability to relate to his environment were normal. After running a battery of tests on Papero - including a glucose count, potassium, sodium, urea, bilirubin, phosphorus, calcium, hemoglobin coagulating period, and bloodletting, and a biopsy of the affected skin areas - the physician could find nothing to physically account for the spots. The physician also took an electroencephalogram, which was normal. Later, two regressive hypnotic sessions revealed information about what had happened to Papero while he was unconscious. At this date, however, that information has not yet been made public. Although a highly unusual and rare case, it can be seen as fitting a pattern of worldwide close-encounter cases and might be paralleled in the United States by the celebrated Barney and Betty Hill case in 1961. The Soviet Union also has had an interest in UFOs. In 1966, it had one of it's first massive UFO sighting waves. Although, details are incomplete, it appears that the government lent it's support to a study of the phenomenon by Soviet astronomer F. U. Zigel. Zigel was enthusiastic about the study and even made public statements to the effect that the UFOs might be extraterrestrial. However, before the study could be mounted, the Soviet government mysteriously withdrew it's support and abruptly it ended. Perhaps one of the most vivid and strangest occupant cases occurred in Boinani, New Guinea, in 1959. The witnesses were Reverend William B. Gill, his assistants, and the entire student body of a missionary school - about twenty-seven witnesses. Reverend Gill and the people of the area had been seeing what they called "talley lights" or lanterns hanging in the sky practically every night for several weeks before the main sighting. There had even been some daytime sightings beforehand. On June 27, 1959, Reverend Gill implored to come outside and observe the strange object hanging in the air a few hundred yards away from the school house. Gill and his assistants went outside and saw an oval-0shaped object with landing gear. There was a platform on top of it - something like an observation deck. The object rose and left the area. The next day the object returned. This time it slowly lowered to the ground as the astounded witnesses looked on from about fifty yards away. As it lowered, the witnesses noticed "men" walking on the platform on top of the object. They seemed preoccupied with some task - as if they were repairing something. As one occupant worked, the other occupant looked a Reverend Gill and the other observers. Spontaneously, Reverend Gill waved his arm above his head to signal the UFO occupants. Suddenly, the occupant raised his arms above his head as if he were either reciprocating the movement or signaling also. Reverend Gill repeated the gesture and so did the occupant. Then all the witnesses began to wave their arms and the occupant waved his arms again. Finally, the object raised up and flew straight off into the sky. Later Reverend Gill questioned each witness to verify the facts of the sighting, took measurements in an attempt to determine the size of the object and the occupants, and the distance they were from the witnesses. His lengthy, well-reasoned, and well-researched report constitutes one of the most famous and well documented Pacific cases.6 In late 1972 and early 1973, UFO sightings were reported in Africa (particularly South Africa), Latin America, Eastern Europe, Canada, and Australia. The wave of sightings in Africa was highlighted when President Amin of Uganda and scores of witnesses saw a "spectacular object" covered with something like "smoke" come down from the sky, splash into a lake, and then emerge from the lake and fly straight up and out of sight. President Amin decided this was of great significance and a good luck sign. He urged all the witnesses of the event to attend prayers.7 No matter where people report UFO sightings, all the reports share common features. They fall into narrowly defined, established patterns. The human mind is capable of imagining a virtual infinity of objects to fly through the sky. This does not happen. Although one of the interesting aspects of the UFO phenomenon is the great variety of sizes and shapes that people report, these people do not see apartment houses with wings, upside-down elephants, chairs, three-hundred-foot-long mosquitoes, or television sets winging their way across the sky. They do see basically geometric objects self-illuminated or with lights attached. They see objects with strange configurations and difficult-to-describe colors. They see those objects performing maneuvers which appear to be either controlled or random. They see these objects at various altitudes in the sky. Sometimes they see these objects at low levels or on the ground. When on or near the ground some people claim to see "occupants" of these objects. Sometimes there are physical effects, as in the Brazilian case. Sometimes the objects leave markings on the ground after they have landed and taken off. Whatever the case, the foreign cases are exactly the same as the American cases, regardless of whether the sightings occur in large cities, rural areas, industrial nations, developing nations, or Pacific Islands. The witnesses to these occurrences cut across all educational, cultural, ethnic, religious, and class lines. The UFO phenomena is worldwide. As in America, many other countries have strong private UFO-investigating organizations which catalogue and analyze the cases reported to them. Some of the best periodicals are published abroad - notably the British Flying Saucer Review and the French Lumières dans la Nuit. As interesting as worldwide or historical sightings may be to read about, they still can seem quite remote, unreal, and improbable to the more skeptical American mind. A report from a farmer in England or France, or an intriguing incident from the past, no matter how well documented, will ever be as real or as believable as a first-hand story told by a credible neighbor down the block, or better yet, as impactful as a first-hand experience.

