FLORIDA Tonight at 8:52 PM, May 12, 1998, Judy and I had a sighting at Shoreline Park South in Gulf Breeze, Florida. The object was a little bigger than the street lights on the toll bridge, south east moving to the north. It was an orangish-red amber in color. First time the light popped in was between the Holiday Inn on the Beach and the Comfort Inn. Elevation was between 10 and 15 degrees. The light went out and returned three times to the right of the Comfort Inn and twice to the left of the Comfort Inn. The object (light) was visible from one to three seconds during each interval of visibility. Total time of the multiple sightings was less than two minutes. No sound was heard during the sightings. In addition to myself, (Pat Gerbig), Judy Francoeur was also present with me. At a table farther down from where we were located were also three other witnesses. Thanks to Pat Gerbig.

COLORADO Marcia King writes: "I've been reading your postings on the MUFON page. My husband and daughter saw something in Colorado, last summer. It could only be a UFO. I'm truly a believer and have been for a couple years. I have a friend who is graduating as an anthropologist who strongly is suspicious that alien involvement is responsible for the sudden jump in progress of "human development." I've read some other books (Zecharia Sitchin) which are so carefully researched, I don't see how they can be ignored. I have a child with a congenital difference caused by a supposed "spontaneous genetic alteration" Yet I find it difficult to believe that this condition that results in the change of one letter in the sequence of billions in the gene sequence, could happen repeatedly at the rate of 1:20,000 merely by spontaneous, random chance. There are other characteristics occurring with this condition that I'm suspicious occur at a higher incidence than would otherwise if it were all merely random. (higher intelligence as one). How many astronomers, geneticists, anthropologists, physicists are seriously considering this universal solution to all the questions they face? I would love to find other professionals that share these beliefs. Thanks to Marcia King king@netonecom.net

CALIFORNIA MYSTERIOUS GREEN LIGHTS On Monday, May 4, 1998, around 11:30 p.m., residents of Half Moon Bay and El Granada, California spotted three mysterious green lights hovering just offshore. Half Moon Bay (population 8,886) and El Granada (population 4,426) are on Highway 1 about 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of San Francisco. Reports were also received from two or three residents living on Skyline Boulevard, north of Redwood City. According to Larry Hatch, "observers" on a tugboat in Half Moon Bay "also saw the lights for 30 minutes. The tugboat operator described them as green 'stoplights' or traffic lights. He also said they were arranged in a straight vertical row. Many thanks to Larry Hatch and Errol Bruce-Knapp and UFO Roundup Vol. 3, #19, May 10, 1998 Editor: Joseph Trainor

OREGON UFO On Friday, May 1, 1998, at 4:21 p.m., Wayne R. of Harper, sighted "a 4-to-8 foot round UFO moving through the sky" southeast of Vale. This town is located about 50 miles west of Boise, Idaho. Wayne described the UFO as "light tan with spots or markings, no lights." He added that what caught his attention was its unusual movement. "It flew at about a 30-degree angle from behind a ridge 80 feet above the ground, stopped, moved up and down rapidly, and then flew away at a very high rate of speed." No smoke or trail was visible during Wayne's four-second sighting. Many thanks to Tim Hagemeister of NACOMM

NEW MEXICO On Sunday, May 3, 1998, a cow was found dead and mutilated in a remote mountain pasture 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Questa, New Mexico (population 1,707). The cow, "which had been dead for about a day...was missing its eye and its tongue and suffered massive hemorrhaging, investigators say." John Paternoster, district attorney for Taos, NM, said authorities would investigate the case as a cattle mutilation--"one of a series of unexplained animal deaths in New Mexico in the past 25 years." "Samples of the cow's tissue, blood and organs will be analyzed at an Albuquerque laboratory, he said." "'No apparent cause of death was immediately visible,' Paternoster said, 'I'm not certain what we're looking for, but we have since the beginning been taking these deaths seriously.'" "A team of law enforcement officers" visited the crime scene in the Moreno Valley, "along with Gabe Valdez, an agent for the National Institute of Discovery Science, a privately-funded Las Vegas, Nev. organization that investigates paranormal phenomena." See the Albuquerque, NM Journal for 5/4/98. Thanks to Bruce-Knapp, UFO Roundup Vol. 3, #19, 5/10/98 Joseph Trainor.

ALASKA Aaron Kristofer Asbury, Esquire reports about an incident in Denali National Park , Denali on June 21, 1997. At 12:00 AM I awoke because of a low tone vibration outside the cabin. I went outside to see what was going on, then a bright pulsating object came closer to me until I fell over thinking it would hit me. From far away it looked like an enormous metallic football, but changed shape to a small ball as it came to me, after that it slowly disappeared. I went back in the cabin to see that it was around 5:40 a.m., I didn't mind and went to bed. My brother woke me up at around 4:00 p.m., wondering why I was screaming in my sleep. I still thought it was the morning, and still do not understand that night. I get bits of memory from it back, but the feelings I feel are of both hatred and love. I remember, a being that looked like a small hairless primate. He told me he needed to learn why we were so careless? I didn't understand. Thanks to ISUR 907-696-5127, 19744 N. Montague, Eagle River, Alaska 99577

UFO VIDEOTAPED HOVERING OVER A BEACH IN BRAZIL March 28, 1998, hundreds of people relaxing on the beach at Praia do Jose Menino in the seaport city of Santos were startled when an OVNI (Portuguese acronym for UFO) suddenly appeared offshore. Santos is in southern Brazil, about 120 kilometers (72 miles) southeast of Sao Paulo. As the UFO hovered over Ilha da Urubuquecaba, an offshore island, Valentim do Nascimento picked up his video-camera and began shooting footage. The UFO was described as a disc-shaped object that hovered with a yellow, green and blue luminosity. Nascimento videotaped the UFO for 40 minutes as the beach goers watched it hover. Then, the light flickering strangely, the UFO zipped away. (See the Brazilian newspaper Gazeta de Limeira for March 30, 1998, Muito obrigado a Pedro Cunha por eso caso).

AUSTRALIA Last week, I ran a story concerning illuminations in the sky and I apologize for not giving Harry proper credit for his fine work. He wrote: "On October 11, 1997, several million Australians observed extremely bright fluorescent lime green illumination across the skies. These illuminations have been observed in other parts of the world such as Mexico and the United States. Ross Dowe National UFO Hotline in Melbourne received well over 1000 telephone calls from Australian residents of the eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, etc. (See Files #18) Harry Mason also writes. "Perhaps you could also pass on the dialogue with your scientist friend who reckons these lights were due to plasmas nucleating on upper atmospheric particles - I sincerely doubt this explanation giving the huge energies involved as per the eyewitness interviews. Also you took this section out of context re my contention of it's relation to similar timed events in the USA in Mexico and Texas and in both the Australian and USA events you would be unlikely to get agreement from eyewitnesses on your scientist's viewpoint." Thanks to Harry Mason for the Australia article.

MISSILE DEFENSE The South Jersey Courier Post reported: Despite test failure, Pentagon supports missile defense plan. Disappointed but pushing ahead, the Pentagon has no thoughts of backing off its $15 billion missile defense system after it failed for a fifth straight time to intercept a test target. "We will continue to test the system until we get it right," said DOD spokesman Ken Bacon. The missile-defense system failed for the fifth time to hit a target when a booster rocket misfired in a New Mexico test. The Pentagon said it isn't ready yet to cancel the $15 billion Lockheed Martin project, which is called Theater High-Altitude Area Defense. It is being developed to protect troops in the field from attack by Scud and other short and medium range missiles.

