The Science Advisor Briefing
by Bruce MaccabeeINTRODUCTION
(written November, 2000 for this web presentation) What you are about to read is a briefing paper written for Dr. John Gibbons, the Science Advisor to President Clinton. Before I present the document I will discuss how it came about, the structure of the document and the choice of information content. I was at home, Tuesday afternoon, April 13, 1993, taking some time off from work to catch up on "chores" around the house when the phone rang. It was Ron Pandolfi, a CIA employee whom I had known for about 10 years. He explained the reason for his call: he wanted me to write a UFO briefing for the President's science advisor. "WHAT? You MUST be kidding!" Something like that was my initial response. First of all, I was surprised that the science advisor would want such a briefing in the first place, but then I was stunned by the request that I should do it. At the same time, I was excited. Not everyone get's a chance to present such a high level briefing on this subject! Naturally I expected I would have a week or more, well, several days at least, to get a briefing ready, assuming Ron wasn't pulling my leg. After all, I had to collect information, write the briefing document and back it up with visual aides such as slides and viewgraphs and so on. For the science advisor it had to be a real production. Apparently one shock was not enough. "It has to be ready by tomorrow morning." "WHAT? You MUST be kidding." Well, at least it would be late in the morning, right? After all, I was more than an hour driving time from Washington. If I had to visit the science advisor at least I should have time to travel to DC. Two shocks were not enough! "He needs it by 8 AM!" "WHAT?.....(you know the rest!) I do not now recall my immediate response but it must have been one of excitement combined with fear or dread. How could I get a UFO briefing ready in less than 20 hours! The basic requirement was that I had to fax whatever I wrote to the CIA officer who was detailed to the science advisor's office by 8 AM the next day and he would give it to Dr. Gibbons. Of course, anything I said would not be based on still classified information. Knowing this, I asked Ron why he didn't give it himself. After all, he was aware of the hundreds of released documents. Morevoer, he, unlike I, would be aware of any still classified documents if there were any. His response, as I recall was somewhat diffuse, indistinct, nebulous, not clear...that is, a mumble response. He didn't want to do it because he didn't know much about the subject, or something like that. (Subsequently I learned that he did discuss the subject with Gibbons, but after I had submitted my briefing paper.) Anyway, when I hung up the phone I knew that I had been offered a great opportunity and also a hot potato. How to write something that was both brief and convincing...and get it done by tomorrow morning, early! Needless to say, the rest of my day and evening were taken up with this project.You may well wonder (a) why the science advisor wanted such a briefing and (b) why I was chosen to be on the "hot seat." (a) Ron explained that Laurence Rockefeller and Scott Jones had managed to arrange a time early Wednesday morning to discuss the UFO situation with John Gibbons. This was apparently as a result of the political "connections" of Rockefeller and the fact that Jones and Gibbons were well acquainted. I knew Scott Jones. I did not know Laurence Rockefeller. And I did not know that they were attempting a "UFO putsch" at the beginning of the Clinton administration in order to get some official government interest in the subject, if possible. So, this came as a complete surprise to me. It wasn't a surprise to Ron, however. He had known of the upcoming meeting with Jones and "Rocky" for quite some time. So, why did he wait until the last minute to ask me to prepare a briefing? I don't know. Perhaps he thought the meeting would never take place. Or perhaps he decided (or was directed?) not to give the briefing himself to keep direct CIA involvement out of it. Or perhaps he really felt that he didn't know enough about the subject. Anyway, whatever the reason he handed me a "fire drill" type of situation. (b) Why me? I first met Ron Pandolfi when he took an interest in my Navy work with high energy lasers used to generate underwater sound "way back" in the early 1980's. He had discovered, essentially from a literature search, that the Russians