France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years

Didn't know E.T.'s spoke French...

23 March 2007 : France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.

The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists. "It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena."

Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption. "Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper" are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.

But many others involving multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously. A phalanx of beefy security guards formed a barrier in front of the space agency (CNES) headquarters where the announcement was made, "to screen out uninvited UFOlogists," an official explained.

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Can find it on the `net now...

France Puts Secret UFO Archive on Web
Mar 23, 2007 - The saucer-shaped object is said to have touched down in the south of France and then zoomed off. It left behind scorch marks and that haunting age-old question: Are we alone?

This is just one of the cases from France's secret "X-Files" - some 100,000 documents on supposed UFOs and sightings of other unexplained phenomena that the French space agency is publishing on the Internet. France is the first country to put its entire weird sightings archive online, said Jacques Patenet, who heads the space agency's UFO cell - the Group for Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena.

Their oldest recorded sighting dates from 1937, Patenet told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. The first batch of archives went up on the agency's Web site this week, drawing a server-busting wave of traffic.

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Among the unexplained cases, one of the most perplexing concerned a 1994 Air France flight. While flying over the Paris region, the crew noticed a large brown-red disk hovering on the horizon and constantly changing shape. The case "has never been explained to this day, and leaves the door open to all possible hypotheses," the agency wrote.

So, do we have neighbors out there, after all? "I don't have an answer to that," said Patenet. "Even if there is such a planet, given the size of the universe, what is the probability that two civilizations ... will meet or come across each other? I really don't know. It's very complicated. It's incalculable."

On the Net:

http://www.cnes.fr (Click on 'English' link)

FULL http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070323/D8O23IN81.html

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Former Ariz. governor says he saw UFO
Ten years after ‘Phoenix Lights,’ Symington says he was a witness
March 23, 2007

Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who trotted out an aide dressed as an alien 10 years ago to spoof the frenzy surrounding mysterious lights in the Phoenix sky, now says the lights were actually an alien spacecraft. Now a pastry chef and business consultant, Symington is keying in on the anniversary of the sighting of the so-called "Phoenix Lights" by reversing course, saying the lights were really extraterrestrial and that he saw a UFO himself.

"I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies," Symington said Thursday. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it." During a news conference in 1997, Symington, a former Air Force captain then in his second term as governor, told the assembled press that an alien had been captured. He then ushered out his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, dressed in a costume complete with oversized head and eyes.

"This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious," Symington said at the time. Later that year, he was convicted of bank fraud charges stemming from his bankrupt real estate empire. The conviction later was overturned and he was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001 before federal prosecutors decided whether they would retry the case.

More http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17761943/

[waltky]

Will flying saucers determine the next President?...

UFOs invade presidential debate
November 1, 2007 - Kucinich claims he saw one, and Richardson says the government should 'come clean' about the Roswell, N.M., incident.

Presidential candidates have flip-flopped on taxes, abortion, gun control and the war. But rarely has one flip-flopped on flying saucers. Until now. In September, a spokeswoman for Dennis J. Kucinich dismissed a report emanating from a Washington conference about UFOs that the Ohio congressman had a close encounter with one.

"If you have a serious question, just ask me," Kucinich staffer Natalie Laber instructed a Washington Post reporter who inquired about Kucinich's knowledge of UFOs. "If not, then just keep your silly comments to yourself." But Tuesday night, Kucinich had no wiggle room when moderator Tim Russert posed this question during the Democratic debate in Philadelphia:

"The godmother of your daughter, Shirley MacLaine, writes in her new book that you've sighted a UFO over her home in Washington state, that you found the encounter extremely moving, that it was a triangular craft silent and hovering, that you felt a connection to your heart and heard direction in your mind. Now, did you see a UFO?"

Replied Kucinich: "I did."

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Nasa told to solve 'UFO crash' X-File
Sunday November 11, 2007: For four decades, residents of the tiny Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg have told their story of strange blue lights in the sky one winter's evening and a fireball crashing into woods.

On 9 December, 1965, they say, they saw armed soldiers cordoning off the area and a large metallic acorn-shaped object bearing strange hieroglyphics driven off at speed on the back of a lorry. They talk of menacing plain-clothes officials visiting homes and warning local people not to tell anyone of what they saw. Until now the US government has denied that anything sinister took place. It has maintained that a thorough search of the woods by the air force, the only federal agency to have acknowledged it was there, found nothing. But now Nasa has been ordered to examine its X-Files to solve the mystery.

Steve McConnell, Nasa's public liaison officer, has admitted two boxes of papers from the time of the Kecksburg incident are missing. The episode has parallels to the 1947 Roswell incident, when a UFO was said to have landed in New Mexico. 'For so many years, a lot of good people in Pennsylvania were told by their government that what they had to say was a lie or that they were hallucinating,' said Leslie Kean, a journalist who launched a lawsuit four years ago to force Nasa to open its archives.

Washington judge Emmett Sullivan refused to accept Nasa's claim that the papers had been lost. He gave it until the end of the year to examine its records. 'Something came down that night,' said Kean. 'Nasa has been stonewalling and now it's required to do the search it didn't do in the first place. It's a victory for those patriotic people who didn't like being told that they were making things up.'

Stan Gordon, a UFO investigator living close to the site, interviewed several witnesses. He said: 'It's interesting that [witnesses say] it was made of one solid piece of metal with no panels or rivets, and that it was moving relatively slowly and made almost a controlled landing. 'I have no doubt the government knows a lot more about this than it has revealed to the public.'