                                                 A History of UFO Research, Part 2

It has been speculated about in books, hinted at in articles, expounded on by lecturers, and argued by UFO buffs that the Air Force has been, and still is, involved in an elaborate and perhaps sinister conspiracy to hide the real facts about UFOs from the public. Considering some of the Pentagon's past indiscretions, this allegation would appear to be quite in keeping. But, after reviewing the subject within the Pentagon in some frank, closed-door discussions, spending several days with the ex-heads of Project Blue Book, retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend and Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla, reviewing the subject with the Air Force's scientific advisor on UFOs, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, plus many official internal documents, personal letters, and files - after all that, I feel the "conspiracy" idea is mostly in the minds of the accusers. The only thing that's been proven to my satisfaction is that the mere accusation of a "conspiracy" in itself sells books and puts lecturers in demand. After all, what's more titillating than rumors of "three flying saucers carefully hidden away in some cave behind the hills of Colorado Springs by the Air Force?" Or the often-heard rumor that there are "two small extraterrestrial bodies, recovered from a downed spacecraft, now pickled and kept in the third sub-basement of the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division in Ohio?" That's potent stuff - but in reality I believe our government may be as mystified by the phenomenon as the man down the street. If the Air Force gives an outer appearance of having the situation well under control, internally it is plagued by loose ends. Report after report reads, "no definite and conclusive evidence is yet available that would prove or disprove the existence of unidentified flying objects as real aircraft of unknown and conventional configurations" or "it can never be absolutely proven that 'flying saucers' do not exist." In fact, an extraterrestrial theory, at one time had been seriously considered as the explanation. But to understand the Air Force's real interest in UFOs, a brief background of its involvement might be helpful. The Pentagon first became actively involved in the UFO phenomenon in the late 1940s, when reports started coming in about objects and lights seen in the sky by military personnel and others with high credibility. The Air Force - then it was the Air Corps - thought there was a logical explanation but decided to investigate the matter anyway. There was that one possibility that these flying objects could well be foreign weapons deployed here for test purposes, and that possibility made it a national-security concern. Early investigations led right into no-man's land, and it quickly became apparent to the Pentagon that the UFO phenomenon would need increased and more penetrating study. So, General Nathan F. Twining - then commander of Air Materiel Command, which included the intelligence-gathering arm for the Air Corps - recommended, in a top-level discussion, starting a full-scale classified study to identify these unidentifiable objects. The investigation branch was called Project Sign. The project had been under way for only two weeks when Captain Mantell crashed in his P-51 pursuing what the press felt to be a UFO. It made headlines across the nation. The staff's investigation was far from complete, but public pressure was enormous and building. Project Sign personnel were forced to come up with an answer to quiet growing speculation that Mantell had been killed by hostile aliens in a flying saucer. That's when they decided that Mantell was probably chasing Venus. They had statistics to back it up. It was, in the last analysis, an explanation, right or wrong. Now the task was to determine whether the growing number of reports coming in were descriptions of foreign secret weapons. German scientists brought to the US at the close of World War II from Peenemünde (the German's secret rocket proving grounds) were carefully interrogated. Many of their former colleagues had been taken to Russia after the war; could they have developed a vehicle that matched the reported descriptions of UFO behavior? In each case, the German scientists responded that there was "no possibility of a colleague inventing a flying object matching the descriptions of the behavior given to them of UFOs." After checking out the other military branches and our World War II allies, Project Sign personnel couldn't come up with a definite explanation. Then, in 1948, the Chiles and Whitted case had a great impact on the Air Force's project - it presented them with the first close-up account by highly reliable witnesses. Examination of the drawings and description of the object led some of the staff to postulate an "extraterrestrial theory." And they wrote up their then-top-secret "Estimate of the Situation," suggesting that the saucers were most probably from outer space. This theory was rejected by the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt Vandenberg, and even by other Project Sign staff members as not having enough proof - so the "extraterrestrial visitation" idea was dropped for the time being. In light of this, it was felt that Air Force officers should investigate these UFO reports. After enough reports had been solved - and the phenomena clearly shown to be no threat to national security - the Air Force should then drop UFO investigations as a special program. The project was thus re-organized under the name Project Grudge. Grudge attempted to identify the unidentifiable objects in the reports, and in most cases suggested the most probable explanation, based on current scientific knowledge. But still, about twenty-three percent remained unexplained. The staff stated publicly that it felt these unknowns could be misinterpretations of conventional objects, hoaxes, or the result of "a mild form of mass hysteria or war nerves," and they recommended closing down the project. Nevertheless, more sightings by reputable and competent witnesses followed, and the press got hold of the information. The Air Force was forced to upgrade the project again, and it decided to make another attempt at solving and explaining the various sightings from around the country. Project Grudge's name was changed to Project Blue Book in 1952, and that became it's permanent name. 1952 was a big year for UFO sightings - over 1,500 reports. Of course, the early fifties were full of anxiety: the Korean War, the McCarthy hearings, the cold war which th eAmerican won by a land shot.. Against this background the CIA entered the picture: Could UFOs indirectly create a menace to us? Could they be used in any way as a "decoy" or propaganda aid to the Communists? The Air Force cooperated with the CIA and sponsored a scientific inquiry called the Robertson Panel. After several days, the panel determined that the evidence-to-date did not justify the Air Force's sustained and systematic study of UFOs. The panel concluded that the public should be educated to the fact that most UFO sightings were, as the Air Force had always thought, misidentifications of conventional objects or natural phenomena. The thrust from that time on should be to show the public that all reported objects could be identified, if there were sufficient information. So with an almost "explain it come hell or high water" approach, the investigations continued. From this point - up until 1969 - the Air Force came into a lot of criticism. For one thing, the Blue Book files were under the jurisdiction of an intelligence organization of the Air Force; by necessity, all intelligence information was classified. Blue Book also had other confidential material, like names and addresses of witnesses, in the records. To satisfy the public, there were regular press releases with Blue Book's conclusions, and annual summary reports were available. But because of the classification policies, the Air Force was still subject to heavy criticism - mainly the charge that it was holding back proof that UFOs were extraterrestrial vehicles. It created a bad dilemma for the Air Force: it had no proof that UFOs were spaceships, but it couldn't prove they weren't spaceships either. Criticism was the greatest around 1966, about the time that Dr. J. Allen Hynek made headlines by saying that sightings in Michigan were of swamp gas, not UFOs. Then-Congressman Gerald Ford called for a congressional hearing, and more study was proposed. This finally led to the famous Condon Committee Reports.
In December, 1969, amidst great public controversy, the Condon Report from the University of Colorado finally came out. The committee had found no evidence whatsoever that UFOs were a threat to the national security (which so far has not been disproved), and Condon recommended that the Air Force terminate it's UFO investigations and analysis. He also stated that no scientific knowledge had came out of previous studies, and none could be expected in the future. Everyone seemed satisfied with the report, in 1969, with a great sigh of relief, the Air Force officially disbanded Project Blue Book. As a result, they are no longer studying UFOs. The Air Force's struggle over how to handle the UFO phenomenon is now history, and it makes an interesting side story to the UFOs themselves. But in spite of official positions and the collective conclusions of all the reports, the UFO phenomena keep going strong - with or without official Air Force sanction. A close look at the official data relating to the UFO phenomenon is most revealing. In the

