01x03 - Close Encounters at Nuclear Bases

[bunniefuu]

HOST (over TV): One of these
three men is an expert on

unidentified flying objects.

What is your name please?

CONTESTANT 1 (over TV):
My name is J. Allen Hynek.

CONTESTANT 2 (over TV):
My name is J. Allen Hynek.

CONTESTANT 3 (over TV):
My name is J. Allen Hynek.

RODEGHIER: J Allen Hynek came
into the UFO field with the

typical scientific attitude,

which is, they
shouldn't be studied,

there's nothing to them.

O'CONNELL: Ultimately
that changed, and

that's sort of the core of
the J Allen Hynek story.

HOST (over TV):
I, J. Allen Hynek,

am a consultant to the
United States Air Force

on unidentified
flying objects.

KEAN: Like so many other
key figures of that era,

Hynek had to push against
the government that he once

worked for and stand
up for the truth.

HOST (over TV): I am also a
professor of astronomy and

director of a large
university observatory.

KEAN: Hynek believed
that science was the tool.

Science could get us to an
understanding of what UFOs are.

And that's what
he advocated for.

O'CONNELL: There are a lot
of people who don't always

understand his rationale
for the things he did or the

things he said, but Hynek's
impact today, I think,

is immeasurable.

MAN (over TV): Only one
of these men is the real

J. Allen Hynek.

The other two are imposters
and will try to fool this panel

On To Tell The Truth!

HYNEK: We get
reports every night.

MAN: I don't know
what the hell it is.

MAN 2: A rotating
light around it...

MAN 3: I'd like to report a UFO.

(theme music plays)

RODEGHIER: The US government
closed its formal study of UFOs,

Project Blue Book,
in late 1969.

And the government as a whole,
says we're not interested in

UFO reports.

POWELL: The Air Force made
the decision: let's get out of

this business of
investigating UFOs.

Our business is national
security, we see no threat.

Let's stop Project Blue Book.

KEAN: J. Allen Hynek who was
the scientist who worked for

Project Blue Book
for almost 20 years,

actually came through that
with the opposite perspective,

which was that UFOs were
something serious and

they should be investigated.

HYNEK: In my association with
Project Blue Book, I know and

I know very well that it
was not a scientific project.

I also know that they never,
never would notify the media

when an
interesting case came up.

They did everything they
could to keep it down,

so they definitely
withheld information.

RODEGHIER: Dr. Hynek realized
that this was a serious problem,

UFO reports could not
all be explained, and that

the military should be
taking this more seriously.

KEAN: We now know that there
were UFO cases during this

time that did seem to have
national security implications.

ELIZONDO: I think the public
would be shocked to realize

that there were incidents
going back even into the '60s,

where our nuclear m*ssile silos
were being interfered with.

MELLON: Production facilities,
weapons facilities.

We've had incidents over
numerous ICBM bases.

KEAN: During the Cold w*r,

intercontinental ballistic
missiles, called ICBMs,

were strategically located

throughout northern parts
of the United States,

where they were within striking
distance of the Soviet Union.

There were almost identical
UFO events at two of the

Minuteman ICBM locations:

at Minot Air Force base
in North Dakota in 1966,

and at Malmstrom Air Force
base in Montana in 1967.

SALAS: My name
is Robert Salas.

In 1967, I was a
lieutenant in the Air Force,

stationed at Malmstrom
Air Force Base, Montana.

SCHINDELE: My name
is David Schindele.

I'm a retired Air Force captain

at Minot Air Force Base
in North Dakota.

In 1966, my responsibility
was to launch our ten

nuclear tipped missiles upon
appropriate and verified order.

JAMISON: My name
is Robert Jamison.

I was a first lieutenant in
the United States Air Force,

Malmstrom Air
Force Base in Montana.

One of my jobs was to, if
a m*ssile goes off alert

for any reason, is to
go out and restart it.

MAN (over film): The Air
Force includes m*ssile men.

