Original subtitles

Tonight, a shocking event

sends the city of Phoenix into a panic.

More than 100 witnesses called the UFO hotline.

Some believe it's one of the largest scale UFO sightings

in history.

They were about 3,000 feet high, approximately.

They looked as though they were kind of hovering.

But the question is, what the heck is it?

Now, we reveal the top theories behind this phenomenon.

JASON McCLELLAN: What we find out is this

isn't an isolated incident.

These phenomena happen all the time.

Is the government covering something up?

MICHAEL J. CARTER: Is Phoenix in the crosshairs

of a possible interstellar war?

Are we being targeted for some reason?

What could possibly account for the mysterious Phoenix Lights?

[music]

New York, New York, December 16th, 2017.

News breaks of a secret Pentagon program

investigating unidentified aerial phenomenon,

also known as UFOs.

AMORY SIVERTSON: The New York Times publishes

a bombshell report that details the work

of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,

a shadowy government group that has spent 10 years

investigating military encounters

with strange unknown objects in the sky.

Here is another UFO bulletin.

AMORY: For years, people have reported encounters with UFOs.

Roswell, Lubbock, Belgium-- the list goes on and on,

and stretches as far back as antiquity.

JASON: Acknowledging this program's existence

is huge, because up to this point

the government's position

has been deny, deny, deny.

AMORY: And now, they're not only admitting

that these lights in the sky really are something,

but that they are, in fact, unidentified.

LAURENCE: Within months the government

declassifies videos of some of these encounters.

PILOT: Look at that thing, dude.

LAURENCE: Including one captured by the Navy in 2004,

known as the "Tic Tac Video."

PILOT: My gosh.

100 miles off the coast of San Diego,

radar tracks the object descending from 15 miles high

down to 50 feet in about one second.

PILOT: Whoa, got it!

[laughing] Woohoo!

No known object

can fly that fast.

PILOT: Oh my gosh, dude.

- Wow. - What is that, man?

Look at it fly!

When jets intercept it, the cylindrical craft

drops down below the water...

What the -- is that, man?

AMORY: ...then flies up into the air,

and then disappears.

LAURENCE: When radar detects the object,

it's already 60 miles away.

The video causes a sensation when it's released.

It's not only massive international news,

it's also vindication--

vindication for people who have seen these craft

and have spent years swearing that they exist.

LAURENCE: Perhaps none feel more vindicated

than the citizens who witnessed a strange event

on March 13th, 1997.

On the night of March 13th,

reports come in from Phoenix,

as well as California, Nevada, and New Mexico.

People are describing

a huge V-shaped craft

moving southeast along the region.

SHANE: Around sunset, a man in Henderson, Nevada,

observed and reported a triangular-shaped aircraft

with lights underneath it hovering over the desert.

MICHAEL: He moves in closer to get a better look,

and the object starts to move.

Now, he doesn't know what he's looking at,

but he does know this is not an airplane.

LAURENCE: The sighting of the unidentified craft

is quickly confirmed by others.

Twenty minutes later, a retired police officer

calls to report that he's seeing the same object

200 miles south of Henderson.

AMORY: He follows it with his car,

and he's never closer to it than about a mile.

And yet, even from there, he can tell it's gigantic.

MICHAEL: Reports continue to flood in.

At 8:20, Prescott Valley,

20 minutes later, downtown Phoenix.

JASON: I was kind of surprised to see it on the news,

but at the same time, I was excited,

because I thought I would get some answers

to explain this strange thing that I'd just seen.

These were incredibly bright lights.

They were completely motionless, made no sound,

and these lights just hung there

directly over me, and I was awestruck.

I observed these lights for a period of about 30 minutes,

went inside, came back out later,

and 45 minutes later, this string of lights

is still in the sky.

LAURENCE: Also among the eyewitnesses,

Dr. Lynne Kitei.

LYNNE KITEI: On March 13th, 1997, the Hale-Bopp comet

was in clear view

on a beautiful spring night

in the northwest sky.