SECRETS IN THE DESERT Rumored UFOs aren't the real danger at Area 51 test facility, Torrance man warns Stories about alien spacecraft and UFOs surround the military test facility in Nevada known as Area 51, but Norio Hayakawa doesn't pay any attention to them. To him, they just cloud the issue. The Torrance resident's interest in the long-secret facility 90 miles from Las Vegas has to do with more down-to-earth concerns: toxic pollution; the possibility of weapons tests posing a danger to people far, far away from the remote location; the potential for the abuse of the technology that may be under wraps at the site.

"It is our tax dollars going out there. And it is the only military facility in the nation where you will be arrested if you make it to the guard shack. The secrecy must end," said Hayakawa, 55, a funeral director who also is a member of a civilian intelligence group that monitors covert government operations and black projects - developments so secret they don't show up on the Pentagon's books. In the past decade, Hayakawa has assembleed a file of declassified documents and other documents relating to operations at the base. One makes reference to an antenna system so powerful that it is hazardous to stand within 500 meters of the dish if it is pointed toward you. Hayakawa also has a series of detailed photographs of the base showing hangars, aircraft, radar and satellite dishes and other details. Hayakawa has been to the edge of the secret base at least 15 times in the past decade. He's going back in June, and he's taking some friends. On June 6, Hayakawa and others will host a gathering they're calling The People's Rally, right at the border of the restricted zone, the thousands of acres surrounding the base that the military has sealed off to the public. Fact and fiction The rally is designed to draw attention to the amounts of taxpayer dollars spent at the site, as well as the environmental damage some fear has been done there. It is expected to draw between 400 to 800 people, from as far away as Canada and New Zealand, as word of the event spreads via the Internet. Hayakawa maintains several Web sites, including one devoted specifically to the test facility at Groom Lake. Area 51 has existed in the world of fiction for some time, perhaps most prominently as the secret military installation nearly destroyed by very unpleasant aliens in the movie "Independence Day."

The reality is probably stranger than anything Hollywood has come up with. The U.S. government refused to acknowledge the base's existence for decades. In 1994, lawsuits were filed against the government by workers who contend they were exposed to fumes from toxic wastes that were thrown into ditches, covered with jet fuel and burned into ash. In response, the Air Force admitted only that an "operating facility" is located at Groom Lake, a dry lake bed in the heart of Area 51, and said national security prohibited any discussion of what might have occurred there. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, also named in the lawsuits, contended it could not enforce environmental laws at a place that didn't officially exist. What is actually known about the site reads like passages from a Tom Clancy novel.

Super-secret testing Established by the CIA in the mid-'50s, the location has served as a test facility for the nation's most secret aircraft, including the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117A Stealth fighter-bomber, used so successfully in the Persian Gulf War, military analysts have concluded. Operations at the site, which employs between 1,800 and 2,300 people, are funded by the government's "black" budget, a $22 billion fund used by the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency for secret weapons and technological development. The ground outside the buffer zone surrounding the base is laced with sensors buried in the dirt to detect anyone or anything moving toward the restricted zone. "We couldn't tell you what happens there, and to be honest they don't tell me anything," Tech. Sgt. Richard Covington of Nellis Air Force Base's public affairs office said Friday. "I could refer you to Washington, but that's what they'll tell you, too. It's on the base, but it's not a Nellis asset."

Hayakawa's interest in the base stems from the years he spent living in Albuquerque, where he befriended people who worked at military and defense industry jobs. "They always talked about the remarkable aircraft that were being developed in secret," he said. Hayakawa began reading AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY and digging up information on advanced aircraft development. "I always have had an interest in exotic aircraft design and military development," he said. Then in 1988, he read a number of articles and saw a number of television specials that made intriguing references to the site. He wrote to a magazine in Japan, suggesting it to do a story on the base. Instead, a Japanese television crew contacted him. "In 1990, I took the television crew from Japan to interview a man in Las Vegas who said he was a government scientist working on what he called unusual aircraft," he said. "There were about 10 of us, and we interviewed him at his home. He said there was going to be a test, and he gave us a map, but he refused to say what was going to be tested." Hayakawa and the television crew followed the map and set up cameras. What they saw astounded them. "We saw an incredibly bright object rise over the Groom Mountains. Its maneuverability really impressed us, as did its brightness," he said.

Some might have concluded UFO. Others argue the object was most probably an experimental aircraft; at extreme distances, high-speed maneuvers performed by Earth-designed aircraft can look positively impossible. Hayakawa sides with the latter. UFO smoke screen? "There's nothing extraterrestrial or strange there. It's good old American technology," he says. "The government sits back and watches - and sometimes manipulates - these UFO stories to keep people from asking about the real activities there." By the way, the two-hour television program produced by the Japanese crew drew an audience of 40 million when it was aired in Japan, he said. Hayakawa has run into the security forces before. In 1991, he and his colleagues were chased by a helicopter back to the highway, where sheriff's deputies were waiting for them at a roadblock.

Hayakawa's concerns about Area 51 are twofold. The first is laid out in the lawsuits filed on behalf of former workers at the site. Two of them, Walter Kasza and Robert Frost, since have died. An autopsy showed that Frost's body was laced with industrial toxins rarely seen in humans, the lawsuit contends. Kasza went to doctors for years, but none could explain why his skin was cracking so badly his bed sheets would be covered in blood in the morning. The lawsuits don't even seek monetary damages. Attorney and law professor, Jonathan Turley is seeking only records that might indicate what the workers were exposed to, or even to have them treated by military doctors in secret.

In a demonstration of just how secretive the government is about the subject, Turley's office at George Washington University was sealed by a federal court order because of the classified documents he has obtained; he can't have visitors or students in the office. Hayakawa also has concerns about biological and chemical weapons he says may be under development at the site, as well as unmanned surveillance aircraft he said could be used not only in war, but against civilians during times of peace. "Progress is going to take place, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. But it has the potential for abuse," he said. "There is a danger that these projects could impact the public, environmentally as well as in the area of privacy." For more information, visit Hayakawa's website at GroomWatch : Home Page for Norio Hayakawa at www.eagle-net.org/groomwatch --------------- Contributing to this article were Scripps McClatchy News and The Associated Press.

As many of you remember, Alex Collier, who has direct, person to person contact with Andromedans has stated that they told him that toward the end 1998 there would be some event that would remove any doubt that UFOs are real and are inhabited by beings from other planets. His latest post at, http://www.trufax.org/collier/lastest.html, seems to indicate that this event is still planned and is only a matter of when. Another thing he mentions is a large cigar shaped object orbiting Saturn. This is real! Center of Attention reported this years ago, I have seen NASA pictures and others that show its existence. There is, indeed, a huge spaceship of some kind within the rings of Saturn. Who it is, and what they are doing is only speculation, however. The following is the latest update from Alex. Alex, if you are reading this, I need to get hold of you and the special phone number you gave me was lost when my computer crashed. Please get it to me again! I also lost John Robinson's contact info.

