During one of my recent excursions to Barnes and Noble, I found a book I first heard about when it was in hardback. It’s now out in trade – less expensive – and wow, it’s a winner. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials go on the Record by Leslie Kean is exactly what the title promises.
I usually do my reading on the treadmill at the gym. But the past day or so, I’ve had a cold and have settled on the couch in our family room with this book and I can’t stop reading it. Kean is an investigative journalist who first published something on UFOs in 2000, in the Boston Globe. Her article was based on a report now known as the COMETA Report, a study by former “high ranking French officials documenting the existence of unidentified flying objects and exploring their potential on national security.”
In the introduction, Kean talks about her reluctance to become involved in this area because journalists – and the mainstream media – tend to ridicule it. But after reading the COMETA Report, she was hooked.
Anyone who knows anything about the UFO field will recognize the big stories in these pages: the wave of sightings over Belgium in the early 1990s, the Phoenix lights in 1997, the Hudson River Valley sightings, the O’Hare Airport sighting in 2006, the incident at Rendlesham Forest, UFOs in Brazil, France… But what makes this book unique is that Kean not only compiles this information in a suspenseful way, but has included chapters written by pilots, military personnel, and other government officials who experienced these sightings.
During the Phoenix lights flap on March 13, 1997, hundreds – maybe thousands – of ordinary Americans saw “a massive craft, a solid object, not merely lights; and it often appeared to be very low in the sky, blocking out the stars behind it.” The 9-11 calls poured in. People were panicked. But it wasn’t until USA Today ran a story on the Phoenix Lights that the national media really spotlighted the incident.
So on June 19, Arizona’s Republican governor, Fife Symington, held a press conference and promised to reveal the source behind the Phoenix lights. His very tall chief of staff, handcuffed and wearing an alien costume, was escorted to the podium. The governor joked, “this just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious.”
And so, the Phoenix lights flap faded into oblivion until a decade later, when this same governor, now out of office, admitted that he had seen the craft. He referred to it as a “craft of unknown origin.” He heard about it first on TV, then “jumped into his car…and drove to a park near Squaw Park outside if Phoenix. “It was dramatic. And I couldn’t have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.”
Symington is now an outspoken advocate for disclosure.
There are so many compelling first-hand testimonies in this book that it reads like the best sort of suspense novel. You get a real sense that people on the front lines – air traffic controllers, for instance . They simply don’t know what to do, how to react, when they get a report from a pilot that they’re being followed by an unknown craft. One of the most intriguing chapters is on the incursion at O’Hare Airport on November 7, 2006, when mechanics, pilots, and managers “looked up from their ground positions at the terminal and saw the strange object hovering just under a cloud bank, which began at 1,900 feet above the ground…Based on the collection of eyewitness testimony, the UFO is estimated to have ranged in size from about 22 to 88 feet in diameter, and was suspended at approximately 1,500 feet above Gate C17 at the United terminal.”
Now, really, you would think that the government, the FAA, Homeland Security, someone somewhere, would have a comment about this incident. But the FAA tried to ignore the safety implications. One FAA person wrote the whole thing off as “weather phenomenon.” You know, that goes into the same category as Japanese lanterns and weather balloons.
As Kean points out, why not be forthright about what these phenomena are? Why not have an agency or commission that actually investigates and reports? In an era when everyone has a cell phone with camera and video capacity, when You Tube brings you the latest on events on the other side of the world, when information travels at the speed of light, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to buy into the “official” explanation.
As Kean concludes: “”…there is too much at stake to continue stonewalling… the phenomenon itself has placed us in a precarious situation that we have not chosen, and that we can do nothing about. We must strive to learn what we can, for its in our deepest nature and best interest to do so- to simply want to find out.”
As she points out, we don’t need the release of just more documents from the government. We need experts who study these sightings, who attempt to understand what these crafts are, where they come from, what they want. And we need these experts – and the government – be be honest and forthright with the pubic about their findings.
Kean has done all of us a service. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer or somewhere in between, you come away from this book with questions about the nature of reality, about your own belief system, and about the silliness and trivia your government is feeding you. That alone is worth the price of the book.
A very clear synchro, Trish! I’m definitely sending him a copy! But I have zero doubt he already knows virtually everything there is to know about the subject. He just must deny deny deny. He’s written his memoirs, which will be published posthumously. I’m hoping he’ll offer his experiences and knowledge in those pages. His entire life has been extraordinary.
