Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EDGAR MITCHELL: Until the current period,

or until the last 30 years, it was conventional wisdom

both in science and theology-- we're alone in the universe,

the whole, single repository of life

anywhere in the known universe.

Well, no one believes that anymore.

NARRATOR: In 1961, astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Frank

Drake devised the Drake equation, which calculates

the number of worlds with intelligent life

capable of technologically communicating with us.

According to Drake's own calculations,

there are 10,000 communicative civilizations

in the Milky Way galaxy.

Four decades later, the Drake equation

has been greatly expanded on by Dr. Amir Aczel, bestselling

author and Associate Professor of Mathematics

and Statistics at Bentley College, Massachusetts.

His latest book, "Probability 1,"

deals with why there must be intelligent life

in the universe.

My calculation of "Probability 1"

goes far beyond what was explored with Drake's equation.

Drake's equation refers only to our galaxy.

My calculation goes to the visible universe as a whole,

which has billions of galaxies, each

containing billions of stars.

So if you multiply all these numbers,

you get tremendous odds for the existence of life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I think one of the main changes that has taken place

in recent years in astronomers' views

of whether or not there might be other civilizations elsewhere

in the universe has to do with the fact

that we've discovered dozens of other planetary systems

around other stars.

Now in most cases, the planets are

giant planets like Jupiter, not the kind

that would harbor life.

But where there are those kinds of planets,

there are likely to be other planets

too, in those solar systems.

And so we're optimistic these days about life elsewhere.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What's the nature of the universe we live in?

What is our relationship to the larger reality?

I looked up and all of a sudden there was this,

you know-- gotta say it-- flying saucer.

Didn't even make a sound.

Not even a sound.

A little bit of swamp light appears here.

It goes out, another one appears over here.

That goes out.

MAN: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

Man, it was just, phew, gone.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

I saw one, but I don't know where-- it just disappeared.

INTERVIEWER (ON TV): There is nothing to hide?

There's nothing to hide at all.

I was a part of the United States Air

Force cover-up for 18 years.

There's no way, within the military

or within the government, of keeping track of something

that is classified.

MAN: Yeah, awful.

It clearly had a shape to it, and a big shape.

This should be the subject of rigorous scientific

investigation and not the subject of rubbishing

by tabloid newspapers.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers.

The Air Force interest in this problem

has been due to our feeling of an obligation

to identify and analyze to the best of our ability anything

in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace

to the United States.

In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947,

we have received and analyzed between 1,000 and 2,000

reports.

There have been a certain percentage of this volume

of reports that have been made by credible observers of

relatively incredible things.

It is this group of observations that we

now are attempting to resolve.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: For the last 50 years, 95% of all UFO incidents

have been explained in down-to-earth, conventional

terms.

These explanations include misidentified aircraft, weather

balloons, atmospheric phenomena, light aberrations,

mass hallucinations, hoaxes, and swamp gas.

However, these explanations cannot

be applied to the remaining 5%.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The cumulative evidence in these cases

leads towards a possible conclusion

that some UFOs are not of Earth origin.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In this documentary, we will present unexplained cases

from around the world, investigate 50 years

of official contradictions and denials,

and put forth possible reasons for secrecy.

We will examine scientific theories on interstellar travel

and discuss the current movement for official disclosure

on a subject that has primarily been considered unworthy

of serious investigation.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The case of the Phoenix Lights began on an evening

in March of 1997.

ANNOUNCER (ON TV): Late breaking.

You're watching News 15 at 10:00.

MARC BAILEY (ON TV): Do these lights belong

to visitors from outer space?

Hundreds of people across the valley

think it's a distinct possibility.

Good evening, I'm Marc Bailey.

And I'm Robin Sewell.

Thanks for joining us.

We start tonight with those strange dots of light

that were the talk of the town.

Tonight--

NARRATOR: As reported, multiple UFOs were sighted

throughout the Phoenix basin.

Numerous eyewitnesses were already outside,

looking up into the night sky to catch a glimpse

of the Hale-Bopp comet.

Yeah, everybody was excited about the comet.

But in the middle of that, these very mysterious lights

appeared over Phoenix, over Maricopa County.

NARRATOR: Michael Tanner is part of a team of investigators who

received roughly 800 reports from eyewitnesses

regarding the Phoenix incident.

Between 8:15 and 8:45, we had an enormous craft

at varying altitudes come right through the center

of the valley of Phoenix, led by a formation

of orbs that were clearly visible

through most of this state.

It passed right in front of us, just about-- right

above eye's length.

My estimate of the size of the craft from the nose as it

passed us, where we lived, to the end

of the left wing that passed in front of us

was over 5,000 foot long.

It's coming across the sky, and as it's moving,

it's blocking and unblocking the stars.

There was actually a shape.

It was actually five lights that were a V, one in front

and two on each side.

And it was perfect.

It was a perfect triangle.

The object we saw, if we opened up a newspaper,

you could not block out the object that we saw.

People say, Mike, nah, you saw a B-2 bomber.

My response was, we could land all 40 of our B-2 bombers

on the wing of that craft.

If you can picture Camelback Mountain, a well-known landmark

in Phoenix, something about four times

that size levitating down the road with lights on it,

that'll give you an idea what this was like.

And he says, you're not going to believe what I saw.

And I said, yes, I would.

I says, that's all that's been on the news all night long,

is this, this craft.

The community got pretty excited about it.

There was a lot of-- a lot of press and borderline hysteria,

almost.

Explanations have been tossed about-- that they

were flares, that they were planes flying in formation.

But Marc and Robin, we checked with the FAA today,

we checked with Sky Harbor, and we checked with Luke Air Force

Base, and there's been no official explanation

of those strange bright lights last night.

NARRATOR: Truck driver Bill Greiner

was driving south on I-17 towards Luke Air Force Base.

He witnessed several fighter jets scramble to intercept

two UFOs directly overhead.

I pulled my truck alongside the west silos, which

faces Luke Air Force Base.

It was, like, right there, and I was here unloading.

Everything was completely quiet.

It was, like, really eerie.

There was one right over the base

and then there was another one out toward Wickenburg,

and these things were just hovering.

They were huge orbs.

But they didn't make no sound or nothing.

They were just hovering right there over the base.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All of a sudden, I hear a lot of roaring come

out of Luke Air Force Base.

And here there is two fighters coming out,

and they had the afterburners on 'cause

there were huge flames coming out the back of these things.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ripped right around the back of me

and shot right for those things.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Then they disappeared on them and it was just, phew, gone.

The military says the lights over Arizona

last night were flares, but the people

who saw the lights last night say

they couldn't have been flares.

NARRATOR: In central Phoenix, in what is known as the Sunnyslope

area, the Ley family were coming home in the early evening

to watch for the Hale-Bopp comet when

they witnessed a very large craft

fly directly over their house.

You know, 'cause when the craft went over,

I really focused on the light.

The tip was right out in the street and the arm is going by,

and the end of the arm was at least to that mountain

over there.

It was 600, 700 feet away, with these huge lights

set inside of it.

And I look inside and it's, like-- it's wavy.

When you look down the street on a hot day in Phoenix,

above the street, like, it's really wavy

and you see everything kind of distorted.

That's what it looked like up inside the middle of the craft.

And it just skimmed by.

Didn't even make a sound.

Not even a sound.

NARRATOR: Further eyewitness testimony

came from Stacey Roads and her daughter

Emily, who both saw a giant craft fly over their car.

It was gunmetal black.

It wasn't shiny, it wasn't invisible.

It was more of a dull, bluish-black color.

And we both just stayed there and looked

at it for a couple minutes, and it was completely silent.

NARRATOR: Mike Fortson spotted the same craft

from his backyard in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix.

When you're looking to the north, towards Phoenix proper,

the lights of the city of Phoenix and Tempe

and Scottsdale and all these here

will form a gray background.

And this was a black object coming

through a gray background.

We had no problem whatsoever seeing this vehicle.

We knew it wasn't really ours because it

was just too doggone big.

Matter of fact, "profoundly massive"

is a better way to describe it.

We don't really have words in our language to describe

something that large.

It was huge.

NARRATOR: Councilwoman Frances Barwood

was approached by a reporter who complained

about the lack of response from local government

regarding the sightings.

What this reporter said was that they had gone

to every level of government, including the City of Phoenix,

and nobody would talk to them.

That this object went from north of Prescott and Paulden

all the way down to Tucson and then

was also seen in Wickenburg, and nobody

would give them any answer.