had written a lot of papers on the subject, papers written by scientists who were working at various Russian/Soviet government research laboratories. By comparison, the number of "free world" publications was small. Ron worried about this "laser sound generation gap" and its relation to antisubmarine warfare. Did this give the Soviets an advantage over us? His search of the U.S. government literature turned up papers that I and another scientist working for the Navy had written. So he called me up to learn the status of our research. We discussed the subject and then he was going to call again. The second time he called we discussed the laser generated sound and then there was a definite switch in the topic. Ron had found out from some other CIA employees that I had provided a briefing on the New Zealand UFO sightings of December, 1978. That briefing had been in the spring of 1979 and had led to a few brief contacts with CIA employees at that time. However, by the time Ron called in 1983 I had not had any CIA contacts for over 3 years, and I was not about to reinitiate such contacts. As far as I was concerned, CIA interest in the UFO subject was an issue that seemed to have been settled about four years earlier. (Note: in December, 1978, the CIA released, as a result of a lawsuit by Ground Saucer Watch, nearly 1,000 pages of UFO-related documents; this after arguing in court that the total UFO involvement amounted to several dozen pages associated with the Robertson Panel review of the UFO situation in early 1953.) I did not bring up the subject. Ron did. Subsequently we discussed the subject occasionally over the years. Ron was in charge of what could be called the "weird desk" at the CIA...he kept track of, but did little actual work in, paranormal subjects and UFOs. (The CIA was involved along with other agencies in paranormal or "psychic" research, including remote viewing, back in those days. This I learned many years later.) Nowadays we might say that Ron was the "Dana Sculley" of the CIA (not Fox Mulder, because, so far as I could tell, at least, Ron was not a "true believer.") Anyway, a few years later, in 1987, after the MJ-12 document release, the publication of the widely read books Communion (Streiber) and Intruders (Hopkins) and after the 40th International Symposium of the Mutual UFO Network that took place in July at American university in Washington, DC, Ron asked me to provide a lunchtime briefing for CIA employees! This was arranged and when I arrived at the briefing room it turned out to be the directors conference room (if I recall correctly) and it was packed with people...standing room only! I would guess there were around 50 employees attending the lecture. You'll never guess what I told them, so I won't keep you waiting. I told them about their own documents. Yes, that's right. Most CIA employees did not know that the agency had released hundreds of pages of material nearly 10 years before. I discussed the history of CIA involvement and some of the interesting cases contained therein. Sometime later Ron told me that my lecture had created a lot of "spies" within the agency, that is, employees who were using their "tickets" (clearance levels) to nose around and try to find UFO-related secrets. Whether any secrets were found or not I do not know. At least no one told me! (Note: my lecture was ostensibly for the entertainment of the employees. There were no security procedures in effect at the time. Also, the agency often invited guest lecturers on various topics. Once I heard Tom Clancy speak there on how he conceived of and wrote "The Hunt for Red October" which made many allusions to a secret underwater sound listening system that was dedicated to antisubmarine warfare.) That was in the summer of 1987. A year or so later I gave a lecture on the then-hot Gulf Breeze sightings and I also took part in another lecture that was about agriglyphs (so-called "crop circles"...but by this time they were much more than just circles!). The point of this preceeding short discussion is that by 1993 Ron knew that I was well informed about the open literature on the UFO subject. So, if anyone could write a briefing based on the open literature, I could do it. (Note: "open literature" is that which anyone can read. This is contrasted to the classified or "closed" literature which is not available to the general public but only to military and civilian persons who have the required classification and "need to know.")