Thousands of people went outside to catch a glimpse of it.

I go outside, and suddenly I notice

three amber orbs.

Every other light out there glared.

These did not.

The light did not extend outside the edge.

It was self-contained.

They were very soothing, very mesmerizing.

And then, the top orb started to shrink

very, very slowly,

until it was pea-size, and then disappeared.

But it felt like it was still there.

LAURENCE: As Dr. Kitei watches the sky,

calls pour in to local police and news stations.

We start tonight with those strange dots of light

that were the talk of the town.

More than 100 witnesses called the UFO hotline.

LAURENCE: For answers, authorities immediately

reach out to Luke Air Force Base.

ALEJANDRO ROJAS: Luke Air Force Base is a base

right in the heart of Phoenix,

and they fly a lot of advanced aircraft.

So, obviously, if anybody knows what's going on,

they would be someone you would call

to find out what the heck this is.

So, police, reporters, and even the governor

are calling the base to find out what's going on.

SHANE: Luke Air Force Base

indicated that they had no planes

up in the air at the time,

and they didn't know anything about it.

It was basically, "Nothing to see here, move along."

LAURENCE: But four months later, the base offers an explanation.

SHANE: They indicated that a team of A-10 Warthogs

from the Maryland National Guard had deployed flares

over the Estrella Mountains at that time.

LAURENCE: Footage from that night

seems to support this theory, at first.

It's getting closer and closer, and we're saying,

you know, that thing's coming right at us!

AMORY: When you look at the witness video,

I guess it's possible they do kinda look like flares.

And military activity is pretty prevalent in the area.

In addition to Luke, there's Davis-Monthan Base,

also in Arizona.

And then there's Kirtland and the Holloman bases

not too far away in New Mexico.

LAURENCE: But eyewitnesses quickly raise doubts.

So, the Phoenix Light event really had two phases.

One was the large V-shaped craft flying across the state,

and the other was the lights over the Estrella Mountains.

However, when you look at the flare theory,

the flares might explain the lights over the mountains,

but it doesn't explain the V-shaped aircraft

witnessed by thousands of people.

LYNNE: It was so awesome and so mind-boggling.

Massive, massive craft right over people's heads.

It was silent.

Took off at blank speed without even dispersing the air.

If you're trying to tell me that flares

that are dropped from an aircraft on a parachute

that drop haphazardly with the wind,

have huge smoke trails that are illuminated

by the flare itself,

and illuminate the area around it.

They're heat-seeking for missiles

that are coming towards aircraft.

And not one person described any of that.

LAURENCE: And there are other red flags.

The Air Force claims that the A-10 Warthogs

deployed the flares over the Estrella Mountains

around 10:00 p.m.,

which is not typically standard operating procedure.

In addition to that, those flares--

the LUU-2B/B flare--

falls at a rate of about eight feet per second.

And from the time the first flare was dropped

to the last flare, those flares would have dropped

some 1,500 feet.

Yet the video shows those lights in a stationary position

for about 30 minutes.

LYNNE: And these amazing amber orbs

were just mind-boggling,

so different than anything you've ever seen,

different from any other light out there.

It definitely wasn't flares.

LAURENCE: The massive craft also leaves no trace on radar.

Air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor International Airport

check their call logs and their radar,

and found no indication of these aircraft.

And if that's not the definition of a UFO,

I don't know what is.

LAURENCE: To silence the skeptics,

the Air Force decides to conduct

a flare-drop demonstration for the public.

LYNNE: We get a very public announcement

that three Air National Guards were coming into town

to show everyone the Phoenix Lights,

and we were ready.

ALEJANDRO: And a lot of people felt that exercise

didn't look similar to what they had seen on March 13th.

LYNNE: Talk about a joke. [chuckles]

They tried to make a triangle.

It was upside-down and fell apart immediately.

One of them just fizzled out.

Had huge smoke trails, just what flares do.

It really put the nail in the coffin.

They had their shot.

To date, the Phoenix Lights have never been recreated

or explained.

