by Dan Wright
September 19, 1976
The Iranian Air Force case outlined below was reported by major media outlets at the time and has been a topic of multiple UFO documentary films. One day after the incident, an urgent meeting of US and Iranian generals was held. Later a Department of Defense document about the incident was released to FOIA petitioners. Yet the CIA made no mention of the matter in its 2017 files dump. This only substantiates a contention that cases with national security implications, even those half a century old, were withheld.
In the predawn hours, an Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom was sent aloft from its Mehrabad Air Base outside Teheran to intercept an unknown over the city. Momentarily, while in pursuit the pilot lost both instrumentation and communications and so returned to base. A second F-4 was scrambled, piloted by an Iranian top gun, who proceeded to arm his AIM-9 Sidewinder guided missile. Immediately the plane lost power to the weapons control system. The pilot and copilot attempted to eject but that circuit malfunctioned as well. They were nonetheless able to land—followed overhead by the UFO.14 It was spotted 25 minutes later by an Egyptian Air Force jet over the Mediterranean Sea, then later by a KLM crew and its passengers in the Lisbon area. It was ultimately revealed that a Defense Support System satellite had picked up signals of an “unidentifiable technology” over Iran that night.15
After the incident, a top-secret meeting was attended by the air base vice commander and a USAF major general, chief of the US contingent in Iran. The air-traffic supervisor at Mehrabad remarked afterward, “When they heard our report and the report of the pilots, they concluded that no country is able to have such a technology, and all of them believed it [must] be [an] object from outer space.”16
Obtained under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, an August 31, 1977, DoD release recounted the events surrounding the Iranian jet chase incident. It added little to what was already reported but did reiterate the puzzling nature of the event. Given the multiple witnesses, the final report conceded, the circumstances had yet to be satisfactorily explained.17
Chapter 30
1977: Start Spreading the News
A non-sourced report from the Soviet Union on March 21, 1977, declared that, in 1976, Dr. Inal Akcyev was studying cosmic ray particles called phosphenes that caused Aeroflot pilots to see flashes of light while in flight, a possible cause of UFO claims.1
The opening statement of an untitled April 18, 1977, article in US News & World Report read:
Before the year is out, the Government—perhaps the President—is expected to make what are described as “unsettling disclosures” about UFO's—unidentified flying objects. Such revelations, based on information from the CIA, would be a reversal of official policy that in the past has downgraded UFO incidents.
(The remainder of the article was deleted.)2
An April 27 article in The Washington Post related that, for scientists with a UFO interest, there was some “increasing hard evidence of recurrent, worldwide events that cannot be explained conventionally. The question, they say, is not ‘is it real,’ but how, through which discipline—astronomy, psychology, physics or social science—the phenomenon must be examined.” At Northwestern University, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a noted UFO authority, said more scientists and engineers were seeking to be involved—but anonymously. Despite a 1973 poll showing 51 percent of adults affirmed a UFO reality, researchers complained that the government remained “decidedly uncooperative.” In earlier years as a USAF Project Blue Book consultant, Hynek said “military pilots told me they had their (cockpit camera) film confiscated, were debriefed, and told not to take it seriously or discuss it further.”3
The Houston Chronicle on May 18 quoted CIA Director George H.W. Bush as complaining that the Agency “has been attacked for everything from ‘hiding relics of Noah's Ark to capturing two humanoids and then letting them die.’”4
On June 3 the Agency's general counsel for the Deputy Director of Science and Technology (DDS&T) remarked that an acquaintance proposed a UFO research program as outlined in the attached letter (not shown):
Analysis of existing policy
Analysis of selected data and research
Alternative policy strategies
National research plan5
The secretary for a (redacted) Agency official sent a note to a White House liaison, attaching a letter (not shown). The correspondence was being forwarded since the letter writer sought to chair a new Presidential commission for UFO research.6
