Original subtitles

If you're a civilian and you spot a UFO

in your area, you don't call the military, you call

the police department or you call your local sheriff.

As a police officer, when you're involved

in a UFO case, things can get tricky.

They can get very political, and that's just the nature

of the beast in this country. 10X31, clear.

120 West 81st Street.

Ravenna, Ohio, April 17, 1966.

It's just before dawn on a midnight shift

that Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and Deputy Wilbur Neff

will never forget. All morning

their police radio had been filled with all sorts

of chatter from witnesses near Akron, Ohio claiming

to have seen a large, bright disc flying

through the sky.

With just a few hours left of their day,

they noticed something unusual, an abandoned car on Route 224.

Just as Neff is about to reach the car,

Spaur senses something.

In Spaur's written report, he states he feels the need

to look behind him.

Spaur tells Neff

to look over his shoulder.

They're suddenly engulfed in light, and the only thing

they can hear is a hum, like a transformer

being overloaded. Both police officers are frozen

underneath this light. Spaur remembers

moving his right foot slightly to make sure he could

still move, and when they realize they aren't

actually paralyzed, they run as fast as they can

for the patrol car.

Can you imagine, two veteran officers

used to dealing with local domestic issues

now find themselves facing a UFO?

Immediately, Spaur gets on the radio and reports

what they just saw. Dispatch tells them

not to move and to wait in the car, they're sending

immediate backup. Spaur and Neff nervously wait

as the light engulfs their car. The officers are starting

to panic, and they're thinking, should we shoot at it

or should we get out of here? They're absolutely terrified,

but they have their orders to wait for backup,

if they survive that long. And this is just

the beginning of one of "Hangar 1's"

extraordinary stories of close encounters

with the police and UFOs, some of the best

documented cases in MUFON's archives.

The Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON,

is an independent organization not bound to any government.

They investigate reports of UFO sightings

from around the world. Over the past five decades,

they have collected more than 70,000 files,

stored at a secure location known as Hangar 1.

Now, MUFON is granting access to their vast archive.

These are the files of Hangar 1.

Officer Spaur and Neff are engulfed in the light

of this UFO, paralyzed with fear wondering, is this it?

Is this how we're going to die? But then, inexplicably...

the UFO just takes off.

They're stunned and relieved and once they regain

their composure, they do the unthinkable.

They actually chase this thing.

These two officers are actually pursuing this UFO,

going about 100 miles an hour

Though it's the Pennsylvania border along U.S. Route 224.

As the Sun rises, the UFO continues traveling East

approaching the Pennsylvania state line.

Patrolman Frank Panzanella, Conway, Pennsylvania is sitting

in his squad car drinking coffee when he sees a large object

fly over him.

His first instinct is also to pursue the UFO.

Panzanella radios dispatch

to see if they have anything on their radar.

They pick up an unidentified object

on their screen.

The officers aren't the only ones interested in this craft.

Four fighter jets appear in the sky.

The police receive confirmation on their radios

that the jets are pursuing the UFO.

The police officers

must be thinking, wow, this is really happening.

The Air Force is going to take down a UFO

right in front of us. But the UFO then shoots upward

into the sky at an incredible speed until it disappears, gone,

before the jets can make a move.

Within hours, this case was picked up by the press.

And from there, the Air Force gave it a lot of attention.

All of the police officers involved are then contacted

by the military's UFO investigative unit,

Project Blue Book. This is where

the Air Force cover-up begins. Blue Book Chief,

Major Hector Quintanilla, arrives on the scene.

Hector Quintanilla headed Project Blue Book from 1963

until its closure in 1970. In addition to his degree

in physics, he was recruited to the position

because they needed a man who was, quote,

"cool under pressure." He gets to Dale Spaur

and the first thing he says to him is, "Tell me about

this mirage that you saw." Can you imagine,

you're a police officer and you've just seen

the most incredible thing and the first thing

the Air Force does is accuse you of seeing a mirage.

Could the officers have witnessed a top secret

military plane, forcing the Air Force

to try and deflect attention from the truth?

