Alien Encounters

What In the Cosmos Is Going On?

“A wave of unprecedented appearances of UFOs in the skies of Israel has stirred up UFO enthusiasts and several thousands of other people who have been witnesses to unforgettable sights. The mounting reports in recent weeks leave no room for doubt in the minds of many that UFOs have invaded Planet Earth!”

Israeli Journalist Iris Almagor, March 1997

In recent years, a number of astonishing events in our skies and in the corridors of power and influence have suggested to many that we are on the verge of open and global recognition of the reality of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and extraterrestrial life.

To many, this great shift in our understanding of our place in the cosmic community will usher in a period of unparalleled peace, prosperity, and global unity. On the other hand, many, including top UFO researchers, believe that we may be headed for the most bizarre—and most far reaching—challenge ever seen on this planet. And your personal destiny—and that of your family—may depend upon how you deal with the strange events that may soon take place.

Now in the 21st century, life in outer space is taken for granted by our educational and media establishments, and with this assumption comes the inevitable discussion of UFOs and alien life forms. Once relegated to the ostracized domain of the lunatic fringe or to science fiction writers, UFOs have now emerged as a socially acceptable topic for serious discussion. Previously regarded as the whacko delusions of the ’40s and ’50s, now they have become one of the hottest topics of our entertainment and news media. One cannot even count the number of TV specials, documentaries (and pseudo-documentaries), and major movies that have been aired on this topic in recent years. Yet, in the last several years a number of staggering, although very well documented UFO events have occurred worldwide and have received no coverage by the mainstream U.S. media.

However, beginning in 1996, we have witnessed what some have called a “leak a week” strategy being orchestrated by agencies of the federal government and the scientific establishment. Many believe this is part of a global strategy toward open acknowledgment of “ET reality.”

Are the UFOs real, or are they some form of delusion? Can anyone really take them seriously? What’s really going on?

It may come as a surprise to learn that a recent Gallup poll revealed that 72 percent of Americans believe in extraterrestrial life; 48 percent believe in UFOs and 15 percent believe they have seen a UFO. According to other polls, up to 3 percent believe that they have been abducted by a UFO!¹

It turns out to be a gargantuan task to even catalog the volumes of the UFO reports in recent history. A bibliography of just the professional articles—excluding newspapers, etc.—lists 6,000 publications in English, 2,200 in foreign journals, and 1,350 periodicals published on the subject.²

Wading through the mountains of reports of sightings, encounters, and even accounts of abductions, one is confronted with an unmanageable barrage of unconfirmable testimonies, hoaxes, frauds, and deliberate disinformation—even from the government. Yet, there remain behind it all too many serious cases which involve multiple reliable witnesses and even tangible physical evidences, enough to bury even the most ardent skeptic.

A Sudden Change of Policy

On August 6, 1996, a dramatic shift in policy was apparently set in motion. A press release, personally endorsed by none other than the NASA administrator Daniel Goldin himself, startled the entire world:³

“NASA Scientists Find Evidence of Life on Mars.”

The next day, President Clinton joined the elation with a press announcement on the South Lawn of the White House:

“This is the product of years of exploration and months of intensive study by some of the world’s most distinguished scientists. Like all discoveries, this one will and should continue to be reviewed, examined and scrutinized. It must be confirmed by other scientists. But clearly, the fact that something of this magnitude is being explored is another vindication of America’s space program and our continuing support for it, even in these tough financial times. I am determined that the American space program will put its full intellectual power and technological prowess behind the search for further evidence of life on Mars...

“Today, rock 84001 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined. Even as it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it poses still others even more fundamental.

“We will continue to listen closely to what it has to say as we continue the search for answers and for knowledge that is as old as humanity itself but essential to our people’s future.”

Since the announcement, a number of investigative teams have expressed considerable doubt regarding the evidence presented by Goldin and the NASA team.⁴, ⁵ Nevertheless, the event marked a significant policy change for the administration. Life in space was now “in.”