Hope you’re feeling better today! Haven’t finished the book yet; I find that some of it hits me so hard that I must lay it aside for awhile, digest it, then go back and continue reading. When reading it, I constantly think of the NASA-related astrophysicist/pilot/genius who was my teacher and mentor, (you know who), and his response when I asked him if he had ever seen a UFO. After all, he began flying as a child and owns 22 planes and 3 helicopters which he hangars on his ranch in a different state, and he has flown everything with wings and some things that have no wings. But…he has above-top-secret classification, and not too long ago when I asked him about UFOs he laughed a forced laugh with no brevity, looked away from my eyes, and said, “there’s no such thing!” Talk about plausible deniability! I’ve always, always intuitively sensed he is one of “them”….the Good Guys. From Einstein’s family Out There. And, I’ve always wished he could be up front with me and explain my experiences to me, particularly the experiences I had when flying with HIM. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Maybe he would’ve if he could’ve. It simply wasn’t allowed. I’m going to purchase another copy of the book and highlight lots of significant lines and mail it to him with no comments. He’ll know who sent it. When I finish the last page I’ll let you know what I think. It’s almost impossible to put down. The magnetic effects on pilots and their aircraft when encounters occur in the air are of intense interest to me, as well they would be. Extraterrestrial or inter/intra/dimensional? Both? OK. Back to the book now.
Toward the end of the book there are stories/experiences from military and others in Chile, Brazil, and other South American countries where UFOs are taken seriously because of their incursion into the country’s air space.
I was about to suggest you send him a book when you said as much. Good idea!
Awesome news about the book and your site! If an author such as yourself finds it to be a page turner, then I must read it tooooo!
Feel better.x
Nat – you’ll enjoy this book. Hope all is well with you.
Trish, this is fascinating. And on another subject, YES, everything loaded like lightning compared to before you did whatever fix it was that you did on your site. I am impressed and hope it keeps up!
My father saw a cigar-shaped UFO when he was a navigator on big jets. He told me about it once, but when he and the crew made a report, it was squashed.
Fantastic! Took me about 4 hours to figure out what the problem was, but @ least it works.
Intriguing about your dad’s sighting and that the report was squashed. There are so many stories like that in this book.
what a great book – i just checked it out at amazon – the photos shown were fascinating – as was the content of the book displayed – what a list of credentials those contributors have! thanks so much for the addition of still another must read on my list! 😉 hope you’re feeling better –
Am nearing the end of the book. The suspense doesn’t let up.
After reading the post this morning, I sent my son to B&N to purchase it for me. They only had one copy. I’ve just begun to read it, am still in chapter one, and it has me in its grip. I like the premises of objectivity and agnoticism upon which the author has established her text, and expect I’ll be awake late tonight, turning the pages.
Can’t wait to hear what you think, Math!
As math says above if we ‘gaze into the deepest skies’ we will most likely see something – sometimes there will be an answer but often not. The book sounds very interesting but I don’t see government’s releasing any ‘quality’ info they have at the moment. Let’s just hope they don’t leave it too late.
My son’s and my encounter experience at Warner Robins AFB on November 9, 1981, left us with the awareness that our government….or at the very least, certain of our military….KNOW and are cooperating with what is happening with UFOs and ETs. When ordinary citizens of sound mind are snatched, taken against their will onto an American air force base, surrounded by hovering helicopters alongside saucer-shaped craft, and are terrorized and threatened by members of our military alongside apparent non-human entities, any denial about that awareness is no longer credible.
Members of the human species are not so vulnerable, generally speaking, that full disclosure would result in the mass insanity governments use as an excuse to remain silent. For most of us, NOT KNOWING what we are dealing with is far worse than whatever the truth may be regarding the presence and activities of the intelligence that is the source of these increasing sightings and the interactions with earth’s inhabitants. Many of the fundamental religious folks might go nuts, I imagine, because their core belief constructs would be shredded. But on the Whole, I’m of the opinion that being well-informed is the most essential weapon, if indeed weapons are necessary regarding these strangers. Any person need only go outside in the dark of a moonless night, away from any city lights, gaze into the deepest skies, to see that there are objects out there which have no logical explanation due to their motions and other distinctive qualities. They aren’t space trash, human aircraft such as high-flying jets, satellites, the space station, or any other earth-related objects. Some of them can be seen to move in extraordinary ways that we simply cannot do but that are obviously controlled by SOMETHING. I’ll be purchasing this book today, guys. Thanks for the post.
It is now on my very long list. I’ll try to download it. I like having a whole bookshelf at my disposal – and in my purse.