                                             A History of UFO Research, Part 3

Kenneth Arnold, a pilot, sighted an unidentified object in the sky on June 24, 1947, and it was to be the first of a flood of reports around the United States. The wave of sightings had actually started in January of that year, but Arnold's sighting report was the first to capture the attention of the news media, and it made headlines across the country. This sensational publicity occurred just when the 1947 wave was peaking that summer, and it created favorable conditions for others to report their sightings to the newspapers. Many of these published reports came from people who had witnessed UFOs before the Arnold sightings. At the time there was no agency to catalog the reports, so it was years before the true dimensions of the 1947 sighting wave became known. Later researchers found that over 850 sightings were reported during that critical year, making it one of the biggest waves of UFO sightings in American history. Most of the reports were being made to the news media, so the Air Corps received only a small portion of them. The Air Corps, however, took the reports that it did receive seriously, especially since many came from military personnel and other people with high credibility and reliability. By the end of 1947, memoranda on "flying discs" began to circulate through the upper echelon at the Pentagon. These memos were to give birth to an official investigation of UFOs. Here is an excerpt from a then-secret memo from the office of Major General Craigie, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Commanding General, Air Materiel Command, at Wright-Patterson, Ohio, dated 30 December 1947: It is Air Force policy not to ignore reports of sightings or phenomena in the atmosphere but to recognize that part of it's mission is to collect, collate, evaluate, and act on information of this nature. ...it is desired that the Air Force Air Materiel Command set up a project whose purpose is to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute to interested government agencies and contractors all information concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security... This project is assigned priority 2A, with a security classification of "restricted" and a code name "Sign." Where data of a classification higher than restricted is handled by the project, such data should be classified accordingly. Signed by Command of the Chief of Staff Approximately eight days after this memorandum, a "report of unusual incident" classified as "restricted" was entered into the Air Force records. It began: At approximately 1400E, 7 January 1947, Kentucky State Police reported to Fort Knox Military Police they had sighted an unusual craft or object flying through the air, circular in appearance, approximately 250-300 feet in diameter, moving westward at "a pretty good clip." This in turn was reported to the Commanding Officer, Godman Field, Ft. Knox, Kentucky, who called Godman Tower and asked them to have Flight Service check with Flight Test at Wright Field to see if they had any experimental aircraft in that area. Forty minutes before the state police reported the unusual aircraft," the tower crew at Godman Field had sighted a bright, disc-shaped object which they were unable to identify. The assistant tower operator watched the object for several minutes before making a report to his chief. Key personnel were alerted and began arriving at the tower, where they viewed the object through eight-power binoculars. The Base Commanding Officer, Colonel Hix, arrived. Looking through the binoculars, he described it: "It's very white, and looks like an umbrella. I just don't know what it is. Through the binocs it appears to have a red border at the bottom at times...and a red border at the top at times." About this time four P-51s happened to be in the area, en route from Marietta, Georgia, to Standiford Field in Louisville, Kentucky. The CO at Godman Field decided to contact the lead pilot and request that he investigate the object seen overhead. The lead pilot was Captain Thomas Mantell. The events of the next few minutes were to lead him, a veteran pilot, to his death. Mantell was like a lot of men who had joined the service in World War II. He trained as a pilot in the States, went overseas to North Africa and England, and survived several missions including the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Later he flew missions over Holland and participated in Rhine Crossing. He was now out of active service and, with a partner, had started a little business, the Elkins-Mantell Flying School, in Louisville. His wife was expecting a call from him later that day. His two boys, a six-year-old and one seventeen months old, were also at home. Friends said Mantell was "easy-going," above average in intelligence, could take care of himself, and never seems to have any personal problems. "Mantell loved flying" - especially the P-51 which he flew "not carelessly, but like an aggressive fighter pilot," according to his closest friend. But as fate would have it, this veteran pilot, who had flown and survived under trying war conditions, would meet his death that day. Mantell's name would be associated with one of the first and more controversial UFO cases recorded by the Air Force - and only Mantell ever knew what actually happened. As the flight of P-51s appears in the sky over Godman, the Commanding Officer presses the intercom key and contacts the Flight Leader. Mantell answers: "Roger, Godman Tower. This is NG3869 Flight Leader of formation . Over." the Base Commander, Colonel Hix, responds: "NG 3869 from Godman. We have an object out south of Godman here that we are unable to identify, and we would like to know if you have gas enough, and if you could take a look for us, if you will." Mantell replies: "Roger, I have the gas and will take a look for you, if you give me the correct reading." One fighter plane requests to drop out. The three remaining P-51s take a reading from Godman Tower and turn south. In a few moments Mantell has moved ahead of his wing men. The tower contacts the Flight Leader again, this time to correct his course 5 degrees to the left, to 210 degrees from Godman Tower. Mantell's voice breaks in over the intercom: "Godman Tower. this is Flight Leader NG 3869, Captain Mantell." He has sighted it. "Object traveling at half my speed and directly ahead of me and above." The tower personnel listen as Mantell continues: "I'm closing in to take a good look." Another pilot's voice breaks in: "What the hell are we looking for?" The tower doesn't respond but pushes Mantell for an identification of the object: "Can you give us a description?" A few moments pass. Mantell informs the tower: "It's above me...it appears metallic and to be tremendous in size." Another moment passes and Mantell, knowing he is not equipped with oxygen, nevertheless informs the tower: "I'm going to twenty thousand feet." The other pilots, lacking oxygen equipment also, level off under 15,000 and start down. The commander and the tower operator watch and wait. Within a few minutes, at approximately 3:15 P.M., Godman tower loses sight of the UFO and Mantell's plane. Over the intercom you no longer hear the transmission from his P-51, only the sound of the engine as it strains in the distance on it's way to 30,000 feet. The tower again tries to contact Mantell. Five minutes later, there is a telephone call. Captain Mantell's plane has been located - it has crashed; his decapitated body lies near the wreckage. It is noted that Mantell's watch stopped at 3:10. The Air Force was in a dilemma about releasing the unpleasant photos of the crash and Mantell's body beside it. The press sensed that the Air Force was holding back the photos for ulterior reasons. Stories and speculations sprang up and found their way into the media - that his body was covered with strange, unearthly radiation burns, that he had been struck down from the sky by an alien spacecraft. The public clamored for more information and explanations. The Air Force, pressed for an official explanation, made a complete investigation and then, taking their best shot, announced that Mantell had simply been pursuing the planet Venus, which was located in that area of the sky. This explanation, coupled with the holding back of the photos, did not satisfy those who believed it was an Air Force cover-up. A look at the investigator's report gives you some insight into what actually happened - but as you read into it, you'll notice that "Venus" was following a highly erratic orbit that day. Officer Walker stated that when he arrived, the pilot's body had been removed from the aircraft. Upon questioning eyewitnesses, Officer Walker learned that the aircraft had exploded in the air before it hit the ground. The wreckage was scattered over an area of about one mile, and at that time the tail section, one wing, and the propeller had not been located. Lt. Tyler, Operations Officer at Standiford Field, departed Standiford Field for Bowling Green, Kentucky, in NG 8101 to investigate the accident. Also at our suggestion an investigation party and Military Police were dispatched from Godman Field to the scene. The reporting officer goes on to say: Godman Tower again contacted us to report that there was a large light in the sky in the approximate position object seen earlier. Then Lockbourne Tower and Clinton County Tower advised a great ball of light was traveling southwest across the sky. We then contacted Olmstead Flight Service Center and gave them all the information available to deliver to the Air Defense Command at Mitchell Field, Hempstead, New York. Later we received a call from St. Louis Tower advising that a great ball of light was passing directly over the field - Scott Tower also verified this. We then received a call from Air Defense Command through Olmstead Flight Service Center advising us to alert Coffeyville, Kansas, Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and that they had plotted the object as moving WSW at 250 miles per hour. The report continues on for several pages and concludes: It is the ATIC opinion that Captain Mantell lost consciousness due to oxygen starvation, the aircraft being trimmed continued to climb until increasing altitude caused a sufficient loss of power for it to level out. The aircraft then began a turn to the left due to torque and as the wing dropped so did the nose until the aircraft was in a tight diving spiral. The uncontrolled descent resulted in excessive speed causing the aircraft to disintegrate. it is believed that Captain Mantell never regained consciousness. this is borne out by the fact that the canopy lock was still in place after the crash, discounting any attempt to abandon the aircraft. The UFO was in no way directly responsible for this accident. The Air Force concluded that Mantell had been pursuing the planet Venus; but there was one observation made of the unidentified object in a signed affidavit that the Air Force must have overlooked it. In it, we get a different description of what Mantell may have been chasing that day. The military man involved describes a cone-shaped object that appeared to be surrounded with burning gas. State of Ohio County of Clinton Before me, the undersigned authority for administering oaths of this kind, personally appeared one James H. Hudson, Cpl, ASN 13220873, who, being first duly sworn by me, deposes and says: The following information came over Plan 62: This observation was made in Kentucky at the scene of the P-51 crash with an 8" telescope:
             

                                                                              observation was taken at Godman Field, Kentucky, with a theodolite:
                                                                                                   1854 CST. Elevation 2.4, Azimuth 254.6
                                                                                                   1856 CST. Elevation 2.0, Azimuth 253.9
                                                                                                   1902 CST. Elevation 1.2, Azimuth 253.0
                                                                                                   1906 CST. Disappeared.
The following is my opinion: The object is not a comet or star, but was man-made. It was not a balloon, comet, star, or aircraft of known type. The light did not come from an aircraft's running lights. The whole object appeared to be surrounded with burning gas or something that gave light...
Although at first the Air Force investigator's report stayed with the conclusion that Mantell had been pursuing the planet Venus, later information led them to believe it was a Navy Sky Hook Balloon thought to be in the area at the time. That was the most probable cause. And that revised conclusion closed the Mantell case.
The explanation still didn't account for the many other descriptions given by other military ground observers. This was only the beginning of an unresolvable dilemma for the Pentagon.

After the Cold War ended, the culture of secrecy and the operational style of the CIA began to change. Its director appeared on a radio talk show, and it became possible for citizens to pressure the CIA in ways unheard of during that earlier era.

Ufology has been a beneficiary of these changes.

In late 1993, inquiries from several UFO researchers led CIA Director R. James Woolsey to order a review of all CIA files on UFOs. This agency-wide search occurred in 1994 and centralized the CIA's UFO files.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, government historian Gerald K. Haines reviewed the documents, conducted interviews, and wrote a study examining the CIA's interest and involvement in UFO investigation and government UFO policy from 1947 until 1990.

Haines's study was published in Studies in Intelligence, a classified journal published quarterly for the intelligence community. The article, "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90," appeared in the first semiannual unclassified edition for 1997, on pages 67–84.

This is a rather important document because it is the first time that a government agency has written a review of its involvement with UFOs. Although the study had been available at least since June when I downloaded it from the CIA Web site, it did not receive widespread publicity until early August.

But when the press learned about the Haines study, the attention was dramatic. The story was carried in most large newspapers, on the NBC Nightly News, and many other media outlets. A typical headline from the Chicago Sun-Times reads, "CIA feared UFO hysteria." Several columnists used the CIA history as an opportunity to bash the CIA and secrecy in government, as exemplified by the column by David Wise (author of The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power) in the New York Times "Big Lies and Little Green Men."

The media generally focused on two aspects of the Haines article. In a brief section entitled "CIA's U–2 and OXCART as UFOs," Haines claims that many UFO sightings in the late 1950s and 1960s were actually misidentified secret American spy planes. Moreover, he alleges that the Air Force's Project Blue Book was in on this cover-up, purposely misled the public, and falsified (Haines didn't use that word but that is plainly what the Air Force would be doing) UFO explanations. This is important news if true, and the media rightly played up this angle.

Note that the CIA is not accused of deception by Haines; rather, it is the Air Force that willingly concocted the bogus explanations. Reporters asked the Air Force for comment, and on August 4, Brigadier General Ronald Sconyers told the press, "I cannot confirm or deny that we lied. The Air Force is committed to providing accurate and timely information within the confines of national security."

General Sconyers sounds a bit like a weasel-worded politician, and his statement hardly serves to reduce the controversy. The second topic seized upon by the press and played up as news was the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel from 1953.