Here at Malmstrom Air Force
Base a strategic m*ssile wing

controls the most
modern Minuteman in its

underground silo.

The Air Force specialists
on this job, by continuous

readiness to launch their
bird, help prevent rather

than start a nuclear w*r.

SALAS: We had Minuteman 1
missiles and that's an

800-kiloton weapon.

And just for reference the
weapons that were dropped on

Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were 20 kilotons.

MELLON: That capability is
helping to keep the peace.

We have a policy of
mutually assured destruction.

It would be suicide for us or
our potential adversaries to

launch a nuclear attack.

Unless they could disable that
capability in that system.

Then they could conceivably
decapitate the United States,

destroy the Capital without
fear of a retaliatory response

and change the
global balance of power.

SALAS: Our location
was 60 feet underground.

SCHINDELE: We were
very well protected.

SALAS: It was a concrete
steel-reinforced capsule.

SCHINDELE: And this capsule
was sitting below what we call

the launch controls facility.

SALAS: We had six security
guards topside.

They had the responsibility
for making sure

there was nobody
trying to break in.

(laughs)

SCHINDELE: I traveled
to base to attend a
pre-departure crew briefing.

After the briefing, several
m*ssile crews came up to me

and said, "Did you hear
what happened overnight?"

SALAS: Sometime in the evening
hours, I get up a call from

the main guard upstairs.

He tells me that there
are strange lights flying
over the facility.

They're looking at
reddish-orange, glowing,

pulsating light.

It's hovering just
above the front gate.

SCHINDELE: And he pointed with
his arms, and he says it's

right out there hovering,
motionless and without sound.

SALAS: He did think that there
was a solid object within the

light, sort of oval-shaped.

I kind of dismissed it.

I even said,
"You mean like UFOs?"

and, uh, kind of
laughed at him.

And he said, "Well,
they're not airplanes, sir."

About five minutes later,
he calls back and he is

screaming into the phone now.

He's very frightened.

He's babbling.

He said, he's got all the
guards out there with their

weapons drawn.

They wanted
orders on what to do.

I told him, "Make sure nothing
enters the fenced area."

When I hung up the phone, I
thought we were under attack.

By who or what, I had no idea.

And then we get bells
and whistles going off

at our control panel.

And, we could see the lights
going from green to red,

all across the board.

Meaning the missiles
were inoperable now.

MELLON: If the president had
given the order to launch the

missiles, we could
not have launched them.

♪ ♪

SALAS: Losing 10
missiles was a shock.

Except for that instance,
I never lost more than

one m*ssile at a time.

MELLON: Somehow, some way,
vehicles were able to maneuver

right over those
ICBMs and turn them off.

JAMISON: We don't know
why they went down,

and still don't know.

There's no other reason I can
think of that would cause the

ten to go off
alert within seconds.

SCHINDELE: We knew it wasn't
an ordinary man-made machine

because we had
nothing like that.

SALAS: After the incident, I
was required not to speak to

anybody about it.

SCHINDELE: I attempted to
question the security guard,

and he said, "sorry, sir,
I've been told to keep quiet.

And he was told that as far
as you're concerned,

it never happened.

JAMISON: I had to go
through a special briefing.

This is where they told me,
"You're not supposed to say

ever again that
something happened,

because nothing happened."

Of course, the first thing I
did when I got home was,

"hey honey, guess
what happened."

There was a man from
Air Force Office of
Special Investigations.

All he wanted me to do was to
sign this document stating

I would never speak
about this again.

Once we signed that document,
we were released,

told to leave,
and that was that.

I never spoke about
any of this until 1994,

so that was about
27 years later.

KEAN: Three years after the
Malmstrom incident in which

ten missiles were shut down,
the Air Force released a

"Fact Sheet" to the public,
announcing the close of

Project Blue Book.

And it stated that no UFO
reported, investigated or

evaluated by the Air Force was
ever an indication of a threat

to our national security.

Meaning not even one has
represented any kind of

national security threat.