Spaur describes exactly what he saw in great detail,

but Quintanilla doesn't ask anymore questions,

and he doesn't attempt to interview the other

three officers who also saw the UFO.

Major Quintanilla holds a press conference to release

the Air Force's official findings on the incident.

Quintanilla's explanation was simple, the officers

had been chasing an echo communication satellite

and then after the Sun came up, that changed to them

chasing the planet Venus. Quintanilla also denied

that any jet fighters had been in the area attempting to engage

or intercept a UFO. Unsatisfied with the official

explanation, a number of investigators,

including famed ufologist, William Weitzel,

are determined to find out what really happened.

William Weitzel got on the scene and found

three other police officers and four other

civilian witnesses who had seen a UFO between

5:00 and 5:30 that morning.

After Weitzel's findings, Quintanilla is forced

to reopen the case. Realizing simple deflection

was not effective, stronger tactics are employed.

Quintanilla and Spaur sit down for another meeting,

this time attended by William Weitzel

and local reporters, but afterwards, Quintanilla

stands by his original conclusion that

the police officers were chasing Venus.

He says, "There was never a UFO. Case closed."

Project Blue Book head, Quintanilla,

successfully closes the case. The police officers

who witnessed the UFO find themselves discredited,

left trying to understand what they did wrong.

After this whole event was over, the officers involved

really took it hard. Officer Houston quit the force

and moved off to Seattle just to get away.

Officer Neff became a recluse. And I think Dale Spaur

had it the worst. He lost his job

and his marriage, and for years

was hounded by the press, everyone trying to debunk

his case and make him look like he didn't know

what he was doing. And this just made him crazy

because he knew that what he saw was real.

He knew it was legitimate.

During this Cold War era, UFOs were treated

primarily as a threat.

These military people come in and intimidate the officers,

discredit them for something that obviously the government

knows is going on. Was Quintanilla simply

employing the same techniques that began with

Project Blue Book regarding deflection

and discrediting witnesses? And when did these techniques

come into play?

Up next... Zamora starts to back away,

a huge flame bursts out of the craft.

Military and media descend

on a small town after one police officer's

incredible close encounter when we return.

If I had been working back in the fifties and sixties,

I don't think I would've wanted to make a UFO report.

Something like that could destroy your credibility.

You just turn your head and look the other way.

But, you know, that's stressful, and you have to carry that

with you.

Police officers are trained to be meticulous about details.

But when it comes to UFO sightings,

their reports are often challenged or the incident

is dismissed as a hoax. Hangar 1 files suggest that

this treatment lines up directly with how Project Blue Book

and the military dealt with civilian UFO witnesses

and that these protocols were applied

to police officers as well.

April 24th, 1964. Socorro, New Mexico.

Officer Lonnie Zamora is driving in his car

outside of Socorro, New Mexico. He's chasing a speeder.

All of a sudden, Zamora hears this roaring sound,

and he sees what he thinks is a flame object in the sky.

Zamora breaks off from the chase to investigate.

He thinks that a local dynamite shack

may have exploded.

He's moving closer to where this event was taking place.

It's then that he notices a shining object,

which at first he thought was an overturned car.

Zamora gets on the radio and tells the dispatcher

he's leaving his car to check out a situation

in the arroyo.

Suddenly, a loud roar emanates

from the craft.

A huge flame bursts out of the craft.

The craft begins lifting up and then immediately takes off.

Zamora radios a fellow officer, Sergeant Chavez, asking him

if he sees a craft in the sky. Radio silence.

When Chavez finally got there, the two of them

found four indentations in the ground

where the object had sat, some burnt vegetation,

and they took very detailed notes and pictures

of the whole area, and they put together

a complete report.

Two days after the incident, Major Quintanilla, the head

of the Air Force's Project Blue Book shows up

to investigate the report, but he isn't the only one

who descends on the town.

The sleepy little town of Socorro, New Mexico

was overrun.

Overrun by major journalists, UPI, AP were there.

