Panel Wants U.S. Air Force to Re-Open File in Name of National Security

An international panel of two dozen former pilots and U.S. government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and national security.^[1] This advice was given in light of continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings.^[2] "Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement released at a news conference.^[3]

The panelists, who are from seven countries and included former senior U.S. military officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena.^[4]

Most UFO’s turn out to be misidentified aircraft, satellites or meteors; yet a panelist who once worked for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5 percent of incidents cannot be explained.^[5] The panel asserts that this 5% is key to improving national security, the problem is that the sightings are often dismissed by authorities without proper investigations.^[6]

"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska.^[7]

The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project Blue Book.^[8] Investigators concluded that the incidents posed no threat and there was no evidence of space aliens or a super technology in operation.^[9] The U.S. Airforce asserts that since the termination of Project Blue Book, nothing has occurred that would support a resumption of UFO investigations.^[10] The official USAF statement on the issue is that “no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.”^[11]

---

^[1] David Morgan, Joanne Kenen, David Alexander, Stuart Grudgings, Former pilots and officials call for new U.S. UFO probe, Reuters Newswire, November 12, 2007, available at LEXIS, News Library, Wire News Services File.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Id.
^[4] Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] Id.
^[7] Id.
^[8] Id.
^[9] Id.
^[10] USAF, UFO Webpage, United States Air Force Website, available at http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=188 (last visited November 13, 2007).
^[11] Id.