They either told them that they were not

going to talk about it at all or that there was nothing--

that nothing happened.

NARRATOR: Responding to mounting pressure from his constituents,

Governor Fife Symington held a press conference.

Oh, I'm going to order a full, you know,

investigation of this through DPS.

We're going to make all the necessary inquiries

and we're gonna get to the bottom of it.

We're gonna find out if it was a UFO--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Later that day, Governor Symington

held an unscheduled live press conference

to announce that they had discovered the source

behind the Phoenix Lights.

FIFE SYMINGTON (ON TV): Now I'll ask

Officer Stein and his colleagues to escort

the accused into the room, so that we may

all look upon the guilty party.

[LAUGHTER]

Now this just goes to show that you

guys are entirely too serious.

[LAUGHTER]

I think everybody pretty much laughed at it.

I thought it was really disgusting.

He was just dismissing everything

that these people had seen and said, just

like we're all Looney Tunes.

I just thought that was a really improper attitude

for somebody in his position.

Nobody in state, local, federal, military-- nobody

wanted to talk about it.

They didn't want to interview witnesses.

They said it didn't happen.

They said it didn't concern them.

There was one councilwoman, Frances Barwood.

She's the one that spoke up and said, why don't we investigate?

And then when it came time for her election,

she lost, and the press, the media, everybody else

was really trashing her bad.

Why is everybody so afraid?

And the only thing I can think of is, one,

they were afraid of their careers.

Which, you know, comes to a point of what's more important,

your soul or your job?

And I guess to them, it's their job.

And the second thing is the scorn factor.

NARRATOR: In 2006, we caught up with Governor Fife Symington

to find out what really happened and whether he believed

the military's explanation that the Phoenix

Lights were just flares.

I was never satisfied with the explanation

that they were high-altitude flares.

It didn't look like that.

They were too-- it was all too symmetrical.

I mean, it clearly had a shape to it, and a big shape.

And it was a constant shape.

And you can't control flares that way.

There's just no way they were flares.

NARRATOR: We also asked him what he

wanted to accomplish with his alien stunt

at the press conference.

The hysteria that was building with Francis

Barwood on the city council and some others.

And I thought it was just-- you know,

they were just getting too, you know, overboard about it.

I mean, it was unbelievable the hysteria that was building,

and I just felt that there was a need for some levity,

and we were known, once in awhile, to pull a prank.

And I dressed my chief of staff up as a Martian.

We led him in in this Martian costume in handcuffs

with the Department of Public Safety police officers

and it was just hilarious.

And it was just a total meltdown at the press conference.

It was a spoof.

And now I'll ask Officer Stein and his colleagues

to escort the accused into the room

so that we may all look upon the guilty party.

Don't get him too close to me, please.

NARRATOR: We confronted him with a tape recording from one

of his many constituents who failed to find

the humor in this staged event.

It's been a long time since I've

been put on the spot on TV.

[LAUGHTER]

STACEY ROADS (ON TAPE): Is this still a matter of ridicule

to him after he came out on TV with his alien,

making us all look a little foolish?

We've all remained unwavering of our descriptions.

A lot of evidence has been provided since then

and I'm wondering if he still feels

this is a matter of ridicule or if he

has taken a new stance on this.

Well, it's a good question.

And of course, as I said earlier,

I never felt that the overall situation

was a matter of ridicule.

We certainly took advantage of it.

Now this just goes to show that you

guys are entirely too serious.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, you know, if I had to do it all over again,

I probably would have handled it differently.

But at least I have the opportunity now

to correct the record, and that's important.

NARRATOR: In correcting the record,

he told us what he would say now.

I would say that, at that time, over Phoenix,

we all experienced a very exciting sighting of some kind

of a craft of unknown origin.

Nobody's ever been able to explain it.

And that it was-- most of us feel that it was definitely,

you know, of alien origin-- enormous, inexplicable.

Probably one of the major sightings in modern history

in the country, 'cause a lot of people

saw it in Maricopa County, and I saw it too.

And we never got to the bottom of it.

We never found out what they were.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The US military's involvement in the UFO subject

dates back to World War II.

It began with the sighting by Air Force

pilots of mysterious, luminous orbs called

"foo fighters," which would pace aircraft during missions

and then dart away.

They'd fly circles around anything we've got flying.

That strange behavior includes the ability

to both hover and move at extremely high velocity,

to make a right-angle turns at high speed,

to go straight up, straight down.

All of this, typically, without any noise,

without any visible external engine, without any wings,

without any tail.

We simply could not do that back 50 years ago.

NARRATOR: In the summer of 1947, numerous UFOs

were spotted by local authorities, airline pilots,

and civilians worldwide.

By July, these sightings made headlines in newspapers

all across the United States, culminating on the 8th of July

with the alleged recovery of a crashed disc on a ranch

near Roswell, New Mexico.

The military were quick to respond.

They sent agents out all over this area

here to try to get information on Roswell.

And yet, we stood back like fools

and said that it didn't exist.

It was a weather balloon.

NARRATOR: 50 years after the incident, Colonel Phillip J

Corso, formerly a member of the National Security Council,

revealed that the weather balloons over Roswell

was a cover story for the crash of an alien craft.

We had to cover to protect our own installation,

'cause they tabbed us as kooks and it

would destroy our organization.

You had to understand what was going

on in the government and the climate of opinion and all.

So, discretion better part of valor,

we just kept it to ourselves.

Only some certain people knew about it, head to head, brain

to brain-- no paper trail.

NARRATOR: Although the official position claimed that UFOs

didn't exist, this secret memorandum

written by General Nathan Twining suggests otherwise.

The consensus expressed by the Air Materiel Command

was that "the phenomenon reported

is something real and not visionary or fictitious."

The memo continues, "There are objects probably approximating

the shape of a disc of such appreciable size

as to appear to be as large as a man-made aircraft."

In this chaotic climate and in an effort

to reorganize the US military, President Truman passed

the National Security Act.

This act built the framework for America's modern

national security structure.

Among other things, the act established the National

Security Council and the CIA.

The National Security Act of 1947

allowed for the creation of a state within a state.

NARRATOR: Author of "UFOs and the National Security State,"

Richard Dolan asserts that the signing of the National

Security Act created an intelligence infrastructure

capable of maintaining a very high level of secrecy.

One with an enormous amount of power,

an enormous amount of wealth, an enormous amount of secrecy

and latitude of action.

NARRATOR: The level of secrecy imposed by the US government

on the UFO issue is revealed in this top secret memorandum.

It was written in 1950 by electronics engineer Wilbert

Smith, a high-ranking ranking official in the Canadian

Department of Transport.

After a meeting with a top government scientist employed

by the Pentagon, Smith was informed that "flying saucers

exist," and more significantly, "the matter is the most highly

classified subject in the United States government,

rating higher even than the H-bomb."

[EXPLOSION]

In my opinion, I think they were wary that it would panic

the public if they knew that someone had vehicles

that had this kind of performance way

back right after World War II.

NARRATOR: On a clear night in February of 1951,

Lieutenant Graham Bethune sat at the controls

of a US Navy transport plane en route from Iceland to America.

The flight was routine until Bethune spotted a strange group

of lights below his aircraft.

And we were at 10,000 feet-- this is about 15 miles away.

It came up to us like that, just about that fast.

And of course, I disengaged the autopilot to put the nose over.

I thought we'd be able to go under this thing

and not collide with it.

And when I did, it's staring me in the face

and you couldn't see anything out of the cockpit.

We could tell it was a monster, about 300 feet in diameter.

As it drifted out to our right, we could see the dome.

NARRATOR: According to Lieutenant Bethune,

the object remained in this position for about a minute.

It then accelerated rapidly and disappeared above the horizon.

Upon landing at an airbase in Newfoundland,

he was debriefed and interrogated

by several officers from Naval Intelligence.

At the conclusion, he was ordered to never speak

about this incident again.

You accept anything like that simply

because you're in the military and that's your job,

defending the country.

And whatever they tell you to do, you do.

NARRATOR: The identity of the group responsible for imposing

the secrecy around the UFO issue was revealed to Lieutenant

Bethune several months later in a conversation with an officer

from Naval Intelligence.

And I ask him the question.

I said, what happens to this report?

Where does it go?

He said, it goes to Navy Intelligence, the Chief

of Naval Operations, then it goes to a Joint

Intelligence Committee.