Yes, that is correct, the Robertson Panel, whose report has been well-known to anyone interested in UFOs for over 30 years now. That the press could consider the recommendations of the panel to be news at this late date speaks volumes for the intelligence, reporting skills, and historical knowledge of the Fifth Estate. (The Washington Post, in full damage-control mode, said in an editorial that the study was "not an exposé full of new revelations," but the paper had already published an article claiming the opposite.)

Press coverage focused on the panel's recommendations that UFO reports be debunked (a policy Blue Book followed assiduously after 1953), that UFO groups be watched, and that there was a danger the Soviets might use UFOs to clog the channels of communication and then launch a nuclear attack.

The deception about our spy planes was just a small part of this strategy.

Although the press was only late by about 40 years, their coverage of this aspect of the report is a positive note for ufology. What is clear from the tone of most articles is that the CIA's (and Air Force's) lies about UFOs are just further examples of all the many lies the American public had been told during the Cold War.

And for once, Ufologists are being viewed in a sympathetic light by the media as direct victims of government deception.

Coming on the heels of the Air Force's second report on Roswell, the tide has begun to turn against the government in the UFO debate. More and more, it is becoming apparent the government has lied about UFOs for years, and that it still may be lying today.

Although the press gave so much coverage to the Haines article, it missed part of the story, failed to do any independent investigation, and generally swallowed the report as written. As Paul Harvey says, now for the rest of the story.

The CIA's excessive secrecy

The report by Haines is remarkably brief, given the CIA's complex UFO involvement. In its Internet version the full article is 21 pages in length, with eight pages of that for footnotes (with several interesting tidbits buried there).

Whole swaths of history, such as the early 1970s, are compressed into a few paragraphs or sentences. Certainly a more complete study could be done, and perhaps the classified version is a bit longer.

Nevertheless, to this credit, Haines several times makes it clear that the CIA bungled the handling of UFOs because of its policies of excessive secrecy, in effect fueling the idea of a massive UFO cover-up (for which, not surprisingly, Haines finds no evidence).

For example, in 1957 Leon Davidson, a UFO investigator who worked at getting the Robertson Panel report released and was a believer in a government cover–up, was working on a UFO case involving a strange tape recording made by the Maier sisters of Chicago.

This tape had actually been analyzed by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and found to be "nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station."

When Davidson wrote to Dewelt Walker, the CIA officer who had contacted the Maier sisters, Walker obfuscated and refused to provide a straight answer about his role.

When Davidson persisted, the CIA had the Air Force contact Davidson saying that Walker "was and is an Air Force Officer." Then to further screw things up, the CIA had one of its officers dress in an Air Force uniform and contact Davidson, claiming to speak on behalf of the Air Force. One cannot blame Davidson for believing there was a cover-up because, obviously, there was.

As Haines writes, "Thus, a minor, rather bizarre incident, handled poorly by both the CIA and the Air Force, turned into a major flap that added fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and CIA's role in their investigation."

In another incident, officers from the Contact Division (CD) of the CIA obtained a UFO photograph from Ralph Mayher in November 1957. After the photos were returned (with no comment or analysis for Mayher), he contacted the CD for the CIA's evaluation because he wanted to mention it on a television program on which he was going to appear. The CIA declined.

Major Donald Keyhoe, head of NICAP, heard about these events and contacted the CIA to confirm the story. But the CIA refused, referring the matter to the Air Force, even though, as Haines writes, "CD field representatives were normally overt and carried credentials identifying their Agency association." No wonder, again, that Ufologists would conclude the government was lying about its UFO activities.

Although the CIA clearly lied to Davidson and Keyhoe, the actual UFO events at the heart of each story were mundane and not of particular importance. More sinister is the suggestion that the CIA (or FBI at the CIA's direction) has monitored UFO groups and investigators.

Haines has no direct evidence for this, but it is unclear where such records would be kept or whether they would even be at the CIA (rather than the FBI). Certainly, the FBI has files on various Ufologists, including Richard Hall, head of the Fund for UFO Research and long-time staffer at NICAP.

A complete history of the CIA's involvement in UFOs should have discussed this critical issue in depth; after all, the Robertson Panel recommended that UFO groups be monitored for subversive activities.

That Haines did not fully discuss this subject can probably be attributed to his ignorance of UFO history, to the lack of documentation about this subject in CIA records, and perhaps, to the scope of his article which is more concerned with the investigation of UFOs rather than the investigation of Ufologists.

The one bit of evidence Haines does include involves Leon Davidson again. In 1958, worried about future inquiries about government UFO investigation, the CIA met with the Air Force to discuss what to do with such requests.

CIA officer Frank Chapin "hinted that Davidson might have ulterior motives" and he suggested having the FBI investigate Davidson. Haines says the record is unclear as to whether the FBI ever acted on this suggestion, but it is not clear how deeply Haines investigated this possibility

Although the evidence is circumstantial, there are other hints that the government was monitoring UFO groups long before these discussions. In their book UFOs Over the Americas, Jim and Coral Lorenzen detail several rather bizarre incidents of what would seem to be rather clumsy attempts to learn the Lorenzens' motives for their UFO investigations and the work of APRO, the organization they founded.

These occurred in several states over at least a dozen years, and the Lorenzens sound more amused by the experience than upset.

In point of fact, just about any Ufologist would have been pleased to have the Air Force or CIA approach them and ask for advice about UFO investigations or what types of cases the investigator was receiving. The problem faced by these agencies, as Haines outlines, is that an excessive policy of secrecy kept them from openly contacting UFO investigators who most likely would have cooperated with government requests for information.

There is no more pivotal event in the CIA's involvement with UFOs, perhaps in the U.S. government's interest in UFOs, than the Robertson Panel of January 1953. Haines devotes just over a page to this critical study, which provides him no room for nuance or much more than a bare reciting of the facts.

In his review of CIA documents he demonstrates the very high-level CIA interest in UFOs engendered by the UFO flap in the summer of 1952 and, especially, the sightings over Washington, D.C. A special study group was formed within OSI to review the UFO situation.

Director Walter Bedell Smith "wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of flying saucers was sufficiently objective," and he wondered "what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts."

Memos and meetings were frequent in late 1952 as the CIA considered what should be done about the UFO problem. Haines's research shows that the Robertson Panel's concerns about the clogging of communication channels and the use of UFOs to disrupt U.S. air defenses were taken straight from CIA concerns expressed in internal memos during the summer of 1952.

In other words, the Robertson Panel, despite the eminence of the scientists involved, appears to have been carefully orchestrated by the CIA to come to the conclusions it did, which included debunking UFOs with the help of the Air Force Project Blue Book. Haines does not comment on this element of the CIA's role in determining government policy.

Spy planes and UFOs

I turn now to the issue that so dominated press coverage of Haines's article, the claim that many UFO reports were caused by secret aircraft flights. Given the nature of many UFO reports of objects seen at close range low to the ground, Ufologists have uniformly found this claim preposterous.

I have over the years personally reviewed the majority of Blue Book reports and know that that they were not caused by misidentifications of spy planes. But because this is such an important claim, here is the full discussion of this issue by Haines.

In November 1954, CIA had entered into the world of high technology with its U-2 overhead reconnaissance project. Working with Lockheed's Advanced Development facility in Burbank, California, known as the Skunk Works, and Kelly Johnson, an eminent aeronautical engineer, the Agency by August 1955 was testing a high-altitude experimental aircraft—the U-2.

It could fly at 60,000 feet; in the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew between 10,000 feet and 20,000 feet. Consequently, once the U-2 started test flights, commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings.

The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays from the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers below. Air Force BLUE BOOK investigators aware of the secret U-2 flights tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.

By checking with the Agency's U-2 Project Staff in Washington, BLUE BOOK investigators were able to attribute many UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.

According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U–2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States.

This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the cover-up controversy of the 1970s.

The percentage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956.

What exactly is the evidence for the claim that "over half of all UFO reports . . . were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights"? In one footnote, Haines mentions the monograph The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974, by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach (1992).

A colleague at CUFOS tried to obtain a copy of this reference, which was published by the CIA History Staff, but has been told the monograph is classified. That makes it impossible to verify its accuracy.

In a second footnote, Haines mentions a telephone interview with a John Parongosky, who "oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the OXCART program." I would like to call Mr. Parongosky myself, but have been unable to find any listing or address for him.