JASON: It's almost comical that this is what

they expect us to believe.

But fortunately, I and many others in Phoenix

who saw the Phoenix Lights that night

weren't about to take the Air Force's word

at face value.

We were ready to dig in and get answers.

LAURENCE: After thousands witness unexplained lights

in the sky above Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997,

the city is desperate for answers.

The March 13th, 1997 Phoenix Lights incident

was probably the largest UFO mass sighting

in UFO history.

But the question is, what the heck is it?

AMORY: The military says it's flares,

but almost nobody in Phoenix believes it.

They know what they saw,

they know what flares look like,

and these weren't flares.

MICHAEL: One of the things that I think bothers people the most

is the behavior of our military.

AMORY: Initially, the Air Force denies having any involvement

with the event, but four months later

they come out with this flare story.

Why is that?

SHANE: Even Governor Fife Symington himself,

a former Air Force pilot,

tried to make inquiries

to the military as to the identification

of this object, and he himself

got the runaround.

And he's the governor of the state of Arizona.

Symington was also skeptical of the flare explanation.

He claimed that, you know, flares don't fly in formation.

LAURENCE: Is it possible the military

has something to hide?

SHANE: So, many people feel that Luke Air Force Base

is not letting on everything they know.

And the reason they could be doing that

is because they're protecting some secret military technology.

LAURENCE: Located 20 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix,

Luke Air Force Base is home to the most advanced aircraft

in the U.S.

AMORY: Luke Air Force Base is affectionately called

"The Home of the Fighter Pilot."

It's where the 56th Fighter Wing is based.

And this is the Air Force's version

of what the Navy famously calls Top Gun.

RICHARD HOFFMAN: Back in '97, it was the F-15,

the F-16s were coming out.

There were a whole bunch of other kinds of aircraft

that could potentially be seen

being flown out of Luke Air Force Base.

AMORY: Basically, any fixed-wing aircraft

in the U.S. arsenal has flown at Luke,

plus a few that we don't know about,

because they're top-secret.

JASON: We know for certain that the U.S. military

has tested top-secret weapons and aircraft

in this area for decades.

LAURENCE: Among the state-of-the-art aircraft

initially flown here, the X-1, the X-15,

and the Blackbird.

Each test is classified and top-secret,

and for some, that's a clue.

These are all aircraft that were developed

and tested in total secrecy up over the deserts here.

If you would ask the military about any of these

back when they were still being developed,

you would have heard the same kind of subterfuge

and denial that we heard with the Phoenix Lights incident.

SHANE: There's a high presence of the military

in the state of Arizona, and perhaps they were testing

some secret technology.

So, it makes sense that people might have mistaken

what they saw on the night of March 13th, '97,

for a UFO.

LAURENCE: It wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

SHANE: In the 1980s there were many UFO reports

in the state of Arizona.

However, those reports ended up being identified

as the F-117A and the B-2 Bomber

that were in development at the time.

When you look at these aircraft, what do you see?

You see V-shaped aircraft that look similar

with what they reported in the Phoenix Lights,

albeit smaller.

AMORY: More recently, we've had some UFO sightings

that actually turned out to be advanced spy drones,

like the Air Force's RQ-170 and RQ-180.

Engineers contracted by the government

are currently at work on a new stealth bomber,

the B-21, which is scheduled to be operational

in the mid-2020s.

That project wasn't greenlit until 2015,

so it's not responsible for the Phoenix Lights.

But it just goes to show they're always working on something.

ALEJANDRO: If nothing else, we know that the Southwest

is a hotbed for innovation for aerospace

in the public and private sector.

LAURENCE: Even so, some doubt the military

has the advanced technology witnesses say they observed

in Phoenix in 1997.

Witnesses describe something out of a sci-fi movie.

They see this giant V-shaped craft

which was hundreds and hundreds of yards across.

SHANE: By comparison, known aircraft

such as the B-2 Bomber,

the wingspan is only 172 feet.

Or the largest plane known to be flown,

the Stratolaunch, only had a wingspan

of 385 feet.