And of course, later on, I learned that was M-A-J-I-C,

which is Majority Agency of Joint Intelligence.

Now he said, this is a small committee,

but this committee determined whether it would

affect our national security.

That if it did, it would probably

never go anywhere else.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: One of the main arguments

used to deny the possibility of interstellar travel

is the question of distance.

The closest star, Alpha Centauri,

is 4.2 light years away.

If astronauts traveled to this star

at the speed they reached the moon,

it would take them roughly 100,000 years.

ALAN SHEPARD (ON RADIO): OK, make it smooth.

NARRATOR: Another major obstacle in obtaining

interstellar travel would be the amount of fuel required.

When you're driving a car, the amount

of propellant you have to carry in your fuel tank

is very small, just a few percent of the weight of car.

When you're trying to carry enough propellant to take

a rocket ship vast distances, even in our solar system,

pretty soon you find yourself carrying a propellant

just to propel the propellant.

This problem skyrockets to infinity.

So we'd want to go to propulsion systems

that very, very high exhaust velocities.

And with a chemical reaction-- essentially, a barely contained

explosion with a chemical rocket--

you have a limit to that.

And that limit is currently almost

met by the Shuttle engines.

You can't go beyond it very well.

And so we have to go to some other kinds

of propulsive source.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Even if we could develop a radical form

of propulsion capable of obtaining near lightspeed,

Einstein's theory of relativity tells us

that we would encounter another enormous problem.

There's a law of relativity that says that the closer you

try to accelerate something like a rocket to the speed of light,

the more massive it becomes.

And so it becomes infinitely massive at the speed

of light, which makes it impossible to get there.

A new way of thinking about the universe--

NARRATOR: Physics professor, Rhodes Scholar,

and author of the national bestseller, "The Elegant

Universe," Dr. Brian Greene has been

researching relativity and quantum

physics for several decades.

Dr. Greene brings up another problem with traveling

near the speed of light.

If astronauts one day go to the moon

and beyond in ships that travel at a substantial fraction

of the speed of light, when they return to Earth,

relatively really tells us they will be in for a shock.

Because while they may have thought a few months went by,

they'll get back to Earth and they'll see that years

and years-- hundreds, perhaps thousands of years--

will have gone by.

This is not science fiction.

This is science fact.

So the idea of traveling between stellar systems

in normal space, I don't believe, is possible.

We're gonna have to invoke jump gates from "Babylon 5," or warp

drives from "Star Trek."

And of course, in 100 years, who knows what might develop?

MAN: Three, two, one, zero.

NARRATOR: Although, at present, the solution to interstellar

travel may sound like science fiction,

a growing number of scientists are

exploring radical new theories that

may circumvent these obstacles.

We're beginning to discover in theoretical physics

that maybe our entire universe is just

a subset of a much greater universe,

a multi-dimensional universe.

That's being investigated in modern superstring

and M-brane theory.

In the context of those theories,

there may be new possibilities that, so to speak, step outside

of space-time, move somewhere else,

and come back into our universe at some distant location.

Einstein teaches us that the fabric of space

can respond to its environment.

It can warp and curve.

And in fact, the equations of general relativity

allow the fabric of space to have severe bends.

So long as you distribute matter and energy

in the appropriate way, you can bend

space fairly significantly.

So in principle, it's possible that if you want

to go from one end of the universe to another,

you don't have to travel all along the fabric of space.

Maybe you can bend the fabric of space,

and then travel from here to here-- a very short journey--

by a shortcut, a wormhole.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Continuing research into the possibilities

of interstellar travel are currently

being conducted by NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion

team headed by Mark Millis.

What we're trying to do is break it down into the smaller

steps to attack the critical make/break

issues of some of the things we need to find out.

Can you propel a vehicle without propellant?

Can you conserve momentum in the process?

The issues of faster-than-light travel,

the causality violations and things like that.

Address those in smaller steps to see if you

can eventually lead that way.

MICHAEL LINDEMANN: Today we have scientists working for NASA,

working for the US Air Force, working for British Aerospace,

working for other firms and agencies

that we don't even know about that are intent on discovering

how to do star travel.

They have already decided it can be done theoretically.

Now the question is, OK, what's the trick?

Let's figure it out.

If you look back 50, 100 years to what science as we knew then

and what we could do today, who knows

what we could do in the future?

So I have an inherent optimism about progress

and I think that what seems impossible today will

possibly be possible tomorrow.

We're at that point of imagining these things,

asking these technological questions.

Clearly that opens the door to at least the possibilities

that others have figured it out already.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MAN (ON RADIO): T-minus 15 seconds and counting.

Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two--

All right, there it goes.

NARRATOR: In 1965, Gordon Cooper was the last American astronaut

to go up into space alone.

GORDON COOPER (ON RADIO): see what they think on it.

Now the action that I have taken is to turn off

my 0.05 g switch gears and my--

NARRATOR: He orbited the planet 22 times.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[CHEERING]

GORDON COOPER: I think those already

that know me know that I've always spoken honestly

and straightforward to you.

I intend to do so today.

NARRATOR: 10 years earlier, while stationed at Edwards Air

Force Base, Cooper witnessed an event that

has yet to be explained nearly 50 years later.

He was supervising the filming of a precision landing

facility for F-86 fighter jets.

Suddenly, a saucer-like craft flew

directly over the cameramen.

Three landing gear apparatus opened and the object

landed on the dry lakebed.

GORDON COOPER: It was just a typical saucer

shape, that double lenticular shape, metallic.

And they went out and picked up their cameras

and moved on out toward him, filming.

And he lifted off, put the gear back in the well,

and climbed out at a very rate of speed and disappeared.

NARRATOR: Cooper had the film footage

of the strange craft developed.

By the time it returned from processing,

he had gone up through the ranks to report the incident.

Finally, with the colonel telling me the, uh-- you know,

when the film arrived at my desk,

to put it in a carrier pouch.

There'd be a courier there at my office by that time already

and they'd arranged for him to fly in our base airplane back

to Washington with these films.

MALE INTERVIEWER: Did you watch the film?

We didn't have a chance to run it.

I had a chance to hold it up to the window and look at it.

It was certainly good film.

NARRATOR: After the developed film

was sent by plane to Washington, it was

never seen or heard of again.

MALE INTERVIEWER: Did you ever keep in touch with anybody

about it or discuss it?

How would I keep in touch with anybody about it?

There's no way within the military

or within the government of keeping track of something that

is classified, unless you're directly involved in it,

and I was not.

I went into space to learn about the universe we live in,

to get new insights, to go beyond the boundaries

of our known existence.

EDGAR MITCHELL (ON RADIO): How's this?

Look OK?

NARRATOR: Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon Edgar

Mitchell states in his book, "The Way of the Explorer,"

that he's never had firsthand experience with UFOs.

However, he has "met with credible professionals

within two governments who have testified

to their own firsthand experiences

with 'close encounters' during their official duties.

The only people I know of that claim

to have been in that position are former intelligence,

military, and government people and some contractor people

whose official duties in the early days

were to investigate this and know about it.

Those people are under-- were under at that time--

great restrictions and high security

clearance that prevented them from telling

the general public about it.

What we photographed up there affected me

for the rest of my life.

NARRATOR: In 1964, former US Air Force lieutenant Bob Jacobs

was in the 1369th photo squadron at Vandenberg

Air Force Base in California.

He was in charge of photo-optical instrumentation

at a tracking site in Big Sur, 124 miles away.

His mission was to film an Atlas rocket go through all three

stages of powered flight.

This particular mission was part of the Nike Zeus objective

for the development of an anti-missile missile

during the height of the Cold War.

All cameras rolled as they heard liftoff from Vandenberg

over their radio.

MAN (ON RADIO): Six, five, four, three, two, one.

ROBERT JACOBS: We were looking down south, southwest,

and the missile popped up through the fog.

It was just beautiful.

Then our guys on our M45 tracking

mount with 180-inch lenses on it got it.

And sure enough, we could see all three

stages of powered flight as they burned out and dropped away.

And then, of course, to our naked eye, all we saw

was a kind of smoke trail going off into subspace.

So we whoopeed and shouted and heard the film

wrap off in the BU telescope and figured,

well, that was our first big deal and we got it.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant Jacobs then took the cans of film

down to Vandenberg to have them developed that night.

The following morning, Jacobs was ordered to go immediately

to the office of Major Florence J

Mansmann, the ranking optical instrumentation

officer in charge.