SALAS: That was certainly um...

a lie.

Let's, let's use the right word.

The Air Force knew full
well these were UFO-related

incidents and that UFOs
were responsible for the

shutdown of these missiles.

KEAN: We found out later, in
1979, that in fact a secret

memo had circulated called
the Bolender Memo which stated

that any national security
cases could continue to be

reported through
channels already in place.

And so it was a complete
black and white contradiction

between what was being said to
the public and what was being

said behind the scenes.

JAMISON: There's something
that's in our atmosphere that

we just don't know what it is.

These things seem to
be interested in our
nuclear capabilities.

And that's something we
should be concerned about.

SCHINDELE: I kept the
secret for 40 years.

It was a long time to
have this burden on the
back of my shoulders.

I'm normally a quiet
personality, and I just

don't want to be
in the limelight.

But the public
needs to know this.

KEAN: Robert Salas did not
speak out about what happened

for many, many years.

And it shows how
intimidated these people
are to come forward.

Decades will go by and they
won't even talk about it.

SCHINDELE: Good morning.

My name is David Schindele.

In 2001 I found an article
describing Robert Salas'

incident, and when I
saw it I said, oh my God.

The incident that he had
was almost identical

to the one I had.

And I experienced a,
just a joyful freedom, and

I finally was able to tell
my wife my secret.

And so thanks, Robert,
for helping me out.

SALAS: After the incident,
the guards had called me and

literally begged me to come
out and see them because this

was a very traumatic
experience for the guards.

But I had just signed a
nondisclosure statement,

so I had to tell them on the
phone that I could not see them.

So when I talk about this, I
do it partly for those airmen

that begged me to come see
'em and I just couldn't do it.

HYNEK: There's a shyness and a
reluctance on the part of many

witnesses, and understandably
so, against reporting, because

too many have been ridiculed
and life has been made

somewhat miserable for them.

MELLON: Dr. Hynek grew
increasingly disillusioned by

the Air Force's dismissive
approach to these sightings

and dismissive
approach to the evidence.

RODEGHIER: Hynek gradually
realized that this was a

subject that
demanded serious study.

O'CONNELL: Back when Hynek was
in Project Blue Book, there

was a case that involved
a father and his two
sons in Idaho.

One day they saw this object
just zoom down this gully,

down the river
bed and disappear.

They, all three, saw it.

Hynek found it
fairly convincing.

He ended up writing it off as
something with a natural cause.

That was Hynek's official
report to Project Blue Book,

Why this is significant is
years later when Hynek started

to change his mind,
he had regrets about
that specific case.

He said, "With that case,
I should have said,

'You know what?
It doesn't add up completely.

I think there's
more going on here.

I'm not gonna dismiss it.

I'm gonna try to
find out more.'"

So, that was kind
of the first ch*nk

in Hynek's façade as a debunker.

HYNEK: I began to get certain
doubts because it was the

people themselves.

I said to myself, well now,
come on, how much longer am

I going to call
these people crazy.

And when I changed my glasses
you might say, a little bit,

and took a view that maybe
these people aren't crazy,

and began to realize what
sort of people they were:

good, solid people.

I said to myself, well, the
time has come to maybe

change my attitude."

♪ ♪

POWELL: With the United States
Air Force leaving the role

behind of taking in UFO
investigations, this left a

large vacuum that civilian
organizations began to fill.

KEAN: In 1974,
J. Allen Hynek founded

The Center for UFO Studies,
abbreviated "CUFOS".

This was a civilian group
composed of very qualified

people that runs the gamut
of the average person with

enthusiasm, to a very highly
trained scientist or academic.

And the records that they
provided are absolutely crucial.

RODEGHIER: I'm Mark Rodeghier,
the scientific director of the

Center for UFO
Studies in Chicago.

Dr. Hynek mentored me and
designated me as his successor.

Dr. Hynek was the
classic professor.

He loved teaching.

He also really enjoyed jokes,
you know, and a good time.

He wasn't stuffy.