The cynics snickered that it was just a clever ploy by NASA to facilitate desperate funding. It may, however, be far more than that. In subsequent months the Mars announcement was followed by similar, less dramatic announcements by NASA touting the discovery of liquid water on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons:

“Jupiter’s Europa Harbors Possible ‘warm ice’ or Liquid Water”

“Tantalizing new images of Jupiter’s moon Europa from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft indicate that ‘warm ice’ or even liquid water may have existed and perhaps still exists beneath Europa’s cracked icy crust. Europa has long been considered by scientists and celebrated in science fiction as one of the handful of places in the solar system (along with Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan) that could possess an environment where primitive life forms could possibly exist.”⁶

A subsequent news release heralded the possibility of a mass of ice in the giant crater known as the Aitken Basin near the south pole of the moon.⁷ More announcements of this kind are sure to follow.

Understandably, this fanfare has made life in space a hotter topic than ever. The euphoria was soon enhanced by subsequent Mars missions, which predictably supplied more “evidence” to fan the interest. The Mars Global Surveyor reached orbital insertion in March 1998 and began mapping for one Mars year (687 Earth days) until January 31, 2000. This was intended to be the first of a decade-long program of the robotic exploration of Mars, called the Mars Surveyor Program. An aggressive series of orbiters and landers was planned to be launched every 26 months, as Mars moved into alignment with Earth.

The Pathfinder mission landed a small, 25 pound, six-wheeled robotic Rover (“Sojourner”) on Mars on July 4, 1997. It transmitted data collected on the atmosphere and surface and also transmitted images taken by the rover’s cameras.

In the meantime, while the U.S. press slept and the scientific community focused on the possibility of ancient microbes from Mars, a number of well-documented mass sightings of unidentified flying objects have continued around the globe which have convinced multitudes of the reality of UFOs.

The Day Mexico City Stood Still

On January 1, 1993, at 2:00 p.m., Mexico City became host to the most astonishing and best documented UFO event in recorded history. According to numerous broadcasts⁸ and published reports,⁹ tens of thousands of people (including police, military personnel, and ordinary citizens) sighted a silvery craft performing aerial acrobatics over the central portion of Mexico City in broad daylight. Radio stations were inundated by phone calls while television stations preempted their regular schedules to broadcast the event. Videotapes of the event showed traffic backed up on Mexico City’s main thoroughfare, Avenida Reforma, as drivers and passengers emerged from their automobiles to get a look at the strange metallic disks.¹⁰ Later that day, at 3:51 and 5:21 p.m., two additional metallic, disk-shaped craft appeared and were also documented by local residents with camcorders.

On January 2, 1993, every major newspaper and news program covered the event which reportedly lasted five hours. One of Mexico City’s major newspapers, La Prensa, carried the headline, “Astonishment! UFOs over the Capital.” The event was also recorded by radar at the Mexico City International Airport.¹¹ Incredibly, there was no reporting of this event in the U.S. press.

This was not the first UFO event in the skies of Mexico in recent years. The Mexico UFO flap (a flap is a large number of sightings in a short time span) began on July 11, 1991, during the total eclipse of the sun that swept across the central part of Mexico. On that day, shortly after 1:00 p.m., 17 unrelated individuals, in four different cities, armed with cameras and camcorders, documented a metallic disk-shaped object hanging motionless below the eclipsed sun. This event became the first “mass-photographed” daylight disk in history. Interestingly, many of the witnesses didn’t realize they had photographed the disk until subsequent viewing of their tapes.

Examination of the videotapes revealed a solid, metallic, “hockey puck-shaped” object with counterclockwise rotation. Since that time, researchers have collected more than 700 video tapes of metallic, disk-shaped UFOs observed in the skies over Mexico.¹² More than 100 of the videotapes are daylight shots. In addition, many of these have been videotaped by local residents while being simultaneously tracked on radar by nearby airports. On March 4, 1992, air traffic controllers in Mexico City recorded a group of UFOs on their radar screens. The blips stayed for 40 minutes.

