Original subtitles

♪ ♪

(radio chatter).

FOX: It's 1986 over Alaska, Japan Airlines encountered

something truly inexplicable in the night sky.

POWELL: These guys were flying from Paris to Tokyo.

They noticed a very bright light.

And it's following them.

FOX: The pilot, Kenju Terauchi had described it

as being several times larger

than his airplane, and his airplane had an elevator in it.

KEAN: It was huge and Captain Terauchi was open about

the fact that he was afraid during this event.

But the Japanese Airline incident was hardly unique.

PILOT (over radio): We just had something go right over the top of us.

PILOT 2 (over radio): It's a definite UFO or

something like that.

KEAN: Incidences like this was much more widespread

than anybody realized.

PILOT (over radio): I have no idea what that is.

It just flew right over me.

PILOT 2 (over radio): The length is unbelievable.

PILOT 3 (over radio): Looks like a...

UFO.

KEAN: UFOs definitely represented an aviation safety hazard.

There were many cases documented that showed that.

And yet, the government didn't seem to care.

REPORTER (over TV): In tonight's special report,

Mary Murphy finds that while the US government has

closed its eyes on the matter.

The public hasn't stopped seeing or believing.

RODEGHIER: The U.S. Government closed its

formal study of UFOs in late 1969.

KEAN: The cases that required investigation,

none of that went away.

And so people stepped in to fill that void.

NUFORC (over phone): UFO Reporting Center...

MAN (over phone): We got a call

he saw five distinct lights in a triangular pattern.

MELLON: Thankfully these events were recorded by civilian researchers.

It showed that the phenomenon was continuing and

it was extensive, that it was widespread.

KEAN: I mean look what these people are saying,

look what they've documented.

This is real, and it's a safety hazard.

MAN: We get reports every night.

MAN 2: I don't know what the hell it is.

(radio chatter)

MAN: I'd like to report a UFO.

(theme music playing)

HYNEK: UFOlogy today is in the state I would say chemistry was

when chemistry was alchemy.

A mixture of superstition, wild ideas, unproved claims.

And yet out of that whole mess,

finally the very first class science of chemistry evolved.

What we need in UFOlogy is to make it professional.

KEAN: J. Allen Hynek was a great advocate

for civilians to be researching UFOs.

He felt that the subject deserved scientific scrutiny.

REPORTER (over TV): Doctor Hynek's been studying UFOs for 30 years.

His files contained unexplained sightings from 140 countries.

KEAN: After Hynek died in 1986, his work was carried on by

a handful of national UFO research groups.

Even though the government wasn't paying attention,

the civilians were.

REPORTER (over TV): Phil Imbrogno of Greenwich, Connecticut

has recorded more than 300 hours of conversations

with people who have reported UFO sightings.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): Larry Faucet, a police officer in Coventry, Connecticut.

He helped establish Citizens Against UFO Secrecy.

NUFORC (over phone): UFO reporting center...

MAN (over phone): I have never been a believer of UFOs in my entire life,

and I've just seen a minimum of 9:00 this morning

with my own eyes and, I mean, I am a believer!

KEAN: My goal in writing about UFOs has been mainly to

bring information forward to the public.

But, beyond that, it's to motivate the official world to pay attention.

Once I realized that there was enough data to show that these

things are real and the possibility that there are

other civilizations visiting us here,

I was just hooked.

And I realized that I needed information that could be

verified and documented and cases that were irrefutable.

I turned to the most credible civilian researchers

because they were the ones doing the work.

The National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, NARCAP,

was founded by Doctor Richard Haines who

was a former chief scientist for NASA.

Hey Dick, can you hear me?

HAINES (over computer): I sure can.

KEAN: Sure is good to see you!

What is your reflection on, you know,

looking back at NARCAP, like,

why you started it?

HAINES (over computer): Well, I'd spend quite a number of years, as a hobby, uh

studying this phenomenon.

And I finally came to the understanding that Ufology,

the study of UFOs or UAPs these days,

is not gonna progress until there's some practical benefit from it.