Nasa told to solve 'UFO crash' X-File | World | The Observer

[waltky]

Granny wants t' know how he can be sure if he never seen `em?...

UFOs ‘definitely’ exist, Japan spokesman says
Tues., Dec. 18, 2007 - Top government official certain despite lack of confirmed sightings

Japan’s air force has never spotted a UFO, but the country’s top government spokesman said Tuesday he “definitely” believes they exist. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura was speaking to reporters in response to demands lodged by an opposition lawmaker for an inquiry into “frequent reports of UFO sightings.”

The government said in an official reply that it had “not confirmed sightings of unidentified flying objects believed to be from outer space.” Still, “I definitely believe they exist,” Machimura said as reporters erupted in laughter.

In a written response issued Tuesday to opposition Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Ryuji Yamane, the government said the air force had often spotted “birds and other objects beside aircraft,” but no UFOs. Tokyo keeps a vigilant watch over Japanese airspace and is ready to scramble fighter jets to intercept suspicious airborne objects, the government reply said.

UFOs ‘definitely’ exist, Japan spokesman says - Space - MSNBC.com

[waltky]

Pope Benny endorses UFO's...

Vatican: It's OK to Believe in Aliens
Tuesday, May. 13, 2008 — Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones. "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said. The interview, headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy. The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

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U.K. releases batch UFO sightings files
13 May,`08 — The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.

No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that's what they reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984. The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released Wednesday by Britain's National Archives. It is one of the few that was never explained. The air traffic controllers' "Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon" was filed from an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England.

The men, each with more than eight years on the job, described how they were helping guide a small plane to a landing on runway 22 when they were distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without clearance. "Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified," their report said. "SATCO (code name for a controller with 14 years experience) reports that the object came in 'at speed,' made a touch and go on runway 27, then departed at 'terrific speed' in a 'near vertical' climb."

The incident is one of the more credible in the newly public files because it was reported by air traffic controllers, said David Clarke, a UFO expert who worked with the National Archives on the document release. "They were absolutely astonished," he said. "It was a bright, circular object, flashing different colors, and after it touched down it disappeared at fantastic speed. The report comes from very qualified people, and it's one of the few that remained unexplained."

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[waltky]

A puzzling UFO case...

How to crack a case from the UFO files
Thurs., May. 15, 2008 : 1984 Minsk sighting serves as case study for flying-saucer sleuthing

The highly publicized releases of "UFO files" from France and Britain provide more puzzling tales about anomalous aerial objects over the years. But the stories behind some of the most spectacular sightings in UFO history will come to light only when the Russian Ministry of Defense opens up its files. Consider one of the most sensational UFO stories in Soviet history — a story that has been enshrined in world "ufology" as a classic that cannot be explained in any prosaic terms. The tale of the Minsk UFO sighting can teach a lesson about the vigor of unidentified flying objects as a cultural phenomenon.

A passenger jet is flying north on Sept. 7, 1984, near Minsk, in present-day Belarus. Suddenly, at 4:10 a.m., the flight crew notices a glowing object out their forward right window. In the 10 minutes that follow, the object changes shape, zooms in on the aircraft, plays searchlights on the ground beneath it, and envelops the airliner in a mysterious ray of light that fatally injures one of the pilots. Other aircraft in the area, alerted by air traffic control operators who are watching the UFO on radar, also see it.

The incident figures prominently in "UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union," a 1992 book by Jacques Vallee, who was the real-life inspiration for the fictional ufologist in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." “No natural explanation [is] possible, given the evidence,” Vallee wrote. A leading Russian UFO expert, Vladimir Azhazha, reported that as a result of the encounter the co-pilot “had a serious mental derangement — the encephalogram of his brain was not of an ‘earthly’ character, as he lost memory for long periods of time.”

More How to crack a case from the UFO files - Space - MSNBC.com

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says they prob'ly couldn't afford the high price of gas, ran out an' crashed to the ground...

Vietnamese island showered with UFO remains?
May 29,`08 : Aliens from outer space might not be a thing of science fiction anymore, especially after a small Vietnamese island was showered with metal-like debris, courtesy a UFO explosion.

According to reports, the unidentified flying object is not believed to be a plane as none have been reported missing in the area. Investigators are working on the theory the explosion happened five miles above the ground. A search of Phu Quoc island off southern Vietnam uncovered shards of grey "metal" up to four feet long.

On May 29, soldiers examined the area for clues as airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand insisted none of their aircraft were missing in the area. Villagers in the nearby Cambodian province of Kampot said on May 27 that they had heard a loud explosion. A day later they found chunks of material near the coastline.

After the explosion Kung Mony, of Cambodia's Air Force, claimed it could have been a foreign plane but he later backed down from the theory. One explanation could be that the plane was a military one - but none of the nearby countries has admitted to losing any aircraft.

Vietnamese island showered with UFO remains?

[waltky]

Chinese develope UFO...

Chinese company develops UFO - report
June 17, 2008 - A CHINESE company has developed a prototype flying saucer that can hover in the air and be controlled remotely from afar, state press said today.

The aircraft is 1.2 metres in diameter and is able to take off and land vertically and hover at an altitude of up to 1000 metres, Xinhua news agency said.

The unmanned disc is driven by a propeller and can be controlled remotely or sent on a preset flight path, it said. Its top speed is 80km/h, it added.

It took the Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft Co Ltd 12 years and 28 million yuan ($4.36 million) to develop the prototype craft, which is designed for aerial photography, geological surveys and emergency lighting, the report said.

Chinese company develops UFO - report | NEWS.com.au