UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record

by Leslie Kean

  In 1988, GEPAN became a new agency called SEPRA4 in order to broaden the mission to include the investigation of all reentry phenomena, including debris from satellites, launches, etc. When an unidentified object left traces or any kind of marked effect on the environment that could be recorded and measured by sensors or instruments, we referred to them as UFOs. Among the physical trace ground cases that have been thoroughly investigated, three have stood up to a rigorous analysis and could not be categorized as involving known objects.

  In November 1979, a woman called the gendarmes to say a flying saucer had just landed in front of her house. The gendarmes went to the reported landing site immediately, and GEPAN came also with a multidisciplinary team of investigators. Another witness provided an independent account of an object alighting. The visible trace evidence included a grassy area flattened in a uniform direction, and plant physiology analysis was subsequently carried out by a respected university. Since this was the first time we had collected soil and plant samples from a presumed landing case, rigorous protocols had not yet been established for their analysis, and no significant results were obtained.

  However, that changed with the Trans-en-Provence case, one of the best known cases in France. Around 5:00 p.m. on January 8, 1981, electrician Renato Nicolai was building a small water pump shelter in his garden on a sunny afternoon. He heard a low whistling sound coming from above. Upon turning around, he saw an ovoid object in the sky that approached the terrace at the bottom of the garden and landed. The witness moved forward cautiously to observe the strange phenomenon from behind a shed, but, within a minute, the object rose and moved away in the same direction from which it had arrived. It continued to emit a low whistle. As it flew away, Nicolai saw two round protrusions on the underside that he said looked like landing gear. He approached the scene of the apparent landing and noticed circular depressions, separated by a crown, on the ground. The next day, after noticing how upset he was during the night, his wife called the gendarmerie, which came to his home and found two concentric circles on the ground, one 2.2 meters (7.2 feet) in diameter and the other 2.4 meters (7.8 feet) in diameter, with a raised area between them 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) wide. They gathered soil samples of the traces and control samples from outside the area.

  The GEPAN investigators went to the site in Trans-en-Provence a month later, collected additional samples of the compacted soil and nearby plants, gathered control samples, and reinterviewed Mr. Nicolai. The physical traces left by “the object” provided the laboratories with much useful information on its nature, its shape, and its mechanical characteristics.

  The biochemical analyses carried out on wild alfalfa from the site revealed a major deterioration of the vegetation, apparently caused by powerful electromagnetic fields. Dr. Michel Bounias, from the National Institute of Agronomic Research, showed that the plant degradation was probably due to pulsated microwaves. The following year, new measurements taken on the alfalfa showed a return to normal biological activity.

  Drawing by witness Renato Nicolai of the Trans-en-Provence object, which left visible ground traces and caused nearby plants to degrade. © temoin, GEIPAN

  The GEPAN investigation went on for a full two years and came to some very interesting conclusions. There was evidence of a strong mechanical pressure, probably due to a heavy weight, on the ground surface, and simultaneously or immediately, the soil was heated to between 300 and 600 degrees C. In the immediate vicinity of these ground traces, the chlorophyll content of the wild alfalfa leaves was reduced 30 to 50 percent, inversely proportional to its distance from the landing site. The younger alfalfa leaves experienced the highest loss of chlorophyll, and moreover exhibited “signs of premature senescence.” By way of comparison, biochemical analysis showed numerous differences between vegetation samples obtained close to the site and those more distant.

  The report concluded that “it was possible to qualitatively show the occurrence of an important event which brought with it deformations of the terrain caused by mass, mechanics, a heating effect, and perhaps certain transformations and deposits of trace minerals.” Nuclear irradiation does not seem to account for the observed effects, but some type of electrical energy field might account for the chlorophyll reductions.5

  Roughly one year after the case of Trans-en-Provence, the so-called Amaranth case of 1982 involved the daytime sighting by a scientist (M.H., a cellular biologist) of a smallish object about one meter in diameter hovering above his garden. The witness first saw the shiny flying craft at 12:35 p.m. in front of his house, making a slow descent. He stepped back as it seemed to move toward him, until it stopped about one meter above the ground and sat there, silently hovering for about twenty minutes, which he measured by looking at his watch. He was not frightened, and, being a scientist, made a detailed, precise observation. He described it as oval and resembling two coupled metal saucers, one on top of the other, the upper half a blue-green dome. It suddenly shot straight up, as if pulled by strong suction, and the grass underneath momentarily stood straight up, but it left no visible traces on the ground.

  The gendarmerie made extensive notes on the event within five hours and reported their findings to GEPAN, which sent a team of investigators forty-eight hours later. Of high interest were the visible traces left on nearby vegetation, particularly on an amaranth bush, whose leaves were desiccated and dehydrated after the event. The fruits of other plants around where the object had hovered looked as if they had been cooked. Biochemical analyses showed that these effects could only have been caused by a strong heat flux, most likely due to powerful electromagnetic fields, causing dehydration. This electric field would have had to exceed 200 kV/m at the level of the plant, which could also have caused the blades of grass to lift up. Subsequent investigations showed that this phenomenon could be reproduced in the laboratory by using very intense electric fields.