In any case, there is a very straightforward step which could verify this claim about spy planes, one I am surprised was not taken by at least one reporter. If the Air Force was lying about the cause of UFO sightings to protect the secrecy of our spy planes, then obviously the heads of Blue Book would have been central to the deception.

Yet no one seems to have contacted any of these officers, most of whom are still living, for a comment.

I had previously spoken to Lt. Col. (Ret.) Robert Friend, head of Blue Book from about 1958 to early 1963, on a matter of UFO history, so I called him again recently to discuss this subject.

Friend had not heard about the CIA report (he doesn't watch much television and doesn't follow UFO news closely these days), but he was very interested to learn about its existence. He asked me for a copy plus any news stories I had on the report.

I read to him the discussion by Haines reproduced above and then asked for his comment. Almost the first words he said were that it is "absolutely not true" that he or his Blue Book team were covering up spy flights as alleged by Haines.

He found the whole idea laughable, and he knew Blue Book did not receive more reports from pilots and air traffic controllers after the U-2 began flying.

I asked him if he had ever concealed classified activities that were reported as UFOs. Friend indicated that, indeed, this had occurred on a few occasions, but it was not a regular occurrence. I inquired as to whether he had regular contact with the CIA at Blue Book.

He said that he did because the CIA overlooked no potential source of information and wanted to keep tabs on all government intelligence activities. In addition, the Air Force had utilized the services of the National Photographic Interpretation Center, the CIA's photo analysis office, to analyze UFO photos.

However, in none of his contacts with the CIA or U-2 project staff was Friend ever told to conceal sightings of the U-2 by the CIA.

To be absolutely sure before I ended the conversation, I asked Friend whether the project had ever received a sighting which he recognized as caused by a U-2 (or other secret aircraft). He said, to his recollection, no. Once again, he chuckled about the idea of half of all UFO reports being caused by manned reconnaissance flights.

I then read him the statement by Sconyers quoted earlier, in which the general cannot "confirm or deny that we lied." This brought a guffaw from Friend, who wondered why Sconyers, or anyone currently in the Pentagon, should know what happened 30 years ago.

We both marveled at how the press and the military (and Haines) had failed to contact the obvious central figures in this alleged cover-up.

In summary, then, the claim that motivated the press coverage of Haines's report is inaccurate and is not evidence for a CIA and Air Force cover-up of UFO sightings and lies to the American public.

Yet the CIA and Air Force did knowingly debunk UFO sightings, and Blue Book personnel often came up with any old explanation so that the yearly summary sheets would have only a small percentage of unidentified sightings.

So I'm not too unhappy that the CIA and Air Force were taken to task for something they didn't do, but it is important to set the record straight.

Forcing disclosure of CIA records

Beginning in the mid-1970s, UFO researchers began using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to request government, including CIA, documents on UFOs. Once again, the CIA mishandled the requests.

After William Spaulding, head of Ground Saucer Watch, wrote in 1975 requesting UFO records, the CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Gene Wilson wrote to Spaulding that the Robertson Panel was "the summation of the Agency interest and involvement in UFOs." As Haines states, "Wilson was ill-informed."

Not believing Wilson's statements, Ufologists sued the CIA for records and won the release of about 800 pages in December of 1978.

Since the CIA had, unwisely, been denying its involvement in UFO matters, the media was surprised to learn how many documents were held by the agency. The New York Times claimed as a result that the CIA was probably secretly involved in the study of UFOs.

CIA Director Stansfield Turner was so upset by this that he asked his senior officers "Are we in UFOs?" He received a negative answer from his deputy and so moved to quash a new lawsuit asking for the withheld documents from the first release.

Notwithstanding the reply Turner got, Haines found that the CIA continued a few activities during the 1980s. As he writes:

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers [sic] reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings.

CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects. Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs.

These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.

If I hadn't checked the calendar after reading this, I would have sworn this was 1952 and I was reading of CIA concerns about how UFOs could be used by the Soviets against the United States, as eventually expressed in the recommendations of the Roberson Panel report. Some things never change, at least during the Cold War.

Haines notes that during this period, "Agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released," and Haines says he found almost no documentation on CIA involvement with UFOs in the 1980s. This certainly is an effective method to circumvent FOIA, but it hardly leads to further confidence in the CIA.

Finally, in an intriguing footnote, Haines says that the "CIA reportedly is also a member of an Incident Response Team to investigate UFO landings, if one should occur. This team has never met." Say what?

He offers no evidence for this statement, which, if true, belies the notion that the government completely ignores UFO reports.

In the end, Haines's article is not as revealing as press reports indicated, but it does open a window on CIA activities that have long been closed to the public.

Perhaps its chief contribution will be the documents referenced in the footnotes which can now be specifically requested through FOIA by an enterprising UFO historian.

His historical analysis is unremittingly pedestrian, but he does admit that CIA errors of commission and omission contributed directly to the notion of a UFO cover-up, and he demonstrates that there was indeed a cover-up, though not of spy planes, of a UFO crash near Roswell, nor other events of similar import.

Another effect of Haines's article is a gradual shifting of media opinion toward granting greater credibility to the statements of UFO groups and investigators and a concomitant greater distrust in government claims about its UFO activities.

This is all to the good and here the old phrase "better late than never" surely applies.

In 1966, Marjorie Fish, a school teacher and astronomer was curious if ET contactee Betty Hill's two year old star map had any similarity to a real star pattern.

Ms. Fish decided to build a 3D model of the stars in our galactic neighborhood. She then observed the sculpture from various angles and recorded the data.

Walter Mitchell, professor of Astronomy at Ohio State University, studied it and was "very impressed by the astronomy involved in Marjorie Fish's work."

Through computers, Mitchell and his students calculated the real positions of hundreds of nearby stars and found virtually no error in her findings. The source of the star map were aliens believed to be from a large binary solar system in our southern sky known as Zeti Reticuli.

Zeta Reticuli is a faint pair of fifth magnitude stars 220 trillion miles away. The pair is unusual in that it is the only known double system where both components are nearly identical to our sun. Their distance from one another is estimated to be 350 billion miles or nearly 100 times the distance from Pluto to the sun.

At least 100,000 years are required for Zeta Reticuli 1 and Zeta Reticuli 2 to revolve once around their common center of gravity. The two solar systems are positioned at such an extreme distance that one would not disturb the other.

One thousand stars exist in a radius of 55 light-years from us; which is the distance just beyond Zeta Reticuli. Within this sphere: these thousand stars come in various sizes, temperatures, ages and colors. We should keep in mind that a vast majority of suns are not like our own.

Our star is in a small minority of a large and diverse crowd. Suns are green, purple, red, orange, blue, small and white, flickering, expanding, variable, huge, very active or dim and weak. Most suns are not single suns, but binaries and other combinations of multiple systems. Out of our neighborhood of a 1000 assorted stars, only 46 are similar to our middle-aged, yellow sun.

The small, grey aliens that abducted Betty and Barney Hill explained that the solid lines on their map were 'trade routes' or places they stop regularly. The broken lines were their expeditions. Ms. Fish believed that our sun was possibly on one of their trade routes. With this assumption, a corresponding pattern was found!

Actually, 16 stars fit the pattern; Zeta Tucanae is located directly behind Zeta Reticuli 1 and therefore not in sight. Betty Hill's star map is believable because these are not just any 16 suns. They are all YELLOW, except for Tau Eridani 1 and Gliese 86.1 which are slightly above and below the parameter of yellow suns.

The conclusions of investigating astronomers indicate that these were Zeta Reticulans seeking out yellow stars. They were traveling to places similar to their home world.

The map is very convincing when one considers that the 16 yellow stars are not randomly scattered all over this imaginary sphere. They are concentrated in one particular area of space that includes our solar system. Professor Mitchell and Marjorie Fish have pointed out that "the stars in the map are almost in a plane; that is, they fill a wheel-shaped volume of space that makes star hopping from one to another easy and is the logical way to go..."

Therefore, the Zeta's exploration and trade route theory is possible. They deliberately bypassed many non-yellow suns (cepheid variables, close binaries and multiples, giants and dwarfs) until they reached

the very next yellow sun.