He had a little
twinkle in his eye.

People really
warmed up to him.

Allen was very open minded,
and that is really the

background to him
being interested in UFOs.

UFO groups, you know, they're
not massive organizations.

In fact, we're now sitting
in the basement in my

UFO office here in my house.

The Center is really like
a scientific think tank.

Dr. Hynek realized that there
was a need for a focused,

professional
group to study UFOs.

That involves
mainly three things.

Being a place for people
to report sightings.

Number two is to be a place
for reliable information.

We publish a journal, a
periodical, with monographs.

And finally, of course,
a place to do research.

We've stayed pretty
close to that mission
all through the years.

O'CONNELL: One of the first
things that CUFOS did was

establish a national
hotline for UFO reporting.

They distributed this hotline
to law enforcement agencies

around the country and said,

"Put this on your
bulletin board.

If you ever get a call from
someone who has seen a UFO

call us on this hotline, and
we will do the investigation."

WITNESS (over phone):
But it didn't look like
anything I know of...

POWELL: But there was a big
difference between civilian

and military
investigations of UFOs.

The military has access to other
information civilians don't.

KEAN: In the 70s and 80s in
general, government officials

were not talking about UFOs.

But some presidents were
also interested in getting

information about UFOs.

When Jimmy Carter was the
governor of Georgia in 1969,

he had a sighting with a
group of other witnesses.

CARTER: All of us saw a very
bright light in the western sky.

And it got closer and closer
and then it seemed to stop in

its proximity to us.

And then the color of it changed
from white to blue to red.

KEAN: Jimmy Carter was
very impressed by that.

It really impacted him.

Then in 1973, he filed a
written report on this with a

number of civilian UFO groups.

So it's on the record.

So when he did become
President, he approached NASA

to see if they would open up a
new investigation that could

continue what the Air Force
had been doing prior to

closing down
Project Blue Book.

The Air Force would not have
wanted this to happen

seven years after closing
Project Blue Book.

So the Air Force jumped in on
the process and said to NASA,

"we don't want
you to do this."

After a series of exchanges,

NASA did decline the
president's request.

PLANTE: Under pressure to
answer by the end of the year,

NASA concluded that it would
be pointless to mount a new

research effort because of
the lack of physical evidence.

KEAN: It was kind of stunning
that a request from the

president would
have been denied.

♪ ♪

SHALIT: If there is no
concrete evidence of people

from outer space,
how do you write a
whole book about UFO's?

HYNEK: That's exactly why I
called it The UFO Experience

instead of something that
would've sold more,

like Sex and the UFO.

I call it "The UFO Experience"
because that's what I was

talking about: the
experience that people had.

And you can't convince a
person who's had a real

UFO experience that
he hasn't had it.

KEAN: In the early '70s,
J. Allen Hynek came out with

his monumental book,
called The UFO Experience.

It wasn't just about research.

He was somebody that
would listen and took people

seriously who had had sightings,
and had experiences.

He would go on lots of TV
shows and radio interviews and

he was a public figure
advocating for official

recognition and study of UFOs.

MELLON: With the space program
taking off, there was a

groundswell of
interest in outer space.

ARMSTRONG (over TV): It's one
small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

MELLON: It was a
national movement.

And so, people's imaginations,
of course, run wild.

Hollywood was able to capture
that and feed people's thirst

and imagination.

And it led to a
longstanding, powerful genre.

MAN (over TV): May the
force be with you.

KEAN: So UFOs became
a cultural, creative,

imaginative area.

And Hynek's book
was a big hit...

SHALIT: Dr. J. Allen Hynek...

O'CONNELL: Steven Spielberg
bought the rights to Hynek's

book and hired Dr. Hynek
as a technical consultant.

KEAN: And so Spielberg worked
with Hynek in helping to get

the facts accurate for
his movie Close Encounters.

SPIELBERG: Yeah, I was very
influenced by J. Allen Hynek

because he was not looking
at UFOs as science fiction,

but he was looking at
them as science speculation.