Our government has never flown anything this big.

AMORY: The Phoenix Lights craft also moved slowly.

Estimates place it at about 15 to 30 miles an hour,

and it was maybe 100 to 200 feet off the ground at times.

He thinks that-- he said if he had a tennis ball,

he could have hit it.

He could have thrown a tennis ball at it,

- it was that close. - It was very close.

I just could have nailed it.

LAURENCE: Others report seeing the object

come to a stop and hover in place.

AMORY: Airplanes can't do that.

There's not enough airflow to produce loft

with their wings.

Helicopters can, but the Phoenix Lights craft

moved silently.

The flight characteristics that they describe

are unlike any other machine we have in the air today.

And keep in mind, this is back in 1997,

so 25 years ago, they had something this incredible,

and it still hasn't ever seen the light of day?

LAURENCE: But John Powell, a private defense contractor

for JP Aerospace, believes this capability exists,

and will soon be made public.

Powell and JP Aerospace were awarded a grant in 2014

to develop slow-moving, top-secret classified

triangular aircraft.

So, Powell believes that perhaps what they saw

during the Phoenix Lights was something similar

to what he's been developing.

AMORY: The specs of these are highly classified,

but JP Aerospace was able to get a prototype

of this thing going.

LAURENCE: Meanwhile, Arizona lawmakers

continue to press the military for more answers.

SHANE: So, Frances Emma Barwood

was a City of Phoenix councilperson.

She launched an investigation into the Phoenix Lights

because no one else would.

She interviewed over 700 witnesses.

She offered to let the military talk to those witnesses,

and they chose not to interview a single person.

ALEJANDRO: Then-Senator John McCain

put in a formal request for more information,

but that request was denied.

LYNNE: If it's military, show me.

We have not seen anything technologically

even close to what thousands saw

on March 13th, 1997, right above their heads.

The technology has never been seen.

If it was military experimental aircraft, show me.

ALEJANDRO: Until really the government comes out

and says this was them,

and it is some sort of classified project,

people just still aren't gonna know what to believe in,

and it'll remain a mystery.

LAURENCE: Phoenix, Arizona, April 21st, 2008,

nearly 11 years after an entire city

witnesses a strange UFO event, it happens again.

So, on Monday at about 8:05 p.m.,

again, you know, the police, the Air Force,

authorities are being inundated with reports

that there's another set of lights hovering over the city.

It's unbelievable, or maybe it's totally believable.

If it happened once, why couldn't it happen again?

REPORTER: Live and late-breaking right now, they're back.

Did you see them tonight?

Many people called our news room about lights in the sky.

SHANE: People reported that there was a series

of four or five orange-red lights

over the north valley.

It's like a repeat of the 1997 incident.

People come out running out,

and they see a V-shaped formation of lights.

Initially there was four lights.

They were about 3,000 feet high, approximately.

They looked as though they were kind of hovering or floating.

LAURENCE: But as it progresses, this event plays out differently

from the 1997 sighting.

AMORY: As this 2008 formation hovers,

the shape changes from a triangle into a square.

The previous lights just remained uniform

in their V-shape.

Lights in the sky, did you see them tonight?

Many people were calling our news room.

And if you missed it, take a look.

One man in North Phoenix caught the lights on home video,

15 minutes' worth.

Whatever you believe happened back in 1997,

people are convinced that it's happening again.

LAURENCE: This time, they won't have to wait long for answers.

Unlike the Phoenix Lights, the mystery to this event

only lasted about 12 hours,

because the next day, April 22nd,

a man called in admitting that he was responsible.

It was all a hoax.

The whole thing was staged.

The man tied flares to helium balloons,

and then let them go one minute apart.

AMORY: Is this a relief? Is it disappointing?

Does it make people angry? It's hard to know how to feel.

But one thing it does is it makes people

look back at the real Phoenix Lights event

11 years prior, and think,

"Well, wait, what if that was a hoax too?"

Back in 1997 while they're looking for answers

and people are going to the government,

there are a lot of people that think

the whole thing was just a gag.