Sept 12, 1998: During a contact on September 11th, Alex asked Morenae "Well, when's the fly-over?" Morenae smiled, looked at him and said, "be patient". Alex said there has been some talk that the craft that is parked in the rings of Saturn (Jahovah Group) left, but according to Morenae its still parked there doing nothing. Also, a race from the Aldebaran system has been in contact with the Israeli government, according to Morenae, who said he couldn't say more about that at this point in regard to the topic of discussion between the race from Aldebaran and the Israelis. Morenae indicated that the sun has completed its pole shift, but the magnetic field is still fluctuating wildly and has not repositioned itself. I asked Alex if that had anything to do with the fact of the light spectrum shift recently in the sunlight from yellow to a more white spectrum, and he indicated it did. Alex indicated that if the solar fields did not settle down within about 93 days, the Andromedans indicated that they would intervene and stabilize it themselves.

UFO ROUNDUP Volume 3, Number 37 September 14, 1998 Editor: Joseph Trainor

TWO FIGHTER PLANES LOST OFF COAST OF JAPAN As many of you remember, Alex Collier, who has direct, person to person contact with Andromedans has stated that On Tuesday, August 25, 1998, at about 6:30 p.m., three Mitsubishi F-1 fighter jets of Japan's Air Self- Defense Force (ASDF) took off from the Misawa Air Base, heading for a training exercise off the coast of Honshu island. Japanese air traffic controllers lost radio contact with two of the three jets at approximately 6:58 p.m. Both jets vanished from the radar screen at the same moment. The two missing ASDF pilots were identified as 1st Lt. Hirokazu Nagai, 29, and 1st Lt. Madoka Nakaya, 29. Both F-1s disappeared over the Pacific Ocean about 60 kilometers (36 miles) east of Kuji, a city in northern Iwate prefecture about 600 kilometers (360 miles) north of Tokyo.

As many of you remember, Alex Collier, who has direct, person to person contact with Andromedans has stated that The pilot of the third plane radioed that he had seen "a red fireball during the flying maneuvers." Japan's Self-Defense Forces and Maritime Safety Agency dispatched 13 patrol boats and 13 planes to search the area. Early Wednesday morning, August 26, one boat found a fragment from one of the F-1s, measuring "50 centimeters by 30 centimers, dark green on the top and white on the bottom," thought to be a part of a jet's horizontal stabilizer. They Japanese government confirmed that the third pilot had mentioned a fireball but stated that the two jets "disappeared after apparently collided Tuesday evening during low-altitude drills." (See Japan Times for September 5, 1998, "Missing Fighters." Many thanks to Stig Agermose for forwarding the newspaper article.)

SPHERICAL UFO HOVERS OVER FRENCH BACKYARD On Sunday afternoon, September 6, 1998, a family of four living in Voreppe, a town near Grenoble in the French Alps, received the shock of their lives. Looking up, the unidentified husband and wife, their three-year-old child and the grandmother spotted "a slow, hovering, seemingly metallic shiny sphere about two meters (6.6 feet) above the top of a cherry tree." As the UFO hovered and hummed, the man ran indoors to fetch his camcorder. When he rushed back outside, he switched it on and "shot two minutes of videotape, showing the departure of the object."

The family then telephoned the Gendarmerie (French police--J.T.) The officers took the videotape, contacted SEPRA, the French government agency devoted to UFO research, and reportedly advised the witnesses "not to speak to any ufologists about the incident." Two investigators from the SEPRA office in Toulouse spent two days investigating the encounter scene. They took burned branches from the cherry tree for lab analysis. In a brief statement, SEPRA said the videotape was "very interesting" and "useable" in terms of further UFO research. The case was also investigated by the Rhone-Alpes delegation of SOS OVNI, the French ufological study group, which is based in Lyon.

On Friday, September 11, 1998, representatives of the Centre Nacional des Etudes Spaciaux (CNES) saw the videotape and also interviewed the four eyewitnesses. Jean-Jacques Velasco of CNES said the UFO "looks as if it is floating and then moves away in a curious way." He described the object as "a round disc, about 5 meters (16.5 feet) across with a few protuberances coming out of it and a red ring around its bottom." Voreppe is in the department of Isere about 400 kilometers (240 miles) southeast of Paris. (Merci beaucoup a Perry Petrakis de SOS OVNI pour ces nouvelles.)

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1998 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post items from UFO Roundup on their websites or in newsgroups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

On Monday, October 19, 1998, four military radar stations in Hebei province, China, reported the presence of an unidentified blip hovering above a military flight training school in Changzhou. Once authorities determined that the intruder was not a military or civilian flight, Colonel Li, the base commander, ordered a Jianjiao 6 jet fighter to take off and intercept the UFO. "At least 140 people on the ground saw the object." "To observers at the base, the UFO first appeared to be 'a small star' and then grew larger and larger, perhaps as it descended to a lower altitude, the report said." "They described an object with a mushroom-shaped dome on top and a flat bottom covered with bright, continually-rotating lights." The crew of the Jianjiao 6 interceptor consisted of a pilot and a radar officer. The two officers said "the object clearly resembled depictions they had seen in foreign science fiction films...When they got within 4,000 meters (13,200 feet) of the UFO over Qing county, it abruptly shot upward, easily evading subsequent attempts to get closer." "It appeared to be toying with the fighter by repeatedly outdistancing it and then reappearing right above it, the report said." The pilot requested permission to fire on the UFO with the plane's automatic 20mm cannon. He was denied permission to shoot by ground control and was told to continue to pursue and observe the object. The pilot broke off pursuit at an altitude of 12,000 meters (39,600 feet) when the jet began running low on fuel. "The UFO then disappeared before two more modern (Chinese fighter) planes could arrive in the area." Changzhou is 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Shanghai. (See the Hong Kong Standard for November 4, 1998. The story apparently first ran in the Hebei Daily around October 22 and was picked up by the Chinese weekly newsmagazine Baokhan Wenzhai. Many thanks to Errol Bruce-Knapp and Andy Denne of A.U.R.A. for forwarding the article.)

ISRAELIS VIDEOTAPE A TRIANGULAR UFO NEAR TEL AVIV

On Friday, October 9, 1998, electrical engineer Adrian Dvir met with his group of five "alien healers" at his home in Rishon Letzion, a city approximately 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Tel Aviv. Dvir and his colleagues claim that they were given mysterious "healing powers" by aliens from space. Midway through the meeting, one of the members spotted a UFO moving through the sky. Dvir grabbed his camcorder and began shooting. "The finest moment of the film is a closeup of the craft revealing three beautiful balls--one orange, the others silver and white in a perfect triangular formation. This is one of the finest UFO films ever taken in Israel," said author/researcher Barry Chamish. One week later, on Friday, October 16, Avishai Granot, a computer graphics artist, "spotted two triangular craft which flew over the eastern section of Rishon Letzion." Granot said, "This UFO came from the north at lightning speed, hovered over the city for about a minute, and disappeared in a flash, making a suction sound as it went." A 20-year-veteran of the Zahal (Israeli Defense Forces--J.T.), Granot said, "I know every craft and weapon we've got and it wasn't one of them." On Thursday, November 5, 1998, Barry Chamish and ufologist Gil Bar visited Rishon Letzion and interviewed the two men. They also viewed the videos shot by Dvir. "When he (Granot) saw Dvir's film, he immediately identified the craft on the screen as the one he had seen." Like Gulf Breeze, Florida or Crestone, Colorado, Rishon Letzion is a notorious UFO hotspot, Chamish said. One year ago, in November 1997, "Gil Bar, 16, filmed an Israeli F-15 chasing a UFO over Rishon Letzion in broad daylight." (Many thanks to Barry Chamish, author of WHO MURDERED YITZHAK RABIN?, for giving UFO Roundup permission to quote from his news story.)