I walked into his office and they

had a screen and a 16-millimeter projector set up.

There was a couch and Major Mansmann said sit down.

And there were two guys, as I recall--

two guys in grey suits, civilian clothes,

which was fairly unusual.

And Major Mansmann said, "Watch this,"

and turned on the film projector.

And I watched the screen and there

was the launch from the day or two before at Big Sur.

As the Atlas missile entered the frame,

we could see the whole third stage, which has two rocket

nozzles like this and one in the center, a gimbaled one

in the center, fill in our frame from 100 and-- oh,

about 160 miles.

It pretty exciting optics.

And then on that telescope we could see the warhead,

the dummy warhead.

NARRATOR: According to Jacobs, at this stage,

the rocket was travelling between 11,000

and 14,000 miles per hour when a saucer-shaped

craft entered the frame.

It flew into the frame like this

and it shot a beam of light at the warhead.

Now remember, all this stuff is flying at several thousand

miles an hour.

So the thing fires a beam of light at the warhead,

hits it, fires another beam of light,

and then flies out the way it came in.

And the warhead tumbles out of space.

Now, when the lights came on, Major Mansmann

turned around, looked at me, and said,

were you guys screwing around up there?

And I said, no, sir.

And he said, what was that?

And I said, it looks to me like we got a UFO.

NARRATOR: Nearly two decades later,

several letters written by Major Florence J Mansmann

were obtained.

In one dated March 8, 1983, Major Mansmann corroborated

Lieutenant Jacobs' story.

"In the film, the assumption was at that time extraterrestrial.

Details would be sketchy and from memory.

The shape was classic disc.

The center seemed to be a raised bubble."

Now Major Mansmann said to me, after some discussion

about it-- he said, you are never to speak of this again.

As far as you're concerned, this never happened.

NARRATOR: In another letter, Major Mansmann describes how

two agents took the footage.

"They did not sign out for all the footage,

but took out that part that showed the encounter

and returned the rest of the film as a 'complete' package.

The one agent stated as he handed me back the film,

'That leaves you off the hook, but not off any disclosure--

understood?' Naturally, my answer was, 'Yes, sir.'"

Major Mansmann never saw it again

and, as far as I'm concerned, nobody else ever saw it again.

Certainly not at Vandenberg.

I'm certain that it left Vandenberg

and went somewhere else.

NARRATOR: Another case involving nuclear missiles

happened three years later at Malmstrom

Air Force Base in Montana.

This site is the largest missile field in the world.

We simply were told not to talk about it.

We did not talk about it to anyone.

NARRATOR: As a Strategic Air Command launch controller,

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Salas was

one of the men responsible for the deployment

of nuclear Minuteman missiles.

Three, two, one, key turn.

NARRATOR: These missiles were to be launched as a counterattack

in the event of nuclear war.

On March 16, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Salas

was on duty when he was contacted by his topside guard

stating that there was an unidentified object

above the missile site.

--as I can tell, it'll be past the initiating area in--

NARRATOR: Salas ordered the guard

to observe and report back on any further development.

Then he called back within a few minutes

and was very frightened.

I could tell by his voice he was extremely agitated.

He said there was an object hovering

outside the front gate, a reddish-orange,

oval-shaped object.

And it just hung there quietly.

I went and woke up my commander and told

him about the two phone calls.

And as I was telling him about the phone calls,

our missiles went into no-go condition, one after the other.

We lost nearly 20 missiles that morning.

NARRATOR: After speaking with his commander,

Salas again contacted the topside guard.

The guard said that the UFO had vanished.

Basically, it just took off at high speed.

It was no longer there.

These missiles are controlled individually,

so if something did happen within the system--

the electrical system, let's say, or the command and control

system-- for one missile, one launch facility,

it would not affect the others.

One select switch off.

Check.

ROBERT SALAS: And in addition, these missiles

are separated by miles.

So all these things point to the fact

that somehow this object was able to disable these missiles.

NARRATOR: Later that day, Salas was ordered

to report to the Air Force Office

of Special Investigations for debriefing by two OSI officers.

And so after we gave them our little debrief, the first thing

the OSI guy did is stand up and said,

you need to sign these documents not to disclose any of this

to anyone, ever.

And we signed and basically that was it.

Neither one of them asked too many more questions

and we were escorted out.

NARRATOR: Several recently declassified

documents support Salas' claims of UFO

sightings near Malmstrom.

This preliminary report dated the 24th of March,

1967 states that "between the hours of 2100 and 0400 Mountain

Standard Time numerous reports were received by Malmstrom Air

Force Base agencies of UFO sightings in the Great Falls,

Montana area."

It goes on further to state that "reports of a UFO landing

near Belt, Montana were received from several sources,

including deputies of Cascade County Sheriff's Office."

Another formally classified secret Air Force telex states

that "the fact that no apparent reason for the loss of 10

missiles can be readily identified

as cause for grave concern to this headquarters."

In 1993, after Lieutenant Colonel Salas

had retired from the Air Force, he

tried to gain access to official Air Force records

of the incident.

In a letter from the Department of the Air Force,

he was informed that "no UFO report affected

national security," making reference to an attached Air

Force fact sheet which states "no UFO reported, investigated,

and evaluated by the Air Force has

ever given any indication of threat

to our national security."

If 20 nuclear missiles going down the same time UFOs are

sighted-- nearly 20-- is not a national security incident,

then I don't know what is.

NARRATOR: If unidentified flying objects

are capable of disabling our most powerful weapon systems,

then understandably the military would

not want to reveal any information

exposing its vulnerability.

This is confirmed in a letter from the Department of the US

Air Force which states, "as regards this subject matter,

mere existence or nonexistence is currently

and properly classified per executive order

and exempt from mandatory disclosure

under the Freedom of Information Act

because it would reveal defense capability or lack thereof."

This letter was a response to an inquiry

made by electronic system technician Lee Graham.

At the time, Mr. Graham worked at Aerojet, a prime contractor

to the US Air Force in developing DSP satellites.

He asked the foreign technology division

if the satellite system he worked on

could and had detected UFOs.

Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make--

NARRATOR: On five separate occasions,

Ronald Reagan made references to an outside alien threat

and the unifying effect it would have on us all.

One such reference was made in September of 1987

while addressing the United Nations.

I occasionally think how quickly our differences

worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat

from outside this world.

And yet I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?

What could be more alien to the universal aspirations

of our peoples than war and the threat of war?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Not every government chooses

to deny the existence of UFOs.

Since the fall of communism in 1989,

information surrounding the subject

has become much more accessible in Russia.

Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich was one of Russia's earliest

cosmonauts.

He joins the ranks of an increasing number

of military personnel who have testified as to the validity

of the UFO phenomena.

Major General Popovich shared with us

a sighting he had while flying home

from Washington DC with a delegation of scientists.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: The pilots contacted ground control.

Ground control did not detect anything on radar,

even though the object could be seen

by all occupants of the plane.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

MAN: Now we're going to meet the head of Special Intelligence

section of the Center for Space Communication of Russia,

Major General Vasily Alexeyev.

It's like CIA, but I don't know how to tell--

NARRATOR: Just outside Moscow is Star City.

This is the home of the Russian Space Program.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: During the Space Race of the late

'50s and early '60s--

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: --the Russians also experienced

numerous sightings of UFOs.

MAN (ON RADIO): [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: In Star City, we met with General Alexeyev, who

spoke with us about the history of unidentified flying

objects over Russia.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: During the Cold War with the Soviet Union,

the U2 spy plane was one of the most

highly classified projects.

In the late '50s, Gordon Cooper was involved with its research

and development.

Being familiar with that era's cutting edge technology,

Cooper was certain that the craft he'd seen

was not manufactured on this planet.

I mean, we didn't have any vehicles of that kind.

And I was 99.9% sure that the Russians didn't

have any of that type either.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: By the '70s, the Russian military began to take

the UFO subject very seriously.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: At this point, the Soviet Union

allocated a great sum of money towards

a thorough investigation of the UFO phenomena.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: After the fall of the Soviet Union,

glasnost brought about a new era of openness.

We traveled to Mineral Water, a city near the Chechnyan border,

where we met with Deputy Minister of the Interior

Colonel Opravich.

He shared with us a sighting he had

while flying in a commercial jet over Russia.

He, along with 100 other passengers,

noticed a spherical object outside the plane.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

NARRATOR: This sighting led the colonel

to do extensive research on UFO full incidents

throughout Russia.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: 140 miles north of London is Bentwaters, England.