And so, I came up with this ide let's look at aviation safety.

KEAN: The FAA did not want to receive any reports from any of

their personnel about UFO events.

It was actually written in their manual that if anyone saw

a UFO they were to report it to a civilian group.

HAINES: NARCAP is a reporting center for pilots and

air traffic controllers who would like to make a report of

their sightings in a completely confidential manner.

We are looking carefully at events that are happening in

our skies, all the time, where flight safety could be impacted.

Our objective is to make flying safer.

KEAN: The work I did with NARCAP,

and really getting familiar with the aviation safety hazards,

I became more focused on that as an important component

of this whole issue.

The second story that I ever published on UFOs in 2001 was

based on a 100-page report that NARCAP produced.

There were cases where the pilot would have to make a very fast

turn or he'd have to dive to avoid hitting a UFO.

Cases where passengers were actually injured by maneuvers

the airplane had to make.

If you have commercial pilots that are somehow in danger.

I just thought as a journalist this is really important,

I mean, how could the aviation world ignore this?

One of the most fascinating cases in the report was

the Japan Airlines case, 1986.

ATC (over radio): Spinner 1628 heavy, roger sir.

FOX: What was really compelling about this case is

that you've got the radar data,

and then you've got the testimony of the pilot,

talking to ground control.

KEAN: There are these amazing tapes in Richard Haines' archive

of calls he made.

And the pilots will give him detailed accounts of what they saw.

One of the recordings was with Captain Terauchi from

the Japan Airlines case.

POWELL: As they're approaching Anchorage,

they again radio the FAA.

And they had the plane do a couple of turns

to see if the object continues to follow it.

HAINES: Captain Terauchi was very surprised to realize

that the object was still beside him throughout that turn.

HAINES: How is it able to do that?

Why would it do that?

HAINES (over computer): The phenomenon acts with what I would call curiosity.

To me, that's, that's intelligence.

HAINES: It raises some fundamental questions about the nature of the phenomenon.

Would it constitute a threat to flight safety?

And the answer is clearly...

Yes.

♪ ♪

RODEGHIER: The Japan Airlines event was

fairly lengthy as far as UFO sightings go.

MELLON: They watched it for perhaps a half hour or more.

It moved in different positions around the aircraft.

Eventually, as they descended and approached the airport,

it disappeared.

RODEGHIER: But, the real import of the case is

what happens after the sighting.

KEAN: Captain Terauchi, spoke to the American press

about this event.

And Japan Airlines, took him off the job for like a year.

It just shows that professional pilots,

cannot report an actual event that happened,

that might even be a hazard to their aircraft,

without facing repercussions.

KING: Now on the phone with us from Anchorage is

Paul Stueke who is public affairs officer

for the FAA in the Alaska Region.

What, Paul, does the FAA say this is?

STUEKE (over phone): Well, we've got some possible evidence of confirmation,

but it is not real strong and the military is,

is totally unable to confirm whether this object was real by

its radar and neither are we actually.

KEAN: Publicly, the FAA said that the object on radar was

an unexplained split image of the Japanese 747

and not a separate object.

But there was more going on with this case than

what the FAA had to say publicly.

When John Callahan, who was the head of accidents and

investigations at FAA, first heard about this event,

he ordered that all the data be sent to him immediately on this case.

CALLAHAN: I said to the, uh, software people,

I want a briefing in the, uh, the next room.

I want to see on a chart, uh, every place where the, uh,

Japanese guy was, and I want to see all the targets around him.

I, uh, watched on radar, I took a video tape of it and

the next day came back to Washington headquarters.

This is where it first starts.

It starts at 19 after the hour.

You see that little dot?

That's the UFO.

KEAN: He studied all this data, and then,

according to Callahan, he was called to a meeting

at the Washington headquarters.

And that meeting involved a team of representatives

from the White House.

It included CIA representatives.

RODEGHIER: That's strange.

These things are not typically investigated by

the FBI, not the CIA.