So I met with him and I used
him and I picked his brain

and, and he consulted with me.

RODEGHIER: Dr. Hynek was the
fellow that coined the term

"Close Encounters".

HYNEK: Close encounters of the
first kind is when it's close

and nothing really happens.

O'CONNELL: A close encounter
of the second kind

includes physical damage
to the environment.

That could be landing pad
imprints in the grass where a

UFO was said to have landed.

HYNEK: And the close
encounters of the third kind

are the most
interesting of all.

SPIELBERG: Close encounter
of the third kind...

is really when you meet 'em.

KEAN: It was clear that
Spielberg wanted real science,

real data, accurate
information about UFOs

and that's why he called
on J. Allen Hynek.

ELIZONDO: They were
drawing from real

U.S. government information,
on how these things

operated and maneuvered.

Hypersonic velocities, or
fast speeds, instantaneous

acceleration, even
biological effects,

where Richard Dreyfuss, half his
face has this sunburn.

Those were all observables
that we were seeing in the

US government.

Real observables that made their
way onto the Hollywood screen.

And that's because
Steven Spielberg was provided

information from people
from Project Blue Book.

KEAN: Along with Hynek,
Spielberg also talked to

Jacques Vallée, a French
scientist who was well known

in the UFO field and had written
numerous books on the topic.

VALLÉE: I had the privilege
of working with Dr. Hynek for

five years and we built the
first computer based data

catalog of UFO sightings,
starting with the Air Force

files, which covered
about 20,000 cases.

(speaking in French).

BALABAN: These people have come
from all over their country.

VALLÉE: The French scientist
in the movie, the character of

Lacombe, was based
loosely on, on me.

France has an official
scientific committee for UFOs

that includes physicists,
the military, including

sociologists and
psychologists.

SPIELBERG: By letting the
project team leader be a

Frenchman it immediately
gave more of a depth to the

understanding of UFOs.

VALLÉE: In the whole history
of American movies,

It's always, they come from
somewhere, they k*ll somebody,

so we bring the tanks and they
destroy all the tanks...

that's a very American way of
looking at an alien life form.

SCIENTIST: If everything's
ready here on the dark side of

the moon, play the pipe tones.

VALLÉE: The movie was the
first movie in which we were

greeting these aliens and they
were coming to us as equal,

and we were going to have an
intelligent discussion with

them, or,
intelligent exchange.

(chimes playing)

(loud horn)

KEAN: Close Encounters just
captured the spirit of the

mystery of the phenomenon, the
scariness of the phenomenon

and kind of the impact
that it has on people.

ANCHOR: Whatever the government
may think about them,

unidentified flying
objects seem to be

popular with the people.

Columbia Pictures
reports that its film,

Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,

has grossed
$39 million in 3 weeks.

SPIELBERG: I owe a lot
to J. Allen Hynek;

his instilling in me a
professional's point of view

on this kind
of field reporting.

And he helped me make the
movie more credible than it

would have been
without his, his existence.

O'CONNELL: Steven Spielberg
actually brought him on set

for when they filmed the
movie's huge cl*max at the

secret UFO base in Wyoming.

MAN (over film): Captain,
United States Navy, 0-4-3-4-3-1

O'CONNELL: And of course
Close Encounters,

it became a household term

because of
Steven Spielberg's movie and

really catapulted Hynek
to a degree of celebrity.

HOST (over TV): Therefore, will
the real Dr. J. Allen Hynek

please stand up?

(audience gasps and applause).

KEAN: Even though Hynek worked
for our government for almost

two decades.

What he was doing in the
70s and 80s seemed to have

no impact at all on
the government.

And sightings continued.

HYNEK: There's the fantastic
sightings last year and this

year in the Westchester
and Putnam County areas.

Those are literally
out of this world.

I can find no logical
explanation for them.

WITNESS: I don't know
what the hell it is!

♪ ♪

WORTHINGTON: We were
coming home from grad school.

