UFOs

to toss out the faulty Air Force “fact sheet” to justify this irresponsible behavior?

CHAPTER 16 “A Powerful Desire to Do Nothing”

Most Americans are not aware that, not too long ago, while our government was quietly filing reports on cases overseas, a dramatic UFO wave unfolded over American soil. The spectacle of this wave was as dramatic as the one in Belgium, and the large, low-flying craft resembled those seen over that country in some ways. Only three years after details about the 1980 incident in Peru were distributed to U.S. government agencies, the “Hudson Valley wave” began in upstate New York and parts of Connecticut. It lasted a few years, and after it all died down, our government filed another secret document about the 1990 Belgian wave. But no officials made inquiries about something here that happened in between these two other reported events, even though our own UFOs were witnessed by thousands of American citizens. No official documents have been filed about the Hudson Valley events—at least as far as we know.

Yet its resemblance to the Belgian wave was notable. Beginning in December 1982, the American wave also lasted many years, with its peak occurring within a two-year period, and it, too, involved repeated visits by large silent objects, sometimes more than one at a time, hovering at low altitudes with extremely bright spotlights. Groups of people watched, often at close range or while standing directly underneath, and some reported seeing a dark, solid structure behind the lights. Many, while driving along the Taconic Parkway or meandering alone down curving backcountry roads, pulled over to get a better look at the UFOs, while others saw the objects when walking their dogs or jogging along reservoirs and lakes. Witnesses said these structures appeared to be as huge as football fields and were capable of shooting off at incredible speeds from stationary positions. As is typical for UFOs, they were silent or emitted a low humming sound.

The Hudson Valley UFOs, like those in Belgium, did not exhibit any aggressive or hostile behavior. In fact, in similar fashion, the less intimidated witnesses reported flashing their car lights at the objects and receiving flashes in return. And this wave, too, featured simultaneous sightings by police officers—in Danbury, Connecticut, police initially joked about calls from witnesses, before being rudely awakened, which was exactly how the Belgian police initially responded. Later, twelve officers from this department alone had their own sightings.[111] Pathways could be determined due to the volume of reports from varying locations within short time periods, and route maps were constructed just as they would later be in Belgium. Similarly, some nighttime photos and videos were taken in New York and analyzed by various laboratories, although not as extensively, nor were the images as powerful, as the Petit-Rechain photo of 1990.

^{An artist’s copy of drawings made by independent witnesses in different parts of New York and Connecticut in 1983 and 1984, which have been reduced and sized to fit the same scale. Collection of Phil Imbrogno}

Although the Hudson Valley residents reported mainly delta- or V-shaped objects and the Belgians saw mostly triangular ones, in reading the many witness accounts of both events, the similar behaviors of the crafts are striking. The bizarre and highly unusual “red light ball” phenomenon reported by the four Belgian policemen made an appearance in upstate New York as well. During the first, dramatic night of the Belgian wave in 1989, two pairs of policemen in different locations watched the red light ball shoot out on a beam from a hovering craft, which was then drawn back into the UFO—a rare detail observed at very close range. Heinrich Nicoll, one of the policemen who witnessed this spectacle, interpreted it to be a probe of some sort. In an interview, he said, “The ball kept leaving and coming back, as if the ball were trying to measure something.”[112]

During the Hudson Valley wave, David Athens, chief of the New Fairfield Fire Department in Connecticut, was standing outside talking with a police officer in July 1984 when both saw a row of lights in a circular pattern. “I would say it was something man-made except that two of the red lights dropped down from the group and went in a different direction behind the mountains. One came back and the other didn’t,” Athens reported.[113]

Jim Cooke, a biomedical engineer, was shocked to see a triangular object hovering no more than fifteen feet above the water of the Croton Falls Reservoir late one October night in 1983 while driving home. He got out of his car and watched from the edge of the water. “Something came from the underside of the object, a red beam of light or something solid that was glowing red—I really don’t know what. But it seemed to be probing the water,”[114] he said. According to Cooke, the object moved slowly over the reservoir, and at each stop the “red probe” interacted with the water, and was then retracted. Like the Belgian craft displaying essentially the same thing, this one was triangular. Heinrich Nicoll’s description was remarkably similar to Cooke’s. He also witnessed the phenomenon over a body of water, which he, too, interpreted to be a probe of some sort. We may never know the purpose of this strange red offshoot of the UFO, but this suggests that very similar objects may have visited both locations in the 1980s.

Despite the intriguing similarities, there was a major difference between these events in upstate New York and those in Belgium—not in the details of what actually happened, but in the way these extraordinary close encounters, repeated year after year, were handled by the authorities—those in charge of protecting citizens and monitoring unregistered air incursions over populated areas.

We must remember that the 1989–90 UFO wave in Belgium was handled rationally, openly, and responsibly by the government. The Belgian Air Force was called into action immediately, and other agencies, such as the Gendarmerie Nationale (a combination of police and army) and the Belgian equivalent of our FAA, also cooperated in the mobilization to identify the objects. The Air Force was not only responsive, but was even proactive in its investigation, looking for craft on multiple radar systems, scrambling F-16s to intercept one on three occasions, and then holding a press conference to explain all this to the public. In addition, state-of-the-art analysis was provided by a number of laboratories on the superior photograph of a craft, one of the best UFO pictures on record. And to take it one step further, the Belgian Air Force made all its data and every resource, including radar stations and even aircraft, available to a highly competent group of civilian scientists who organized data, interviewed witnesses, and kept extensive records. All of these important developments were covered in the European media, with some reporting in the United States, as well. Through it all, the Belgian government did not hide information, issue false explanations, or ridicule witnesses. In fact, we know that Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer, head of the Air Force investigation, told the people the truth. Much was learned, except for the most important thing of all: the origin and purpose of the crafts themselves.

However, in the United States, our UFO wave wasn’t handled at all. Not a thing was done by any branch of our government. There was no national or statewide mobilization. No Air Force F-16s were launched (at least not as a matter of public record). No attempts were made to capture the objects on radar. Nor was there any established partnership with a leading U.S. research organization to collect reports, though such qualified scientific groups were ready and waiting. No government labs analyzed the photographs. No government body convened a press conference to provide Air Force data for a public eager for information. The local media gave plenty of coverage in places where the events were actually happening and were a fact of life, but because no officials were engaged other than local policemen, national coverage was minimal.

When pressed by concerned callers, the FAA told witnesses that they had seen something other than what they saw—recognizable things that made a lot of noise, such as airplanes in formation, or helicopters. Numerous factors rendered this explanation untenable, the most obvious being that sometimes the craft hovered or moved more slowly than planes could fly, often at very low altitudes, and it was usually silent. Hovering helicopters or a group of planes flying in formation are notoriously loud. Also, the UFO was seen on many occasions when there were no planes or blimps aloft, as confirmed by the nearby airport. Sometimes, witnesses saw a massive, solid structure around the lights blocking out the sky behind it, easily distinguishable from conventional aircraft. In 1984, for example, six security guards at the Indian Point nuclear power plant witnessed the UFO hovering about 300 feet over the reactor in restricted airspace. Two guards told investigators it was a solid object bigger than a football field.[115]

Yet U.S. government indifference never changed, despite the fact that what many called the “Westchester County boomerangs” hovered or cruised off and on for years over the Hudson Valley and parts of Connecticut,