Government agents, FBI, military intelligence

were there, and private UFO investigators

were also there. Everyone wanted

to look for answers. The evidence gathered

by the police appears to be compelling.

Subsequent research and analysis of ground samples

and photos revealed that some of the sand in the ground

appeared to have been fused together as if

it had come in contact with some very high,

intense form of heat.

Then, on June 8th, 1964, Quintanilla issues his formal

Project Blue Book report. Not surprisingly, this report

turned all the evidence right on its head.

It stated no substantial evidence

had been found to support any kind of event,

none of the witnesses were reliable, and so on.

Now, in the classified version of that report, it was a little

bit of a different story. I have Hector Quintanilla's

words right here and I quote, "There is no doubt

that Lonnie Zamora saw an object that left an impression on him

and scared Zamora to the point of panic."

Zamora became so hounded by the Air Force and ufologists

that he quit law enforcement, and he took a job managing

a gas station.

If I were in the shoes of these officers

that saw these things and were then shut up

and intimidated, I would absolutely lose faith in myself.

This, I mean, this has to be a profound effect on their whole

sense of who they are, the fact that the government would

step in after these careers of service and treat them

like crazy people when we know the government knows a heck

of a lot more than than what they're telling us.

Based on Quintanilla's report, the case was closed.

But shortly thereafter, a UFO researcher

named James McDonald locates a local scientist who claims

to have analyzed a soil sample from the Socorro landing site.

Mary G. Mayes was a doctoral student

in radiation biology at the University of New Mexico

and she was asked to analyze some of the soil samples

from the Socorro case. So she didn't find

any radiation in the soil, but she did find

two organic substances that she was not able to identify.

This is an important detail. It proved that whatever landed

there had organic material that is not found on earth.

The analysis

on the soil samples really opens up the possibility,

maybe the likelihood that we're talking about

two different kinds of investigations,

or two versions of the investigation,

the public one and the not so public one.

What it looks like to me is that Quintanilla and Blue Book

were sent in basically to mess up the investigation

and make Zamora look like a fool.

Civilian police officers are not the only ones

who meet resistance when it comes to reporting

UFO incidents. Up next, military

police officers find themselves in the wrong place

at the wrong time and the outcome

becomes deadly.

Many agencies are not open to these types of investigations

because the upper echelon don't want the media.

They don't want to deal with it.

That's the biggest problem with law enforcement,

dealing with the upper hands. When it gets from

local government up to the military, well, then,

that's a little bit different.

Hangar 1 files contain remarkable encounters

of police officers and UFO sightings.

Some of these incredible events occur with officers who provide

security for military bases.

In 1978, I was working at McGuire Air Force Base

at 21st Air Force as the Deputy Director

of Intelligence.

On January 18th, 1978, I drove onto the base

and noticed that off to my right was a number

of crash trucks and lights out on the runway.

And the sergeant in charge of the command post

came up to me and said that an alien has been found

at the end of the runway, that he was shot

by a military policeman.

January 18th, 1978, between Fort Dix

and McGuire Air Force Base.

Radar from Fort Dix picks up an unidentified object

between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.

The military police officer on duty is patrolling

the outside of the base when he sees a large object

hovering over the road.

He stops his car and radios in what he sees.

He's looking out through his windshield through

the falling snow and explaining to the dispatcher

what the craft looks like.

Right in the middle of a sentence...

the radio goes dead.

The officer looks up and that's when he sees

the unimaginable, a small figure in the shadows

that he later describes as having an unusually

large head, long arms, and a slender body.

And this creature is standing right in front

of his police car. The officer panics.

Here's a man who is told to protect the base.

He's an armed guard, and he's seen a monster

run around. He does what probably

a lot of guys would do, he shoots at the thing.

He runs back to his car and his radio

is now working again. He tells the dispatcher

that he just shot a strange creature

and it's now headed for McGuire Air Force Base.

The police officer drives to the gates

of McGuire Air Force Base where he is told to wait.

Sergeant Jeffrey Morse from McGuire Air Force Base

is called to the front gate to meet with the officer

from Fort Dix to discuss the incident.