MYSTERIES FLOURISH IN EQ PEGASI CONTACT CASE

The EQ Pegasi case exploded into a flurry of charges and counter-charges last week. On October 23, 1998, a man calling himself "Paul Dore" posted GIFs on the Internet which purported to show a strong alien radio signal emanating from the EQ Pegasi star system, 22 light years (132,000,000,000,000 miles) from Earth. Dr. H. Paul Shuch of the SETI League and Dr. Nathan Cohen of Boston University branded the material a hoax. On Monday, November 2, John Doe, alias "Paul Dore," hit back at his critics. "This is assuredly not a hoax," he said, explaining that the similarity of signals was caused by his own hasty error in posting. "I was so excited I got onto the Internet on a CLOSED list." Doe added that "two astronomers at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory" in Germany had confirmed the "hit" and announced that the three of them would appear at a news conference on Wednesday "to announce the discovery of repeating artificial signals from space." On Friday, October 30, 1998, K.H. Benton, a radio operator living in Castel, on the Isle of Guernsey, claimed that he, too, had picked up a signal from EQ Pegasi. "I am an amateur radio operator on the Isle of Guernsey (UK) offshore from Normandy," Benton reported. "When I saw the story of the possible SETI discovery on the BBC, I undertook to see if I could pick the signals up." Benton used his 4.5 meter dish to scan the 23 centimeter band (1296 Mhz to 1450 Mhz) plus an ICOM 8500 receiver and a SETIFOX program up and running on his processor. "At 12:30 UTC, about the time EQ Pegasi rose in the sky, the program began logging what looked like a faint carrier signal," Benton reported. "If this is a signal from another star, it is incredibly strong. This would have to be beamed directly at us as far as I can tell." Researchers seeking confirmation tried to log onto the website operated by the Billion-channel Extra-Terrestrial Array (BETA project) in Harvard, Masschusetts, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Boston. They complained that they could not access the BETA site. On Monday, November 2, the Max Planck Institut fur Radioastronomie in Bonn, operators of the Effelsberg Radio Observatory, denied that their astronomers were using the observatory's 100-meter radio telescope to scan EQ Pegasi.

Institute spokesman Dr. Rolf Schwartz said, "The story circulating that the MFIfR is involved in observations to confirm a SETI signal is wrong. The MFIfR is not involved in any SETI project." Unaware of this, Doe posted a new message, saying, "At noon, I received a call from the two astronomers stating that they would not be with me at the press conference and that I was 'essentially on my own.' 'Fine, then,' I replied, and then apologized and hung up." "Next, my supervisor rang me up to tell me that I was to cease my experiment immediately," he added, "This was quite strange because he had been supportive ever since the news broke." Arriving home at 7 p.m., he claimed to have found "three gentlemen in my residence. My wife Helen had the look of sheer terror in her eyes. It turns out one of them was from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, and the other was from RAF Feltwell, and the third from the American National Security Agency (NSA) They asked if we could speak in private." "Over the course of nearly two hours they explained to me that what I had discovered was not extraterrestrial in nature but was" in actuality an intelligence-gathering satellite "with something known as Project 415." Doe claimed that the men compelled him "to sign a security oath...which stated that should I further describe any details on this subject I will be subect to prosecution under the terms of the Official Secrets Act."

No sooner had this statement appeared than the real Paul Dore emerged, claiming that Doe had "stolen my resume from my website" which "had been inactive for the past two and a half years." According to the Boston Globe, "The perpetrator made most of his claims anonymously but then was tentatively identified by SETI researchers as an engineer named Paul Dore; an anonymous resume he had posted was identified as Dore's through an on-line search." Dr. Shuch said that "he had just heard from the real Paul Dore and is now convinced that he is not the perpetrator. Apparently, whoever was playing the hoax had simply used and altered Dore's resume." "He's a decent guy, and he has nothing to do with this," Dr. Shuch said. "'It has all the earmarks of a hoax,' said Darren Leigh, a radio astronomer who operates one of the largest such search efforts in the world today, the BETA project...Nevertheless, Leigh said, the 84-foot dish of the Oak Ridge Observatory's BETA telescope was trained on the region of the sky where the signal had been claimed, just to be sure. And there's nothing there." The Wednesday press conference was abruptly cancelled. On Wednesay, November 4, people trying to access the EQ Pegasi website "found a National Security Agency logo" filling the screen. Peter A. Gersten of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) telephoned NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland and spoke to Vanessa Taliery of the agency's public relations department. Gersten reported that Taliery had told him that "anyone can download the NSA seal and emblem and place them on a site." He said Taliery "seemed unaware of the story" that was burning up the Internet. Speculation about the EQ Pegasi signal continues to spur a fiery debate. (See the Boston Globe for November 4, 1998, "Earthlings say: Not so fast," page A-10)

HOVERING UFOs SPOTTED IN WESTERN NORWAY

On Tuesday, November 3, 1998, at 4 a.m., witnesses in Vaksdal, near Bergen, Norway, "reported an object in the eastern part of the sky. It was stationary for about an hour, with flashing lights green on the top and red on the bottom." Vaksdal is about 280 kilometers (175 miles) west of Oslo, the national capital. The same morning, between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., a few residents of Stavanger, a seaport on the North Sea about 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Oslo, reported seeing "a meteorite with a blue tail" over the eastern section of the port city. (Many thanks to Asgeir W. Skavhaug for this news story.)

SEVEN LUMINOUS DISCS SEEN IN GRAFTON, N.S.W.

On Thursday, October 22, 1998, at 11:22 p.m., seven luminous discs flying in a V formation were seen in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Sydney. "This formation was huge," reported local ufologist Barry Taylor. "At 20 centimeters (8 inches) at arm's length, the formation must have been about 25 to 30 meters (83 to 100 feet) in length, and each disc was about three meters (10 feet) altogether. I only observed them for four seconds as they flew over. Missed catching them on video by two seconds." "The seven red illuminations were covered by a white haze," he added, "This haze blended with the haze of the next illumination (following) They were close together and 'held in position.' The light from each disc was intriguing to see. A soft, smooth, creamy yellowish-white appearance that looked to have depth." (Many thanks to Barry Taylor for this report.)

MYSTERY METEOR LIGHTS UP THE CITY OF WINNIPEG

On Monday, November 2, 1998, at 8:15 p.m., ufologist/researcher Christopher A. Rutkowski "had two calls and heard of three other reports of a bright bolide-like object...Most witnesses were in the eastern end of Winnipeg and Transcona," in Manitoba province, Canada. The witnesses "reported seeing a 'silver-red' ball in the southeast, heading west. It had a 'long bright tail' behind it, but no sparks." "Have two witnesses insist the object 'stopped' in mid-flight, remained stationary and then moved away." (Many thanks to Chris Rutkowski for this news story.)