According to a September 22, 1977, report by TASS, in the regional capital of Petrozavodsk at 4:00 a.m., September 20, a huge flaring star appeared. “This star moved slowly toward Petrozavodsk and, spreading out over it in the form of a medusa, hung there, showering the city with a multitude of very fine rays which created an image of pouring rain.” Minutes later all ceased and it formed into a semicircle of bright light, “red in the middle and white at the sides, then formed in this shroud.” Witnesses said the incident lasted 10–12 minutes.7
An October 12 journal entry in the Office of Legislative Counsel indicated that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's office telephoned on behalf of a constituent who requested all unclassified information on (a) Soviet gold production and sales, and (b) UFOs. The staffer said OLC had nothing to offer. (Twelve other topics were redacted.)8
As part of a heavily redacted December 22, 1977, Foreign Intelligence Information Report, paragraph 14 stated that, in late summer 1973, a Soviet man stepped outside one evening and spotted a bright green circular light high above. Over 10–15 seconds the circle expanded then displayed several concentric green circles. Minutes later it disappeared. No sound was heard.9
According to a December 20 report in the Chicago Tribune, the White House, State Department, and CIA all requested a private screening of the Columbia Pictures film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.10
While you were away from your desk . . .
January 11, 1977
Forty-two miles west of Varanasi (a.k.a. Benares), India, the crew of an Indian Air Force jet transport encountered three luminous discs. The trio “flew past, circled once as if inspecting my airplane, then continued eastward toward Varanasi,” according to the pilot. Shortly, thousands in the town saw the anomalous objects overhead.11
March 7, 1977
A French Mirage IV-A supersonic bomber capable of hauling a small nuclear weapon to its target was on a routine nighttime bombing exercise, headed toward the city of Bordeaux, when it encountered unknown traffic. At 8:34 p.m., the crew was surprised by a bright light ahead in the vicinity. The pilot, a colonel, said afterward, “I thought it was the landing light of a Mirage III interceptor jet. But we had not been warned about any other traffic.” The Mirage bomber was clipping along at .95 of Mach 1 (approximately 700 mph). The pilot made a hard turn starboard but the light remained nearby, about a kilometer away, moving faster. “We had the feeling that there was a heavy mass behind the light—something at least as big as a Boeing 747.” After they executed another sharp right turn, then a reversal, the unknown left at “I think at least 6,000 to 7,000 km/h—which is not possible for a plane. And there was no supersonic bang and no shock.” The radar staff afterward prompted the crewmen to share their account.12
May 21, 1977
At 10:20 p.m., three British airmen at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, England, home to a Vulcan B.2 bomber squadron, saw a triangle of light moving erratically in the sky. In minutes it was on radar scopes at RAF Patrington, 50 miles northeast, moving in a zigzag pattern. It registered for four minutes, then suddenly the screens were “partially obliterated by high-powered interference.” These returned to normal once the anomaly left.13
June 17, 1977
At a recreation camp on Cotile Lake, Louisiana, a father and two daughters heard and felt a sound characterized by the man as “ultra-low frequency.” He later remarked, “I heard it and felt it vibrate my sternum.” Nearby hovered a disc, 75 feet in diameter with a bubble top and blinking lights, suspe
nded 50 feet in the air. The ship directed onto each of them a thin silver-blue beam that crackled the air. Their entire bodies glowed in an “eerie blue aura.” Their movements were sluggish “as in a dream—slow, heavy.” After 10 seconds the beams and auras vanished, and the craft glided away.14
Also on June 17, a young pilot in the Portuguese Air Force was flying a Dornier light aircraft in poor weather. Suddenly a dark object loomed out of the clouds nearby. The pilot veered left, radioed to ask about other traffic in the area, and was told there was none. Suddenly the object was right in front of him, pacing the plane from no more than six meters away. He estimated it to be 13–15 meters in diameter. On its lower section, he noticed, were four or five “panels.” His directional gyroscope was now rotating wildly. The plane vibrated violently and went into an uncontrolled dive. He regained control at nearly treetop level and was able to land safely.15