The officer is really shaken up. He tells Morse that he shot

at a strange entity, but it escaped and climbed

over the fence into McGuire Air Force Base.

Sergeant Morse says that he'll handle it from here.

Sergeant Morse has to be thinking this other

police officer is crazy, but he was about to get

a big surprise.

Morse and several other MPs head to the area

where the entity reportedly climbed over the fence.

At the end of the runway they see a dead creature

with a large head and slender body.

Sergeant Morse can't believe his eyes.

He reports that the smell is so bad they have

to stand back several feet just to be able to breathe.

He calls in a report

and within hours the Air Force OSI

takes control of the situation.

AFOSI is the Air Force's Office of Special

Investigations, and they report directly to the Office

of Security to the Air Force.

Technically, this means that they provide

independent investigations outside the traditional

military chain of command.

Sergeant Morse reports that he is surprised to see

a military team responding to the incident in a way that

suggests this wasn't the first encounter like this they had

dealt with. Sergeant Morse

is not only brought in for questioning, but threatened.

Morse went through several days of intimidating

interrogations where he was told to keep his mouth shut or else.

As incredible as this story sounds, it is corroborated

by George Filer who was brought in to investigate the incident.

When I was investigating the case, I did interview

Sergeant Jeff Morse who claims to have been out at the place

where they found the ET.

Within a couple of days after he was out there,

he was transferred to Okinawa.

They more or less arrested him and held him for awhile

and essentially gave him a hard time.

When it comes to military officers who witness UFOs,

did the protocol escalate from discrediting witnesses

to completely removing them? Now, what happened

to Jeffrey Morse in the aftermath of all of this

is kind of symptomatic of how military personnel

were held to different standards of accountability than, say,

civilian police officers had been.

It's one thing for a small town cop

to be ridiculed, but when you're a military person and you start

talking privately to investigators about this,

they're going to come after you.

It's almost as if the military learned

from previous reports that if you remove the witness,

the media and investigators don't have any leads.

If this was the military's new protocol, how far

will they go to ensure the silence

of highly credible witnesses? Up next,

military police officers

report a UFO landing on a nuclear base.

The Federal Government is going to give you exactly

what they want you to hear. I don't think they're afraid

of anything, they just want to control things.

And as police officers, we're caught in the middle

because the government does not want this information

to get out.

MUFON investigators have uncovered evidence indicating

the military's desire to undermine and discredit

law enforcement testimony regarding UFO encounters.

However, despite the intention to keep these stories hidden,

information is still often leaked.

1980, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ten minutes before midnight on August 8th, 1980,

three security policemen are on duty

at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area just East

of Kirtland Air Force Base. The Manzano Weapons

Storage Area consisted of a series of tunnels

that had been excavated into three mountains.

In these tunnels is where the nuclear weapons

would be stored.

On this night, three guards at the base

saw a very bright light about three miles northeast

of their position. The men noticed this light

traveling very fast before it suddenly

stops over Coyote Canyon.

Coyote Canyon was a restricted area

and so all three officers became very nervous when

they saw this lighted object begin to descend

into the canyon.

About three miles East of that position,

there was another military police officer.

He was on patrol, and he was told to check out

the weapons barracks area.

This officer drove down an access road to Coyote Canyon,

and when he got there, he saw a very bright light in the air.

And above it was a disc-shaped object.

He starts to panic. He tries to radio for help,

but his radio doesn't work. The officer grabbed

his rifle, got out of his Jeep, and decided to pursue it.

He heard the sound of metal, and before he knew it,

the ship just took off.

The lone patrolman who fired at the object, reports

the incident to Sandia Base security headquarters.

The officer on duty reported the incident on August 9th,

but Sandia Base didn't report it

until August 11th, and they were

supposed to report it to the Air Force Office

of Special Investigations. Protocol dictated that

anything like that had to be reported immediately,

but it wasn't.

But here's where things get more interesting.

For some reason, the AFOSI office at Kirtland

informs Sandia that the Air Force no longer

investigates such sightings unless they specifically occur

on a base. This doesn't make any sense

because the incident did happen around

a U.S. Air Force facility, and furthermore,

near nuclear weapons, and yet AFOSI is not interested.