The star map was drawn by Betty Hill in 1964 while under hypnosis; recalling her ET experience from 1961. It was not until 1969, when the Gliese Star Catalog came out, that two of the stars were found to fit the map.

This incredible fact means that not even the most informed astronomer could have devised such a star chart at the time it was drawn by Betty.

A quote from the December 1974 issue of Astronomy Magazine reads: "The pattern discovered by Marjorie Fish has an uncanny resemblance to the map drawn by Betty Hill. The stars are mostly ones that we would visit if we were exploring from Zeta Reticuli. The travel patterns make sense."

An important question often asked is why are the suns believed to be Zeta 1 and 2 so large in her drawing? The answer is: She drew what she saw. She remembered standing a few feet from a 3-dimensional projection of glowing spheres. The wide-binary hologram was drawn large because Zeta 1 and 2 were the closest objects to her.

Drawing the grey's home world large only emphasizes the reality of the map. Holograms did not exist on Earth in 1961.

ETs from Zeta Reticuli have been described from numerous sources as small, grey-skinned beings with large/black eyes. According to Bob Lazar, whistle-blower of Area 51, our government informed him that the Roswell aliens did indeed originate from the Zeta Reticuli system. If we take a closer look at Betty's star map and compare it to real astronomy, we may discover that the proof has been with us for more than 40 years.

Reproduction or commercial use of this document or any of its

photographs or illustrations without permission of the author is

expressly prohibited.This document may however be redistributed

over electronic networks and to researchers as long as it is

forwarded in its whole, without modifications and without charge.

*****************************************************************

The Yakima UFO Field project was undertaken by me in August of

1972 at the request of Dr. J. Allen Hynek.The study has

continued to this day.

The original reports were not widely circulated by Dr. Hynek

at my request.However, a number of articles and at least one book

related to the Toppenish Study have been published over the years.

This electronic distribution is my attempt to make the original

documents of the study available to anyone who is interested.

This distribution contains the text of three papers:The first

was submitted in November of 1972.Two follow-up reports, in 1974

and 1975, summarize developments and report statistics following

the conclusion of the initial field study.The original

typewritten documents were scanned and converted to electronic media

files with OCR software.Otherwise, they appear essentially as they

did in their original form.

December of 1995 marks twenty-three years since the Toppenish

Field Study was undertaken.Bill Vogel and Allen Hynek have died.

Many of the other people who contributed to it have moved on to new

jobs, retired or died.This publication is dedicated to Bill Vogel

and others who helped to bring the Yakima manifestation to our

attention.

This report presents findings made during a field study period

extending from August 20, 1972 to August 31, 1972, near Toppenish,

Washington U.S.A.

It is intended as a preliminary report, since investigation is

still in progress.The report begins with a description of the

study area.The following section presents a short history of UFO

activity in the region.The next section deals with the objectives

of the study, the investigative approach employed and instruments

used.Detailed reports of each observation of apparent UFO

activity made by this investigator comprise the fourth section of

the report.

The final section of this report includes some preliminary

assessments concerning the effectiveness of the study and some

suggestions for improving equipment for present and future

investigations.Care has been taken to report all unusual

observations as accurately as possible and to refrain from

analysis.

Appendix A summarizes additional observations by other

individuals during the year of 1972, prior to the initiation of the

field study described in this report.

The area involved in this study consists of a rectangular

section, about forty miles wide and seventy miles long (2,800 sq.

miles), located in south central Washington state.Almost all of

the area is a part of the reservation of the Yakima Indian Nation.

Approximately two-thirds of the reservation is closed to the public

and special authorization is required to enter the area.

Eastern borders of the study area are marked by the towns of

Parker, Wapato, Toppenish, Granger and Mabton.The western border

is formed by the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountain Range, with

Mount Adams (elevation 12,307 ft.) the dominating feature of the

skyline.The northern border of the area is marked by Ahtanum

Ridge (4,5OO ft.).Bickleton Ridge and the Simcoe Mountains (max.

elevation 5,500 ft.) from the southern border.Figure I is a map

of the study area.

The eastern quarter (144,325 acres) of the region is used for

agricultural purposes; the principal crops being sugar beets, hops,

mint, asparagus, corn, peas, grain, alfalfa, cherries, peaches,

apples and grapes.This quarter is flat valley farmland.The

remaining portion of the eastern half or the valley is used for

rangeland and consists mainly of dry, rolling hills.

The western half of the study area is made up of heavily

forested terrain, much of it primitive and inaccessible to normal

ground transportation.Timber from this region is a major source

of income for the area.Railroad tracks of the Burlington Northern

Line run along the eastern border of the reservation.U.S. Highway

97 is the only major freeway in the area and, along with primary

power transmission lines of the Bonneville Power Administration,

cuts through the southeastern corner of the reservation.

Secondary roads, many of them dirt or gravel, crisscross the

reservation.The town of White Swan, twenty miles due west of

Toppenish, is the most western population center in the area and

has about 300 inhabitants.The closest areas of industrial

significance are the nuclear research facilities at Hanford, 28

statute miles to the northeast, and the Yakima Firing Range, 14

statute miles to the north of Toppenish.

Geology of the study area is interesting:Marine fossils

found in the area indicate that the entire valley might once have

been a huge lake or inland sea.Volcanic activity is still very

much in evidence, especially in the vicinities of Mt. Adams and

neighboring Mt. Rainier.

Activity recognizable as classical UFO phenomena has been

present in the Toppenish area for more than eight years.There is

even some evidence to suggest that UFO reports are a part of Yakima

Indian legends.A detectable increase in activity has taken place

in the last three years.Reports have recently been made by law

enforcement personnel from the Washington Stare Patrol, County

Sheriff and reservation Law and Order department.Formerly, fire

lookouts had been the primary source of reports.A majority of

observations are made at night and consist mostly of the typical

"nocturnal light" (NL) phenomenon described by Hynek(1).Primary

characteristics of this particular phenomenon include:

1.Generally bright light, larger than a point source.

2.Colors reported cover the entire spectrum, but most

usually are yellow-orange.

3. Kinematics are not attributable to balloons,

aircraft or other natural objects and often give

the appearance of intelligent action.

The NL in the Toppenish study area have generally conformed to

the above description.The Toppenish manifestation does seem to

differ slightly in that it is frequently observed on or near the

ground.Predominant colors range from brownish-orange to pure

white.Investigation of prior NL activity in the study area

revealed that a few daytime observations have been made.These

daylight sightings are very rare and have ranged from "fuzzy"

appearing "blobs" to well-defined, metallic colored,

disk shaped objects of the classical "flying saucer" variety.

There was also one ten year old report of a physical impression

made in the ground by an UFO.

Preparations for the Toppenish project began in April of 1972,

following a survey of the extent of activity in the area by Dr. J.

A. Hynek.It was determined at this time that the activity was of

sufficient quality and regularity to justify placement of an

observer equipped with instruments in the area during a period of

expected peak activity.The Yakima Tribal council and the Yakima

Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs, along with the Agency Forestry

Division gave their full cooperation to the project and plans were

made to conduct a field study during the month of August (a period

of prior high sighting probability).

A primary objective of the study was to determine the

feasibility of "staking-out" a scientific observer in an area of

high sighting probability, with the purpose in mind of obtaining

hard data concerning UFO phenomena.

First priority was assigned to obtaining photographs,

including spectrographs and position data.It was felt that this

information would be of greatest use as scientific information and

the easiest to acquire, given the transient nature of the

phenomenon under study.Another priority was the acquisition of

data relating to any magnetic effects which might arise from UFO

activity.

The investigative approach used involved setting-up portable

observation points at selected locations in the study area for

several days at a time.This technique allowed the observer to

become acquainted with normal activity in a given location and

prepare him to detect any abnormal activity which might occur.No

concerted effort was made to "chase" the phenomenon around the

reservation.Instead, it was allowed to come to the observer.The

temporary observation points and instruments were manned during the

times of greatest sighting probability, i.e., between sunset and

sunrise.

Additional time, during the day, was spent gathering

background data, such as previous sighting reports, geographical

and other supportive information.Accent was placed on flexibility

of method, because of the large area to be covered and the

elusiveness of the phenomenon under investigation.The

investigator's presence was purposely made as unobtrusive as

possible to avoid interference with routine business on the

reservation.

