6.14 The Arizona Sightings - March 1997

had contact with the creature were admonished to not discuss it with anyone, not even their relatives, and to specifically avoid the press and UFO researchers.

Interviews with some of the military men involved in the removal operation who gave confidential interviews reported that three army trucks were used, each with a two-man team. They speculated that three trucks were used to remove one possibly extraterrestrial body so that none of the trucks would know who was indeed transporting the body of the creature. The Brazilian investigators have since determined these facts. The driving teams, although kept outside the hospital itself, observed details of the operation. Military personnel from Brazil’s S-2 — the Army internal intelligence section — was in charge of getting the corpse from the interior of the hospital, placing it lying down in a wooden box and then loading it into one of the trucks.

All three trucks went back to ESA. The next morning at 4:00 am, the trucks headed to another military facility located in Campinas in the state of Sao Paulo, a 200-mile drive. There, the corpse was transferred to the University of Campinas, one of Brazil’s best institutions. The body was autopsied by Dr. Fortunato Badan Palhares, who gained worldwide acclaim as one of the best forensic doctors alive when he conducted the autopsy of the famous German Nazi Mengle, whose body was found in Brazil. However, Dr. Palhares has publicly denied having taken part in the autopsy of the creature found in January of 1996.

One year after the Varginha incident, another witness came forward — Joao Bosco Manoel. He called Sr. Pacaccini. He and Sr. Rodrigues met with him and heard his story. He was an independent witness to the capture of the first creature. At approximately 10:45 am on January 20, Sr. Bosco was in the area selling fish door-to-door when his attention was diverted by a fire truck and firemen, but no evidence of a fire. He hid and watched the goings on. He observed six firemen hurriedly emerging from the bushes, followed by four firemen wearing big gloves and between them were carrying the creature wrapped in a net. The life form was put into the truck and the men drove away. Sr. Bosco noticed an extremely acrid, ammonia-like smell permeating the open air. Sr. Bosco spoke at a press conference and made his story public, stating that he could identify at least two of the firemen. This caused something of an uproar due to the official denial surrounding the story. Sr. Bosco was intimidated and threatened following his press conference, and Sr. Pacaccini spent a great deal of time meeting with him following threatening incidents. Sr. Bosco eventually moved out of the state of Minas Gerais.

The Brazilian media has widely reported on the incident and the majority of the population understands that the case is real and that the military and civil authorities are keeping the facts absolutely quiet. Researchers Pacaccini and Rodrigues have determined that the policemen involved in the captures have since been transferred and promoted. For a period of time after the incident, the region where Varginha is located, in the southern part of the state of Minas Gerais, was experiencing one of the largest waves of UFO sightings ever registered, including reports of huge UFOs observed at close range and reported contacts with inhabitants. This event was covered on the front page of The Wall Street Journal Europe94 although the article’s tone was very much tongue in cheek and is a good example of mainstream media reporting techniques discussed in section 4.1.

6.14 The Arizona Sightings - March 1997

94 Moffett, Matt, The Wall Street Journal Europe, July 1, 1996

On March 13, 1997, flying objects traveled across a large portion of southern Arizona. Seen by thousands, videotaped by many, evoking comment from the military and government, the most significant UFO event in a decade occupied a prominent place in the press and gained worldwide attention. The National UFO Reporting Center95 in Seattle, Washington, received its first call at 8:16 pm on March 13. A retired police officer from Paulden, Arizona, sixty miles north of Phoenix, called in to report observing five red lights in a cluster headed south. In less than two minutes, another report came in from Prescott, fifteen miles south of Paulden. It all broke loose after that, with multiple calls coming in from Wickenburg to Tempe. The Center’s director, Peter Davenport, who describes himself as usually skeptical about the reports received at the Center, stated: “The incident over Arizona was the most dramatic I’ve seen...what we have here is the real thing. They are here.”96

As the airborne objects came over the flight paths leading to the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, more than one commercial pilot radioed to the control tower asking for an identification of the lights. The air traffic controllers had no answers. They could visually see the objects, yet nothing unaccounted for appeared on their radar screens. Investigation subsequent to March 13 revealed that callers jammed police department phone lines, as well as television and radio station phones. Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix was also besieged with calls of sighting reports as the objects traveled south over the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. The objects’ speed over greater Phoenix was estimated by many observers as a leisurely 30 miles per hour. This certainly suggests that the objects indeed wanted to be seen and videotaped.