CALLAHAN: I played the tapes for 'em,

I show 'em all the paperwork we got.

I give them the whole tale.

And they were all excited about it.

So, I'm, I'm standing next to this, uh, this little guy,

and he says, "Okay, we were never here.

We're confiscating all this data and

you're all sworn to secrecy."

So I said, "What do you think it is?"

I'm still thinking it's the stealth bomber.

He says, "Well, it's a UFO."

RODEGHIER: So, the US Government doesn't take UFOs seriously and

yet they do this?

So what's going on here?

Well, of course, we don't know because they disappeared into

the black maw of the government.

KEAN: My story about pilot encounters with UFOs got a lot

of play and it was picked up all across the country.

But the culture as a whole didn't really take UFOs seriously.

It was still considered fringe.

And I, I felt kind of determined to fight that.

WOMAN: Have you ever wondered why there wasn't more coverage

in the mainstream media about the subject of UFOs?

We are very pleased today to have an investigative journalist

who has pushed through that barrier, Leslie Kean.

Thank you so much for joining us!

KEAN: When I started out reporting on UFOs.

I mean I felt like I was risking my career as a journalist,

I did feel that way.

I was sort of an anomaly.

I mean, there was nobody doing this in the mainstream.

I was really nervous about being ridiculed because

the attitudes of people were mainly that it was a joke.

If I would go to a party and people said, "What do you do?"

I would have to say, "Well, I'm a journalist," and then I...

The next question was always, "Well, what do you write about?"

And I was dreading that question;

I did not want to have to say what I wrote about

because it was embarrassing.

But the fact that there was so much opposition to it,

the fact that it was ridiculed actually kind of fueled my fire.

And I felt so clear that there was something to it that I just

was willing to take that risk.

And then I realized that there were others who are out there

researching this, taking it out of the fringe who took it

upon themselves to do what the government wasn't doing,

which was to investigate cases.

KING: Your new documentary, James, I Know What I Saw,

assembles accounts from various UFO witnesses

from around the world.

What do you believe James?

FOX: I believe that there are structured craft of

unknown origin whizzing around in our airspace whose

flight characteristics are

so beyond anything we've had.

My name is James Fox.

I have been working on UFO films, for,

coming up on my third decade.

I was never out to prove that ET has landed.

My primary objective is to say there is some really

compelling evidence that needs further investigation.

I stuck with it despite the level of ridicule for decades

because I had gone to locations, I'd met with the witnesses,

I'd looked up the documents from government files because

I wanted to create a body of evidence that I could present to

mainstream and say, "Look. There's something to it."

KEAN: Over the years, James Fox and I had a kind of cooperative relationship,

and we shared a frustration about the lack of

government investigation, the lack of transparency,

this sort of blasé attitude that it didn't matter.

James had experienced this frustration for a long time in

so many cases that he investigated,

one of them being the Phoenix Lights of 1997.

MAN (over radio): We're visitin with James Fox filmmaker in

town doing research on the, the UFOs and interviews, uh...

FOX: What makes the Phoenix Lights UFO case

so compelling is the sheer volume of eyewitness testimony.

KEAN: Hundreds of witnesses saw something gliding over

the state of Arizona for over an hour and a half.

MAN: It was Thursday night, March 13th 1997.

MAN 2: Nice calm evening, about 8:30.

WOMAN: My daughter, Monica, came running in the house and

said you've gotta come outside.

MAN: As I closed both windows and I looked to the north,

I saw a large black craft coming towards us.

And I told my wife at that time that

son of a bitch is a mile long.

FOX: I was working on a film at the time on UFOs,

and so I saw the progression of this whole story unfold.

WATSON: 'Cause it barely missed that mountain!

FOX: Really? WATSON: Yeah.

Came floating over that mountain.

FOX: The witnesses described this boomerang shaped object

that was over a mile across from wing tip to wing tip.

MAN: It's coming across the sky and as it's moving.

It's blocking and unblocking the stars.

There's actually a shape.

WOMAN: I mean, we were just in awe of it.