Observation points were established at six points in the study

area.Three of these locations were adjacent to Satus, Signal Peak

and Sopelia fire lookouts (Slide Nos. l, 2 and 3, respectively).

The remaining observation points were positioned in the valley near

White Swan.All of the observation points are numbered on the map

of Figure I.(Satus, Signal Peak and Sopelia lookouts are numbered

5, 4 and 6, respectively.)

The Tribal Forestry Division radio system was available for

communication between the investigator and fire lookouts.It was

intended that such a communication link might provide a means of

triangulating the position of a NL, should a sighting occur.All

transmissions were coded because of previous reports of apparent NL

responses to radio messages concerning them.When Possible, radio

transmissions were avoided to keep from disturbing personnel who

monitor the 110 unit radio network on a twenty-four hour basis

during the fire season.

All observation points were accessible by means of roads.

However, a sturdy car was required to traverse them.The fire

lookout locations affordedexcellent visibility to the

investigator and were free frominterfering lights.Valley

observation points were often subject to interfering lights and

haze, but afforded the best views of ridges where much of the NL

activity had been previously reported.

The instruments used included two single lens reflex (SLR)

cameras, a 16mm motion picture camera, a 35mm range finder camera,

a compass spin detector, recording magnetometer, standard time

receiver and tape recorder.Other instruments for measuring

nuclear radiation, infrared radiation, ultrasonic sound and

frequency references were available, but not normally deployed.

One of the SLR cameras was fitted with a 500mm, f8

catadioptric design lens.This camera/lens combination had a 5

degree field of view and served as the primary instrument for recording

visible light data (Slide No. 4).

The motion picture camera was normally fitted with an 18-86mm,

f2.7 zoom lens, but could be operated with the same 500mm lens used

on the still camera. The second SLR camera was equipped with a 55mm

lens and replica grating to permit recording of spectral data.

(Slide No. 5, right).These three cameras used Kodak High speed

Ektachrome, Type B (EFB) film.

EFB film was selected because of its high exposure index, good

resolution characteristics and reasonable exposure latitude.It

was also found that the "B" emulsion gave the best color balance

under night exposure conditions.

The range finder camera (Slide No. 5, left) was loaded with

black and white Kodak High Speed infrared film and equipped with a

Wrattan 89B filter.This camera could record radiation in the

near-infrared spectrum (wavelengths 750 to 900 nanometers).

The standard time receiver picked-up National Bureau of

standards time signals and served as a time reference for

measurements.An electronic compass spin detector was also

deployed during the observation periods.Signals from both devices

were fed into the tape recorder, along with the observer's

commentary.The latter instruments are shown in a typical field

set-up in Slide No. 6.

An automatic recording magnetometer, designed and built by the

San Diego section of the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization

(APRO), was also used during the field study period.This device

required some initial setup, but afterwards was capable of

unattended operation.Its primary features were high sensitivity

to changes in magnetic flux, wide frequency response (to 1000 Hz)

and the ability to detect rotational force vectors of possible

paramagnetic nature.

A number of observations of apparent NL activity were made by

this investigator during the field study period.Many of them were

recorded on film.This section catalogs the sightings

chronologically.Slides which are applicable to the particular

observation are referenced by number.All time is recorded in

Greenwich Mean Time, 24 hour format.All dates are given at

location.Headings from observation points are magnetic (add 20

degrees for true headings).

One luminous, round light was observed at 0415 on a bearing of

240 degreesfrom the observer.It was joined by another similar

light at 0437.They were at an elevation of 10-20and well below

the ridge of the hills.Their apparent location was north of Hunt

Creek and west of the Job corps camp, at an estimated distance of 19

statute miles.Topography of the area is rugged, dry hills.

Sky at the time of the first observation was Partially

overcast in cumulus, with openings to the south and overhead.The

moon was high in the sky and intermittently visible through the

overcast.Temperature was about 65 degrees F and surface wind was

from the NW at between 0 and 5 mph during the observation period.

The two objects were apparently round, with a reddish-orange

glow and no clearly defined outline.The diffuse glow was evenly

distributed over the surface of each object and no discontinuities

were visible.The light flickered noticeably, in much the same way

as a flare might look when subjected to a strong wind.The object

would appear and disappear as if being switched "on" and "off".

Color hue and saturation appeared to remain constant as the light

flickered, but perceived size appeared to change.

Movement of the objects was erratic and discontinuous.They

appeared to move independently, circling and changing places in

relation to one another.

The lights operated below the ridge of the hill at all times

during the observation.They were last seen at approximately 0510.

Intensities gradually diminished and time between "on" cycles

became longer until they were no longer visible.

Four slides were obtained during the observation period.The

camera was stationary during the whole sequence.Slide Nos. 7-10

were taken at 0437:48, 0438:16, 0439:35 and 0432:46, respectively.

Exposure was ¬ second through the 500mm, f8 lens.The film (EFB)

was processed for its normal, ASA 125 rating.Slide No. 11 is an

enlargement of Slide No. 8.Note the presence of two objects on

this slide.

The unusual kinematics and physical appearance of these

objects strongly indicates that they did not arise from mundane

causes, such as car or motorcycle lights.

Equipment was set up in a field west of the intersection of

Wesley and Branch Roads, northwest of White Swan.This location

was chosen in an attempt to get closer to the activity observed on

the previous night.At 0405, what appeared to be automobile tail

lights were seen moving on a heading of 20 degrees from the observation

point (Point 8 of Figure I).No headlights were visible.

The red lights appeared to be near the base of the hill, at an

estimated distance of 5« miles.(Note: There is a road in this area.)

The tail lights stopped moving and, shortly thereafter, two

luminous, amber "balls" came rapidly down from near the top of

Ahthanum Ridge, circled around each other and approached the red

lights.All of the lights next went out, suddenly and

simultaneously.The whole observation lasted less than two minutes

and no sounds were heard.

At 0512, two "vehicles" with red lights were observed moving

rapidly up and down the hill side, approximately 10 degrees to the

left of the first observation.

Their distance was again about 5 miles from the observer.

Each "vehicle" had what appeared to be an amber headlight which

swept rapidly back and forth over the ground ahead of its path.

The actual source of the "headlight" was never seen, regardless of

whether the object was going up or down the hill.Only

the beam cast on the ground by this "headlight" and the red light

were visible.The objects appeared to move independently of each

other and traversed the distance from near the base of the hill to

the top of the ridge (approximately 900 ft. of elevation), at an

angle of 60 degrees to horizontal in less than ten seconds.

Again, no sound was heard.The objects disappeared from view

about ten minutes later.Weather was almost completely overcast

with cumulus clouds,Openings in the overcast could be seen to the

northwest and southwest.A thunderstorm was building to the

southeast.

Another object appeared on a bearing of 270 degrees at 0619

(Point C on Figure I).It was a large brownish-orange ball,

apparently positioned above Rattlesnake Ridge.It might have been

taken for a planet except for the fact that it was under the overcast.

It appeared to flicker slightly and remained stationary.

The object disappeared in the observer's field of vision, as

if it were a light being turned-off.Estimated time for this

observation was five minutes.

A luminous orange ball, similar to the one observed on 8-20-72

was seen at 0352 on a bearing of 250 degrees from the observation Point,

This object appeared to be stationary and was near the base of the

hill.It blinked on and off several times.Slide No. 12 was

taken with a ¬ second exposure through the 500mm, f8 lens.Again,

EFB film was used and processed for normal ASA.The top of the

ridge is shown and a mercury vapor street lamp appears at the lower

left of the frame.The unknown object is to the right.Slide No.

13 is an enlargement of the mercury vapor light and object.

(Note:Chromatic aberration in this slide is a result of the copy

process.)

The light was closer in color to white than orange.It was

difficult to determine whether the object in this case was a

motorcycle headlamp or "genuine" NL.The source appears to be too

bright and large for a motorcycle headlamp.

At 0510, the investigator and fire lookout spotted one (?)

bright white light moving very rapidly through a wooded area

southeast of Piscoe Meadow (bearing approximately 358 degrees true).

Distance to the sighting area was about 18 miles.