ALIENS, WEIRD ANIMAL REPORTED IN COLORADO

On Friday, October 30, 1998, a woman living at the new Baca Grande housing development near Alamosa, Colorado, looked out the window and spotted small aliens running across the yard. "The resident reported small objects hitting her house," author/researcher Christopher O'Brien reported, explaining that the house "is out on the (San Luis) Valley and has no tall trees within a quarter mile." The woman described the intruders as "small hooded figures about four feet tall (1.2 meters)." She also claimed to have seen "a hairy pig" running past the house, a sighting O'Brien said "Sounds more like a Prairie Dragon sighting." The next day, Saturday, October 31, 1998, "the woman also observed a fast-moving oval- shaped object enter through her back door and slowly headed up the hallway towards her. She described the anomaly as being 'milky- looking with a reflective band around the rim. The band appeared to be like chrome. The witness was so startled that she stopped looking at the object, which apparently then disappeared. She estimated, at its nearest, it was ten feet (3 meters) away from her as it came down the hallway." (Many thanks to Christopher O'Brien, author of THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY, for this news story.) (Editor's Comment: If there's an award for Strangest Halloween Visitor, this floating Baca Grande anomaly is a cinch to win.)

UFO FLAP ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN MONTANA

Since Friday, October 16, 1998, residents of Polson (population 6,000) and Ronan (population 2,500), two towns on Highway 93 in western Montana have been puzzled by the nightly appearance of a red UFO over the Mission Mountains, just east of town. The large UFO is seen every night between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., hovering about 9,000 feet above the mountain range. "The UFO is reported to be quite large with one continuous red light, a flickering (not blinking) green light and a flickering blue glow which appears under the craft." None of the witnesses have been able to identify the shape of the craft. On Friday, October 30, 1998, Scott Johnson, foreman of a large manufacturing facility two miles south of Ronan, "brought his entire night shift outside for a look to observe the craft during break." Johnson reportedly said, "This is not a vehicle of human origin. Its balance, its ability to hover as it does, its soundless(ness)...all make for something that does not match our standard of human air vehicles." The same night, witnesses near Polson, nine miles to the north, "there were two UFOs at roughly the same altitude about 9 miles apart." (Many thanks to Robert A.M. Stephens for forwarding this news story.) (Editor's Note: Polson, Montana is at the south end of Flathead Lake and is best known as the "home port" of the Flathead Lake Monster, a.k.a. Flathead Lake Nessie. The creature was seen dozens of times during the summers of 1993 and 1996. See the Lake County Leader of Polson, Montana for October 23, 1996)

MAN AND MOTHER SEE A UFO IN KETTERING, OHIO

On Monday, October 26, 1998, at 7:30 p.m., a man and his elderly mother spotted a UFO over Kettering, Ohio (population 60,659), a city southeast of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. "It was just 7:30 p.m., and I had just finished my dinner and went outside for a cigarette," the witness reported, "I was on the porch looking north. I decided to walk around the yard, and I looked up at the stars and saw a large, bright disc moving slowly across the sky. I watched it for a second and called my mom out. By the time she got there, it was flying south extremely fast, faster than any airplane I know of...The object just took off, extremely fast." (Many thanks to Kenneth Young of Tri-States Advocates for Scientific Knowledge, T.A.S.K., for forwarding this report.)

RADIO SHOW TRIGGERS PANIC IN PORTUGAL

On Friday, October 30, 1998, radio station Antena 3, a subsidiary of Radio Nacionao Portugueses (RNP) in Lisbon, decided to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Orson Welles radio drama, War of the Worlds, by broadcasting it during the morning show. The original Welles script was used and was translated into Portuguese. Instead of having the Martians touch down in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, Antena 3 had the aliens land in Palmela, a town 35 kilometers (21 miles) south of Lisbon. The station issued a warning at 7 a.m., announcing their intention to broadcast the radio play. But when the play began an hour later at 8 a.m., panic erupted. The station "broadcasted the landing of a UFO at Palmela" and "the bulletins said that the Martians had set off in the direction of the capital (Lisbon) and that military forces sent to stop them had proved powerless." "The program's producer said the radio station was inundated with calls from hundreds of panicking people demanding to know what was going on." The 7 a.m. warning proved worthless "because not everyone is listening to the radio that early." Some callers said they had fled their workplaces. Others with health problems complained that "the health had deteriorated on news of the Martian invasion." "One of the organizers of the broadcast said, 'One hundred years after the invention of the radio, there are still people who will believe anything." (Merci beaucoup a Robert Fischer pour l'histoire de l'Agence France Presse.)

BALDIM CAVE SEARCH ENDS IN FIASCO

Efforts to search a cave in Brazil's Serra do Espinhaco mountains for a Chupacabra have ended for the time being. The cave, located on a mountaintop near Baldim, Minas Gerais, a small city on the Rio das Velhas 110 kilometers (66 miles) north of Belo Horizonte, was the site of the reported encounter between three spelunkers and a "weird animal, the size of a large dog." Having made a tentative descent into the cave earlier in October, ufologist Vittorio Paccacini, author of INCIDENTE EM VARGINHA, returned to the cave on Saturday, October 17, 1998. But his planned party of ten explorers was not willing to make the descent. "When I got there, I found that this group was not ready to go," Paccacini reported, "No adequate equipment (helmets, lights, etc.) Most of the people there didn't feel comfortable with the idea of returning to the halls of that cave." So the cave expedition was canceled. Three days earlier, Pacaccini had met with his lawyer, who, he said, "alerted me to the complications/responsibilities I'd have if somebody got hurt on this expedition." In addition to possible legal liabilities, Paccacini reported that he was contacted by Manuel Uchoa and the other two spelunkers who reportedly saw the cave creature. "They didn't like the fact that the pictures had already circulated in many UFO webpages and in many Internet UFO news services, as well." "I'll have to wait a little longer to see what can be done, to be sure about the picture," Paccacini added. "I also know where to find it (the cave), of course, but I can only do something in accordance with the witnesses...For me, unfortunately, I'll have to hold my horses. Needless to tell how frustrating this is." (Muito obrigado a Vittorio Paccacini por eso caso.) from the UFO Files...