Now you know how this briefing document came about. I will now discuss the format, which may seem peculiar, and the choice of information. I knew that the typical government format for briefing high level officials was to write a document with the basic important information, the summary or "bottom line" information, right "up front." This is because the "briefee" is assumed to have very little time to read the document. On the other hand, the briefing document must be substantive, with a discussion that justifies the statements made in the first page or two. Since I didn't have time to write a complete document with a long discussion I chose the "tab" format in which the summary information (the "bottom line") was in the the first page or two and there were references to "Tabular Information" or "Tabs" that contained the explanations of the statements in the first page. Thus you will read a statement followed by "See Tab ....". In a real briefing book (which I did not have time to prepare) the tabs would actually be small protruding "tabs" that are attached to the first pages of each of the explanatory sections. In this case, I simply labelled the explanatory paragraphs as "Tab A" "Tab B," etc. I tried to compress the important information, the "whole story," into one page, but was not able to do so. It actually ran about 1 1/3 pages. In the presentation below I have numbered the pages so you can see the way it was presented to Dr. Gibbons. It was not "pleasant" to write because I did not have time to write the tabs as I wrote the first page summary statements. Instead, I had to guess what I would write in a Tab statement. More typically one would write each tab explanation along with the "front page" reference to the tab so there would be a good correlation between the summary statements on the first page and the explanatory statements within the tabs. It took several hours to write the summary pages because at each step of the way, for each statement of fact, I had to look up information that would support the statement so I could refer to it in a Tab. This included information that I thought would indicate there were U.S. government actitivies, information about UFO related activities of other governments and some information that would show that UFOs are real based on government, hence "official," information. But because of the time constraint combined with the knowledge that whatever I wrote had to be supportable, I could not throw in everything including the ufological kitchen sink. I had to be selective and accurate. I could imagine the science advisor asking me to justify something I had written: "You wrote this. Prove it!" The toughest part was, of course, the conjecture about the possibility of a crashed disc at Roswell. I could hardly ignore the information that had been accumulated in the ten years before this briefing, yet I could not point to any guaranteed government documents. Therefore I had to take a tentative approach, beginning with the title which says "the Government approach to the UFO problem AS DETERMINED by civilian UFO investigators during the last twenty years." In other words, this was based on information obtained by civilians, information that was outside of government classification channels. This was not a case of the government (a government employee) itself preparing an official briefing based on knowledge of everything that the government might be doing about UFOs. (Note: two and a half years after this the Air Force released its "Mogul" explanation of the reports of a crashed saucer near Roswell and about 2 years after that, the "dummy drop theory" to explain the reports of alien bodies.) Anyway, what you will read below is what I came up with in less than a day. I completed the summary pages (page one and page two) and faxed it to the office of the President's Science Advisor at 7:59 AM on Wednesday. Note that Ron Pandolfi had exactly no input to what I wrote and, in fact, didn't find out what I had written until some time later that day after I faxed a copy to him. It took me another day to complete the section on "Tab" data, which I faxed on Thursday morning Now comes the disappointment, so characteristic of government programs (e.g, just as a program becomes successful it is cancelled). I learned from Ron later that day that the Jones/Rockefeller/Gibbons meeting had taken place..... AT 7:30 AM, 1/2 hour before I had faxed the briefing!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Gotcha! Apparently, because of Gibbons' schedule of meetings on other (more important!) topics, the UFO meeting time had been changed late Tuesday afternoon. Ron didn't know about the time switch, and I certainly didn't. Thus Gibbons had not read my briefing document by the time of the UFO meeting. Whether or not it would have had an impact on the outcome of that meeting is now a moot point. I was told subsequently that Gibbons did eventually read what I had written, at least the first page and a half. I never had any direct correspondence with him, however, and never got any expression of interest in the topic.
EPILOGUE
Several years later I learned that some UFO researchers had obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, documents held by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that referred to the Gibbons meeting. In August 1996 I requested the documents (write to Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Washington, DC 20502). I received a letter indicating that they had found 44 documents related to Rockefeller's attempts to get John Gibbons or President Clinton (or Mrs. Clinton) or someone to do something about UFOs. I was amused to find that, although many letters to Gibbons on the subject of UFOs were included in the document release, my briefing document was not included.(page 1)