I mean, no fear or anything just kind of like,

"Oh, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

MAN: I thought I was going to pass out because I stopped breathing.

I was so enthralled and looking at this thing.

REPORTER (over TV): The Phoenix lights event in March

is being talked about now all over the world.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): The buzz is very big in the desert southwest after

some weird happenings in the skies over Phoenix recently

KEAN: The objects in the sky over Arizona were probably seen

by more witnesses than any other single UFO event

in American history...

FOX: So many people wanted answers,

that the governor had to respond.

KEAN: The governor had said he was gonna provide answers for people.

They built up this hope and expectation,

"There's been an investigation and

we're gonna get something here."

SYMINGTON: I believe that a serious offense for anyone, human,

space alien or otherwise to engage in mysterious activity

in our nighttime skies.

That is why I will personally ask that the perpetrator be

prosecuted to the fullest for the havoc

wrought on our entire community.

Don't get him too close to me, please, it's, you know...

(laughter).

This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious.

(cheering).

FOX: He had one of his aides dressed up in an alien suit and

he made a mockery of the whole thing.

And I was in touch with the witnesses,

and they were just furious.

SYMINGTON: Thank you! Thank you!

(applause)

FOX: That case is, I think, pretty much representative of

how the US government treats the phenomenon.

KEAN: Even this mass sighting,

which involved hundreds of witnesses,

and lots of concern in the state of Arizona,

even that was not enough to get government involvement

and to get government accountability.

♪ ♪

KEAN: The lack of transparency within the American government

on this topic was so frustrating.

But James and I have both discovered that there are other

countries that really take this seriously.

FOX: As a filmmaker,

I was able to have a level of participation from

foreign governments and military personnel that

I didn't see in the United States.

KEAN: James and I went to France together to the headquarters of

the French agency that studies UFOs,

situated within the equivalent of NASA in France,

in the Space Studies Center.

France sees it as a scientific problem.

They had access to specialists from all over the country,

who would contribute to investigations.

So if they needed a weather specialist

or a soil expert,

psychologists who would interview the witnesses,

all these different areas of expertise that all have a role

to play in an investigation.

FOX: I'd meet with military people in China and in Russia

and in Africa and Australia and South America...

There were similar things happening all around the world.

There was a very compelling incident that happened in Tehran, Iran

in 1976 that involved the pilot trying to shoot down a UFO.

The pilot's name was Parvis Jafari,

and he described this whole cat and mouse thing with this object.

He said it could literally go from this point in the sky to

this point in the sky in the blink of an eye.

And he said that was miles.

JAFARI: I was looking here at about 70 miles out and

he jumped all of a sudden ten degrees to my right.

And I was wondering what is it?

FOX: And at one point, I think he felt threatened

and decided to shoot it.

That turned out to be not such a good idea.

His whole control panel froze up.

He was thinking he might have to eject from the airplane.

KEAN: Jafari made a very important contribution by

speaking out about this.

And in Iran none of it was kept secret.

It was a big event in that country.

Countries in South America, also took reports from pilots

a lot more seriously.

The government of Chile sees it as mainly an aviation issue.

KEAN: Costa Rica also does not keep things secret.

They had what I think may be

the best photograph of a UFO ever released.

That was taken by a government mapping plane.

That photograph was made public.

It was studied by scientists.

We don't know what our government actually possesses

in terms of photographs or videos,

because they've been kept classified.

In America, UFOs became really prevalent during the Cold War.

And during the Cold War we did not want to disclose anything.

So that's sort of when we got in the groove of keeping it secret.

It just sort of became ingrained in our system

to see this as a national security issue which

therefore needs to be classified.

Some of these other governments,

they look at it as an aviation safety problem, perhaps,

or a scientific problem.

To me, this is the way things should be done.

After returning from these explorations of other countries,

I brought that information to a very important government insider,

who I'd met in 2001, who was all about government transparency.

John Podesta was President Clinton's

Chief of Staff.

