UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (31 page)

Sometime later, my new boss found my tape and, unbeknownst to me, started playing it at cocktail parties. Word of it got out, and an American researcher started digging for more information. In 1983, I got a call from Pete Bent, acting Third Air Force Commander, and he told me that my memo from the Third Air Force files was going to be released under the Freedom of Information Act. I knew Pete and asked him to please burn it, to destroy it, and told him my life and his would never be the same because of what would happen if this were released. He said that too many people knew of the statement, so he had no choice. In October 1983, my worst fears were realized: The popular British tabloid
News of the World
ran a huge headline with the story on its front page, and reporters were swarming the base looking for the author of the memo. Fortunately I was already on a flight to the United States at the time, but this was only the beginning. In 1984, the audio tape was made public as well. The original tape was returned to me, and I also have the actual pocket tape recorder that was used that night.

If the memo had not been released, I would have continued to remain silent. This experience is not something I ever wanted to speak about publicly. On the other hand, no one has ever tried to influence me
not
to do so. When I had my final debriefing before leaving the Air Force, it wasn’t even mentioned, so I asked if I could talk about the case, and was given permission, as if it really didn’t matter.

Over the years, I have heard privately from many other witnesses. The weapons storage area tower operator and a communications worker in the same tower both told me they saw an object that went into the forest near Woodbridge base. The air traffic control tower operators at Bentwaters also saw an object and observed something cross their screen at extremely high speed, up to 3,000 to 4,000 mph—the radar monitor registered one streak as opposed to the usual series of blips for even the fastest aircraft. Others have now come forward with similar accounts. All had been cautioned not to talk by someone up the chain of command, or were afraid to talk at the time for various reasons.

Many have wondered how much the United States government might know about the Rendlesham Forest incident. Over the years, it has become clear to me that agents from the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the Air Force’s major investigative service, were on the base and secretly investigated the case in the days following. The incident had everyone very nervous. The high-ranking officers wanted to stay out of it, and the OSI didn’t want anyone involved whom they couldn’t control. OSI operatives harshly interrogated five young airmen, some of them in shock at the time, who were key witnesses. These men reported later that the agents told them not to talk about the UFO events, or their careers would be in jeopardy. Drugs such as sodium pentothal, often called a “truth serum” when used with some form of brainwashing or hypnosis, were administered during these interrogations, and the whole thing has had damaging, and lasting, effects on the men involved.

Other witnesses may have been exposed to high doses of radiation from the landed object. Some have health problems and struggle with personal issues to this day. Repression by the OSI is not uncommon in the military, but nobody involved will ever admit that. The OSI commander for Bentwaters told me then that they weren’t investigating. Others have reported a different story.

I retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1991 as a colonel. This publicity was not exactly career-enhancing; nevertheless, I went on to become a base commander at two large installations and at the time of my retirement was director, inspections directorate for the DoD Office of Inspector General. In that position I had inspection oversight of all military services and defense agencies.

I still have no idea what we saw that night. It must have been something beyond our technology, judging from the speed of the objects, the way they moved and the angles they turned, and other things they did. I do know one thing, without a doubt: These objects were under intelligent control.

CHAPTER 19

Chile: Aeronautical Cases and the Official Response

by General Ricardo Bermúdez Sanhueza (Ret.), Chilean Air Force, and by Captain Rodrigo Bravo Garrido, Aviation Army of Chile

Along with West European nations, South America has also played a crucial role in establishing new agencies to investigate UFOs, and these endeavors have gathered some momentum in that part of the world. Peru set up its Air Force Office for the Investigation of Anomalous Activity, known as the OIFFA,
¹
in 2001, primarily concerned with the safety of air operations. And the Peruvian government took another important step about two years later. The Air Force publicly reported on its investigations of a series of sightings, videotaped in the remote Chulucanas area, stating that whatever was being seen was physically real but could not be explained.
²
Announced in February 2003 by Peruvian Air Force colonel José Raffo Moloche, official acknowledgment of the existence of UFOs had never been provided publicly before by the Peruvian government, so this was an important breakthrough
.