LAURENCE: A 1997 press conference

held by Arizona's then-governor, Fife Symington,

seems to bolster that theory.

We're initially excited and think we're finally gonna

get a real investigation.

And Fife Symington saw it, and he's one of us.

And now, I'll ask Officer Stein and his colleagues

to escort the accused into the room

so that we may all look upon the guilty party.

Don't get him too close to me, please.

It's... you know.

In walks Governor Symington's chief of staff, Jay Heiler,

dressed in an alien suit and handcuffs.

JASON: It's met with laughter and applause.

It really does the whole thing a huge disservice.

The problem with the press conference

was it made getting answers so much harder.

If you ask any questions about it,

you were labeled a crackpot.

Those kinds of things are not helpful.

And for people who are really interested

and they wanna find out what's going on...

[laughter]

Thank you.

MICHAEL: You can't get to the bottom of anything

because no one is taking it seriously.

SHANE: After that news conference,

the national media picked up on that,

that it's a joke and not a serious event,

and that became the story.

LAURENCE: It's a story some refuse to accept.

Most people who thought it was a hoax and laughed at it

didn't actually see it happen.

But unfortunately, I think that laughter

and skepticism was loud enough

that it kept many of us from finding more answers.

It's unlikely that the Phoenix Lights

could be explained as a hoax,

because you would need someone to convince people

along a 400-mile length of desert

that they're seeing an object as large as a cruise ship

with lights on it as large as swimming pools.

Then you would have to pull a second stunt

and convince a population of 2.5 million people

that, you know, this large V-shaped group of lights

flew over the city.

That would be awfully difficult to hoax.

LYNNE: Twenty-five years later, if it was a hoax,

I would think that someone would have come forward

now that it's become world-renowned.

That has not happened to date.

JASON: The individual responsible for the 2008 prank

can't even hold his tongue for 24 hours.

Saying it's a hoax is really saying

that all of the witnesses

didn't understand what they were seeing.

It's saying that they were gullible rubes.

LAURENCE: Then, 10 years after the 1997 sighting,

Governor Symington changes his story

and challenges the hoax theory.

So, in 2007, Governor Symington came out to indicate

that not only was the Phoenix Lights not a hoax,

but that he, in fact, saw the craft himself.

Well, I saw a-- a huge craft

just kind of come right over Squaw Peak...

that was-- you know, it was just breathtaking.

SHANE: At the time people in the city of Phoenix

reported a UFO sighting,

Symington was under such political pressure

as governor of the state,

he did not want to add to those political woes

by claiming to have seen a UFO himself.

JASON: Thanks to him, for about a decade

the Phoenix Lights is really largely viewed as a hoax.

But his abrupt about-face

creates renewed interest in the case.

It returns to the news cycle, and it comes at a time

when people are more willing to believe.

It's no longer a joke or a source of embarrassment.

It's a genuine mystery.

After news of the Pentagon's secret UFO monitoring program

makes headlines in 2022,

Congress vows to investigate further.

That spring, the House holds the first public hearing

on UFOS in more than 50 years.

Those who witnessed the Phoenix Lights

hope it can finally lead to answers.

AMORY: Congress talks to dozens of defense

and intelligence officials,

and collects thousands and thousands of documents.

All of that research is compiled into a House Committee report

about UFO encounters like the one

that happened in Phoenix.

And while we know that people have seen UFOs

from time to time, what we didn't know

is that the military themselves have had hundreds

of their own UFO encounters

which they've been keeping quiet until now.

UAPs are unexplained, it's true,

but they are real.

They need to be investigated,

and many threats they pose need to be mitigated.

JASON: This is huge.

This is the U.S. government going on record

to say these things are real.

MICHAEL: They've collected 144 incidents

about these UAPs.

Eighty of those they have data on,

infrared, sensory,

and of course, video.

Well, describe what we have seen in that.

What are we observing?

What you see here is aircraft

that is operating in a U.S. Navy training range

that has observed a spherical object in that area.