In December of 1980, a United States Air Force Base

armed with nuclear weapons was reportedly

the site of a series of UFO encounters

over a three day period.

NARRATOR: Responding to reports of a possible downed aircraft,

three patrolman were sent out to Rendlesham Forest

to investigate.

Airman First Class Edward Cabansag

was one of the security officers present.

That night, we were on Security One,

which is in charge of mobile security

for the Woodbridge base.

And we responded to Jim Burrough's

sighting of something out on the edge of the flight line.

Well, the controller on the radio

broadcast over the air that go down

and check out a possible UFO.

NARRATOR: Another security officer present was Airman

First Class John Burroughs.

So it was like me-- it was Penniston and me,

and then Cabansag to my right.

It was apparent that it wasn't an aircraft crash.

We knew that much.

NARRATOR: Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston

was sent down to lead Burroughs and Cabansag

to investigate the object.

There was a craft of some sort that was sitting

just inside the treeline.

NARRATOR: As the three officers approached the alleged crash

site, it became obvious that it wasn't what

they were prepared for.

Burroughs would say to Jim Penniston, do you see that?

Do you see?

Do you see what's out there at the edge of the trees?

It was this bright lights, you know?

And the only way you can describe it

is, I guess you'd call it an object.

At that point in time, three of us

had direct observation of the craft.

The closer we would get to it, we would lose communication,

you know, with central security control.

NARRATOR: Cabansag was sent back towards the base

to help transmit radio communications

between the other two officers, who

went further to investigate.

The only noise we heard out in the woods

was the noise of the animals.

Just as Burroughs and I entered the treeline,

the shape of the craft was defined.

The closer we got, the more the white light dissipated.

But what appeared was a triangular craft.

When we approached it, it was-- oh, I

say it measured probably about nine

feet long, maybe six feet high.

A little higher-- maybe six and a half feet.

The lighting emanated from the fabric of the craft

and it would actually move around.

I mean, it would move.

You'd have different locations where

maybe a little blue lighting was going

into it, or maybe a little red.

And then there must've been some type

of lighting underneath of it, because it silhouetted

the aircraft itself.

What I did that night is I had my notebook with me.

I went around and started doing a 360 walk around the area,

taking and recording my observations.

I was looking underneath the craft like that.

I had taken quite detailed notes on that.

"Type of aircraft still unknown.

No apparent landing gear.

No sound, but appears to be pulsating somehow."

Yeah, it was pretty nerve-racking.

I mean, when there's something there right in front of you,

you don't know what it is.

I would go ahead and feel the craft, which was warm.

There were static electricity in the air.

"Very warm to touch.

Identifying markings are on left front side."

As I came around to the one side of the craft,

there was etching on the-- facing me just above the center

part of the craft itself.

Course, this is done all freehand as I

was walking around the craft.

But these symbols ran from left to right across.

And then underneath that line of symbols

was this, which is triangular, and some type of circle here,

some type of circle here, and a larger circle here.

And of course, all this was filled in with the, like,

the etching part of it.

Like you would etch glass.

So those symbols were raised and they

had a different feel than the rest of fabric of the craft.

Liftoff occurred at 2:45 with no sound, no air disturbance, and

no other identifying markings.

Myself and, at that time, Burroughs,

we were a fairly good distance-- maybe 30 feet-- away from it.

And we had taken a defensive position

on that, on the ground.

I mean, it was threatening to me,

but it wasn't the type that you were going to shoot on.

And also the fact was that what would happen

if I would have shot at him?

What good would it have done?

And then it started moving back in between the trees,

with absolutely no sound, no air disturbance at all.

Whatever it was, went up and shot

back up out over the trees, just like it was there

and it was gone.

"Takeoff.

Unknown speed."

And I write, "Impossible."

NARRATOR: Details of this sighting

were first made public when this Air

Force memo was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

It states, "The object was described

as being triangular in shape, approximately two

to three meters across the base and approximately

two meters high.

It had a red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath.

As the patrolman approached the object,

it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared."

This Air Force memo was written by Deputy

Base Commander Charles Halt.

General Gordon Williams, who was commander

of the base at the time, denies either seeing or authorizing

the release of this memo.

In a tape recording presented to General Williams, Airman

Burroughs questions how a story of this magnitude

could escape his oversight,

JOHN BURROUGHS (ON TAPE): How did Colonel Halt's memo go up

without you knowing about it and reviewing

it and allowing it to happen?

Anything that left that base and then was

significant to have warned government

would have to be cleared by you.

MALE INTERVIEWER: You hear that?

Yeah, I did.

Let me answer that last part about that memo.

MALE INTERVIEWER: OK.

Yeah, I agree.

That went under the door and I didn't see it.

No.

Did he have a motivation in doing that?

Did he think that if he brought it in to me,

I would have stepped on it?

I certainly would have looked at it very carefully, because it

had some things in there that I don't think

we were prepared to defend.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant Colonel Halt

was most likely motivated to write this memo because he too

was a witness to a second occurrence,

as himself states at the bottom of the document--

"Numerous individuals, including the undersigned, witnessed

the activities," signed Charles I Halt, Lieutenant Colonel,

United States Air Force.

He captured the encounter on his pocket tape recorder.

I believe that he went out there to debunk

the whole situation and I think he

got in the middle of a situation he couldn't explain either.

He came toward us.

It stopped overhead and sent out a beam.

Now, the beam wasn't like an ordinary beam

of light that radiates out.

It was a focused beam, like a laser beam, that illuminated

the ground in a small circle, probably

two foot or so in diameter.

When I gave the tape that I made to my superior,

he took and played it to 3rd Air Force,

to the commander and the staff, and they all

scratched their head.

And the answer finally was, it's a British affair.

Leave it with him.

Give it back to them.

Hence I wrote the memo that has become public.

I think that Halt was definitely wrong in doing that.

Once that cat was out of the bag,

you know, I couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again

and it lived its own life.

NARRATOR: What did happen over a period

of three days at Bentwaters?

Did a UFO actually land at a US Air Base in England?

That is one explanation, that it actually happened

as Colonel Halt reported.

The other explanation is that it didn't.

And in that case, one is bound to assume that's Colonel Halt

and all his men were hallucinating.

NARRATOR: The British Ministry of Defense's position

is that nothing that took place at Bentwaters

was of any defense interest.

This view is criticized by former Chief of the Defense

Staff Admiral Lord Hill Norton.

That the colonel of an American Air Force Base in Suffolk

and his merry men are hallucinating when there

are nuclear-armed aircraft on the base

must be of defense interest.

If indeed what he says took place, did take place--

and why on earth should he make it up--

then surely the entry of a vehicle from outer space,

certainly not man-made, to a defense

base in this country also cannot fail to be of defense interest.

The public position at the Ministry of Defense

is that UFOs pose no threat to the defense of the realm.

Well, I quite understand such statements--

and indeed, during my tour of duty,

I probably wrote statements like that.

NARRATOR: From 1992 to 1995, the British government

employed Nick Pope to investigate UFO reports.

He now differs with their position.

While it's true to say that there's

been no overt hostile action, it certainly

seems to me premature to say that there

is nothing of any defense significance

when you don't know what they are.

They claim that something from outside the Earth's atmosphere

landed at their Air Force base.

They went and stood by it.

They inspected it.

They photographed.

It.

The following day, they took tests on the ground

where it had been and found radioactive traces.

When we went back out there in the area the next morning,

after we got off duty, and found areas where something was

damaged, that's when we were even more, like, what's

going on, you know?

I think it's fairly well known that Colonel Halt and his team

examined the landing site very carefully,

both the damage to the trees and the three indentations

found on the forest floor where this metallic craft

was seen to land.

Jim went back two days later and made plaster casts.

You can see the size.

It's approximately 8 to 10 inches

across and about three inches deep at the maximum point.

This is cast number two.

He made an impression of all three of the indentations,

and they were all identical.

NARRATOR: The United States Air Force position

is that there was a sighting on the base

witnessed by both high-ranking officers

and base security police.

However, according to the United States Air Force,

military personnel mistook a stationary lighthouse

for a UFO.

I was told to sign some paperwork stating

that what I saw out there was just

the beacon that was out there and that there was

nothing out of the ordinary.

A 45-minute investigation on the ground

with a craft that you're touching and feeling

and observing and doing a walk around,

to be confused with lights in the sky

or a lighthouse or-- it's just totally absurd.

