UFOs

something so unknown to us, so entirely unexplained, that we have no idea what could happen the next time one appeared. The establishment of a government office would be the first step in the distribution of the appropriate data, preparation manuals, and policy recommendations to the Air Force and all other military installations around the country.

The state of Arizona has seen more than one prominent elected official confront the UFO problem. Prior to his sighting, Fife Symington had enjoyed a long-term relationship with a mentor who had strong opinions about U.S. government secrecy and UFOs. Barry Goldwater, five-term senator from Arizona, Republican presidential nominee in 1964, pilot, and friend of the Symington family, was a hero and a father figure to him beginning at age twelve. Goldwater served as campaign chairman for both of Symington’s successful runs for governor.

Symington recounts that on a number of occasions, when he was flying to campaign events with Goldwater, the former senator told him about his efforts to obtain secret UFO information from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as Goldwater has written in his letters.[179] It’s interesting that Symington never knew that Goldwater had written anything about his ventures until after he recounted these conversations to me, when, much to his amazement and delight, I sent him copies of the letters. “Barry was convinced that UFOs exist and that the government held top secret stuff and was holding it close for technological reasons. He didn’t know this as a fact, but he was highly suspicious,” Symington says. Unfortunately, Goldwater was not well enough to comment on the Phoenix Lights incident, having suffered a stroke in 1996. He died in 1998 at his home outside Phoenix.

Today, Symington is inclined to agree with Barry Goldwater that our government is withholding secret information about UFOs. “If we got our hands on a very advanced spacecraft before anyone else, you can be sure we would hold it tight and work on it, and we would be interested in the advanced technology. This is as valid as any other idea to explain why it would be kept secret,” he says.

Governor Symington’s “coming out of the closet” represents a historical turning point in the effort to bring official recognition and policy change to the UFO issue in America. Never before has a twice-elected official of this stature not only acknowledged witnessing an unmistakable unidentified flying object, but also taken a public stand advocating for change. When he was forced to test the system, the governor discovered firsthand that it doesn’t work. As a result, he has to some extent made this effort a personal mission, which is being carried forward with the support of other equally convinced former officials from other countries, some of whom have come together in this volume. As a former elected government official in America and part of the political establishment, Symington is uniquely positioned to influence a change in policy. Through his contacts and experience in government, he can help move us toward the founding of a new government agency—which he could have benefited from so much while in office—and has already done so by adding his voice and support to our international coalition.

CHAPTER 25 Setting the Record Straight by Fife Symington III Governor of Arizona, 1991–97

Between 8:00 and 8:30 on the evening of March 13, 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I witnessed something that defied logic and challenged my reality: a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigating over the Squaw Peak in the Phoenix Mountain preserve. A solid structure rather than an apparition, it was dramatically large, with a distinctive leading edge embedded with lights as it traveled the Arizona skies. I still don’t know what it was. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can say with certainty that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I had ever seen.

As soon as I reached home I told my wife, Ann, about it. She listened attentively, and we both thought long and hard about whether I should make public what I had seen. Eventually, at least for the time being, we reached the conclusion I should not, as doing so would most likely result in ridicule from the press that would distract me and my entire administration from the work we had been elected to accomplish.

The same incident was witnessed by hundreds if not thousands of people in Arizona, and my office was at once besieged with phone calls from concerned Arizonians. Even so, I managed to keep my head down—until two months later, when a story about the sightings appeared in USA Today. Catalyzed by the article, hysteria intensified to a point that I decided to lighten the mood and add a note of levity by calling a press conference at which my chief of staff arrived in alien costume. Originally my idea, this was one my team immediately embraced with enthusiasm. Not only would it dampen any incipient panic, it would show the human face of those who hold public office.

In the event, we did manage to calm the public’s developing anxiety and, despite the fact that, in the process, we also upset a few of my constituents, I felt that our approach had ultimately served a greater good.

With hindsight, however, I would like to set one part of the record straight. As I assured James Fox when he interviewed me for his documentary film, Out of the Blue, it was never my intention to ridicule anyone. My office did make inquiries—of the Department of Public Safety, the Air National Guard, and the lead officers at Luke Air Force Base—as to the origin of the craft, but to this day all of these remain unanswered.

Eventually, the Air National Guard claimed responsibility, stating that at the time its pilots had been dropping flares. This explanation, however, defies common sense, for flares do not fly in formation. Indeed, such a narrative seems indicative of the attitude one all too often encounters in official channels, which provide ex post facto rationales—e.g., weather balloons, swamp gas, and military flares—apparently meant to accord with our experience and expectations rather than our observations.

I was never satisfied by this silly explanation. For, although, as suggested by analysis (by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, among others) of a video taken then, there may well have been military flares in the sky later that evening—around ten o’clock, to be exact—what I and so many others observed between eight and eight-thirty was, on inspection, something else entirely: a huge and mysterious craft.

Today, of course, I know that I was not alone in having witnessed something so extraordinary. There are many high-ranking military aviation and government officials who have witnessed similar apparently inexplicable things at other times and in other quarters of the sky, and who share my concern that our government disparages these facts at its, and our, peril. Some of them have come together in this book, and I join them in suggesting a new approach to this problem.

With due respect, we want the United States government to cease perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms. Instead, our country needs to reopen the official investigation it shut down in 1970. We should no longer shun international dialogue on this important subject. Rather, we urge the appropriate agencies of our government to work in cooperation with countries that have already begun exchanging reports of sightings and to endeavor, in a spirit of genuinely open scientific inquiry, to learn more about UFOs and to make the results of such inquiries, whether immediately comprehensible or not, fully public.

CHAPTER 26 Engaging the U.S. Government

In 2002, I cofounded the Coalition for Freedom of Information,[180] an independent alliance and advocacy group whose mission is to achieve scientific, congressional, and media credibility for the often misunderstood subject of UFOs. Much of our work has been built around an effort to acquire new information through the Freedom of Information Act, and it quickly won the support of John Podesta, one of our country’s strongest advocates for openness in government, who contributed the foreword to this book. As President Clinton’s former chief of staff, Podesta was instrumental in the declassification of 800 million pages of documents during the Clinton administration. In 2008, he headed President Obama’s transition team and now directs the