The AFOSI's main directive is to provide investigative

services to protect the national security of the U.S.

So to claim that a UFO that lands near

a nuclear weapons storage unit is out of their jurisdiction

is ludicrous.

On the night of August 11th, the UFO returns

to the exact same location. At that point, the Air Force

just couldn't deny it.

On August 22nd, Major Edwards from Kirtland Air Force Base

interviews every officer who was involved

in these multiple sightings. Major Edwards informs

an intelligence officer named Richard Doty

of the persistent accounts of UFO sightings near their

nuclear weapons storage site. Richard Doty

is a controversial character in the whole history of UFOs.

Doty was expert at leading people on a wild goose chase.

It appears that once Officer Doty became involved,

the case was doomed and eventually buried.

This is an important case because you have multiple

witnesses of a multiple sighting that took place

over several days all claiming to see

the same object near Coyote Canyon.

So it appears there was a cover up.

Once again, we see forces from above come in

and take these credible men, these servants to our country,

and make them feel like they've done something wrong

when they were just doing their duty.

If it was a cover up, who are they hiding

the information from? The public was not involved

in this, it was strictly military.

Was the military hiding information

from the military?

Up next, these incidents aren't just confined

to the ground. Two respected police

helicopter pilots go head to head with a UFO.

The unbelievable dog fight when "Hangar 1" returns.

When you're involved in a UFO case, your credibility

is in question. The first thing they're going

to do is perform a psych test on you, then they're going

to do a drug test on you.

They want to intimidate you and a lot of police officers

don't want to go through that.

Louisville, Kentucky, 1993.

At 11:50 P.M., Officers Graham and Downs

are in the middle of a routine patrol flight

when they receive a call about a possible break in

near Sanford Avenue and Buechel Bank Road.

The officers fly over the area when suddenly Graham

notices a small light below them.

Downs points the helicopter spotlight on the object

to get a better look.

Downs and Graham see a glowing, pear-shaped object

about the size of a basketball. Suddenly, the object

shoots up, right in front of the helicopter

and then spins counterclockwise around them

until it stops right behind the two pilots.

Graham has never seen anything like it.

Now he's afraid the object is going to ram the tail rotor,

so he pushes the helicopter forward at a 100 miles an hour.

Incredibly, the UFO chases them and at one point

even shoots past them.

All of the sudden, the UFO appears to shoot three fireballs

at the helicopter.

Graham is able to bank his helicopter away

from the blast.

The pilots are panicking, but then the UFO just zips away.

The officers wake up

their boss, Lieutenant David Pope,

to give him their full report. Pope can't believe

what he's hearing. He knows that

his officers are credible. He stated in a report that

Graham was a veteran pilot and that both he and Downs

were military veterans with many years of service.

So, look at the facts here. These are police officers

who work in the air. They work in the sky

every single day.

Well, of course they know the difference between a star,

a planet, and some bell-shaped thing flying around

their helicopter.

Lieutenant Pope submits his report to superiors,

but it goes unnoticed.

Downs and Graham can't believe the report isn't being

taken seriously. And then if that isn't enough,

fellow colleagues warn them

to just let it go because it was starting to make the department

look bad. It makes you wonder

if these police officers were hung out to dry

with nowhere for them to go and no one to provide

any answers. Is the military

now intentionally ignoring UFO reports by police officers

in order to protect law enforcement authority

or to protect themselves by avoiding a paper trail?

It's almost a relief when I hear that

there is some official involved, someone who is trained

to observe because the credibility of these things

is so often challenged.

One thing that I want to see in my lifetime is some answer

for these experiences that I've had.

I want to see some kind of government recognition.

If they would just, you know, come out and say, yes,

it is real, this is actually happening.

With the majority of UFO sightings at night, it makes

sense that the officers working these late shifts would be

the most likely witnesses of such phenomena.

Coming up, another predawn UFO chase leaves

the police with nowhere to turn until MUFON uncovers the files.