June 18, 1977
The next day, two South African Air Force Mirage F1-CZ jets were airborne off the coast of Namibia. The weather was good. Both pilots had 15 years of flying experience. Following a routine 10:48 a.m. radio contact, at 11:15 both planes vanished from radar screens. Evidently, the pilots were pressing their radio call buttons in the final moments but nothing was transmitted. A Navy ship arrived at the last known location within an hour and a helicopter in two hours, but neither the pilots nor any traces of the planes were ever found.16
June 23, 1977
At 5:15 a.m. a newspaper delivery van was traveling between Noupoort and Middelburg, South Africa, when the driver noticed a dull glow emanating from a stone quarry he was passing. Immediately a phosphorescent object of indeterminate shape rose from the quarry and moved in front of the truck as its engine died and lights went out. Without further incident, in a moment the UFO left the scene with a buzzing sound. The van's engine restarted itself, quit, then started again when the accelerator was pressed.17
July 16, 1977
An Air India Boeing 747 was on final approach to Calcutta's Dum Dum Airport at 11:15 p.m., when the tower's air traffic control staff noticed a second object closing on the jet's position. No other aircraft had requested clearance for an approach. Witnesses on the ground described a saucer shape with a breadth equal to the 747's wingspan, rushing toward the airliner. Now dangerously close, the passengers and crew became aware of it. When the plane was two miles from touchdown, the intruder departed. Afterward the captain said it was a “strange-looking apparition ... but a thing of real substance.”18
Chapter 31
1978: The New Zealand Film
The chief of the Agency's Minneapolis office contacted the Domestic Collection Division to relate the account of a man, somewhere in Canada, who claimed that as he was headed to work on January 27, he observed an “odd object coming down in the sky.” No further description was given. Note: A Soviet satellite crashed in Canada on January 24.1
According to a non-sourced report from South America, the Argentine government announced that an object seen falling from the sky on May 14, 1978, was a satellite (no indication of origin). The crash site was located in Bolivia; the surrounding area was cordoned off.2
An anonymous person sometime in June 1978 sent a note titled “Parapsychology” to a major at the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (OACSI), Department of the Army. The state of “investigation of unconventional discrimination techniques” was outlined, in reference to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and parapsychologists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ on remote viewing. A parapsychology course was offered at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, which included the UFO subject. Athens State University, Athens, Alabama, also offered a parapsychology course in its psychology department.3
Sociologist Marcello Truzzi of Eastern Michigan University resigned as editor of a magazine on paranormal events. That periodical was reorganized as The Skeptical Inquirer, with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICP) skeptics at its core. Truzzi in turn founded the Zetetic Scholar. He said interest in the paranormal meant abandoning the supernatural, seeking answers via science. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek's UFO research was an example, he offered. Instead of condemning UFOs, Truzzi called for serious examination by qualified persons. Paul Kurtz and CSICP, by contrast, were “tarring everybody with the same brush,” Truzzi accused. “When you do that, you're cutting yourself off ... from what I would call a protoscience.”4
Bill Spaulding of Ground Saucer Watch decried official secrecy on UFOs. His group sued the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provisions to reveal all its files. “It appears now that all intelligence agencies had something to do with this. We consider the Air Force to be merely the data collecting house. It appears when one goes through Project Blue Book, some of the better military cases are missing.”5
Ground Saucer Watch had issued a FOIA request for all CIA materials on UFOs. A House committee did not object to their release.6
An investigative journalist for The Washington Post requested a copy of the approximate 900 pages of government UFO-related material released to Ground Saucer Watch in the previous week.7
While you were away from your desk . . .