BRIEFING ON THE U.S. GOVERNMENT APPROACH TO THE UFO PROBLEM AS DETERMINED BY CIVILIAN RESEARCHERS DURING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS
During the early summer of 1947 hundreds or thousands of people including military saw shiny circular objects flying through the sky. Civilian researchers over the last 15 years have learned from several former Air Force officers that during this time the Air Force retrieved, from the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, debris with unusual physical properties, which evidently came from a non-man made device that crashed. Based on the testimony of numerous witnesses and government documents some civilian researchers now believe that the government, with top level authorization, took a two pronged approach to the problem. On the one hand the Air Force set up an intelligence collection program at the Secret Restricted level run by the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. (TAB A, TAB B) On the other hand, the government at the compartmented level carried out analysis of the retrieved material and attempted to correlate this with sighting information collected through official channels. The compartmented project was completely independent of the collection effort. Subsequently the Air Force set up three consecutive publicly-known projects to collect and analyze civilian and military sightings which did not involve debris (Project Sign, 1948-49; Project-Grudge, 1949-1951; Project Blue Book, 1952-1969). In 1952 the Battelle Memorial Institute, under Air Force contract, began a statistical study of over 3,000 sightings between 1947 and 1952. (TAB C) The statistics showed that on the average about 20 % were not explained and that of the best sightings (best witnesses, most complete reporting) over 30% were unexplained. The report included several examples of unexplainable sightings. (TAB D) In 1967 the Air Force, at Congress' direction, supported an independent investigation at the University of Colorado. (TAB E) After about a year and a half the Director of the investigation concluded that "nothing had been learned" and that the Air Force should end its involvement. However, the Colorado investigators couldn't explain about 30 of the about 90 sightings it investigated. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics pointed out that the large percentage of unexplained was justification for continuing the investigation. (TAB F) In 1969 the Air Force closed Project Blue Book and has not maintained a publicly known investigation since. However, the Air Force does admit to investigating sightings over Air Force Bases. (TAB G)page 2
Since 1969 there have been thousands of sightings worldwide. Some have involved the US military. (TAB H). One sighting was investigated by the Federal Aeronautics Administration. (TAB I) Other governments have taken a more open attitude toward the subject and some have set up official investigating groups. (TAB J) The recent (1989- 1990) sighting flap in Russia and Belgium involved military Russian and Belgian jet "chases" of UFOS. General Igor Maltsev, in charge of the Air Defense of the Moscow Area, reported publicly that he had "more than 100 visual observations" compiled by military commanders concerning a UFO that was flying near Moscow and was detected on radar (TAB K). Later, General Ivan Tretyak, Chief of all the Russian Air Forces, confirmed Maltsev's report and hinted that Soviet developments to counter Stealth might provide further information about UFOS. (TAB L) Gorbachev, during a speech to workers in the Urals in the spring of 1990 said that UFO reports should be studied. (TAB M) Serious investigators of this subject have concluded that some unusual phenomena have, in fact, been observed visually and on instruments (TAB N). Furthermore, combining the early history of the Air Force approach to the subject with numerous documents and "leaked information" some investigators have concluded that there has been a compartmented study of debris and bodies from at least one crash of an alien craft.(page 3)
SUMMARIES OF TAB-REFERENCED INFORMATION
TAB A:
A letter of 23 September, 1947, was sent from Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, Commander of the Air Materiel Command (AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson AFB) to Brig. Gen. George Schulgen, Chief, Air Intelligence Requirements Div., USAF. The letter describes certain characteristics of "flying saucers" as reported by military and qualified civilian witnesses and states that, after confering with several laboratories at Wright Field, it is the opinion of AMC that "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." The letter recommends that Headquarters, Army Air Forces "issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and Code Name for a detailed study of this matter" by the Army Air Force along with the Navy, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Joint Research and Development Board, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Group, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (predecessor of NASA), the RAND Project (Research Applied to National Needs) and the NEPA Project (Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft).TAB B:
A document entitled "Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft" issued by General George Schulgen on 30 October, 1947. This was circulated to continental intelligence agencies and to military attaches throughout the world. It requested any and all information on craft that resembled flying saucers and which had unusual characteristics such as "absence of sound when operating under high performance conditions, a plan form approximating that of an oval or disc with a dome shape on the top surface, the ability to disappear by high speed or complete disintegration, the ability to appear without warning as if from extreme altitude (and) the bility to clear a path through clouds." The agents were requested to supply information on craft that had the above characteristics and which were constructed of lightweight, strong material like :composite or sandwich construction utilizing various combinations of metals, metallic foils, plastics and perhaps balsa wood or similar material." (Note: "metallic foil" and "like balsa wood" were terms used by former Air Force officers to describe debris found near Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947.) The agents were also instructed to provide information on propulsion of special design including nuclear powered craft "which would be characterised by lack of fuel systems and fuel storage space" and craft in which "the power plant would ... be an integral part of the aircraft and could possibly not be distinguished as a separate item."TAB C:
Project Blue Book Special Report # 14, Project 10073 (Project Stork); text - 94 pages; tabulated statistical data.- 170 pages. (see page TAB C -1)
The classified version was completed in late 1953; a declassified version was published for government use only in 1955 by the Air Technical Intelligence Center. Although the unclassified report does not name the contractor, other documents in the Blue Book file make it clear that the contractor was the Battelle Memorial Institute, probably because of its proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base ("home" of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, the parent organization of Project Blue Book) and because of its uniquely large (at that time) computing facility. The project carefully analyzed 3,201 sightings that occurred between June, 1947 and December, 1952. Numerous characteristics of these sightings were converted to IBM card format and statistically processed by the computer. Of these 3,201, 21.5%, were listed as "unknown." The
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sightings were ranked according to credibility of the observer and quality of the information supplied. Four classification were used: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor. Of the 213 Excellent sightings, 33% were "unknown" whereas for the 435 Poor sightings only 17% were "unknown." (see TAB C -2)
(Note: this contradicts expectation, which is based on the idea that flying saucers or UFOs are not truly extraordinary phenomena but are conventional phenomena which were misperceived by the witness(es). If UFOs are explainable, then the Excellent sightings, made by better witnesses who supply, on the average, better descriptions of the phenomena than the Poor sighting witnesses, should have a lower percentage of unexplainable sightings ("unknowns") as compared to the Poor sightings. The actual statistical result reported by Battelle indicates that the witnesses have, in fact, seen extraordinary phenomena.)
TAB D:
The Battelle study found 12 sightings which were so detailed that they could not be explained by any amount of rationalization. One of these, Case 10 (Rogue River, Oregon; May 24, 1949) was reported by five witnesses, two of whom reported it to the Security Office at the Ames Research Laboratory where they worked (see page TAB D - 1).
TAB E
: "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects," Dr. Edward Condon, Director; E. Gilmour, Editor under contract F44620-67-C- 0035 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. (Jan. 8, 1969) Dr. Condon stated his opinion that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. ....(we) conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby." However, the study left unexplained approximately 1/3 of the sightings it investigated.TAB F:
"UFO: An Appraisal of the Problem" written by the UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Astronautics and Aeronautics Magazine, November, 1970, pp. 49-51. The UFO subcommittee found no "basis for his (Condon's) prediction that nothing of scientific value will come of further studies." The subcommittee pointed out that "it is difficult to ignore the small residue of well- documented but unexplainable cases which form the hard core of the UFO controversy" and that, furthermore, "a phenomenon with such a high ratio of unexplained cases (about 30%) should arouse sufficient scientific curiosity to continue its study."TAB G:
Document entitled "Alleged Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Lights in the Resticted Test Range" filed by Special Agent Richard Doty at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, N.M., 9 September, 1980. This document reports several sightings of lighted objects between 8 August and 9 September, including a "round disc shaped object" with a bright light which landed in a secured area at night and subsequently, as a security guard approached, took off in a vertical direction at a high rate of speed" with no sound. This document also reports that "the USAF no longer investigates such gightings unless they occur on a USAF base." (see Tab H)TAB H:
Military reports of UFOs include: Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, 8 September 1973, 0220 hours; a UFO was sighted by military policemen was traveling at a high rate but subsequently stopped and hovered for about 15 minutes in front of them while flashing brilliant blue, white and amber lights. It then flew off.(page 5)
Near Mansfield, Ohio, 18 October, 1973, 2305 hours: a UFO approached an Army helicopter at some speed causing the captain to put the helicopter into a dive, The UFO appeared to stop over the helicopter before traveling on. After it departed the captain found that the helicopter was at a greater altitude than when he began the dive. NORAD documents indicate penetrations by unidentified craft over several Strategic Air Command Bases, including Loring AFB (Maine), Wurtsmith AFB (Michigan), Minot AFB (North Dakota), Malmstrom AFB (Montana) and Falconbridge Radar Site (Ontario) during late October and early November, 1975. The NORAD Command Directors Log and the 24th NORAD Region Senior Director's Log (Malmstrom AFB) show that on 8 November 1975 at 0635Z a Sabotage Alert Team (SAT) reported a UFO with white lights and a red light 50 yards behind the white lights. Ten minutes later height finder radar detected objects at 10-13,000 ft. At 0753Z two F- 106's were scrambled out of Great Falls to check on an object tracked on radar at 12,000 ft which was seen by ground Sabotage Alert Teams (SAT). Over the next hour and a half jets were scrambled several times but never made visual contact because, according to the SAT, the object decreased its altitude to about 300 ft and turned off its lights whenever the jets approached over the mountains. (Note: the object was hovering near a missile launch site.) Similar sightings occurred on the next night and also on the 10th of November. Also on the 10th, Minot Air Force Station reported a bright object "about the size of a car" that passed slowly over the station at an altitude less than 2,000 ft. No noise was heard. Tehran, Iran, 19 September, 1976, 0130 local: Iranian Air Force General Yousefi was alerted by Mehrebad Airport Tower that a UFO was hovering over Tehran. Youssefi spotted it himself and launched an F-4 from Shaharoki AFB at 0130 local. As the jet approached the bright light over Tehran and reached a radar distance of 25 nm it lost all communications (UHF and intercom). It turned and headed back to base. Youssefi ordered a second jet to be launched at 0140. The second jet approached on afterburner and the radar determined a rate of closure (VC) of 150 nmph. However, as the range approached 25 nm the VC decreased to zero. The object was giving off rapidly flashing colors of blue, green, red and orange. The jet and the light were headed toward the Iranian border when the light released a smaller light, which the pilot took as a threatening move and commenced to arm an AIM-9 missile. At that time he lost all communication (UHF and intercom) and turned away from the chase. Fort Ritchie, MD, 30 July 1976, 0345 EDT: Ft. Ritchie called the National Military Command Center to report that they had received reports of UFOs from civilians near Mt. Airy, MD at "0130, from two separate patrols from Site R" at 0255, from a Desk Sargeant at Site R at 0300 and from an Army police Sargeant at 0345. The 0255 sighting was of "3 oblong objects with a reddish tint moving east to west." The 0300 sighting was of "a UFO over the ammo storage area at 100 to 200 yards altitude." Mariano Melgar Air Force Base, La Joya, Peru, 9 May 1980 (morning): a group of Air Force Officers saw a round UFO hovering near the airfield. The air commander scrambled an SU-22 aircraft to intercept, but the UFO outran it. A second sighting occurred at night, 10 May. Again a jet was scrambled but the UFO outran it. Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM; August, 1980: security guards at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area (nuclear weapons storage) east of Kirtland AFB reported that they saw a lighted object performing odd maneuvers over the Coyote Canyon area of the Department of Defense Restricted Range at 2350 hours, August 8, 1980. This lighted object descended behind some small(page 6)
hills, from their point of view. A Sandia Security guard on routine patrol observed the light behind an alarmed structure on Coyote Canyon Road and went to invegtigate at 0020 hours, August 9, 1980 (i.e., 30 minutes later). As he approached he thought it was a helicopter but then he saw it was a "round disk shaped object." He attempted to radio for help but the radio did not work. As he approached the object armed with a shotgun it accelerated upward at a great rate of speed. The Manzano guards saw the light proceed straight upward and disappear. Lake Erie, east of Cleveland, Ohio, 4 March 1988, 2035 local: civilians reported to the Coast Guard a large, lighted object hovering over lake. Two Coast Guard unit members went to the viewing site and confirmed the object. The civilians reported that 3 to 5 smaller lighted objects had come from the larger ones and these "were zipping around rather quickly. These objects had red, green, white and yellow lights on them that strobed intermittently. They also had the ability to stop and hover in mid flight." The two members of the unit reported the same activity and watched for approximately 1 hour before reporting that the large object was almost on the ice. They reported that the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer to it." After a period of time and numerous "activities" by the object, the unit members reported that "1 object was moving toward them at a high speed and low to the ice. Mobile 02 backed down the hill they had been on and when they went back to the hill, the object was gone." The Coast Guard reports that "the unit was unable to identify any of the objects using binoculars and after contacting local police and airports this unit was unable to identify the objects." (Note: a civilian took a photograph of one of the small objects flying by. It shows a glowing triangular shaped object.)TAB I:
