High Level Government and Military Officials Pilots to Tell Their UFO Stories for the First Time

The American public is not alone when it comes to sighting what the US Air Force has labeled Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). So too have former governors, high level military and government officials, highly trained airplane pilots and aviation experts. The phenomenon is real. It happens worldwide. No one is sure about its nature. Experts from seven countries will divulge what they have discovered about UFOs at a November 12 panel discussion moderated by former Arizona Governor Fife Symington (R) at the National Press Club.

Just one year ago, pilots, mechanics and managers from United Airlines witnessed a metallic disc-shaped object hovering over the United Airlines Terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The clearly observed object shot straight up leaving a hole through the clouds. Despite the clear aviation safety issues involved, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) never investigated the incident and dismissed it as weather. This head-in-the-clouds refusal to investigate stands in sharp contrast to efforts by governments of other countries to understand these incidents.

“I believe that our government should take an active role in investigating this very real phenomenon,” said Symington, who was a witness to the famed ‘Phoenix Lights” incident seen by hundreds in Arizona while he was governor. “This panel consists of some of the most qualified people in the world with direct experience in dealing with this issue, and they will bring incredible, irrefutable evidence, some never presented before, that we simply cannot dismiss or ignore,” he said.

Paul Hellyer, Canadian Minister of National Defence
from 1963 to 1968, announced in September that he
believes UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors and that some
governments—the United States at least—know all about
it and are covering up. He also believes American scientists
have re-engineered alien wreckage from the UFO
crash at Roswell, N.Mex., in 1947 to produce modern
technical marvels.

Hellyer spoke September 25 at a conference sponsored
by MUFON Central Canada and held on the University
of Toronto campus. He described a UFO sighting he
had while camping out with his wife and some friends: “A
bright light appeared in the sky and appeared to zig and
zag across the horizon.” He added that he started taking
the issue much more seriously after watching ABC-TV’s
UFO special with Peter Jennings in February 2005.

This morning, Dana Millbank’s story in the Washington Post notes that our
government does not always reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, and that even the highest leaders of our government don’t always tell the facts
just as they are. That’s why freedom of information is so important, and the
information that is included in the requests that we are discussing is so critical to be
put in front of the American public, so that they can make their own judgements about
the conduct of the program of investigation as well as the facts there that the Air
Force and others have discovered.

In January 1979, The New York Times reported that despite repeated, feverish denials, the CIA had indeed investigated the UFO phenomenon: "CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance" screamed the headline. The report is said to have so upset the then CIA director, Stansfield Turner, that he reportedly asked his staff: "Are we in UFOs?"

The answer was yes - since the late 1940s, apparently. But exactly how, what, when, why and who remained layered in mystery, leaving grist for the conspiracy mill.

But this year a raft of newly unclassified CIA documents revealed that the remote possibility of alien invasion elicited greater fear than the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack.

More interesting still, the CIA documents show that despite decades of repeated public denials, behind the scenes there raged a series of inter-agency feuds that involved the highest levels of the US government.

One of America's first astronauts claims that the government has withheld information that alien spacecraft have visited Earth.

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper Jr. says the government has "swept under the rug" the truth about unidentified flying objects or UFOs.