UFO researcher Brit Elders discussed the radar tracking of UFOs over Mexico:

“...Mexico has in place and operational a highly sophisticated radar system, the TDX 2000. This air traffic management system has tracked and recorded unidentified objects simultaneous to the eyewitness reports of OVNIs [the Spanish term for UFOs] both from the ground and from pilots.”¹³

Commercial pilots and air traffic controllers have asked the Mexican government to investigate the problem due to a number of perceived “near misses.” However, when officials of the Mexican government held a press conference—during which they acknowledged the sightings—they said the UFOs posed no significant danger to the public. The UFO activity has even engendered the attention of Mexico’s news magazine 60 Minutos (the Mexican counterpart of 60 Minutes). The chief investigative reporter and editor of 60 Minutos, Jaime Maussan, has directed extensive research on the Mexico UFO flap and reported his results on Mexican television on numerous occasions. In 1995 Maussan stated, “Thanks to the video camcorder, Mexico has become the site of the most documented UFO flap in history.”¹⁴

Since 1991, sightings of UFOs have continued almost unabated in the skies over Mexico, especially over Mexico City. UFOs have been extensively sighted and videotaped by hundreds of ordinary citizens, commercial pilots, and Mexican governmental authorities. Although the sightings have been thoroughly covered in the Mexican press, according to researchers, the majority of the populace has become desensitized to their presence and have come to view the sightings as “routine.” While opinions vary, many of the witnesses believe that the Mexico flap represents the fulfillment of ancient Mayan or Biblical prophesies.

Israel: “The Big Invasion”

Starting in 1996, the borders of Israel became host to one of the most extraordinary UFO flaps in history. At 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 17, 1996, traffic on High Road in the Ramat Aviv section of Tel Aviv, Israel, came to a standstill when astonished motorists emerged from their automobiles to watch a UFO hovering near the city. Tel Aviv police received dozens of calls about a lighted object doing aerial acrobatics over the northern end of the city that were considered impossible for any conventional flying plane or helicopter. According to a report in Mai’ariv, one of Israel’s two largest daily newspapers, the event was witnessed by police along with hundreds of motorists at the scene.

Since the Israeli flap began, David Ronen, a reporter and editor for Mai’ariv newspaper has received hundreds of reports of UFO sightings as well as accounts of alleged contact with aliens by Israeli citizens. In his column Ronen noted that the sightings, which were previously restricted to relatively deserted areas, have started to occur in the more heavily populated coastland and city regions of Israel. In a 1997 interview for the British Journal UFO Reality, Ronen summarized the goings-on in Israel:

“All at once, UFOs have begun to appear in the centre of Israel and in other areas throughout the country, as well as simultaneously in Iran and Australia. At precisely the same time (August 1996) a tide of eyewitness reports came in, this time not from individual people, but involving a wave of mass reports, including an intervention by the police and the army. The succession of reports is so staggering that it is already impossible to keep track of the hundreds and thousands of eyewitness reports that pour in each day.”¹⁵

One of the best documented sightings occurred on Sunday, August 4, 1996, around 2:30 a.m. in Eilat, Israel. According to some estimates, more than a thousand people saw a UFO traveling slowly over the perimeter of the city at a height of 200 meters above ground. The local police stations and emergency centers were deluged with dozens of reported sightings. An eyewitness to the event was the son of the deputy mayor of Eilat, Rafi Edri. Regarding the event, he stated:

“At 2:30 a.m., a group of 50 people stood and watched a UFO, like a giant tent full of lights, light up the sky above two residential districts. The UFO passed just over our heads at a height of not more than 100–200 metres. The event lasted close to ten minutes. Suddenly, without any advance warning, it disappeared.”¹⁶

Other residents who observed the UFO stated that at first it was semicircle-shaped; afterwards it split in two, then instantaneously disappeared. In a similar sighting in August 1996, the deputy editor of the local paper in Eilat reported an enormous red-and-purple boomerang-shaped UFO the size of “half a city” which split in two, then floated above the city of Aqaba and disappeared above Jordan.