When government policy states that UFOs do not exist,

what happens when their local law enforcement agents see

and report UFO sightings? Over the years, it appears

policy has changed from deflection to disaccreditation

to disregarding entirely, leaving police officers

with nowhere to turn when it comes to reporting

these incidents.

January 5th, 2000 near Scott Air Force Base,

Illinois.

Melvin Knoll, a local Highland, Illinois

truck driver pulls into his company office at 4:00 A.M.

He looks up and notices this really bright light

in the sky that's moving towards him,

and he realizes that the light is actually coming from a huge

triangle-looking craft. A recording from the county

radio dispatcher documents the driver's report

to the Highland Police Department.

We received a call from the Highland PD

in reference to a truck driver who just stopped in

and said there was a flying object.

Officer Ed Barton responds to the call at 4:10 A.M.

He asks the county dispatcher if she's joking.

The dispatcher says, "No, the man who stopped in

was totally serious." Just a quick question.

If I happen to find it, what am I supposed

to do with it?

As soon as Officer Barton turns onto Route 4...

there's a bright light coming from a large triangle.

He pulls over to the side of the road,

kills the car lights, and turns off his radio

to see if this thing is making any noise.

The object makes no sound, but he can see every detail

on this craft because it's moving right above him

at a steady speed. As soon as it passes,

he radios the sighting into central command.

He predicts that the object should be hitting the town

of Shiloh, Illinois at any moment.

In Shiloh, Officer David Martin soon radios in

that he sees the craft as well.

What does it look like to you?

It's kind of V-shaped.

Several minutes later, at 4:29 A.M.,

Officer Craig Stevens, who is in the nearby town

of Milstadt radios in that he also sees

a triangular UFO passing over his patrol car.

And then at 4:35 A.M., another officer in Dupo,

Illinois reports that he can also see the craft,

but at this point, it's climbing altitude fast

and he's losing track of the light.

If you would, contact Scott Air Force Base

and see if they have anything flying in this area.

The dispatcher calls Scott Air Force Base,

who report that they have not detected

any unidentified object on their radar.

But here you have no less than four different officers

all witnessing the same craft, yet Scott Air Force Base claims

they've got nothing. It just doesn't add up.

This was a huge case. You have four police witnesses,

media interest, and yet the military claims that

they have no knowledge about anything that happened

in the vicinity.

I find it impossible to believe Scott Air Force Base

is not going to be able to detect a 75-foot

triangular craft in its vicinity,

and yet this is exactly what they claim.

Does the government and military now turn

a blind eye when it comes to these kinds of sightings?

The government knows what's going on.

They don't talk about it. They won't report it.

Any singular event that has happened

with pilots reporting and the police department

on the ground reporting this, and then the story

dies the next day. You don't know if there's

an investigation going on internally.

We know that there is, but the government doesn't

talk about it, any government.

As a son of a cop and having grown up around cops

my whole life and knowing the kinds of witnesses

that they are, I find it offensive

when you start seeing all of the ridicule that so many

of them have been facing. Once a police officer

has seen a UFO, they very adamantly

will defend what they saw against all odds.

Many of these police cases go unreported because of a fear

of ridicule, but some brave officers do come to us

to report their story.

They recognize that these are important cases

that shouldn't be swept under the rug.

And they'd also like some answers to what

they've witnessed. We have now become the place

for police officers to come to to report UFO encounters.

When you have this kind of experience seeing a UFO

or something as unexplainable, and you try to report it,

they'll tell you, we don't investigate

this kind of phenomena. If you want answers,

you have to go to someone outside of the system because

chances are it's not going to be investigated through

law enforcement channels.

Police encounters with UFOs are some of the most detailed

witness reports on record and yet they are

continually disregarded by higher authorities.

Despite the government distancing themselves

from these UFO accounts, MUFON remains a source

that our law enforcement, both civilian and military,

can turn to and be taken seriously.

As these officers continue to spend so much time

on the front lines of our streets

and military bases, the unusual sightings

they document will be revealed in the files of "Hangar 1."