And under Clinton he was partly responsible for the release

of many, many documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

This has been really great, I appreciate your...

PODESTA: I came into this really as an advocate of open government,

more than I had thought a lot about UFOs or UAPs.

They were a curiosity for me really,

but the two interests kind of married in 2001

when I met Leslie Kean.

Uh, I think it's time to open the books on the question of,

of government investigations of, of UFOs.

It's time to find out what, what the truth really is that's out there.

I think there has been fear that if the government ever

tipped their hand to say, "Well, we have some phenomena

and we don't know what it is," the public would just freak out.

(laughs).

And, I think quite the contrary,

I think the, the public can handle the truth.

KEAN: I was wondering if you'd like to see a photograph...

I would go to these countries and then I,

I put together information about how these agencies worked into

a dossier and I gave it to John Podesta.

You know, until the United States government joins

and has their own official agency,

like the French, like the British,

like the people in Chile,

people in Peru, it kind of holds back the whole world.

In that dossier were two letters to John Podesta,

specifically to him, one written by the head of

the Chilean government agency studying UFOs and

one written by the head of the French agency

explaining why they thought that it was

absolutely crucial that the United States be involved if

we're gonna make any progress with this.

PODESTA: I think it's important for investigative journalists

like Leslie Kean to keep pressing for answers.

So, I put my credibility on the line.

And I supported her efforts to open this space for politicians

to say, "It may be a question of national security.

It is a question of aviation safety."

KEAN: It seemed like what we really needed was some kind of

major UFO event, a major case with lots of data,

with great witnesses, that would galvanize the country,

that would be in the media,

and that would force government involvement.

♪ ♪

HAINES: November 7th, 2006.

Something happened over O'Hare Airport.

An event that once again,

suggests a problem with aviation safety.

This time over one of the country's busiest airports.

POWELL: You had workers on the tarmac and the pilots.

And these guys look up at around 1,000 feet,

they see a disk shaped object above them.

REPORTER (over TV): And you don't believe this was

possibly your imagination?

JOE (over TV): It was definitely not my imagination.

REPORTER (over TV): Joe was a mechanic for United Airlines.

While taxiing a jumbo jet to the hangar,

he and another mechanic...

JOE (over TV): Noticed an object up in the sky sitting

above the terminal complex.

POWELL: It had a metallic grayish appearance to it.

It appeared to be 30 to 40 feet in diameter.

It's not moving at all.

I mean there's no motion.

And this goes on for a few minutes until suddenly

the object just goes straight up.

And in doing so, burns a hole through the clouds.

HILKEVITCH: My name is John Hilkevitch.

I was a transportation reporter at Chicago Tribune

for roughly 18 years.

A few days after the alleged sighting,

I got a phone call from an official with

the National UFO Reporting Center.

And I think he assumed that I had heard about this and

he wanted to know was I working on a story?

I cover transportation, uh.

UFO was not part of the beat at all.

So, you know, I had my healthy reporter's skepticism

about this, but this is highly restricted airspace.

You don't want something up there that doesn't belong there.

So, I took that information and contacted

the FAA and United Airlines and

they both denied any knowledge of this alleged sighting.

They were sort of amused by it, like,

"Are you okay, John?"

You know, "You're, you're asking these weird questions."

I spent the next couple of weeks interviewing as many people as

I could about the sighting.

These were all trained aviation professionals.

Pilots who were taxiing on the ground,

ramp workers who were pushing back planes.

Given the pushback from the FAA, I submitted a FOIA request for

the logs at O'Hare tower for that day, November 7th.

HILKEVITCH: When I heard the recordings,

it was clear that this alleged sighting was logged in O'Hare tower,

that United Airlines was told about this

by numerous employees.

There was just an abundance of radio chatter between

O'Hare tower and various people on the airfield.

HILKEVITCH: United, uh, despite their, uh, insistence to

me that they had no knowledge of this and

they took no action was first to backtrack,

to say that, "Yes, they had received reports of this."

And then the FAA said that upon further review,

"Yes, they had received calls saying that something was up there."