According to published reports, in September 1996, in the village of Netanya, an estimated 5,000 people were terrified when a UFO descended between a group of nearby buildings. The event was witnessed by numerous local officials, including at least ten police patrol cars.¹⁷

On other occasions residents have reported disruption of electrical appliances, burn marks on the ground, burnt out street lamps, “crop circle” landing sites, cattle mutilations, close encounters with “giant alien entities,” and yes, even alleged alien abductions.¹⁸

One of Israel’s best known journalists, Barry Chamish, has extensively researched the recent events in the skies over Israel. Chamish, who was the chief editor of Inside Israel, an investigative news journal, stated that “Israel is recognized as an international UFO hot spot —with an unsurpassed quantity and quality of evidence.”19 Due to the enormity of the Israeli flap, Barry Chamish and many of his journalistic colleagues have dubbed the events as “The Big Invasion.” In fact, the frequent sightings of UFOs and alleged contact with alien entities was even discussed—with no resolution—by the Knesset on February 12, 1997.²⁰

According to those who have studied the events over Israel, there is a very puzzling aspect of this UFO flap. Researchers note that the sightings appear to be occurring almost exclusively over the tiny land mass of the Jewish state rather than throughout the Middle East. This peculiarity was also noted by Daniel Brynberg, a journalist for the Jerusalem Report:

“Ufologists are at a loss to explain the lack of sightings in Israel’s near neighbors—it is as if the aliens, unlike most Earthlings, are aware of Israel’s borders.”²¹

The “rationalists” in Israel, like those in the United States, prefer to deny the existence of the phenomenon, claiming the events are a simple case of mass hysteria. Many view the events as a sign from God. Still others believe that the events in Israel portend a sinister influence—a foreboding sign that something ominous is about to happen and that Israel will be its focus. Whatever the case may be, the events in Israel closely follow those that have comprised UFO folklore in the United States.

Phoenix Rising?

On the evening of Thursday, March 13, 1997 the state of Arizona became host of one of the most recent and best documented UFO sightings in history. The sighting began at 8:16 p.m. when a retired police officer in Paulden, about 60 miles north of Phoenix, reported “a cluster of five red lights headed south.” Minutes later, calls from eyewitnesses in Prescott, Wickenburg, Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe flooded telephone lines at nearby Luke Air Force Base and local police departments.

While some described the object as a globe or a sphere, the majority of the witnesses saw an enormous V-shaped object with six leading and one trailing light. Some of the witnesses described the object as a solid, massive triangular craft. Others said that it appeared to be somewhat transparent. Like “a gray distortion of the night sky.”²² Videotapes of the object confirmed its great size and the V-shaped leading edge composed of a bank of six bright lights.

The event, which lasted 106 minutes, apparently engendered the attention of nearby Luke Air Force Base. According to eyewitnesses, as the object neared the base three F-16 interceptors were scrambled. However, when the jets approached the object it “shot straight up and disappeared like a blink of an eye.”²³ Predictably, officials at Luke Air Force Base denied this claim, stating that no aircraft were dispatched and that they do not investigate UFOs.

Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington, received hundreds of calls on the sighting and said “the incident over Arizona was the most dramatic I’ve seen... What we have here is the real thing. They are here.”²⁴

The object was also sighted by numerous local pilots and air traffic controllers. Bill Grava, a pilot and air traffic controller, was on duty that night at Sky Harbor International Airport. Although he witnessed the event he disclosed that the object did not show up on radar. When asked about the sighting he stated, “I still don’t know what to think, and I have no idea what it was. Something military, I guess.”²⁵

The event was big news in the Arizona press. Local television stations aired the video tapes taken by local residents and radio talk shows were inundated by calls about the events for several weeks. However, it was not until June 18, 1997, over three months after the event, that the sightings gained simultaneous national media attention when the network news programs on NBC, CNN, MSNBC and ABC covered the Arizona event with comprehensive prime-time stories. In the ensuing days the story was also aired by dozens of local television news affiliates.