1940: LAST CRUISE OF THE WILLIAM B. DAVOCK

Of all the stories associated with the Lake Michigan Triangle, the case of the oreboat William B. Davock is certainly one of the strangest. On November 7, 1940, the Davock sailed out of Erie, Pennsylvania, westbound for Chicago with a load of coal. The ship had a crew of 31 aboard, with a surprising number of the men hailing from Ashtabula, Ohio, another port on Lake Erie. The Davock had a routine trip to Detroit, then headed north across Lake Huron and sailed through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Michigan. At 12 noon on November 10, 1940, the Davock was seen entering Lake Michigan by observers onshore at Mackinac City, Mich. At 12:15 p.m., her skipper, Captain Charles W. Allen, sent out a routine radio message. That was the Davock's last contact with the outside world. Shore radio stations attempting to contact her during that afternoon and evening reached nothing but static. The following afternoon, November 11, 1940, Lake Michigan was swept by a ferocious blizzard. This "Armistice Day storm" killed hundreds of people in the USA's Midwest, and a few ships foundered on the Great Lakes. By the time the blizzard began, the Davock should have been safe in her berth in South Chicago. But there had been no word from the vessel for 24 hours. Then the bodies began washing ashore. "From a point a mile or two above Pentwater to the beach north of Ludington, they wandered in amidst a clutter of life rings, broken lifeboats, oars, cabin doors, fragments of furniture... young deckhands James Saunders and his buddy Sterling Wood, second mate John Wiesen, first mate Charles Price, wheelmen Andy Stiffler and Walter Kiewece, and watchmen James Bowman, Lawrence Bleshoy and Martin Chambers." "Walking for miles, they (searchers) found both of the Davock's lifeboats, one damaged, the other intact but full of water. Tarpaulins, parts of what had once been an icebox, a section of the captain's desk" and Capt. Allen's prize possession, his brand-new wicker chair. The dead men of the Davock were laid to rest at Ludington's Lakeview Cemetery. The Coast Guard assumed that the Davock and another steamer, the Anna C. Minch, had been thrown together by the mountainous seas of the blizzard. They theorized that the Davock had cleaved the Minch's hull in half and had then limped away, to sink elsewhere on Lake Michigan. But then, in May 1972, divers discovered "the Davock's hull, upside down in 304 feet of water, off Little Sable Point" near Ludington. Working from a former fishing tug equipped with sonar and other sophisticated gear, divers Kent Bellrichard, John Steele and William Cohen explored the hull briefly but could find no evidence of collision...The divers found the Davock's rudder cramped hard to port, as though she too were trying to fighter her way out of a valley between monstrous seas." Or perhaps trying to get away from something. The mystery persists. Where was the Davock during the twenty-four hours prior to the arrival of the Armistice Day storm? Why didn't Capt. Allen erect an emergency radio mast? Or simply send a gig ashore to Ludington? What was the vessel doing just off Little Sable Point, east of its intended route to Chicago? Ludington, of course, has long been rumored to be the nexus of the Lake Michigan Triangle. The Davock is just one of the many large ships that have sunk under mysterious circumstances within earshot of Ludington's automated lighthouse. (See STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE GREAT LAKES by Dwight Boyer, Freshwater Press Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, 1974, pages 100 to 104, and THE GREAT LAKES TRIANGLE by Jay Gourley, Fawcett Crest Books, Greenwich, Conn., 1977, page 86.)

FUN UFO WEBSITES:

The video of the three Cleveland UFOs is now a Quicktime movie, Rev. John Tenney of Michigan Anumalous Information Network informs me. You need 5 megabytes to view it. See the movie at http://members.tripod.com/~main.org Ignatius Graffeo managed to download much of the material on the EQ Pegasi website before it was replaced with the NSA seal. He invites people to view it at his mirror site at this URL: http://members.aol.com/ufoseek/Cape CanaveralHall7193/ Malaysian UFO Network now has its own site. Check them out at http://www.malayians.com/ myufonet Don't miss our parent site, UFO INFO, with its wide array of saucer source material. Drop in at http://ufoinfo.com Back issues of UFO Roundup can be accessed, read and downloaded at our webpage. Feel free to browse anytime at this URL: http://ufoinfo.com/roundup

Some week, eh? We'll be back in seven days with the latest in saucer news from around the globe, plus continuing coverage of the growing EQ Pegasi contact controversy, brought to you as always by "the paper that goes home-- UFO Roundup." See you then.

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1998 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup on their websites or in newsgroups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

#1. TO DEFEND THE EARTH?: USAF vs. UFO By Scott Corrales Lornis@aol.com © copyrighted 1995 #2. A Nottingham Ghost Story By; John Mainert Freelance Researcher johnniem@dial.pipex.com #3. So. Cal. Green Fire Case Solved? Jerry Glass 7/2/98 from Jeff Rense's website: www.sightings.com #4. Genesis Revealed -- Zecharia Sitchin Part 2 © copyright 1998 J. M. Cornwell jackiemc@prodigy.net #5. Special Guest Chats This Week!

#1. TO DEFEND THE EARTH?: USAF vs. UFO By Scott Corrales Lornis@aol.com © copyrighted 1995

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was featured in the Spring edition of UFO UNIVERSE under the heading "UFOs: Are They A Serious Threat To Earth?" I would like to personally thank Scott for giving WOTS this opportunity for sharing this with my readers. Also to tell you all to look out for a very special message that will be coming out, telling you all of Scott's acceptance to joining a special guest chat which will be on Oct. 21st. (stay tuned)

Speculation has as always been perceived as the bastard child of fact and fiction, and imagination has often been condemned as the refuge of the incompetent (those who can, do, while those who cannot, imagine). Ufology, however leaves us very little things to grasp as we try to gain a deeper understanding of the challenge it presents. Therefore, speculation should not be perceived as a stigma in our search for an answer to a question which has taunted us since the 1950's: is our planet under imminent danger from a hostile, spaceborne enemy, and if so, have our air forces made any effort at formulating a defense?

This query is often met by horse laughs both within and without ufology, suppressing any discussion. Yet few seem to notice that our military posesses devices which are somewhat overmuscled to fight a post-Soviet terrestrial adversary.

Science fiction expressed America's Cold War paranoia and fear of the "alien" in a series of memorable (and not so memorable) films. But it wasn't until the early 1970's that a piece of entertainment, a show which ran for only one season, depicted the struggle between a covert branch of the military and alien invaders bent on raiding our planet for vital organs and fluid--an oddly-prescient take on some of the theories espoused today.

A Visionary TV Show

The program,called UFO and directed by British filmmaker Gerry Anderson, gave us SHADO (Supreme Headquarters--Alien Defense Organization), boasting futuristic and devastating air, sea, and space weaponry, all directed from a small base on the lunar surface. While not the best acted or scripted show, Anderson nonetheless presented a remarkably compelling and oddly prescient scenario: humanoid aliens have been abducting humans for years as a source of internal organs for less fortunate members of their species. This discovery prompts the creation of SHADO's amazing defenses as well as an effort to send an unmanned probe to the alien's surprisingly Earthlike planet. Humans "turned" by the aliens are endowed with amazing physical and mental prowess; captured pilots are forced to breathe the invaders' blue-colored liquid oxygen; top-like saucers crash-land in wooded areas and "retrieval" teams are sent to collect wreckage and survivors; futuristic early-warning satellites known as SID (Space Intruder Detector) warned SHADO of alien presences. However, the SID found a real-life counterpart in the DSP (Defense Support Program) Satellite System, an advanced technology defense satellite. According to some UFO researchers, DSP has been employed in the effort to detect UFOs from our planet's orbit since the mid-1970s. In this case, fiction kept readily abreast of fact.

Reasons to Worry

Despite the CIA's 1953 scientific panel's determination that UFOs posed no threat to the US, the Air Force learned otherwise. That very same year, a UFO spotted by a radar installation at Truax AFB prompted the scrambling of an F-89 interceptor out of Kinross field. The fighter pilot chased the intruder over Lake Superior for almost ten minutes, closing in on his target while radar officers followed his progress. The blips on the screens at Truax suddenly merged, which was at first no cause for concern, but did not separate. To the onlookers' bemusement, the single blip then vanished off the screen. American and Canadian rescue efforts failed to recover any wreckage, if there had indeed been a crash, and the pilot was never seen again. Noted investigator Kevin Randle, who included the Kinross Incident in his The UFO Casebook, mentions that the majority of the pilots back at the base believed that the plane and pilot had been seized by the UFO. An Air Force report at the base wrote off the incident as an "aircraft accident."

July 1954 witnessed the incident which took place in the skies over Walesville, NY. An F-94 Starfire sent up to take a closer look at a UFO picked up by the radars at Griffins AFB was struck by a blast of heat fired from the unknown vehicle. The damaged F-94 fell to the ground, smashing into a home and killing five. The pilot and navigator bailed out to safety.

