Symington: I saw a UFO in the Arizona skyNext Article in Technology »

Former AZ Governor Fife Symington will be moderating a November 12 event at the National Press Club where he will discuss the Phoenix Lights incident. He says he will be joined by 14 former high ranking military and government officials from 7 countries who will share evidence from what they call their own UFO experiences & investigations.
In 1997, during my second term as Governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic & challenged my reality. I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, AZ. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights. To my astonishment this apparition appeared; this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky. As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation. The incident was witnessed by hundreds, if not thousands of people in Arizona and office was besieged with phone calls from very concerned Arizonians.
The growing hysteria intensified when the story broke nationally. I decided to lighten the mood of the state by calling a press conference where my chief of staff arrived in an alien costume. We managed to lessen the sense of panic but at the same time, upset many of my constituents. I would now like to set the record straight. I never meant to ridicule anyone. My office did make inquiries as to the origin of the craft, but to this day, they remain unanswered. Eventually the Air Force claimed responsibility stating that they dropped flares. This is indicative of the attitude from official channels. We get explanations that fly in the face of the facts. Explanations like weather balloons, swamp gas & military flares. I was never happy with the Air Force's silly explanation. There might very well have been military flares in the sky that evening but what I and hundreds of others saw had nothing to do with that.
I now know that I am not alone. There are many high ranking military, aviation & government officials who share my concerns. While on active duty they have either witnessed a UFO incident or have conducted an official investigation into UFO cases relevant to aviation safety and national security. By speaking out with me, these people are putting their reputations on the line. They have fought in wars, guarded top secret weapons arsenals & protected our nation's skies. We want the government to stop putting out stories that perpetuate the myth that ALL UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. Investigations need to be re-opened, documents need to be unsealed & the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned. Incidents like these are not going away. About a year ago, Chicago's O'Hare airport experienced a UFO event that made national and international headlines.What I saw in the Arizona sky goes beyond conventional explanations. When it comes to events of this nature that are still completely unsolved, we deserve more openness in government, especially our own.
Next Article in Technology »


Can UFOs Bring Iran and the US Together? by Wayne Madsen -http://www.opednews.com - document.write ("")
'The hard right villifies Dennis Kucinich for admitting to seeing a UFO. Yet astrophysicists and retired air force generals (including one from Iran!) convened in Washington to call for a dialogue on UFOs.';