Mike Fortsen, an eyewitness to the events of March 13, 1997, was interviewed on the CBS This Morning and asked to describe his sighting.

“It was 8:30 in the evening, I was going to bed, I was closing my bedroom window which faces to the west and as I closed the window my eyes immediately went to the north where I saw the three huge white bright lights...we watched this craft as it leveled off. We watched it from the north all the way to the south for approximately a minute and a half. It was a flat black triangle. It was approximately a mile in length. It was about 1,500 feet off the ground. It was totally quiet. It was a solid object, it was one vehicle and it was close to a mile in length.”

When asked what he thought the object was Fortsen stated,

“I’m pretty well convinced that this was an alien visitation craft. I’m pretty sure that it was interdimensional instead of interplanetary and I’m quite sure that our federal government and our military knows exactly what it was.”

The story was also covered by USA Today in a full page article on June 18, 1997. In the article investigative reporter Richard Price called the events “the most confounding UFO report in fifty years.” According to Price the event, which was witnessed by thousands of Arizona residents, was described in remarkably consistent terms.

“Something happened in the skies over Arizona the night of March 13. No one is sure what it was, but thousands saw it, dozens videotaped it and people all over the state are still haunted by it... Witnesses generally agree on three things. First, it was enormous. The most conservative estimate describes it as three football fields long. Computer analysis of the tapes puts it at 6,000 feet, or more than a mile. Second it made no sound. Third, it moved slowly over Phoenix, cruising at 30 mph. Several times it hovered in place in the sky.”²⁶

In a scene that was reminiscent of the blockbuster movie Independence Day, dozens of night-time videotapes showed the outline of a massive object floating slowly near the downtown lights of Phoenix. Yet, despite the large number of witnesses, neither the Air Force nor the state and local governments were willing to officially investigate the incident. The origin of the enormous unidentified flying object will surely be the topic of much speculation and debate in the months and years to come.²⁷

UFOs Over Korea

On November 23, 1996, the Associated Press (AP) in Seoul, South Korea, posted a story about a daylight sighting of a diskshaped UFO that was witnessed by thousands of Koreans at 7:20 a.m., during rush-hour traffic. The story, entitled “UFO Footage Stirs Sensation in S. Korea,” described the event and noted that it was videotaped and aired by a local television network.

The television pictures showed footage of a shining object floating motionless in the early morning sky, suspended in midair for about ten minutes before it suddenly disappeared. While skeptics attributed the event to conventional air traffic, according to AP, South Korean Air Force officials stated that there were no scheduled military or civilian aircraft flying in the area at the time when the object was allegedly sighted.

According to the published reports, South Korea had been overtaken by “UFO fever” in recent months as numerous sightings—documented by local photographers—had received widespread and prominent coverage in newspapers throughout the country.

Observers in South Korea said the flying pattern of the object was identical to another unidentified flying object sighted in 1995. The same day, at 7:30 p.m. PST, CNN World Report reported the “cigar shaped UFO” over Seoul. According to CNN, a number of witnesses recorded video footage of the UFO and this footage accompanied the CNN report. The incident was also reported in the United States by Reuters, making it one of the rare UFO events reported by the mainstream media.

Project Starlight

On April 9–10, 1997, an unprecedented congressional briefing occurred in Washington, D.C., to promote official and definitive disclosure regarding the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence. The briefing was sponsored by the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and represented the official start of CSETI’s “Project Starlight” initiative.