Toward the late 1950's, the Assistant Chief of Staff of Army Intelligence formed an "Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit," evincing the concern felt at the highest levels over these utterly unforeseen developments. U.S Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. George Brown, once described a "free for all" caused by UFO sightings off the Vietnamese coast in 1968, resulting in an Australian destroyer taking damage. In the late 1960's, an F-106 supersonic fighter scrambled to intercept a UFO at 15,000 feet. In a scene worthy of a TIE fighter pursuit from Star Wars, the USAF pilot chased the unknown at lower altitudes through the valleys and canyons of the remote mountain area. The chase ended when the daring pilot smashed into a cliff wall as the UFO zoomed vertically upward (SAGA UFO REPORT, Winter 74).

The air forces of the former Soviet Union also experienced their share of misfortunes during UFO encounters, as testified by information which has surfaced only recently. In 1981, a MIG jet fighter had its underside torn open by an enormous fiery ball reminiscent of a World War II "Foo Fighter". Lt. Boris Korotkov barely managed to return to his base after the intruder caused his fighter's engine to shut down. Two years later, five Soviet MIGs were destroyed by the same "Foo Fighter"-like craft.

There was also the haunting incident involving the destruction of a Cuban MiG-21 by an unidentified object. Radar operators at the Boca Chica Naval Station in Florida noticed a UFO heading toward Cuba at an estimated speed of 600 miles an hour at an altitude of 32,000 feet. A pair of Cuban MiG's intercepted the object, initiating radio contact. The vehicle was described as a large, featureless sphere. When orders to destroy the object were issued from the ground, one of the MiG's suddenly exploded and disintegrated (in other retellings of the story, it was "zapped" by the UFO) while the UFO climbed suddenly to 100,000 feet and continued its southward trajectory unchallenged.

A fascinating document, which purports to be an NSA briefing paper dating back to 1968, contained a stern admonition to take the UFO phenomenon as a serious threat to Earth. The report allegedly reads: "The very fact that UFO phenomena have been witnessed all over the world from very ancient times, and by considerable numbers of reputable scientists in recent times, now indicated rather strongly that UFOs are not all hoaxes." The study goes on to add, ominously: "If "they" discover you, it is an old but hardly invalid rule of thumb, "they" are your technological superiors. Human history has shown us time and time again the tragic results of a confrontation between a technologically superior civilization and a technologically inferior people." In closing, the briefing paper urges: "Investigation would become an intensive emergency action to isolate the threat and determine its precise nature. It would be geared to developing adequate defensive measures in a minimum amount of time [author's italics]."

UFOs have also shown an unhealthy interest in our nuclear arsenal. Authors Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood, whose book Clear Intent: The Government Cover-up of the UFO Experience became a landmark in UFO research, include an October 1975 case during which alien spacecraft hovered over Loring Air Force Base while USAF personnel could do little else but look on helplessly. The most mind-bending case of this nature in any researcher's files is unquestionably the one documented by the distinguished Dr. Berthold Schwarz in his classic UFO Dynamics: a retired Air Force officer, who was involved in the operations necessary to secure a nuclear-bomb laden B-52 Stratofortress after its emergency landing in Vietnam, witnessed a UFO hovering over the stricken aircraft. Guards posted around the bomber heard "clicking sounds" issue from within the plane as the UFO hovered above. The officer went on to discover that the nuclear weapons had been inexplicably neutralized. The same officer told Dr.Schwarz during the course of an interview that it was his belief that the detonation of a Soviet nuclear missile field in the late 60's or early '70s.

On May 9, 1980, the Peruvian Air Force scrambled an Su-22 fighter in pursuit of a circular UFO hovering near the Mariano Melgar air facility. The pilot allegedly fired upon the object at a very close range without inflicting damage, and the intruder sped off, evading pursuit.

A few months later, Kirtland AFB in New Mexico would experience total failure of its main and backup radar systems as a result of deliberate jamming. While the source of the jamming was pinpointed, the systems did not reactivate for over four hours. The Air Force concluded rather cryptically that "the presence of hostile intelligence jamming cannot be ruled out...the method has ben used in the past...frequency monitors reported the interference beam was widespread and of a type unknown to their electronic equipment." Would it be reasonable to speculate that an "Earth Defense Command" (for want of a better name) may have been established as a result of these incidents?

The creation of highly advanced fighters and bombers (advanced technology aircraft) can be seen as an effort to achieve air parity--if not superiority--with the apparently solid craft we call UFOs. Ufologists have collected numerous cases in which conventional jet fighters have either been blown out of the air or in one instance, had their wings sprayed with a substance which made them incredibly hot, forcing the pilots to break pursuit and return to base. The bat-winged B-2 bomber, the F-117A fighter and other "futuristic" aircraft could conceivably belong to this Earth-defense initiative.

The Arrival of the "Chupas"

A particularly surreal chain of incidents took place in northern Brazil during the months of June through September of 1977 which should be mentioned as an example of overt hostile contact with non-terrestrial (or superadvanced, if terrestrial) machinery. The siege of the Amazonian communities along the Tarantins River has been documented by Daniel Rebisso Giese and later by Jacques Vall‚e. The largely cylindrical craft which became known as "chupas" unleashed an all out campaign against the residents of the island of Colhares, tormenting them with beam weapons and disrupting their lives day and night, as the Brazilian military could do little more than document the amazing technology at work and steer all aerial traffic away from the area.

The sheer size of Brazil and the remoteness of its thinly populated northeastern region led many early researchers, like the late Coral Lorenzen, to speculate as early as 1962 that the nature of UFO reconnaissance in the area was military. Her Brazilian correspondent, Dr. Olavo T. Fontes, had composed a paper entitled UFO Weapons--Comments on Technical Aspects Involved, in which he theorized that the electromagnetic and thermal beams fired from unknown craft against terrestrial targets, both man and machine, could best be described as a sort of microwave ionizer capable of short-circuiting electronics and paralyzing mechanical systems. Fontes also argued that ultrasonic beams, capable of producing thermal effects, explained the "heat weapons" associated with UFOs. The ultrasonic beams would have the added ability of setting up resonances which would disrupt the cohesion of physical structures. Almost thirty years later, Dr. Vall‚e would concur that high-powered microwave weapons could account for the "chupas" lethal might.

A President Speaks Out

In the mid-1980's, President Ronald Reagan, at whose behest the Strategic Defense Initiative was undertaken, made a series of cryptic (or misunderstood, at worst) remarks concerning the possibility of an alien invasion. In December 1985, at a speech given before the students and faculty of Fallston High School, and after discussing his recent trip to the Geneva Summit to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, the president mused about the possibility of a sudden threat from another world serving as a catalyst to bring about unity on Earth. He promptly ended his speech on that note.

Two years later, at the 42nd General Assembly of the U.N., the president made his point yet again, saying: "I occasionally think how quickly our differences world-wide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat...and yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?..."

President Reagan allegedly repeated his line of thought on the alien threat in May 1988, during a political dinner held in Chicago. In response to a question bearing no connection to the subject, he replied that he was certain humans would unite and fight together against forces from another planet. No journalist challenged the president's remark, and we remain as bewildered by his statements today as we were then.