November 12-13, 2007 -- A possible thaw in US-Iranian relations: "UFO diplomacy"
U.S. relations with mainland China thawed in the early 1970s as a result of "Ping Pong diplomacy." In the late 1990s, there was a similar thaw between America and North Korea with "basketball diplomacy" followed by an ill-fated thaw with Cuba involving "baseball diplomacy."
As unlikely as it sounds, could there be a thaw in US relations with Iran as a result of "UFO diplomacy?" Today, a group of retired Air Force generals, as well as astrophysicists and former defense and government investigative officials from around the world, gathered at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to call on the US government to begin an active dialogue on the reality of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and related aviation security concerns. Officiating at the event was former Republican Governor of Arizona Fife Symington. Present were retired and current senior air force officers and civilian pilots from France, Belgium, Chile, Peru, United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the United States, and perhaps most notably, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Officials of Russia and Canada signed on to the request to the U.S. government. The conference was covered by CNN, the Washington Post (Dana Milbank), Spanish TV, Mexican TV, Fox News 5 Washington, DC, Agence France Presse, and Canadian TV, among others. At a time when the United States has, until very recently, held as captives Iranian diplomats seized in Erbil in northern Iraq and neocon sectors of the administration are still calling for military action against Iran, the U.S. State Department granted a visa for retired Iranian Air Force General Parviz Jafari to attend the first ever conference in which former high-level government and military officials told their own stories about the UFO phenomenon.
General Jafari, who currently lives in Tehran and who retired from the Iranian Air Force in 1989, was clad in a suit wearing a fashionable necktie when he recounted an event that took place on September 18, 1976, in the skies over Tehran. Jafari, then an F-4 pilot and his squadron's commander, was scrambled to intercept a bright object over the city. Jafari approached the object after the first pilot scrambled lost his instrumentation and communications when he got too close to the object. Jafari said the size of the object, according to his radar, was the size of a Boeing 707 tanker aircraft. Every time the object neared Jafari's F-4, his weapons became jammed and his radio communications were garbled. Jafari's attempt to launch a heat-seeking missile at the object was stymied when his missile panel went out. Jafari said emergency communications were squawking from other airliners flying at the time and this emergency communications chatter continued for another few days. After his interview at his command headquarters subsequent to the incident, Jafari said an American colonel took notes, but after the interview the American officer disappeared. Jafari told this editor he had never seen or heard from the colonel again. Jafari did note that a previously classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, released pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, documented the Tehran incident in great detail and copies were sent to the National Security Agency (NSA), the White House, and the CIA. The DIA assessment said, "this case is a classic example that meets all necessary conditions for a legitimate study of the UFO phenomenon."
After the conference, I happened upon Governor Symington and one of the conference organizers in the National Press Club elevator. I asked how the Iranian general could have possibly been granted a visa under present circumstances to visit Washington, DC. Symington, a former Air Force pilot and cousin of the late Missouri Democratic Senator Stuart Symington (who became the first Air Force Secretary mere weeks after the 1947 "Roswell Incident"), only half in jest stated, "he's [the general's] probably being debriefed at the Pentagon right now." Even though it took three months to arrange for General Jafari's visa to be granted and his trip arranged, perhaps one day any U.S.-Iranian thaw in relations may be ascribed to "UFO diplomacy."


Nasa told to solve 'UFO crash' X-File ; Richard Luscombe in Miami : Sunday November 11, 2007 : The Observer

For four decades, residents of the tiny Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg have told their story of strange blue lights in the sky one winter's evening and a fireball crashing into woods. On 9 December, 1965, they say, they saw armed soldiers cordoning off the area and a large metallic acorn-shaped object bearing strange hieroglyphics driven off at speed on the back of a lorry. They talk of menacing plain-clothes officials visiting homes and warning local people not to tell anyone of what they saw. Until now the US government has denied that anything sinister took place. It has maintained that a thorough search of the woods by the air force, the only federal agency to have acknowledged it was there, found nothing. But now Nasa has been ordered to examine its X-Files to solve the mystery.
Steve McConnell, Nasa's public liaison officer, has admitted two boxes of papers from the time of the Kecksburg incident are missing. The episode has parallels to the 1947 Roswell incident, when a UFO was said to have landed in New Mexico. 'For so many years, a lot of good people in Pennsylvania were told by their government that what they had to say was a lie or that they were hallucinating,' said Leslie Kean, a journalist who launched a lawsuit four years ago to force Nasa to open its archives. Washington judge Emmett Sullivan refused to accept Nasa's claim that the papers had been lost. He gave it until the end of the year to examine its records. 'Something came down that night,' said Kean. 'Nasa has been stonewalling and now it's required to do the search it didn't do in the first place. It's a victory for those patriotic people who didn't like being told that they were making things up.' Stan Gordon, a UFO investigator living close to the site, interviewed several witnesses. He said: 'It's interesting that [witnesses say] it was made of one solid piece of metal with no panels or rivets, and that it was moving relatively slowly and made almost a controlled landing. 'I have no doubt the government knows a lot more about this than it has revealed to the public.'
Special reportSpace exploration Interactive guides Space exploration: interactive guides Useful links Nasa homepageNasa Watch (not a Nasa site)Welcome to the Nasa WebSpace.comThe Planetary SocietyHouston Space ChronicleEncyclopedia AstronauticaNasa Human Spaceflight (shuttle homepage)Kennedy Space CenterEuropean Space AgencyUnited Nations Office for Outer Space AffairsBritish National Space CentreSearch for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)