  The “Amaranth case” involved an object, drawn by the witness, that hovered near the ground. Vegetation was desiccated, most likely by powerful electromagnetic fields. © temoin, GEIPAN

  A psychologist in charge of analyzing the testimony and the psychological profile of the witness concluded in his report that this story had not been invented and that the witness was neither a mythomaniac nor a hoaxer.

  Such field investigations demonstrated the possibility of the physical reality of the UAP, but, in fact, the aeronautical cases are the ones which provide the most convincing results on this question. Unlike land witnesses, pilots are operating within the framework of a transportation or air security mission, following the directives coming from civilian or military navigation control centers. They are neutral and highly trained observers when sightings of UAP occur. Such observations of strange unidentified air phenomena by civilian and military pilots in France led to the creation of a database of 150 cases of aeronautical UAP beginning in 1951. The classification into the four categories showed that over 10 percent (fifteen) of the aeronautical UAP cases belong to Type D, the ones that can’t be explained despite precise witness accounts and good-quality evidence. In about half these cases, environmental effects such as electromagnetic interference with on-board instruments and/or disturbances of the radio connection with air traffic controllers were reported by the pilots when UAP were nearby.

  In January 1994, SEPRA investigated a case that turned out to be the most exceptional pilot case documented in the French skies. On January 28, Captain Jean-Charles Duboc and copilot Valerie Chauffour were piloting Air France flight 3532, making the Nice-London connection at a speed of 350 knots (approximately 650 kilometers/hour) in the early afternoon. The visibility was excellent when a crew member informed the captain and his copilot about a dark object to the left of the aircraft, which he thought was a weather balloon. It was 13:14 GMT and the sun was at the zenith. At first, Duboc thought it was an aircraft banking at a 45-degree angle, but soon all three agreed that this was not a familiar object. They estimated a distance of twenty-two miles (fifty kilo
meters) at an altitude of six miles (ten kilometers). At first it looked bell-shaped, and then more like a lens or disc, brown and large, and the witnesses were struck by its changes in shape. After about a minute, it disappeared almost instantaneously, as if suddenly becoming invisible, without any escape trajectory. The duration of this sighting was approximately a minute.

  Captain Duboc reported the incident to authorities at the Reims air navigation control center, which had no information about any aircraft in the location. A report was then sent to SEPRA, which classified it as Type C, meaning it was insufficiently documented for identification. However, Reims contacted the Taverny air defense operations center, CODA, and we later learned something important that allowed us to reclassify this event as a clear Type D: CODA recorded a radar track at their control center in Cinq-Mars-la-Pile that corresponded in both location and time to the observation of the crew of Air France flight 3532. The object disappeared from view of the radar scope and the crew at the same instant. CODA’s investigations ruled out the possibility of a weather balloon. Because the precise crossing distance of the two trajectories was known, experts estimated that the UAP was about 750 feet long.

  In studying aviation cases, an important contribution was made by an outstanding independent French investigator,6 Dominique Weinstein, who has catalogued 1,305 cases of UAP and UFO sightings by pilots—cases for which adequate data is available to categorize the UAP as unknowns—collected from official sources, including material I provided from CNES/SEPRA. The following results are interesting: 606 cases (36.7 percent) are sightings by military pilots and crews; 444 cases (26.9 percent) are sightings by civilian pilots; and 196 cases (11.8 percent) are by private pilots. In 200 cases (12.1 percent) the visual observation was confirmed by on-board or ground radar. And in 57 cases (3.45 percent), the pilots noted electromagnetic effects and disturbances on one or more of the plane’s transmission systems.

  In combination with radar, we can draw a clear picture of the physicality of the UFO maneuvers in the airspace. The analysis of certain characteristics and maneuvers of these objects indicates behaviors that have nothing to do with any natural phenomena or with operations carried out by aircrafts or aeronautical and space machines.

  One crucial point I have noted, which is shown in Weinstein’s study, is that a UFO’s behavior tends to depend on whether the encounter involves a military aircraft or a civilian passenger plane. Neutrality usually seems the general rule with commercial airlines or private planes, whereas an active interaction often occurs between UFOs and military aircraft. Military pilots usually describe the movements of UFOs as they would air maneuvers of conventional aircraft, using terms such as follows, flees, acute turns, in formation, close collision, and aerial combat. Twenty-two military cases in the Weinstein catalogue involve near misses, and six include reported “dogfights,” or combat maneuvers, between the UFOs and the military aircraft. I conclude that these incidents clearly demonstrate that in no way are these examples of natural events, but rather that UFOs are phenomena with a deliberate behavior. The physical nature of UFOs has been proved. Some of them also exhibit intelligent control when interacting with military aircraft.

  I would like to propose an intriguing hypothesis that is important to me personally. On my part, it has required some research that extends outside of France and into the United States. I believe that there is a connection between strategic nuclear power, the atomic bomb, and the presence of unidentified artificial objects in the sky. This is suggested by data collected over several decades. It could be part of the answer to the question of why UFOs have been present in our environment.