RICKI: Is it standard that the FAA,

if you ask them a straightforward question,

would lie essentially?

HILKEVITCH: Well, I mean, there was,

there's nothing standard about this story.

(laughs).

This story ran on page one of the Chicago Tribune on

January 1st, 2007.

And the reaction to it was unbelievable.

REPORTER (over TV): John, the response has been, well,

out of this world, hasn't it?

HILKEVITCH (over TV): I mean, just the last two days,

this is my email.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): Several pilots apparently at

Chicago's O'Hare swear they saw one.

A UFO!

JOE (over TV): And it looked like literally someone had

poked a hole in the clouds.

KEAN: It got more hits on the Chicago Tribune website than

any story they had ever written in the past.

But there was still a very strong taboo against this so

there were some skeptics that were called on these various

shows who kind of debunked it.

OLBERMAN (over TV): We turn to the chief astronomer

for the Franklin Institute,

Derrick Pitts.

Derrick, thanks for being with us again.

PITTS (over TV): My pleasure, Keith.

OLBERMAN (over TV): All right, let's start with the UFO sighting at O'Hare.

When it's pilots sayingG this do we have to listen?

And then what is it they could have seen but

not been able to identify?

PITTS (over TV): Well, that's a really difficult question to answer

because there are all kinds of sky phenomena that could

have manifested themselves.

But that doesn't necessarily mean they are alien spacecraft.

PITTS: I was intrigued that so many people had seen this.

But we can't just suggest that here's a spacecraft from

another planet that defies the laws of physics.

So, for me, I go to those things that seem much more likely,

much more reasonable, much more possible.

KEAN: When I read the Chicago Tribune's story,

I was really shocked by the FAA efforts to try and

explain this away.

First of all, they said it was airport lights

reflecting off the clouds.

And it turned out that the airport lights had not even been

turned on yet when the event occurred.

So, that explanation didn't work.

REPORTER (over TV): The FAA adds that the sighting may have

been caused by a weather phenomenon.

KEAN: The next explanation they provided was that

it was a weather phenomenon.

I knew what that probably meant was this phenomenon called

a hole punch cloud.

It's very rare, where ice crystals fall from

one cloud above to a lower cloud and

they melt a hole in the cloud.

I called a bunch of cloud experts,

asked what the conditions were that would be required

for a hole punch cloud to form.

I learned that the temperature would have to be below freezing,

which it was not at that day at O'Hare.

It was around 50 degrees.

So, I was able to completely dispatch

the FAA's explanation of a weather phenomenon.

For the FAA and the government,

it's just 'come up with something' to make it go away.

No matter how ludicrous it is.

No matter how inaccurate it is.

This was an aviation safety hazard.

This thing was floating over an airport.

It made me feel inspired to really want to do more.

Because this just can't keep going like this.

♪ ♪

FOX: In 2006, we had that very compelling case that

happened at O'Hare Airport.

That got a lot of media coverage.

We were coming up on the ten-year anniversary for

the Phoenix Lights case.

That was getting a lot of coverage.

And there seemed to be a whole new wave of interest in

the media on the phenomenon.

And I decided to kind of strike while the iron was hot.

Ever since the Phoenix Lights case,

I was meeting with the witnesses and I heard their frustration

with how the governor treated their testimony,

by making a mockery and ridiculing...

So, in 2006, I managed to get a hold of Fife Symington,

who was no longer governor of Arizona.

He responded immediately and

accepted my invitation for an interview.

And, it ended up being one of those aha moments for me as a reporter.

PRODUCER: If you had to do it over again would

you have done it any differently?

SYMINGTON: Ah, y'know, I think it was a legitimate, uh, uh,

occurrence of unknown origin,

probably one of the major sightings in, you know,

in modern history in the country.

'Cause a lot of people saw it in Maricopa County,

and I saw it too. So, I...

FOX: "And I saw it too."

(laughs).

Did I just hear that straight?