And as they fly by it, they take a video.

LAURENCE: Several declassified government videos

are released, all seeming proof

that extraterrestrial encounters exist.

And suddenly, we have all the evidence we need

about what happened in Phoenix.

JASON: Thanks to the hearings, we find out

that these encounters aren't isolated incidents.

They happen all the time.

MICHAEL: I mean, how else can you reconcile the facts?

A silently floating, hovering craft

the size of several football fields,

invisible to radar.

There's nothing on Earth that fits that description.

LAURENCE: Believers like Michael Carter

cite a 1997 call made to AM radio show

Coast to Coast as further evidence

of an alien encounter over Phoenix.

The call is from a corpsman,

someone who actually works at Luke Air Force Base.

He has an incredible story about what happened on the base

when this object appeared over the sky

of northern Arizona.

The corpsman said the base gets a call about 8:15

about a large object moving out of the sky in the northwest.

Soon afterwards, an alarm goes off,

and all hell breaks loose.

Luke Air Force Base keeps

two F-15s on standby

for emergency use.

And on the evening of March 13th, 1997,

allegedly they scrambled those two F-15s

to intercept the object.

The radio caller doesn't know what it is,

and to be frank, I don't think the pilots do either.

ALEJANDRO: The caller claims that the event

had scared the hell out of the pilots,

but they had gotten some gun camera footage

of the object.

LAURENCE: If the caller is telling the truth,

the Air Force may have actually recorded

the Phoenix Lights UFO.

Which means, possibly locked away

in some secret vault somewhere,

we may actually have footage.

We may have proof of what these pilots actually saw.

LAURENCE: Unfortunately, if the video exists,

it's never released, and the anonymous caller

has no additional information.

JASON: He isn't one of the pilots sent out.

He's just on the base when he hears all the commotion

and the base goes into lockdown, so he can't say exactly

what the potential spacecraft was doing in the area.

LAURENCE: Some theorists believe it's not there by coincidence.

SHANE: Within a 500-mile radius of the city of Phoenix,

there are several secret military bases.

Area 51 to the north,

Edwards Air Force Base to the west,

and White Sands Missile Base to the east.

JASON: If aliens were scouting Earth and its defenses,

this would be a perfect place to go.

LAURENCE: Arizona is also home to several nuclear sites,

areas that recent evidence suggests may attract

unidentified aircraft.

MICHAEL: We're having more and more sightings now,

and within those sightings there are certain patterns.

And what we're seeing is that there are more events

where these UFOs are hovering

over our nuclear military instillations.

LAURENCE: The phenomena isn't limited to the United States.

There are sightings in Mexico, Italy, and even Iran.

AMORY: There's a series of UFO-related events

that happen in Iran in 2004 and 2005

over one of their secret nuclear sites.

Several times during that two-year period

pilots near the Bushehr Nuclear Facility

have encounters with large luminous cylinders

that look and sound similar to the quote-unquote "Tic-Tac UFO"

that U.S. Navy pilots saw in San Diego.

And in one of those encounters, an Iranian pilot

actually engaged with the object.

LAURENCE: As news of such events continues to spread,

more become convinced that what happened in Phoenix

isn't an isolated incident.

LAURENCE: Arizona's vast desert has been home to humans

for many thousands of years.

And according to some, there are signs

in the archeological record

that suggest the Phoenix Lights incident

is far from unique.

MICHAEL: When you look back into the history of this region,

it dawns on you that before

we even had the technology

where we could take pictures of this,

and videos, and what have you, this part of the country

was always having these kinds of sightings.

AMORY: The Native Americans who live in this part

of the Southwestern United States

have a very complex mythology

in which we see numerous references and stories

about the so-called "star people."

These are powerful, yet benevolent beings

arriving from other worlds.

Both the Hopi and the Zuni trace their ancestry

back to beings that they believe arrived

from the region of the Pleiades,

which is a star cluster about 400 light years away

near the constellation of Taurus.