January 15, 1978
On a flight from Evansville, Indiana, to Cincinnati, Ohio, the pilot of a cargo aircraft encountered two bright lights while at 5,500 feet, 20 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. One of the lights was stationary ahead, the other circling nearby. Suddenly the latter shot toward the plane on a collision course. The pilot dove 1,000 feet as the anomaly passed overhead and out of sight. He then radioed the control tower at Louisville's Standiford Field Airport and was told that area residents had been reporting a UFO.8
January 18, 1978
At Fort Dix, New Jersey, three nights later, a bluish-green oval object approached and hovered over an MP's patrol car. The MP confronted a short being and fired five rounds. The being ran to the adjacent McGuire AFB fence line as the UFO ascended to join eleven more intruders overhead. A sergeant and others found the entity's body on an old runway and stood guard nearby. The sergeant described it as four feet long, unclad, and hairless. The being had a large head, slender torso, gray-brown scaly skin, and an ammonia smell. Blue Berets prepared it for removal to a C-141 aircraft dispatched from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.9
April 23, 1978
At 7:30 p.m. near Goleta, California, a woman saw a bright airborne light nearby and heard a “zinging” sound while driving. Instantly her radio went silent and the engine lost RPMs, dropping the car's speed from 55 to 35 mph. The light's intensity decreased somewhat, revealing two green and two blue lights revolving around some sort of structured object. After a few minutes she had driven beyond sight of the craft, at which point the car's engine and radio worked normally.10
May 14, 1978
Just past 10:00 p.m., a man called the Navy's Pinecastle Electronic Warfare Range in the Ocala Forest of Florida to report a close encounter with a 50–60-foot, oblong UFO. Jacksonville air traffic control told the duty officer no conventional aircraft was in the area. While radar equipment warmed up, personnel observed a cluster of lights a few miles away. At 11:20 p.m. the radar detected a jetliner-sized object, 50–100 feet off the ground, which abruptly vanished. The same or a similar object was briefly detected at 11:40. About midnight, a target decelerated from 500 to 2 knots in one second, reversed direction, and disappeared.11
November 19, 1978
Around 3:30 a.m. at an undisclosed location in Italy, three individuals in a parked car were trying out a CB radio when they heard a sound like a harvester. The CB quit working as their vehicle was enveloped in red glaring light. They quickly decided to pull away then realized the car was 20 meters from where it had been and facing the opposite direction. With the red light fading, they drove off, catching sight of a sphere flying into the night.12
December 22, 1978
Over New Zealand's Canterbury Coast, on December 22 and again on the 3
0th and 31st, extraordinary aerial events captured the attention of the public as well as the Royal New Zealand Air Force, which placed fighter interceptors on standby. Never before had there been simultaneous radar, visual, and photographic connections in a UFO incident. At 12:30 a.m., December 22, an Argosy cargo airplane was heading up the eastern coast of the South Island toward Christchurch when the captain reported “a number of white lights similar to landing lights” in the distant sky. In due course, Wellington Air Traffic Control radar confirmed five objects for which it had no explanation.13
About three hours later, a second Argosy cargo plane following the same route also encountered five unknowns in the distance. Wellington requested the pilots to help identify them. The radar station located one particularly strong return in the vicinity of the plane. Shortly, the pilot shouted into his mike, “Something is coming toward us at a tremendous speed on our radar. It has traveled some twenty-four kilometers in five seconds” (equivalent to 10,800 mph). “Now it has abruptly veered off. It was moving so fast it was leaving a tail behind it on the radar screen.” A Wellington controller reported that an unknown paced the freighter for 12 miles along the coast before leaving the radar screens.14
Whether announced or leaked, the dual encounters along the same route were an instant press sensation. Channel 0 in Melbourne spearheaded an experiment with the objective of a feature story. On the night of December 30, a recruited reporter and camera crew boarded another Argosy four-engine turbo-prop—leaving a side door open—for the same trip to Christchurch. The three-person media crew in the cargo bay was filming its lead-up commentary when the pilot sighted unfamiliar lights and shouted, “Get up here quick!” 15