Did the former governor of Arizona,

who made fun of one of the most significant modern day

mass sightings, just admit that he too was a witness?

SYMINGTON: At least I have the opportunity now to correct the record.

And that's important.

FOX: I knew I had captured lightning in a bottle.

I really knew this was going to be big.

So, I reached out to Leslie Kean and I said,

"Hey, you're not going to believe this."

KEAN: I could not believe it.

And my immediate response was, "I wanna break this story!"

(laughs).

FOX: Leslie helped get that story out,

and we got a lot of news coverage.

SYMINGTON: If you'd been here ten years ago,

standing out here and looking up there up the, um,

at the lights and the view, um, you would have been astounded.

You would have been amazed.

And I suspect that, uh, unless, uh, uh,

the Defense Department proves us otherwise that

it was probably, uh, some form of an alien spacecraft.

KEAN: There was momentum that started to build.

And it was sort of a catalyst for us to feel,

"Look at what's going on, let's do something really big

that will draw attention to this."

I joined forces with James Fox and we decided to bring together

a panel of the very most credible witnesses from all over

the world, to a major event in Washington,

which would draw a new level of attention to incidences

like the O'Hare event.

FOX: We had scientists, generals, pilots

both military and civilian, from multiple countries.

KEAN: Among them was Parviz Jafari,

the Iranian pilot who had tried to shoot down a UFO,

John Callahan from the Japan Airlines case...

FOX: And the moderator of the event

was former governor of, of Arizona, Fife Symington.

KEAN: He recognized that if there had been an agency

in place when this event happened in 1997,

everything would have been different.

FOX: Leslie and I had wanted to see if we could set up

a new government agency, a modern day Project Blue Book.

SYMINGTON: I'd like to welcome you all, uh, here today.

And I don't think there's ever been a more high-level

or distinguished, uh, group.

KEAN: This event was the culmination of all the work

I had done previously to bring everybody together

in one room like that.

DUBOC: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.

My name is Jean-Charles Duboc.

I am a retired Air France captain.

BRAVO: I am Rodrigo Bravo Captain and pilot of Chilean Army.

CALLAHAN: What I'm to tell you,

is about an event that never happened.

KEAN: The power of this was that you had all these people

in one room telling their stories one after the other.

MARIA: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Oscar Santa Maria Huerta,

official pilot of the Peruvian Air Force,

currently retired.

KEAN: Oscar Santa Maria encountered a UFO over

an air base in Peru.

And he was instructed to go up and shoot it down.

MARIA: My unit commander ordered me to take off in

my Sukhoi-22 jet to shoot down this spherical object.

FOX: He said he unleashed all of his firepower,

direct target hit, and it just absorbed his bullets.

MARIA: The cone-shaped wall of fire that I sent out would

normally obliterate anything in its path.

KEAN: We also had Parviz Jafari,

who talked about what happened to him.

JAFARI: I tried to launch a heat-seeker missile to it,

but my missile panel went out.

KEAN: The momentum just kept building and building and building.

DE BROUWER: Hundreds of people saw a majestic triangle craft.

HALT: I have no idea what we saw that night,

but I do know with great certainty it was

under intelligent control.

FOX: There's something very pragmatic about pilots,

particularly military pilots.

When you hear enough of those cases from around the world,

I felt like the government had to pay attention.

♪ ♪

SYMINGTON: We want the United States government to

stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away

in down-to-earth and conventional terms.

Instead, our country needs to reopen its

official investigation that it shut down in 1969.

KEAN: We made the appeal at that press conference for

a government agency to be set up.

CALLAHAN: Do I look all right?

Because my wife will yell at me if I don't.

(laughter).

SYMINGTON: When it comes to events of this nature,

dealing with the great unknown, we deserve,

I believe, more openness and a serious pursuit of

the facts by our government.

Thank you very much.

(applause).

FOX: That press conference was a moment for all of us,

all of us who had been in the trenches for all those decades.

It was a really satisfying moment.

And we got some very mainstream coverage.