A variety of UFOs were reported: triangles, lights in a straight line, orbs in a V-shaped or delta formation, an actual solid triangular-shaped object. Many witnesses stated that the lights seemed to glow from within — they were very bright but did not shine or cast light. Most observers who saw them at closer range stated the lights were white with orange to red edges and centers. Some witnesses could discern a dim, dark shape behind the light formation that distorted or blotted out the stars as it slowly passed. The Disclosure Project’s director and research director spoke with a retired Air Force pilot on the evening of March 14 who saw the lights clearly from his home. He resides in Carefree, which is north of Phoenix and has much less light pollution than within the city. He described the lights as silent, slow moving and maintaining a formation. He stated that this was unlike anything he had witnessed in the skies during his entire career as a military pilot. Regardless of the type of formation seen, all observers agreed that the lights or objects were slow moving, very large and totally silent. The size of the object was estimated as being from 900 feet to more than a mile in length. Computer analysis of witness’s videotapes done by Village Labs in Tempe marked the length as 6,000 feet — well over a mile long. Richard Price of USA Today, in an article appearing in the June 18, 1997 issue, interviewed witness Bill Greiner, who stated he would never be the same after the sighting. Mr. Greiner turned from a skeptic to someone who saw what he describes as "astonishing and a little frightening." Mr. Greiner, a cement truck driver, was hauling a load of cement down a mountain north of Phoenix when he saw two white, orange and red UFOs. He described them as having spinning tops. Greiner observed one of the orbs break away and fly over Luke Air Force Base. He stated that three F-16 fighter jets went in pursuit of the UFO. As the jets approached, the UFO shot straight up and quickly vanished. In Mr. Greiner’s words: "It was crazy. I know those

95Website at: www.msatech.com/nuforc/index.html 96Richard Price, Arizonans say the truth about UFO is out there. USA Today newspaper article, June 18, 1997, p. 4A. See reprint of the whole article in Appendix (Document AI.18).

pilots saw it. Hell, I’ll take a lie detector test on national TV if that guy from the base does the same thing... I wish the government would just admit it. It’s like having 50,000 people in a stadium watch a football game and then having someone tell us we weren’t there." The analyses of the amateur video tapes undertaken at Village Labs by Jim Dilettoso and his partner Michael Tanner reveal that four different formations or objects traveled from north to south on the evening of March 13, 1997. The transit across the region lasted 106 minutes. The lights were uniform, did not vary in brightness or intensity across the span of each light, and did not glow. They were determined not to be aircraft lights, holograms, lasers or military flares. Comparison with the lights on the Phoenix skyline seen in the videos shows the UFOs to be markedly unique.

The residents of southern Arizona were intrigued, curious and expected an explanation from the civilian and military authorities. While several reports from various military personnel stated that the lights were flares being used during National Guard war game maneuvers, Mr. Dilettoso stated that investigation revealed the National Guard could not, would not and did not cause the lights that were seen by thousands of Arizonans on March 13, 1997. While jets from Luke Air Force Base were in the Phoenix skies on that night, a spokesman from the base assured the press that the jets’ lights could not account for the sightings.

Reacting to the groundswell coming from the local citizenry, Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Barrows raised a question at a city council meeting as to whether anyone was conducting an official investigation. Instantly, the public seized upon her comment and made her their "official" contact to the government. Although Councilwoman Barrows said she did not see the objects herself, many of her constituents did. When the public and the media learned of her raising the question of an investigation, hundreds of calls were received from the curious citizens who now had a public servant upon whom to focus.

But the city council, the mayor’s office, the governor’s office and US Senator John McCain were unable to effect any official action. Senator McCain referred it to the US Air Force, who announced in June 1997 that it would do nothing to investigate the incidents, referring it back to the local jurisdictions. And, of course, this would be the Air Force’s position since they have officially been out of the UFO investigation business since the closure of Project Blue Book in 1969.

Two years later, the above mentioned National UFO Reporting Center released a special update report on their web site97 based on a significant amount of evidence collected since the original sightings. The update substantiated the earlier reports of both the objects size, appearance, and movements. In contrast to sightings and reports by both air traffic controllers and a commercial flight crew on the ground at Sky Harbor Airport near Phoenix, “senior officers from Luke Air Force Base stated that they knew nothing about the incident, and that the base had received no reports from the public regarding the event” (as stated the day after the sighting event took place). Long distance telephone bills, which indicate calls to the base, contradict the statements made by these officers. Finally, a witness who identified himself as an airman stationed at Luke Air Force Base, reported that the Air Force had launched two fighters from the base and “that one of the aircraft had ‘intercepted’ a gigantic object over the intersection of Indian School Road and 7th Avenue.”

It is not surprising that even after two years, the sorting out of the truth from conflicting reports makes an analysis of this very well documented event difficult. The search for additional clues into

97Report at: www.msatech.com/nuforc/phoenix.html