MICHAEL: We see myths and legends

about the star people, a benevolent but powerful people

that these tribes have interacted with.

AMORY: These myths and artwork suggest this area

has been a hub for extraterrestrial activity,

and that the Phoenix Lights incident

is just part of a repeating pattern,

that these star people have been coming back

time and time again.

JASON: Some believe the Phoenix Lights incident

is just one in a series of extraterrestrial encounters

that have been going on for a long time,

but started to increase in 1995.

AMORY: The March of '97 event was certainly seen

by the most people, but some believe

there were several previous fly-bys.

One of them was witnessed by several people.

They stated that on January 21st, 1995,

they saw a triangular formation of large lights.

They weren't bright, necessarily,

but they were really big.

They looked odd.

LYNNE: I step out on the balcony

and immediately notice

an eerie silence.

The entire object turned against the wind,

elevated slowly, and then moved

in synchrony behind South Mountain.

But it felt like something was watching me.

LAURENCE: According to the National UFO Reporting Center,

the sightings in Arizona grow increasingly frequent

in the two years before the 1997 Phoenix event.

ALEJANDRO: Researchers have found that coming up

to the 1997 event,

that there was an increase

of sightings of triangular craft.

JASON: In fact, in January and February of 1997

we have multiple reports

from multiple locations

of the same formation of lights over Arizona.

SHANE: Air traffic controllers

at Sky Harbor International Airport

observed five equidistance lights

that rose about 1,000 feet

above the deck,

they floated back behind South Mountain,

and dropped out of sight.

They had no idea what they saw.

It wasn't on radar, and they behaved in a way

that was unexplainable.

LAURENCE: And right before the Phoenix Lights,

a tiny Arizona town is treated to an encounter of their own.

SHANE: On March 12th, 1997,

the night before the Phoenix Lights incident,

a group of people made reports of UFOs

in a town called Leupp.

JASON: Leupp is 200 miles north of Phoenix,

south of the Grand Canyon and the Hopi Indian Reservation,

who as we've seen, share a rich mythology

of alien visitation.

SHANE: A large V-shaped aircraft appeared in their valley

with about a dozen other small craft,

and they began to float and engage each other

almost like an extraterrestrial ballet.

And these people pulled out their lawn chairs

and watched it like they were watching the fireworks

on the 4th of July.

LAURENCE: But why did these possible visits ramp up,

and why did they stop?

JASON: That's the real question.

Let's say Arizona has been getting regular alien visitation

for millennia.

What's so special about the mid '90s

that we start to get a flurry of activity?

We go from a few visits per century

to a few visits per year, to several in the same month.

Then, absolutely nothing.

Can anybody explain that?

LAURENCE: Despite the many thousands of eyewitnesses

to the 1997 Phoenix event,

the cause of the incident remains a mystery.

It's military flares, it's an experimental aircraft,

it's a hoax, it's aliens.

Is the government covering something up?

Are we being targeted for some reason?

JASON: Each theory has some arguments for it

and some against it,

and each by itself leaves a lot

of unanswered questions.

MICHAEL: Many theorists say, "Wait a minute,

"we've had these answers here

the whole time."

The events on March 13th, 1997,

isn't just about just one of these theories.

It's about all of them.

LAURENCE: It all begins around 8:00 p.m.

This is the period when people actually see the spacecraft.

The hull of it and the structure of it is visible.

AMORY: The silent movements, the anti-gravity technology

it seems to exhibit.

Knowing what we now know about the long history

of UFO contact in the United States,

many are convinced that this is an alien ship.

It does a low slow pass across Nevada and Arizona,

sparking hundreds of reports to authorities.

MICHAEL: As we know from the Luke Air Force Base

radio caller, these UFO sightings

get the attention of the military.

JASON: They scramble their jets on a course to intercept.

According to that airman, they actually see the craft,

and perhaps even film it.

MICHAEL: Now, the airman claims that F-15s

were sent out to investigate.

But simultaneous reports here, here, and here

show that that may not have been so.

AMORY: Many don't believe they sent F-15s

next to the alien ship.