BLITZER (over TV): A group gathering here in Washington to

talk about their UFO sightings,

but this apparently is no crackpot convention.

Former high level government and military officials are amon

those sharing what they've seen in the skies.

KEAN: The press conference felt like a moment of huge success.

But I had this fantasy,

"Well, maybe this will lead to some kind of hearings on this."

Nothing.

Nobody in the government batted an eyelash.

It didn't accomplish what we'd hoped for,

which was to get our government engaging with it.

I thought that the five minute presentations

that these witnesses made simply weren't long enough to

really get across what happened to them.

So I was inspired to bring these people into a book.

And they reported on their cases in their own words.

They wrote their own chapters.

I don't think all people at that level had ever come together

under one umbrella before.

And it had a lot of authority to it,

not because of me, but because of the people

I brought to the book.

When it became a New York Times bestseller,

I think it brought heightened credibility to the topic.

REPORTER (over TV): Our next guest calling for

a formal investigation of unidentified flying objects,

Leslie Kean...

REPORTER 2 (over TV): And here to talk about UFO's,

Leslie Kean.

COLBERT: Please welcome Leslie Kean!

Real generals?

KEAN: Real Generals.

COLBERT: Or, like Captain Crunch? Like, real...

KEAN: Real... COLBERT: Real...

KEAN: Honest to goodness generals.

COLBERT: What generals think that there are aliens out there?

KEAN: They don't think there are aliens,

and that's one of the points they all make in this book is

we don't know what they are.

COLBERT: All right. KEAN: Thank you.

COLBERT: Thank you so much.

Leslie Kean!

PITTS: When I first read Leslie Kean's book I thought

her investigation of this was exactly the kind of

real science investigation that we should be thinking about

starting around unidentified flying objects.

In fact, I had Leslie as a guest here at The Franklin Institute,

to give a presentation about her book.

We're about real science, we are not about speculation,

and I felt that the work that Leslie demonstrated in her book

was a responsible way to go about this.

PODESTA: I wrote the forward to her book,

which at the time people thought was just something to go

on the shelf with the other UFOlogies, uh...

But, uh, was really, I think, uh,

a serious effort to try to document what pilots had seen,

what other military senior leaders had documented.

KEAN: The success of the book brought so much credibility to this topic,

and it drew people into my life that hadn't been there before,

insiders who had been involved with this thing for a long time,

some of them with security clearances.

And they trusted me.

That's what led to my being invited to a meeting,

years later, where I was handed the biggest scoop of my career.

REPORTER (over TV): Leslie Kean

one of the investigative reporters who broke this story.

This report is stunning.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): The New York Times breaking

the news that the Pentagon has been secretly researching

the existence of UFOs.

Apparently, the Department of Defense launched

the program in 2007.

KEAN: 2007, the same year that we gave our press conference.

It just so happened that this Government program was

already being set up.

We didn't know about that at the time,

of course, but it was actually happening.

FOX: The article was a huge moment,

a moment I'll never forget.

I had friends and family from all around the world going,

(gasps)

"Oh my God, maybe you we're right.

Maybe you, maybe you're not as crazy as I thought you were."

You know?

It was, it was a good feeling.

I was really proud of Leslie because the rest of the world

was paying attention.

That maybe, maybe there is really something going on here.

KEAN: That article was really just the beginning.

It opened the door to all these questions that arose after that

about what this program actually had learned about UFOs.

Is it going to release information to the public?

All these questions that people wanna know about UFOs.

Well, if there's a program, what do they know?

Imagine just how wonderful it would be to have those

questions asked on behalf of the American people.

CARSON: Today we will bring that organization out of the shadows.

I think for, for far too long people have said,

"Oh, the public isn't ready to know about these things,

but I think the public is ready,

now more than ever."

GRAVES: We were seeing things off the coast every day.

MAN: The pilots know what they are seeing.

They are not crazy.

NOLAN: You just have to realize

that it's using a kind of

technology that we

don't understand.

LOEB: One of these objects happen

to be from another civilization.

That would change

the future of humanity.

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.