The Project Starlight initiative was begun in 1993 by Dr. Steven Greer, the director of CSETI, “to identify the best scientific evidence related to UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence”²⁸ and for the open public release of this information. According to Dr. Greer, since 1993 CSETI has identified more than 100 “bona-fide military, intelligence, government contractor and other government agency employees with direct, firsthand knowledge of the UFO/ET subject.”

Since 1993, Project Starlight team members have provided preliminary briefings of “best available evidence” for senior military leaders, senior United Nations leadership, White House staff, a sitting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, international leaders, members of the Senate and House of Representatives, and leaders in foreign governments, among others. However, these briefings were simply a prelude to those of April, 1997. According to Dr. Greer, the congressional briefings were necessary because CSETI had learned that the UFO sub-ject was being “managed in a way which kept the majority of our constitutional leadership uninformed on the subject.”

During the April 1997 briefings, the Project Starlight team brought together nearly 20 firsthand government witnesses to UFO/ET events. According to CSETI, most of the witnesses formerly possessed top secret security clearances and testified to events that took place while they possessed those clearances. These UFO witnesses were active in the Air Force, Army, Navy, NASA, private industry, and intelligence operations from the early 1950s to the 1990s.

The closed, confidential briefings took place at the Westin Hotel in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon, and at other locations in the Washington, D.C., area. They were attended by nearly 30 congressmen or their staff representatives, VIPs from the executive branch, representatives of the Dutch embassy staff, government scientists, and representatives from the National Academy of Sciences and two state governors’ offices. Separate media briefings were attended by reporters from 
The Washington Post, US News and World Report, The Boston Globe, The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), WTNH-TV, United Press International, USA Today, and a producer from CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Briefing participants were provided with extensive photographic, written, and video documentation of “definitive and unambiguous” evidence for the existence of UFOs.²⁹

In addition, 11 of the best witnesses were selected to testify before the assembled government leaders. The testimony included a statement from “a world-renowned astronomer who was present when an apparent extraterrestrial signal was received at the Harvard observatory (SETI) facility” in the late 1980s. In a subsequent interview several weeks later, Greer said that over three dozen signals of non-Earth-based origin have been received by the META (Million-channel ExtraTerrestrial Assay) System at Harvard University.³⁰ In our own research efforts we were indeed able to confirm Greer’s statement.

The Million-channel ExtraTerrestrial Assay (META) at the Harvard/Smithsonian observatory is fed by a 26-meter, steerable Cassegrainian radio telescope which became operational in 1985. After five years of scanning for narrow-band radio signals (near the 1420 MHz line of neutral hydrogen), the META hardware searched more than 60 trillion channels! During that time there were 37 candidate “events” that exceeded the average detection threshold.³¹ These “events” were, in fact, electromagnetic signals of varying duration that were determined to be of non-Earth origin. However, they were published with no fanfare in the Astrophysical Journal.³² When we inquired as to why the anomalous signals were not considered extremely significant, public relations officials at SETI in Palo Alto, California, stated that they were not repeatable events; that is, when the anomalous regions were re-scanned, the signals did not repeat.³³ No explanation for the signals was given other than they were “unidentified.”

At the briefing, additional witnesses discussed firsthand knowledge of UFO artifacts; well-documented photographic evidence that was altered by NASA; as well as the testimony of a Naval employee who witnessed a major UFO encounter off the Eastern seaboard which was photographed, tracked on radar, and pursued by military aircraft in 1981.

The ultimate goal of the closed congressional briefing was to bring about open congressional hearings on the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life in a non-sensational, rational manner. However, if they are not forthcoming, CSETI planned to press for the disclosure of UFO/ET reality either through the United Nations or a public blue-ribbon panel of former and current military, NASA, intelligence, and government employees with direct, firsthand knowledge of the UFOs.

This excerpt is from Dr. Chuck Missler and Mark Eastman’s book Alien Encounters. Available in book and eBook formats. Now also as an Audiobook from https://store.khouse.org.