The light moved so fast that it gave the impression of a

streak.It would appear stationary for a moment, then, almost

instantaneously, appear some distance away (typically 10 degrees

of arc through 7x50 binoculars).After another brief pause, it

would dart back in the opposite direction.When stationary, the

object appeared through the binoculars as an intense pinpoint of

white light.

The sky was clear and the moon was rising, but there was

considerable haze in the valley.All car lights observed this

evening had an orange cast.The observation lasted about one

minute and no photographs were obtained.

A radio message from an observer in the valley was received at

0730.He asked the fire lookout if the investigator was "up and

around."The lookout's reply was affirmative and the transmission

was terminated.

The following day it was learned that the observer in the

valley had spotted a tan or light orange, slow moving light from

the freeway near the town of Parker (18 miles NE of the lookout).

It moved slowly down the valley to the town of White Swan, turned

and appeared to move directly over the Satus lookout.It next

turned and headed east, where it disappeared behind Toppenish

Mountain.

The person in the valley assumed that the observer at the fire

lookout could not have missed the object and he did not want to

make any direct mention of the object over the radio.

Nothing was seen from the observation point at Satus lookout

before or after the radio message.There was no reasonable way the

light could have been missed by the investigator and the fire

lookout.Yet, nothing was seen.The observer in the valley is

known to be extremely reliable and there is no reason to doubt his

word.This "non-observation" rates very high on the strangeness

scale.

Intermittent lights were observed along the ridge southeast of

Satus Lookout for much of the night.They seemed to appear and

disappear at random and were thought to have been lights from cars

or campers.sky was clear with bright moonlight.Haze was

moderate in the lower elevations.

A 2.5 minute time exposure was taken of the area between 0845

and 0847 with the 500mm, f8 lens and EFB film.Slide No. 14 is the

result.The two(?) lights appearing on the slide were not seen

during exposure.Note that the microwave antenna on the relay

station also appears dimly in the left hand foreground of the

picture.Slide No. 15 is an enlargement of No. 14.

The closest ridge from the point where the slide was taken is

about 5« miles away.Knowing the distance to the ridge and angle

of view of the lens (5 degree), it should be possible to determine

whether or not the light source was a car.Further analysis of

this slide is needed.

A luminous ball, identical in color and kinematics to that

observed on 8-20-72 was seen at 0518 on a bearing of 240 degrees

from the observation point.The object moved through an arc of

about 10 to 15in three minutes.It appeared to follow the hills,

about ll miles away, and was situated vertically about half of the way

between the base and top of Ahtanum Ridge.

Slide No. 16 is a 60 second time exposure made through the

500mm, f8 lens.Slide No. 17 is an enlargement of No. 16.Note

how the object appears to move in "spurts" or flicker (there were

no known obstructions between the object and camera during the

exposure).

The object was seen briefly again by this investigator at

0739.It was apparently on or near the side of the hill, directly

below and in line with a microwave tower 8« miles due north of the

observation point (Point G).The object was clearly visible

through binoculars and appeared as a sharply defined,

brownish-orange disc.It gave the impression of being flat and the

ground near it could be seen illuminated by the glow.The object

disappeared by "turning-off" before the camera could be trained on

it.The foregoing observations could not be accounted for in

normal terms.One additional observer verified the sighting.

The primary objective of demonstrating the feasibility of the

"stake-out" technique of UFO field investigation appears to have

been met during the study period.Nocturnal light activity was

observed and recorded on film.Unfortunately, the closest activity

was at a distance of about eight miles.

The long working distance did not permit the acquisition of

any physical data other than a few slides.However, given the

technical and position data available, it should be possible to

arrive at a reasonable estimate of the size, light output and form

of the objects observed.It is in this area that primary effort is

needed.

This investigator is satisfied that genuine NL activity has

been and is still taking place on a more or less regular basis in

the Toppenish area.However, there was nothing in the nocturnal

light observations made during the study which would suggest

conclusively that the source of the activity is extra terrestrial.

On the other hand, something very unusual is taking place.The

problem warrants continued very careful and objective examination.

A few words should be said concerning the measurements -- or

lack of measurements -- made during the study period:One camera

was responsible for all of the "hard" data obtained,The only

other camera capable of working at the distances involved was the

16mm camera/500mm lens combination.It was discovered early,

however, that the motion picture camera could not be aimed

with the very dim light available.The reason is that the reflex

viewing system in the camera, utilizing a half-silvered prism, did

not transmit enough light to the viewfinder.(The camera has since

been fitted with an auxiliary viewfinder.)

All of the NL activity was too far away to permit

spectrograms, because of the relatively short focal length lenses

required by the replica grating.Additional work is being done on

spectrograph instrumentation which will allow working longer

distances.

The use of the tape recorder for commentary and time logging

was invaluable in determining the times at which photographs were

made and recalling details of observations.A great deal of

information would have been lost without the time and recording

equipment.

There were no abnormal magnetic disturbances sensed by

instruments at any time during the study period.The compass spin

detector was deployed most of the time during observation periods

and no anomalous compass deflections were sensed.The recording

magnetometer was used less than the compass spin detector, because

of its extreme sensitivity to normal magnetic disturbances.The

instrument appears to have potential, however, and a separate

report dealing with the instrument will be forthcoming.

In conclusion, a great deal in the line of hard, practical

experience has been gained from this study.It was learned what

things would work - what would not.Hopefully, the mistakes made

during this initial study period can be avoided in the next.

At any rate, study of the activity in the Toppenish area will

continue indefinitely until some explanation for the phenomena

there is obtained.

All material collected during the study period, including the

original slides, is available for inspection by any qualified

investigator.Questions, suggestions and comments will be

welcomed.

Spherical shaped object going up and down,

bouncing.Had a bluish "metal-flake blue") sheen and was at

least 30 to 40 feet across.Disappeared with big flash of

light arcing into air.Weather was towering cumulus with 7%

cloud cover.Wind from SW at5 mph (2:00 pm reading).

Visibility was 12 miles.Cloud-to-cloud lightning observed

after 2 pm.Note: Pet dog reacted strangely, as if its ears

were hurting, for approximately one hour on the evening

following the observation.Nothing was visible on the latter

occasion.

2.Date: June 29, 1972 -- 10:20 pm local time

Activity location: Red Butte

Object sat for about 10 minutes."Kind of pear-

shaped" with fairlysharp outline.About four minutes before

it moved, yellow, red and green lights were observed.The

object was sitting motionless and then shot straight up to a

high altitude.Object next shot straight east.Sharp angular

motion and very high speed.Weather was clear, with variable

westerly wind.Visibility was 17 miles.

3.Date: July 31, 1972 -- 9:05 pm local time

Activity location: South slope of Shinando Canyon

Baseball sized, very white light floating along just

below tree top level.No noise as object moved slowly from

west to east.Observer was above the tree tops in the canyon

and above the object.Distance to the object was less than

one-half mile.

4.Date: August 2, 1972 -- 9:10 pm local time

Activity location: Yego Pasture

Big "blob" with no definite shape.Observed for

ten minutes before it shot straight up, made an

instantaneous turn and shot north,Weather clear, NE wind.

Humidity 35 and lower, with 15 mile visibility,

5.Date: August 3, 1972 -- between 10:00 and 11:15 pm

Activity location:NE of fire lookout (Satus)

Big, white, bright "thing", something like a cloud

came and went.It would appear dim, then become brighter

and brighter, and then. "like something melting fast",

disappear.Angle of elevation was 300 and object was fairly

close to lookout.Bright streaks or rays came from the object

and lighted up the interior of the lookout, making things

inside visible,The sky was dark above and below the object.

Size of the object was estimated to be as large as the lookout

(about 12x12x8 feet).No moon was visible.

6.Date:August 11, 1972 -- 12:30 pm local time

Activity location:1000 to 2000 feet above observer

Hemispherical object with multicolored, stippled

streamers observed below cloud cover.Observed less than a

minute and disappeared almost instantaneously into clouds.

7.Date:August 15, 1972 -- 11:00 pm

Activity location:T9, R19, Sec 2226' (approximately)

Three bright lights on top of butte.Described as

pure white and very intense balls.Observed for two hours.

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