Lighthouses don't fly.

They don't go up, they don't go back.

I mean, you know?

And then you could say, well, if you were a half a mile away

and you thought something moved up

and the beacon was still-- the fact is, we were right on top

of whatever was right there, so there's no way that

was a lighthouse beacon.

Three competent Air Force guys saw it,

told not to ever talk about it.

NARRATOR: Georgina Bruni has been researching the Bentwaters

Incident for over five years.

Her book, "You Can't Tell the People,"

is the definitive account of this case.

In May of 2001, she was one of the first

to receive a number of previously classified documents

from the Ministry of Defense about the Bentwaters Incident.

These documents are known as the Rendlesham Files.

In one of the first documents in the file,

we have now, in black and white, that General Gabriel, who

was the chief of the United States Air Force in Europe,

was handed taped evidence.

NARRATOR: Why would General Gabriel,

one of the most important members of the US military

in Europe, be handed evidence for the incident

unless it was of extreme significance?

You had the largest attack fighter wing in the United

States Air Force, OK?

Through the British, they released documents

admitting that General Gabriel came down and took

all the information, and it's proven

that this stuff disappeared.

Where did all the reports go?

You know, we had got General Gabriel out there,

we had-- who was the top Air Force general in Europe,

there three days later.

Why was he there?

Well, he's there to manage what was going on.

He was there for information control.

He was there to obtain evidence.

He was there for all that stuff that they're denying happened.

The other significant factor is that this

is not ufologists talking here.

We have the Defense Intelligence staff carrying out

their own investigation and admitting

that the radiation readings were 10 times higher than normal.

NARRATOR: One other document released in the Rendlesham

Files is this defensive press line issued by the MOD

instructing the authorities how they

should respond to the media.

It states that, "MOD was satisfied that there was

nothing of defense interest" and "there was no question of any

contact with 'alien beings.'"

We were told not to talk about it, so we didn't.

What we saw out there was definitely unidentifiable.

What I saw did not appear to be man-made it was way

beyond any technology we had at the time,

and probably even do today.

I could never identify what it was.

It's why I've always called it a UFO.

I can say without a doubt that we're probably not alone.

NARRATOR: In the southwest of England, just outside Somerset,

there was another sighting.

It was captured on videotape.

MAN 1 (ON TAPE): Got it.

Got it.

MAN 2 (ON TAPE): Yeah, I think it's coming this way.

Yeah.

MAN 1 (ON TAPE): Yeah, I can see it.

MAN 2 (ON TAPE): Is it?

It is.

MAN 1 (ON TAPE): That's amazing.

The UFO that you saw originally was

spotted approximately about 200 yards

to the left of the aerial mast.

And I suppose it was probably at about 500 feet up.

It was very low--

MALE INTERVIEWER: Right.

DAVID KINGSTON: --in the sky.

MALE INTERVIEWER: And this is a radio communications tower?

DAVID KINGSTON: This is our radio communications.

They've got three military masts on there.

And it sends out-- one is a navigational signal,

which is used for aircraft.

The other two aerials are near the top.

We're not quite sure, but there is a pulsed frequency

that comes from them.

The actual UFO, from the time it was first

seen by Rod Dickinson, who did the filming,

it lasted approximately 12 minutes.

So it was quite a long period of time for a daylight

sighting to occur.

NARRATOR: We took this tape to be analyzed by Lucasfilms'

special effects division, Industrial Light & Magic

in San Rafael, California.

Here we met with Bill George, an Academy Award winning

visual effects supervisor.

Over the last 20 years, his special effects

have been featured in films like "Star

Wars-- The Phantom Menace."

The optical zoom certainly would--

NARRATOR: He analyzed this footage

to determine its authenticity.

BILL GEORGE: But there are several things

that I see when the footage is running

that tells me that this was actually

there when this was filmed.

First of all, it's the shake, the shake.

If you were to give me a background plate of just

this sky and say, we want you to take this image of a flying

saucer and match it in, that something that's technically

very difficult to do because you have

to match-- putting the two elements together,

you have to match the shake.

Now, certainly, we have computers that can track that,

but this is just-- this is all over the map.

A couple other cues that tell me that this is actually there

when it was being filmed was that is going in and out

of focus with the background because the camera is

trying to compensate and trying to focus.

It probably has some sort of autofocus.

So the background is going in and out

of focus along with the object.

There are these dark things flying through frame,

and if someone was to have to put that in there,

they would have to composite it in behind the birds.

It would be a technical problem.

NARRATOR: Bill George couldn't say it was a real UFO,

but he could confirm for us that the object

was not added in later.

Given those clues, I'm convinced

that this object was there when this person was taping.

NARRATOR: In 1968, the UFO subject

was being debated at the highest levels of government.

The debate was triggered by a major sighting

over the state of Michigan.

[BEEPING]

And I could see the lights on either side.

And then the red light was sort of casting

a glow over the whole thing, so it looked like a round disc.

When it got to the top of the trees,

it stopped, and a blue and a white light come on it.

Good evening.

NARRATOR: Walter Cronkite reported the incident on CBS.

WALTER CRONKITE: Residents of the area saw it.

The police saw it.

Sergeant Newell Schneider of the Sheriff's office

remembered it well enough to draw it.

MALE REPORTER: What do you think it was?

NEWELL SCHNEIDER: Oh, if they call it a flying saucer,

that's what it is.

The Air Force sent its consultant,

Allen Hynek in to review what had been going on.

And Hynek, after about one or two days in the field,

had to face a big press conference.

He said, well, I don't know what was going on.

It may have been marsh gas.

A little bit of swamp light appears here.

It goes out.

Another one appears over here.

That goes out then.

But the illusion as viewed from a distance

is that the objects have moved back and forth.

The public was absolutely furious

and the press kind of made fun of it.

And Congressman Ford of Michigan thought he would take action,

and he calls for public hearings by the Armed

Services Committee.

This matter should be brought--

NARRATOR: In an exclusive telephone interview,

the late President Gerald Ford confirmed his involvement

in the investigation.

NARRATOR: Congress heard testimony

from a number of witnesses.

Former Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe

asserted that there was far more to UFOs that swamp gas.

In fact, the Air Force at one time

had a top secret estimate that these things

were interplanetary spaceships.

Today, we have over 10,000 cases

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, of which 646 of these

remain unidentified.

The Air Force has been accused from time to time of hiding

information about UFO.

What do you have to say to that, Colonel Tacker?

Well, these charges are absolutely untrue.

NARRATOR: The Air Force continued to maintain

that it was hiding nothing.

And we've always honored the accredited media

when they want to investigate a given specific sighting.

TV HOST: There is nothing to hide?

There is nothing to hide at all.

Now, this is not an attack on the Air Force spokesman

or the project spokesman.

They are simply following orders to explain away all UFO

sightings as quickly as possible when they become public

and deny that UFOs really exist.

So it was pressure from Congress

that led to the study that ended up not being an open study that

was a few days long.

It ended up by being a project given to a university that

lasted 18 months.

NARRATOR: In an effort to maintain

a neutral investigation, it was assigned

to the University of Colorado.

The university gathered a team of 11 eminent scientists.

They were to analyze and make public their conclusions of

the most compelling UFO cases.

As reported in a 1968 feature article published

by "Look" magazine, the university study

was doomed from the beginning.

The project leader, Dr. Edward Condon,

appeared to be biased from the start.

In February of 1967, he stated, "My attitude right now

is that there's nothing to it."

He added, "But I'm not supposed to reach

a conclusion for another year."

The "Look" article goes on to describe how two scientists

were fired over a leaked memo written by one

of the project's managers.

This memo dictated what the project's

conclusions were to be before the project even started.

The leaked memo read, "The trick would be,

I think, to describe the project so that, to the public,

it would appear a totally objective study

but, to the scientific community,

would present the image of a group of non-believers

trying their best to be objective,

but having an almost zero expectation

of finding a saucer."

When Representative J Edward Roush read the leaked memo

and all the controversy published by "Look" magazine,

he urged Congress to take over the investigation

because he challenged the objectivity of the study.

His plea was ignored.

Left unchecked, the project chairman

announced the conclusions to the anxiously waiting press.

Dr. Condon stated that "nothing has

come from the study of UFOs that has

added to scientific knowledge."

It is not a fair and accurate summary

of the body of the report, which a summary should be.