An Armed Response

In spite of the number of treaties which proscribe the militarization of space, the detonation of nuclear weapons in orbit, and other hostile applications, the space-faring nations have liberally tested a number of war-connected artifacts over the last twenty years. In the mid-1970's, the Soviets began to work diligently on the so-called "hunter/killer" satellites, laser beams, and FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment Systems). During the 1980's work on the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program, also known as the "Peace Shield", introduced advanced concepts such as electromagnetic railguns and other veritable wonder weapons as an ultrasophisticated way of protecting the United States against Soviet aggression or nuclear assault from rogue countries (Libya, Iraq, etc.). As has been stated elsewhere, the sophistication and capabilities of this system went far beyond the declared objective, causing many to believe that "Star Wars" had a more interplanetary agenda in mind.

Dr. Richard Boylan, a psychiatrist and UFO researcher who took it'upon himself to visit all the major military installations in the saucer-ridden American Southwest, told author C.D.B. Bryan that his visit to Tonopah, Nevada, (home of the Air Force Defense Command HQ) helped him gain confirmation that much greater progress on SDI had been made than what was officially announced. Boylan also suggested that electromagnetic pulse weaponry, developed by AT&T and Sandia National Laboratory, could well be designed at repelling nonterrestrial air/spacecraft, since the capability is excessive for vaporizing incoming ballistic missiles. The possibility that the "Star Wars" program may have become operational behind everyone's back is further corroborated by the existence of "Project Timberwind", the code name for the mammoth rocket boosters assembled to lift the components of the Space Defense Initiative into orbit. These oversized boosters have allegedly been seen at Nellis AFB.

During his travels, Dr. Boylan visited a museum operated by the Department of Energy where he learned that the U.S. had achieved the capability of accelerating particles able to deliver a multitrillion volt burst of energy through a one inch thick lithium diode. While such a capability jibes perfectly with the beam weapons being tested (and possibly deployed) as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, it again constitutes an excessive punch to knock out an ICBM when less energy-consuming methods like the Homing Overlay Experiment (HOE) have proven that ballistic missiles can be destroyed by simply colliding with them at tremendous speeds.

The existence of other surface-to-space defense systems has also been documented over the years. Among them is MIRACL (Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser), which was tested in New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range in September 1985. This "directed energy experiment," as it was described in DOD literature, successfully destroyed a ballistic missile booster, proving that beam weapons were could no longer be dismissed as special effects for science-fiction films. A year after MIRACL was put to the test, the first particle beam was successfully deployed. In this experiment, a simulacrum of a warhead was irradiated with a high-power proton beam, causing the explosive contained within the warhead to explode. In the spring of 1989, the Alpha Chemical Laser was proven successful during initial tests as a candidate for a future space-based beam weapon. A demonstration of this system was staged for the former Soviet Ambassador, Yuri Nazarkin, and a group of Russian specialists--the very "adversary" it was designed to threaten. There can be no question of the global character of the research into these defensive systems. Since 1985, when then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger invited U.S. allies to join in the effort, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Israel, and presumably even the Russian Confederation, have played a part in it.

Research has not circumscribed itself to lethal beams of cohered energy. The Thunderbolt Electromagnetic Launcher, one of the "electromagnetic railgun" concepts developed under SDI, could potentially fire projectiles at a velocity in excess of 8.6 miles per second.These "baby steps" into a hitherto unexplored realm of offensive weaponry prove that we are gradually building a capability to defend ourselves against a far greater threat than the one posed by enemy missiles.

Enter the Wonder Weapons

In 1986, a daring "commando" made up of Greenpeace activists penetrated the Nuclear Test Site at Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range, protesting American atomic tests. The group was left dumbfounded not by the horrific destruction of the terrain, but by something in the sky--an enormous black flying wing, as silent as a manta-ray moving underwater. The Greenpeacers had no way of knowing they had seen the B-2 Stealth bomber--a full five years before its official unveiling ceremony at Palmdale--at a time when we were being told that the project was still under development.

According to a military magazine, the secretive and controversial "Aurora" project relates to a methane-powered, hypersonic aircraft capable of attaining speeds as high as Mach 7 (5,000 miles an hour). This superplane allegedly has a three-man crew and has been covertly in service since 1985, spanning the distance separating its home base at Nellis AFB from Japan's Kadena air field in little less than 2.5 hours, refueling in mid-air with converted KC-135Q tankers.

The spy-thriller names of projects bandied about in the late Eighties and early Nineties by UFO cognoscenti--"Snowbird," "Aquarius," "Redlight,"--- may have actually referred to bona fide Air Force projects than recovered extraterrestrial craft. Concealing such astonishing advanced technology behind the cynical guise of alien technology would only be natural, since in all likelihood it would distract prying eyes from taking further interest in the "discredited" field of ufology. Espionage and UFOs have maintained an uneasy relationship over the past thirty years: the late French scientist and author Jacques Bergier, who was never worried about making his disbelief in UFOs widely known, pointed out that flying saucer reports constituted a great way for a hostile power to learn about the frequency and number of oscillations of the radar systems covering a particular area, the location of the nearest air force base, and the nature of the military response during a critical situation. According to Bergier, the former Soviet Union was very strict in this regard: "all ufology groups were disbanded and some of their members were consigned to the Gulag. Fighter pilots received formal instructions to shoot down anything that hadn't requested permission to fly over their territory. This policy led the former USSR to shoot down an amazing array of objects, such as an American spy balloon that imitated the beating of an eagle's wings.

While UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are now a matter of public record since the disclosures concerning the Tier III Minus UAV, better known as Project DarkStar, in June 1995, there was also talk of a Lockheed project called "Shadow", allegedly deployed during the Gulf War and resembling a flying saucer. Could even more sophisticated UAVs be crossing our skies? The following account strongly suggests the possibility:

In a recent segment of his Ovnis Confidencial (UFO Confidential) radio program, Puerto Rican ufologist Jorge Mart¡n recently disclosed that a military source had advised him on an interesting development which involved the Arecibo Radiotelescope facility. During the month of May 1994, residents of the farms surrounding the installation were treated to a most peculiar sight: artifacts of diverse descriptions were seen "descending" from the heavens to given altitude over the radiotelescope. The officials in charge of this most singular project informed the concerned locals that they were simply "bringing satellites down from their orbits"--a patently absurd notion, since the satellites would have incinerated upon reentry. The objects were described as boomerang-shaped, some of them equipped with a large metallic ball in the object's center. Once lowered, the objects would then rise once more, disappearing in the sky. Management of this curious operation was allegedly in the hands of U.S. military personnel. Unknown aircraft with triangular or boomerang-shaped configurations have been reported over Puerto Rico since the late 1980's. While comparisons of the aircraft sighted do not correspond with the B-2 bomber or the F-117A, it is very likely that the descendants or even the "grandchildren" of these advanced technology aircraft could be tested in certain locations, such as Puerto Rico, or even closer to home, over Ellicottville, New York.

The sightings in this beautiful region of western New York state in the spring and summer of 1994 described a boomerang-shaped object which could be identified with a military prototype similar to the High-Altitude Endurance UAV depicted in the Tech Update section of the January 1995 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Sightings of unidentified aerial objects with a configuration reminiscent of the notorious flying weapon employed by Australian aborigines are not limited to the Ellicottville area, although they do seem to confine themselves to a certain latitude. Between 1991 and 1992, the city of Williamsport, PA, was besieged by "boomerang"-shaped craft. The Williamsport craft were characterized by a high-pitched, sharp noise resembling the sound made by a freight train, or according to some, the sound made by the Mothership from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As in the Ellicottville sightings, the vehicles moved very slowly and at very low altitudes. Their wingspans were reported as ranging from 100 feet to 600 feet.

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