  I find it very interesting that this association between the sensitive strategic sites and the overflights of “flying discs” was proposed within the American Air Force during the Cold War. Air Force intelligence noted that many sightings occurred over “sensitive installations.” According to one document, a meeting was held on February 16, 1949, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, that included Edward Teller, “the father of the H bomb.” Commander Richard Mandelkorn of the U.S. Navy wrote in his report on the meeting that “there is cause for concern7 of the continued occurrences of unexplainable phenomena of this nature in the vicinity of sensitive installations.” And an Army intelligence memo written a month earlier outlining different theories for these “extraordinary phenomena” stated almost the same thing: “It is felt that these incidents8 are of such great importance, especially as they are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive installations.” On April 28, 1949, Dr. Joseph Kaplan, member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, recommended a scientific investigation about the observed “unidentified aerial phenomena” and emphasized that “this was of extreme importance” because “these occurrences relate to the National Defense of the United States.”9

  Such historical documents enable us to understand the origins of the connection between UFOs and nuclear bases, and to see that this problem was taken very seriously by the military and governmental authorities. Most explicit was part of a report by George E. Valley, MIT physicist and radiation expert and member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, submitted to the Air Force Project Sign in 1949. Valley swept aside all the assumptions of known natural and artificial phenomena and advanced the hypothesis of extraterrestrial objects, specifically “space ships.” He states that any “extraterrestrial civilization” making these objects would have to be developed far in advance of ours. He goes on to write:

  Such a civilization might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should, therefore, expect at this time above all to behold such visitations.

  Since the acts of mankind most easily observed from a distance are A-bomb explosions, we should expect some relation to obtain between the time of A-bomb explosions, the time at which the space ships are seen, and the time required for such ships to arrive from and return to home base.10

  We have on record the number of explosions worldwide and tests both in the atmosphere until 1963 and underground from 1958 to 1998, from the first explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945 to the most recent in India in 1998, a total of just over 2,400 explosions (543 atmospheric tests and 1,876 underground explosions). By comparing nuclear tests to some 150 visual/radar UFO cases collected since 1947, we note that the curves are practically superimposed in time and that they coincide, with not more than a few months appearing between the number of explosions and one of the UFO appearances. This similarity in the two curves would suggest that the proven presence of UFOs is related to the nuclear strategic activity in the world. I base my hypothesis on my studies of official documents, the places and zones of UFO sightings, and remarks made by highly placed civilian and military persons involved in secret programs. There have been numerous instances of UFOs flying over or near strategic air command and other military bases in the United States, especially as documented during the 1960s.

  In fact, flights of “green fireballs” and “flying discs” occurred over sensitive U.S. sites such as Los Alamos, Albuquerque, Kirtland AFB, Alamogordo, and Holloman AFB. The perimeters of Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Knoxville, where the materials intended for the nuclear bombs were produced, were also flown over. And other examples have been documented: Great Falls and Malmstrom AFB (Montana); Fairchild (Washington); Kincheloe, Wurtsmith, and Sawyer AFB (Michigan); Plattsburg (New York); Loring AFB (Maine); and Pease AFB (New Hampshire).11 Perhaps if there is some kind of monitoring going on, it manifests more strongly when there is a nuclear crisis situation on the planet. On March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, nearly twenty nuclear missiles were suddenly shut down while UFOs were in close proximity.

  Something very extraordinary also occurred one year earlier at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota: On October 24, 1966, the Minuteman missile system was adversely affected during an afternoon while UFOs were sighted from the ground by multiple observers at three separ
ate missile sites for over three hours, and two objects were tracked on radar. Communications and radio transmissions between various facilities monitoring the events were disrupted by static when the UFO came close to the site.

  At 4:49 p.m. the outside and interior security alarms of safety for the Oscar 7 missile silo were activated at the control desk located sixteen kilometers (ten miles) away. A security team was dispatched and discovered that not only was the fence open but the horizontal door closing the missile silo was also open. This reinforced-concrete door weighed nearly twenty tons and there were no tire tracks nor any record of a visit that could account for this.

  This case puts in stark view some serious questions about the nature of this phenomenon that was responsible for: various ground and on-board radar echoes; the loss of the UHF transmissions; the simultaneous observation on the ground and from the air of this immense stationary luminous ball above the Oscar 7 zone; the alarm trigger; and the rising of the twenty-ton silo door. The main witnesses to this incident were located and interviewed years later, confirming these events. The Minot Air Force Base director of operations submitted a detailed report, released with the Air Force Project Blue Book files.

  Unlike the Tehran case in 1976, where the Iranian military authorities did not know how to react in the presence of UFOs, the U.S. Air Force knew that it should not suddenly intervene by force above a Minuteman missile silo, but instead should remain as neutral as possible faced with this kind of situation.

  I am fascinated with the possible correlation between nuclear activity, the location of nuclear weapon storage facilities, and the presence of UFOs. We can see on a graph the relationship between atomic explosions and visual/radar sightings, by looking at the similarity in the two curves. We can’t be certain why, but perhaps UFOs are “monitoring,” and this activity was heightened during times of dangerous nuclear activity on the planet.