NARRATOR: Three decades later, Dr. Peter Sturrock

an astrophysicist from Stanford University,

takes a close look at some of the case studies never

mentioned in Condon's summary.

The Condon Report is really a complex document.

If you're looking for what they thought were wild goose chases,

you'll find those.

If you're looking to see whether there

any intriguing cases that were really challenges to the staff,

you'll find them.

And if you want to see whether the staff thought anything

was what they called, quote, "a real UFO,"

you'll find that too.

There are two regular visual cases analyzed

by McDonald and Thayer.

NARRATOR: Another case summary was that--

PETER STURROCK: And there are two photographic cases

analyzed by William Hartmann who he thought were possible UFOs.

PETER STURROCK: But they do not feature

at all in Condon's summary.

The part that most people read, the part

that the press referred to, were the few pages

of recommendations and about one chapter,

a short chapter of summary, that were

written entirely by Condon.

NARRATOR: While the panel of scientists

conducted an objective investigation as requested

by Congress, the project leader appeared

to have ignored the data and asserted that there was

nothing to the UFO phenomena.

On December 18, 1969, the New York Times

quoted Dr. Condon saying it "was a bunch of damned nonsense,"

and that he was sorry that he "ever got involved

with such foolishness."

Condon's 30-year-old conclusions are still being used today

as a benchmark to prevent further official

scientific investigation.

One of the problems with so-called UFO

research by debunkers is they ask the wrong question.

Their question is, what are UFOs?

Really what they're saying is, are all UFOs alien spacecraft?

And the answer, of course, is no.

The proper question is, are any?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MAN 1 (ON TAPE): [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

WOMAN (ON TAPE): [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

MAN 1 (ON TAPE): [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

MAN 2 (ON TAPE): [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

It was, you know-- it was shaped like a saucer.

I hate to use those trite terms, but that's

what it was shaped like.

I looked up and all of a sudden there was this,

you know-- gotta say it, flying saucer,

you know, kind of looking like it was

not particularly far above us.

If you look at tree limb, it seems to me

that when it floated across the road, it was to just about

that far away.

You saw that it was actually moving,

but the fact was it just went-- zoom!

And it was just gone.

Nothing we had at the time could

fit the description, size, shape,

or performance of this craft.

MAN (ON TAPE): [SPEAKING SPANISH]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: It appears that many people in power

are being kept out of the loop regarding the UFO phenomenon.

At the same time, covert operations

being conducted by the military-industrial complex

seemed to have escaped government supervision.

In the councils of government, we

must guard against the acquisition

of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,

by the military-industrial complex.

NARRATOR: In his farewell address to the nation,

President Eisenhower cautioned the public

about the relationship between the US military

and the industrial sector which supplies the military

with weaponry and equipment.

Eisenhower felt that if gone unchecked,

the military-industrial complex would become too powerful.

The potential for the disastrous rise

of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination

endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Well, I think he was telling us the military-industrial complex

will stick you in the back if you are not totally vigilant.

And I think he felt like he had not be vigilant.

I think he felt like he trusted too many people.

NARRATOR: Brigadier General Stephen Lovekin

served under President Eisenhower in the White

House Army Signaling Agency.

He recalls Eisenhower's concern with the

military-industrial complex.

He realized that he was losing control.

He realized that this, this-- the phenomenon of whatever

it was that we were faced with was not

going to be in the best hands.

And that, that-- those were the-- as far as I can remember,

that was the expression that was used--

"It's not going to be in the best hands."

NARRATOR: Almost as great as the mystery surrounding the origin

of UFOs is the wall of denial encountered even by the most

powerful citizens in the land.

In October of 1969, President Jimmy

Carter, who was then governor of Georgia, had a UFO sighting.

He filed a report with the National Investigations

Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

In the report, he described a sharply

outlined, self-luminous object about the size of the moon.

It maneuvered silently in front of 10 witnesses.

At a recent book tour, we asked President Jimmy

Carter about his sighting.

What happened to--

MALE INTERVIEWER: The UFOs.

I don't really know what happened to it.

I saw one, but I don't know where-- it just disappeared.

MALE REPORTER: Well, this is a first.

A president and--

NARRATOR: During Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign,

he promised to make public what the government knew about UFOs.

In an effort to fulfill this promise, President Carter's

scientific adviser Frank Press wrote a letter

requesting that NASA lead the investigations

into the UFO phenomena.

When news of this pending investigation

reached Air Force Colonel Charles Senn, he wrote NASA.

In closing, he stated, "I sincerely

hope you are successful in preventing a reopening

of UFO investigations."

Whatever activity is going on, to the extent that it is

a clandestine group, a quasi-government group,

a quasi-private group, it is without any type,

as far as I can tell, of high level government oversight.

And that is a great concern.

NARRATOR: In December of 1977, NASA officially

declined President Carter's request,

proposing that it "take no steps to establish a research

activity in this area."

MALE INTERVIEWER: Did you ask when you were president--

[BEEPING]

MALE BROADCASTER (ON RADIO): The American Broadcasting Company

and affiliated stations present "Headline

Edition" with Taylor Grant.

TAYLOR GRANT (ON RADIO): The 509th Atomic Bomb Group

headquarters at Roswell, New Mexico reports that it has

received one of the discs, which landed on a ranch

outside Roswell.

Colonel William Blanchard of the Roswell air base

refuses to give details of what the flying disc looks like.

NARRATOR: New Mexico congressman Steven Schiff

was pressed by his constituents into making inquiries

regarding the Roswell Incident.

I think a number of people getting their information

from news stories-- not in all cases, but in many cases--

are not getting all of the information.

NARRATOR: In a 1997 radio interview,

he recalls what happened when he made inquiries

with the Department of Defense.

NARRATOR: After a second attempt with the Department of Defense,

Congressman Schiff was again referred

to the National Archives.

NARRATOR: Evidently, former director of the FBI J Edgar

Hoover was also denied access, as he stated

in his own handwriting in July of 1947--

"We must insist upon full access to discs recovered."

Hoover continued, "The Army grabbed

it and wouldn't let the Bureau have

it for cursory examination."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We will stand against the forces of--

NARRATOR: A more recent inquiry was apparently

made by President Bill Clinton.

Let us stand up and talk against it.

NARRATOR: He asked Associate Attorney General

Webster Hubbell to investigate.

Webb Hubbell and Bill Clinton were old friends.

In his book, "Friends in High Places,"

Hubbell recalls a special favor that President Clinton

made after he first came into office.

"'Webb,' he said, 'if I put you over at Justice,

I want you to find out the answers

to two questions for me.

One, who killed JFK?

And two, are there UFOs?' He was dead serious."

Hubbell had looked into both, but wasn't satisfied

with the answers he was getting.

When we asked Mr. Hubbell about this incident, he replied--

NARRATOR: We contacted President Bill Clinton

and received this letter.

It is a response from NASA stating that "No government

agency is currently responsible for investigating UFOs

because there is no factual evidence

that alien life exists on other planets

or that UFOs are related to aliens."

See, this is what you'd be up against.

Who are you gonna see?

The moment you go see somebody, they'll say,

oh, we can't tell you.

It's top secret.

What are you gonna do?

You have to walk out.

So you see how the government operates?

How they can-- you say you should go there and ask them.

Who you gonna go to?

Even with the experience I had being

on the top of the government all the years,

I couldn't tell you who to go see.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Paris, 1999.

The most important UFO study in recent decades is made public.

This was presented to the President and Prime Minister

of France, urging diplomatic action with the US

through the European Union.

The report was compiled by the COMETA

group, which investigated over 500 UFO cases

from around the world.

This report, which came from a high level

group of French military officers primarily,

as well as some scientists, is the most strongly worded,

pro-UFO document ever written in any language

that has been made public by a group of this stature.

NARRATOR: The COMETA group consists

of generals and admirals of the French military as well

as top-level scientists, such as-- Andre Lebeau,

director of CNES, the French equivalent of NASA;

General Bernard Norlain, former Commander French Tactical Air

Force; and Jean-Claude Ribes, the former director

of the Observatory at Lyon, France.

The title of the report is "UFOs and Defense--

What Must We Prepare For?"

Now, it's 92 pages of text after that title.

NARRATOR: The COMETA group received

data collected by numerous scientific agencies.

Much of its content was based on reports

from military and civilian pilots.

This official document was an internal military investigation

that was never intended for the general public.

The report also contains a selection of photographs.