People didn't see any F-15s,

radar didn't pick up any F-15s,

nobody heard any F-15s.

MICHAEL: These are pretty loud fighter planes.

You know when an F-15 is flying overhead.

One thing that characterizes this whole event

is how quiet the whole thing was.

The military actually sends out a top-secret experimental craft.

People over here are seeing an alien ship,

while people over here are seeing

a top-secret military aircraft.

LAURENCE: Is it possible that the U.S.

scrambled a top-secret experimental craft

to intercept the alleged alien vessel?

One thing is certain,

whatever is in the air doesn't stay around long.

JASON: Why it leaves, we don't know.

Were they spooked by the military intercept?

MICHAEL: Are they trying to gather intelligence

on our defense capabilities?

Whatever the reason, they took off.

AMORY: Now, if this theory is correct,

the military has a problem on its hands.

They know a large amount of the population

in the Phoenix area has seen this alien spaceship.

But in 1997, the government's policy on UFOs

is very clear-- deny, deny, deny.

LAURENCE: Thanks to recent congressional hearings,

it's clear the military has a long clandestine history

of encounters with UAPs,

as well as a history of cover-ups.

Perhaps the Phoenix Lights is one of them.

And Luke Air Force Base is a possible ground zero.

JASON: So, the bigwigs at Luke Air Force Base

speak to their superiors,

and they realize they have precious little time

to figure out how to deal with this situation.

MICHAEL: Within a half hour or so,

they come up with a plan, a subterfuge,

which is a little hoax of their own.

JASON: They send up A-10 Warthogs

to drop a series of flares right over Phoenix.

They choose a very visible place where everyone will see.

MICHAEL: So, if they were going to do

a secret quote-unquote "training exercise,"

why would they drop these flares

in front of 2.5 million people

knowing they were gonna freak out about it?

JASON: If it was what they say it was,

they would have done it in seclusion.

They choose to drop the flares

in front of the whole city on purpose,

because it's not a training exercise,

it's a distraction.

LAURENCE: Their explanation works initially.

MICHAEL: While 1,000 people are seeing an alien spaceship,

a million-plus people are seeing flares in the sky.

JASON: That's the story the Air Force releases,

and they're able to convince people for a while.

MICHAEL: They at least confuse enough people to create doubt.

They even convince the governor to ignore what he saw

and call the whole thing a joke on national television.

If it is just military flares

and I come out screaming about aliens,

I'm gonna be a laughing stock.

Once you have people thinking in that way, you've won.

MICHAEL: So, there's an alien encounter.

Then it's the sighting of a top-secret military aircraft.

Then it's flares used to create a hoax

and then to cover up the truth.

LAURENCE: Thanks to new government transparency,

believers are optimistic the truth

will someday be known.

Now that the armed forces are more open

about UFO sightings, there's renewed hope

that they might come out with more information

about what actually happened in Phoenix.

What did they encounter in 1997?

Did they actually capture it on film?

As they continue to declassify these files and videos,

maybe we'll find out.

As congressmen, senators, and even presidents have said,

the focus of their research is to determine

if UFOs pose a threat to America.

MICHAEL: Some people are curious,

and then there are some people

who are really scared.

Is Phoenix in the crosshairs of a possible interstellar war?

Well, the public would like to know that.

JASON: It's a hard thing to explain,

but a lot of people who experienced this event

came away feeling something,

wondering if they were meant to see it,

meant to feel it, meant to experience

some sort of connection with what they saw.

Some even describe feeling calm

or even being told to not be afraid.

People were in awe and in wonder, curious.

So many cars pulled over

to watch this amazing,

extraordinary sight.

In real time and in long term,

it affected the experiencers very profoundly.

Who are you? What are you?

Do you know that I'm here? I'd love to meet you.

Today, the U.S. government's tracking

and studying of UFOs

continues under the authority

of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.

There's even a new branch of the military to assist--

the United States Space Force.

And perhaps together they'll gain insight

into what really happened in Phoenix.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."