Former Military Pilots & Officials Call for U.S. UFO Probe

Recently Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich was ridiculed by Tim Russert for saying he had seen a UFO, but he now has a little more company in that camp. In case you missed the story on network and cable news, former military pilots and others called on the US government earlier this week to officially reopen UFO investigations.

"Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," an international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials said in a statement released at a news conference.

The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military officers, said they had each either personally seen a UFO or had conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena.

The subject of UFOs grabbed the spotlight in the U.S. presidential race last month when Kucinich, a member of Congress from Ohio, said during a televised debate with other Democratic candidates that he had seen one. Kucinich’s statement caused a stir, but he isn’t the first presidential candidate to have made such a claim. Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter both reported to have seen UFOs.

UFO activists urge the government to lift what they refer to as the "truth embargo" on government information about the subject. They also believe the government does not properly investigate the phenomena when they occur. While most UFP sightings turn out to be misidentified aircraft, satellites or meteors, a panelist who once worked for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5 percent of incidents have no explanation. The panel claims these sightings are often improperly dismissed by authorities.

"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska.

The panel, organized by a group dedicated to winning credibility for the study of UFOs, urged Washington to resume UFO investigations through the U.S. Air Force or NASA.

"It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.

The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project Blue Book. Investigators concluded that the incidents posed no threat, and that there was no evidence of space aliens or a super technology in operation. On the topic of reopening the investigation, The Air Force has made clear that they do not look favorably on the request, as it was recently announced on their website that they do not believe there is a reason to investigate UFO incidents.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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