These photos were subjected to scientific analysis

in an effort to determine authenticity.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

COMETA also examined physical evidence,

such as plant and soil samples taken

from alleged landing sites.

One such case occurred on January 8, 1981

in Southern France.

There was only a single witness to that event.

He was working in his small farm.

Late one afternoon, he heard a whistling sound.

NARRATOR: He looked up and just above the trees

was this strange craft.

It descended and landed 30 feet away in his garden.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

He told his wife about it in the evening

and she thought that he was joking.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

PETER STURROCK: They went back in the morning

to look at the area and they found traces on the ground.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

The scientists came out in a week or two

and they took further samples of soils.

They also took samples of plants,

and the analysis of the soil and plants were very interesting.

They were carried out quite professionally.

And there was evidence of compression of the soil

and there was a clear evidence of damage

to the plants, the kind of injury that

could happen because of heating-- due

to microwaves, for instance.

So there was good physical evidence in that case.

And moreover, there were two kinds

of physical evidence-- injury, damage to the soil

and damage to plants.

NARRATOR: Despite the physical evidence,

the small town of Trans-en-Provence

labeled the farmer as a flying saucer fanatic.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

NARRATOR: A number of cases analyzed by the COMETA group

came from military pilots involved in UFO incidents.

One of the most dramatic cases occurred in September of 1976,

when a Phantom F-4 jet flown by a pilot

from the Iranian Royal Air Force attempted

to fire a missile at a UFO.

In the same instant, the pilot's fire control console and radio

went dead.

At this point, a smaller craft emerged from the main UFO

and circled around the jet.

The pilot then took evasive action and power

to his controls returned.

He escaped unharmed.

In this report, they say, in effect, UFOs are real.

Ergo, the extraterrestrial hypothesis may,

in some cases, be the best or only real

answer and cannot be ignored.

They are technological.

They do things that we probably can't do.

And, all that being said, this obviously

constitutes a major concern for global defense and security.

NARRATOR: When the report was completed,

it was given to a number of leading French journalists.

One of these was Bernard Thouanel, the editor of "VSD."

"VSD" is a French weekly magazine, like "Time Life."

We are a general press publication.

It's not specialized in UFO sightings at all.

NARRATOR: The COMETA group allowed "VSD"

to publish the report, provided it

was not manipulated in any way.

If the public was aware of the COMETA Report,

then the COMETA Report was not going

to disappear in any kind of official

or semi-official dark hole, so to speak.

Then the COMETA Report became a public fact,

and it remains a public fact.

NARRATOR: To date, the report has not been officially

published outside of France, and so far,

only one article published in the "Boston Globe"

has appeared in the US press.

LESLIE KEAN: I applied a very high

standard to the story because of its controversial nature.

I was basically retelling what the generals

and the other people had concluded in their report.

I looked at government documents that

dealt with the issue of national security and UFOs,

which was what the generals were dealing with in France.

NARRATOR: Despite her thoroughness,

Leslie Kean encountered much resistance

in getting the story published.

LESLIE KEAN: I went to many papers, many of whom

I'd published with in the past.

People laughed, hung up the phone.

The subject matter is ridiculed in the media.

And so even though I was dealing with facts in this article

and high-level journalism, they weren't interested because

of the subject matter.

This was really, really frustrating,

because I thought this was an extremely important story

and I know that it was newsworthy.

Most Americans have never heard of it.

The group hasn't published an English translation

that anybody can get ahold of.

And they seem to be on the trail of saying, hey, you Americans,

you're holding back technology that you've learned from flying

saucers from your allies.

So it's a message to the Pentagon, not to the public.

They know the Pentagon knows they're real.

So it's an important report for what it says.

No other report with names, with people, with excellent cases--

this is not anonymous reporting now--

has come close to taking as strong

a stand that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft.

NARRATOR: In 2007, the French National Space Agency

CNES released a half century of previously

classified UFO reports.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

A group calling itself the Disclosure Project

is in Washington this week calling on Congress to hold

public hearings on UFOs.

Is there really life on other planets?

Some former military and government

personnel say they have proof--

--group of people who claim they have seen UFOs is calling

on Congress to open hearings.

What do members plan to do with their information?

They hope Congress and President Bush take notice.

[APPLAUSE]

MALE REPORTER: Before a crowd of believers and skeptics,

with cameras rolling, members of a group calling itself

the Disclosure Project stood up one

by one to tell personal experiences involving

what they say are UFOs.

I have with me the voice tapes of the controllers

that were involved.

I have a copy of the original of the video that we took,

which is rather interesting.

And it's called the UFO incident, Japan 1648,

I believe the number was.

It happened on November the 18th, 1986.

When it was all done, the CIA-- one of the CIA men

told the people they were now sworn to secrecy,

that this meeting never happened and this event never happened.

We have another--

NARRATOR: The Disclosure Project was formed

by Dr. Steven Greer in 1993.

Since then, he has gathered together

over 200 military and civilian witnesses

who experienced UFO events during their official duties.

We had ground visual, ground radar, airborne visual,

and airborne radar confirmation of some of these sightings.

NARRATOR: Witnesses ranged from FAA controllers

to military communications specialists.

And I can clearly recall seeing a message that

went through my crypto center which said that a UFO had

crashed on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway

and a team of scientists were coming to investigate it.

NARRATOR: Many witnesses provided official documentation

of their event.

Out of the National Archives, I have the 18-page official

Navy and Air Force report.

So the truth is here.

I will testify under oath before Congress that everything

that I have said is true.

[APPLAUSE]

I think it's time to open the books.

NARRATOR: In October of 2002, former White House Chief

of Staff John Podesta urged the release of secret government

UFO records.

He cited the importance to the public of declassifying

government documents.

It's time to find out what the truth

really is that's out there.

We ought to do it, really, because it's right.

We ought to do it because the American people, quite frankly,

can handle the truth.

And we ought to do it because it's the law.

NARRATOR: It's not surprising that government officials

of this stature are requesting the release

of official UFO information, because sightings

over major cities persist.

In December 2006, a number of United Airlines employees

witnessed a disc-shaped craft hovering over Chicago's

O'Hare Airport for two minutes.

The incident was reported in the national media.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[CHATTER]

WOMAN: Oh my god!

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Often in reliable UFO cases,

the official explanation is more unbelievable than the event

itself.

I had the evidence that a crash did happen here.

And then the red light was sort of casting

a glow over the whole thing, so it looked like a round disc.

I saw one, but I don't know where-- it just disappeared.

People say, Mike, no, you saw a B-2 bomber.

My response was, we could land all 40 of our B-2 bombers

on the wing of that craft.

I would go ahead and feel the craft, which was warm.

There is a serious possibility that we all being visited

and have been visited for many years

by people from outer space, from other civilizations.

That it behooves us, in case some of these people

in the future or now should turn hostile,

to find out who they are, where they come from,

and what they want.

Well, if the accounts are to be believed,

yes, there have been ET visitation.

There have been crashed craft.

There have been material and bodies recovered.

And there is some group of people somewhere

that may or may not be associated with government

at this point, but certainly were at one

time, that have this knowledge.

The thing you have to remember is that absolute power

corrupts absolutely.

When you've got the knowledge and the budget,

nobody looking over your shoulder,

there's a great temptation to think that you know best.

To heck with the public, they don't know enough to have

a sensible opinion.

That's unfortunate.

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

I just wish that government entities that are involved

in trying to always stop the investigation

or put out some flaky story about some observation that was

legitimate-- I don't know why people just don't stop

and, and-- and in government-- and just sort of, you know,

open the books for everybody.

We all ought to be included.

It's something that we should embrace

and not be fearful about.

That's-- that's how I feel about it.

Since the subject is clearly of great interest to the public,

I think that the scientific community owes it to the public

to really pay attention to the subject

and make a thorough, extensive, and careful

investigation, and then share with the public whatever

they find.

MALE INTERVIEWER: A story this big,

there's no way it could be kept secret from the public.

What do you say to someone like that, who says that?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: If structured craft of unknown origin

are penetrating our skies, the people best equipped to know

are the military.

And we will provide you with all the information

that you need.

NARRATOR: Numerous military witnesses

are prepared to testify in great detail that need immunity

from their security oaths.

Congress is currently being lobbied

to provide a platform for such testimony, but so far,

to no avail.

The discovery that we are being visited by extraterrestrials

would be one of the greatest in human history.

Such a discovery would profoundly

alter the perception of ourselves

and our place in the universe.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]