And we were just
yakking like we are now.

And all of a sudden, Doris says,
what are those lights up there?

SORAVILLA: I was driving
north on 118, and I was

approaching the light here.

I looked into the northern
skies, saw what appeared to be

a large aircraft with landing
lights flying very low,

about 500 feet.

And it stopped and
rotated 180 degrees

and started to head west.

SANT: I looked up at
Interstate 84 and it was

a parking lot.

People were out of their
cars, blinking lights,

pointing up at the sky.

And there was that city
of lights hovering over
in my backyard.

ACOSTA: And it went from
like night to broad daylight.

SANT: And all of a sudden,
it was, "It's gonna land!

It's gonna land!"

ACOSTA: You could
hear a pin drop.

SANT: And I said, "Oh,
what do with my family?

How am I gonna
handle all this?"

SORAVILLA: What I
saw was unbelievable.

Mind boggling.

The whole town saw this.

KEAN: Beginning in around 1983,
There was an incredibly

dramatic series of sightings
that took place in the

Hudson Valley area of New York
state and in Connecticut,

which was actually a wave

because it took
place over years.

People would report these
UFOs to the police or maybe

to local UFO groups.

And a lot of people were
kind of awed and frightened.

BROOKS: It was a
little spooky.

REPORTER: How come?

BROOKS: Because it
was unexplainable.

REPORTER: What Jim Brooks saw...

MELLON: There was a
lot of local reporting,

some local civilian
investigation.

SCARBOROUGH: Now, researchers
have set up a special UFO

hotline in Westchester...

MELLON: But it was something
that involved hundreds,

at least, witnesses,
if not more.

KEAN: There was nothing coming
from our government,

even though these gigantic craft
were cruising around over

a part of the United States.

REPORTER: The Federal Aviation
Administration has joined the

Air Force and many astronomers
in attributing most UFO

sightings to man-made objects
and natural phenomenon.

SCIENTIST: Believe it or not,
the planet Venus is a fairly

common UFO sighting.

WITNESS 1: It moved very slowly.

WALSH: We looked up in the sky
and we saw six lights

in a V-shape.

KEAN: Even after all these
witnesses had seen these

objects and had reported
them to their local police,

it still became
a kind of a joke.

CARBONE: The head of my
school, he said, you know,

some people might
think you're crazy.

SANT: I was the commissioner
of motor vehicles and I was

involved in a
political race at that time.

The last thing I wanted to
be known for was little

green people or UFOs.

ACOSTA: My husband also
thought I was nuts, and so

I didn't talk about it too much.

HYNEK: What is interesting,
tragic, and amusing all at the

one and the same time is that
lots of people are afraid to

talk about it.

Their friends will
laugh at them and so forth.

And we need to let these people

feel safe and talk about it.

KEAN: On August 25th of 1984,
Hynek came to the Hudson Valley

and he gave a talk
at the middle school there.

This was the last case that
he was involved with before he

died and it made a
huge impression on him.

HYNEK: Here's the sketch
of the thing going on in

Westchester County now.

There's this large
boomerang-shaped object

that moves slowly, far below
the stall speed of aircraft;

moves silently.

I've been told by highly
responsible witnesses that

it is as large as
the football field.

ZIMMERMAN: It speaks to
the importance of the

Hudson Valley wave that
J. Allen Hynek came here.

He thought it was important
enough, to speak to the

witnesses, to go to the sites.

SANT: I spent a
weekend with Dr. Hynek.

Dr. Hynek could ask you a
question and he'd sit back and

he would listen and if one
of my kids jumped into the

conversation, he would just
kindly just put up his hand

and go, "I'll get right back
to you," with a little wink.

And you were the most
important person for that

moment he was talking to you.

That's the way
he made me feel.

KEAN: It was very important
for these witnesses who were

not getting any official
recognition that somebody like

J. Allen Hynek,

an astronomer who had
worked for the government,

that he came there,
and spoke with them,

and took them seriously.

