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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/ufos-pilots-history-channel_n_935847.html.
HUFFINGTON POST.
26 AUG 2011
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Lee Speigel--"Writer, Reporter, Paranormal expert"
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“Over the past year, we’ve been averaging 500 sighting reports a month, compared to about 300 three years ago [67 percent],” MUFON international director Clifford Clift said.
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However, the remaining 5 percent of all UFO reports aren’t as easily explained. And many of them are reported by commercial and military pilots. These were examined on “Secret Access: UFOs On The Record,” a new History Channel documentary that premiered on Thursday.
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“There’s a great case from South America where a commercial flight was over the Andes after dark, cabin lights were on and everybody on one side of the airplane was looking out at this lighted object that was approaching them at their altitude,” said Richard Haines, a former research scientist from the NASA Ames Research Center.
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“One is an encounter where the airplane is flying along, minding its own business, usually on autopilot, when the phenomenon will come alongside, approach the airplane, pace it, sometimes do maneuvers around it and then fly away,” Haines said.
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The more than 30-minute close encounter ended when the UFO vanished. But the most telling part of this case is the aftermath when Callahan was contacted by the CIA.
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“I get a call from this guy in the CIA who tells me he wants to talk to me about the UFO. I said, ‘What UFO?’ He said, ‘The one that was in Alaska.’”
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The next day, Callahan found himself at a meeting with individuals from Pres. Ronald Reagan’s scientific staff, the CIA and FBI, where he was told to hand all the materials about the case over to them.
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“After I showed them the materials three times, one of the scientists stood up asking questions about the radar. Finally, another man stepped forward and said, ‘OK,’ and he pointed to the screen and said, ‘This event never happened. We were never here. We’re confiscating all this data and you’re all sworn to secrecy.’
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“I asked him what he thought it [the object] was, and he said, ‘It’s a UFO. Look at them [pointing to the scientists], they’re drooling and can’t wait to get into this data. This is the first time they ever had more than a minute of radar data on a UFO before.’”
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IIRC, the FAA official in Alaska somehow managed to keep a tape of the RADAR evidence.
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