The Federal Aviation Administration investigated sightings by a Japanese air crew flying a jumbo jet over Alaska in November, 1986. The FAA could not explain the visual sightings by the crew of two very unusual lighted objects which held station ahead of the jet for many minutes before moving to the left and then behind. Occasionally Elmendorf AFB radar detected a non-identifiable target in the vicinity of the jet. The weather radar on the jet also detected a large target.TAB J:
In 1977 France set up a special investigating group (GEPAN) under the auspices of the French National Space Agency (CNES). (GEPAN has published reports of investigations, including an investigation of ground effects (after a UFO was seen to land and take off) which could not be explained. In 1985 the Commission for the Investigation of Anomalous Atmospheric Phenomena was established under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union with Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich as its director. More recently UFO investigation has been carried out by the SOYUZUFOTSENTR (Unified UFO Center) under the Academy of Sciences. Rather high level contacts have been established between American and Russian investigators in recent years. The Chinese government announced the founding of the Chinese Society of UFO Research as a branch of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1980.TAB K:
General Igor Maltsev reported in RABOCHAYA TRIBUNE (Workers Tribune newspaper), 19 April, 1990, that he had reports of "more than 100 visual observations" compiled by commanders of several air defense units of the Moscow Military District of a UFO (or UFOs) which was seen in the area of Pereslavl-Zalesskiy (northeast of Moscow) on 21 March, 1990. Maltsev included with his report to the newspaper 5 testimonials, including a report by(page7)
a pilot who flew over the object and a report from a ground radar tracking station. The pilot saw only two lights and a dimly perceived silhouette of the object against city lights. The radar post reported a visual sighting of a rapidly moving, shining object with red lights and another with white lights that followed the first. The report included times, azimuths and distances of the reported objects.TAB L:
General Ivan Tretyak was interviewed by a writer for LITERATURNAYA GAZETA (Literary Gazette magazine) in November, 1990. Tretyak was the Soviet Deputy Minister of Defense as well as being the Commander in Chief of the Air Defense Forces and General of the Army. He said that during the events reported by Maltsev one UFO had been photographed and optical and thermal signals had been detected by the aircraft pilot. However, the aircraft radar did not detect the object.TAB M:
Optical, magnetic and acoustic devices and instruments have recorded or have been affected by the presence of UFOs. Optical devices include simple cameras, movie cameras, cinetheodolites, videocameras and even cameras fitted with diffraction gratings. Magnetic sensors include simple compasses and magnetometers. Acoustic sensors (microphones) have, occasionally, detected sounds associated with the presence of UFOs, although most often no sound is heard. In 1947 a witness reported that his compass rotated as several flying saucers passed overhead. Years later another witness noticed that a saucer seen in the daytime near the horizon appeared to have dark rings around it when viewed through polarized glasses, but not when viewed directly, possibly a result of Faraday rotation in the atmosphere caused by an extremely large magnetic field. A scientist working for the French National Space Agency in the early 1970's determined that there was a inverse relationship between the vertical component of the geomagnetic field measured at field stations scattered throughout France and distance to a reported UFO. Self-propelled machines such as automobiles have been affected in the presence of UFOs. One incident involved two combines operating in a field of grain at night. During the passage of a glowing UFO the gasoline powered combine stopped, whereas a diesel type continued to operate. In April, 1949 at the White Sands proving ground high flying (estimate 150,000 ft) UFOs were tracked and filmed with cinetheodolite cameras. The size was estimated from the image size and the triangulated altitude to be about 30 ft. Electronic devices have been affected, including gyrocompasses (TAB H - Mansfield, Ohio, 1973; the gyrocompass had to be repaired after the incident) and radios (TAB H - Tehran, Iran, 1976; Kirtland AFB, 1980). Plants have been affected by UFOs. An incident in 1980 in France was investigated by GEPAN (see TAB J). The GEPAN report shows that after a circular UFO landed on a lawn (as reported by the witness) the chlorophyll in the grass was affected by an amount which diminished as 1/r where r is the distance from the center of the landing spot. Plant scientists could not explain how the chlorophyll change had been caused. UFOs have been detected on radar coincident with visual gightings (TAB H - NORAD documents regarding Malmstrom AFB, 1975; Tehran, Iran, 1976; TAB I - Jumbo Jet over Alaska, 1986; TAB K - Moscow area, 1990).