SANT: And we walked through
the whole sighting,

he wanted to go every place.

And every time we
made a stop he said,

"What were you feeling?

Did you feel
anything in your gut?

Did you feel
connected to this object?"

KEAN: It made a huge
difference to have him

on site during the wave.

HYNEK: In the Westchester case
in New York for instance we

had witnesses geographically
independent of each other,

didn't know each other, and
yet reported identically the

same things now you cannot
call that mass hallucination.

KEAN: Lack of scientific
involvement or government

acknowledgement of
UFOs encourages people's

imaginations to go wild with,
"What are they hiding?

WORTHINGTON: We called the
police when we got home and

they didn't tell us that night
but a couple of days later we

were reading they
thought they were ultralights.

The planes?

HYNEK: The chief
meteorologist at the
Westchester County Airport

with some 25 years
experience told me that

when he saw it overhead, it
moved very slowly like a

ship docking at a berth.

Now that cannot possibly be
ultralights flying in formation.

That's just out
of the question.

ROSE: The plane flying in
formation is one of the

reasons cited including an
article in Discover Magazine.

KEAN: This article that was in
Discover Magazine talks about

the pilots who were going
up and hoaxing UFOs and it

implies that's probably
what all the sightings were.

WITNESS: Hear the engines?

SANT: Planes fly all the time.

Do you hear 7,000 people
coming out and saying,

"Ah, I saw planes over my head."

No.

They saw something different.

WORTHINGTON:
Ultralights make noise!

CARBONE: They do make noise!

WORTHINGTON: So we've
never had a good explanation.

KEAN: So these pilots did a
huge disservice by creating

this hoax situation to confuse
everything, and to bring a

lack of credibility and to
give the government something

to hang their hat on when they
were asked what people were

actually seeing.

ZIMMERMAN: People
began doubting themselves.

It kept the entire
wave suppressed.

KEAN: Hynek was just stunned
by the fact that this was

not getting attention.

HYNEK: The subject came up in
the United Nations recently.

We have reports from
133 different countries.

And the same pattern
exists around the world.

It's not just localized in one
particular country, you see.

KEAN: So while our government
was telling the public that

there was nothing to UFOs,
that the investigations had

all been shut down...

documents reveal that
officials were, in fact,

monitoring cases in
other countries.

POWELL: What they were seeing
was very similar to what was

seen in the Hudson Valley.

(beep).

HYNEK: This map was prepared
by Dr. Jacques Vallée.

UFO reports are truly global,
and that they seem to occur in

waves or "flaps" as
they are often called.

Notice how the flaps have been
distributed throughout the

years and over the world.

MELLON: This is truly an
international phenomenon.

There's no question about it.

There's a very similar
pattern, very similar reports.

Foreign militaries are
also having encounters.

The Belgian Air Force had
some extraordinary encounters.

KEAN: A few years after the
Hudson Valley wave,

a very similar wave
occurred in Belgium.

ZIMMERMAN: These
large black triangles.

Again, all the characteristics,
silent, low,

beams of light, hovering.

KEAN: Belgian authorities
would scramble jets in order

to try to get a better
look at the objects.

They wanted to identify
what it was that was invading

protected airspace
over their country.

They felt that this was
their responsibility.

POWELL: The F-16s that the
Belgian military had

tracked these objects on radar.

So they actually have radar
imagery of the unknown,

moving through Belgian airspace.

KEAN: And the contrast from
how the Belgium government

handled it there versus how
our government didn't handle

the events in Hudson Valley
are really striking.

The Belgian Air Force became
actively involved with a group

of scientists to collect
reports from witnesses.

They assigned a colonel to
head up in an investigation.

KEAN: And they held a press
conference packed with media,

in which they disclosed
everything they knew and

how they were approaching this.

KEAN: And the public were
encouraged to file reports.

ZIMMERMAN: Air Force officers
were coming forward, and

speaking about it.

They gave it a legitimacy that
we have yet to see here in

this country.

ANCHOR: You said the
government stopped

investigating back in 1969.

Do these UFO watchers have
any reason to expect the

government to get re-involved
in investigating these claims?

REPORTER: Right now
they're a bit disappointed the

government has not gotten more
involved than it has in the

last ten years.

But we do know that the CIA
and the Defense Department

have been doing some research
into other sightings in other

nations, like the
Soviet Union and Iran,

but in the United States,
they seem very skeptical.

KEAN: The Belgian case
was documented by

U.S. government officials.

Colonel de Brouwer had
approached American officials

to inquire
whether this was ours.

And we had told them no.

And we had said also, "We'd
like to know whose it was."

So there was a document filed
about the Belgian wave,

but no document filed about
a wave in our own country.

At least that we are aware of.

HYNEK: To me, the greatest
evidence for the existence of

something strange going
on is the caliber of

many of the witnesses.

For instance, in Westchester,
we had meteorologists,

Navy test pilot, IBM executives,
priests, CPAs...

ROSE: Are they
all saying the same thing?

That it is not
explainable to them

by any conventional explanation?

HYNEK: You just
said it, Charlie!

That's exactly what
they're saying.

They're seeing
the same things.

WORTHINGTON: You know, there
were so many people that saw it.

It wasn't, you know, if
I saw it alone, I probably

wouldn't have told anybody.

If the three of us saw it, I
might have told my family.

CARBONE: Yeah.

WORTHINGTON: But there were
so many people that had saw it,

that I was
fine with, you know.

CARBONE: Yeah.

WORTHINGTON:
Spreading the word.

CARBONE: Me too.

WORTHINGTON: And everybody
that I told said, they were

sorry they didn't see it.

O'CONNELL: A lot of people
took solace in the fact that

Hynek was a guy who
was on their side.

If you witnessed a UFO, Hynek
was one person who would take

you seriously, wouldn't make
fun of you, and really try to

get a full picture of your
experience and that, that's so

huge just to someone who has
seen something weird in the

sky and doesn't know how
to tell anyone about it.

SANT: I felt validated.

That's the way Dr. Hynek
made me feel.

So I could say, "There's
nothing wrong with me and

nothing wrong with my eyes

and nothing wrong
with my intuition.

They're all intact."

VALLÉE: Dr. Hynek was someone
who was very alive, very open.

He told me once that the
reason he became interested in

UFOs was about the
challenges, about, you know:

what is this world?

If this is real, what does
that mean for human existence?

KEAN: The last thing Hynek did
before leaving this earth,

was try to understand the
nature of the denial and

the disconnect among human
beings when something

this dramatic happens.

Hynek wrote an essay that was
a rough draft that was left on

his computer when he died.

He said, "How is it possible
that in the United States

where even trivial events
are often flashed across the

world, only one national TV
and radio network carried an

account of these
utterly astounding sightings?

Was no one minding the store?

Was everyone
asleep at the switch?"

Hynek was a different person
than he was previously when

he worked at Project Blue Book.

Here he was saying: UFOs,
they're of scientific interest,

the witnesses
should be taken seriously.

It was just the most
profoundly important moment

in setting a course of events
that continued through the

'70s, '80s and '90s.

HYNEK: Starting as
a complete skeptic,

I underwent a transformation.

And now, I guess the best way
of saying it is that it's an

itch that I just
have to scratch.

I feel that we have a
phenomenon that, could be,

of tremendous potential
importance to the human race,

I feel that strongly about it.

♪ ♪

MAN: It's a definite UFO
or something like that.

It just flew right over me.

HILKEVITCH: This is
highly restricted airspace.

You don't want something up
there that doesn't belong there.

KEAN: The culture as
a whole didn't really

take UFOs seriously.

FOX: I stuck with it despite the
level of ridicule for decades.

CALLAHAN: He described it as
a huge ball of light turning

around and he says it was about
four times bigger than a 747.

KEAN: My immediate response was,
"I wanna break this story!"