Comandante Julio Chamorro, the founder and first director of the OIFFA, had been previously stationed at La Joya air base and was a witness to the incident involving Oscar Santa María Huertas in 1980, when the base was put on alert. He told me that Peru funded its Air Force agency because “these anomalous events had occurred frequently enough over national territory to create a danger, and we recognized that they needed to be taken seriously.” Chamorro says that, as director of the OIFFA, he had approached the U.S. Embassy on a number of occasions to discuss the situation for the purpose of requesting assistance, but received no response. “We have not been able to expect any help from the Americans in dealing with this problem,” he says
.

The Uruguayan Air Force, which has been active in UFO investigations for decades, declassified its UFO files in 2009 and made them public, including records of forty cases that remain unexplained, some involving military pilots. “The UFO phenomenon exists and I must stress that the Air Force does not dismiss an extraterrestrial hypothesis based on our scientific analysis,” said Colonel Ariel Sánchez at the time, an officer with thirty-three years of active service who presides over an Air Force commission studying the cases
.
³

Chile set up an agency within its civil aviation department, the equivalent of our FAA, in 1997 to investigate UFO cases affecting aviation safety. The CEFAA
⁴
(the Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena) was founded and directed by General Ricardo Bermúdez and soon developed a relationship with the aviation branch of the Chilean Army, through the work of Captain Rodrigo Bravo. Since leaving the CEFAA in 2002, General Bermúdez has prepared a graduate-level course in UAP for the University of Science and Technology in Santiago, “designed to furnish the students with the necessary tools for distinguishing between what is real and what is fictional regarding UFOs,” as he describes it. He constructed the course to include a wide range of lectures by other professors in related fields, such as astronomy, space physics, and astronautics. In January 2010, General Bermúdez was reinstated as chief of the CEFAA, in an elaborate ceremony chaired by the director general of civil aviation. Representatives of the armed forces, police
(carabineros),
and academic and research communities from all over Chile were in attendance, and the event was covered by the media. “It was a beautiful ceremony that had the full support of the authorities,” Bermúdez wrote in an e-mail
.
⁵

I. General Ricardo Bermúdez Sanhueza

In the last days of March
⁶
and beginning of April 1997, various anomalous aerial phenomena were observed over the city of Arica, in the far north of Chile. For two consecutive days, lights were seen west of the city and the airport, alarming the people of the region. Lights were also visible over the sea, apparently moving in a coordinated fashion. In addition to members of the civilian population, other witnesses included civil servants and official aeronautic experts at Aeropuerto Chacalluta, the airport in that city. The news made its way to the press, and the Ministerial Department of Civil Aeronautics, DGAC, issued a public statement acknowledging and confirming these observations. This was the first time the Chilean government had publicly recognized the existence of unidentified objects in national airspace.

Given the high profile of the case and the strong public interest in the subject, and discussions that had already occurred within the Air Force about addressing the UFO issue, General Gonzalo Miranda, the DGAC director, ordered the creation of a committee to study anomalous aerial phenomena. This group, the CEFAA, was charged with compiling, analyzing, and studying every incident involving anomalous aerial phenomena observed by any aeronautic personnel, civil or military. It began its work on October 3, 1997.

I was put in charge of the CEFAA from 1998 to 2002. As current director of the Technical School of Aeronautics, I had held other important educational posts in the Air Force, such as director of the School of Engineers and sub-director of the School of Aviation. I had been an active researcher of unidentified phenomena, especially when I served as aviation attaché to England. It was during that assignment that I came to the conclusion that there was something happening in the world’s skies, and that we didn’t know what it was. My position as director of the CEFAA demanded that I keep a scientific view on this topic, but it also meant that I was willing to consider any hypothesis about the origin and nature of these phenomena.

My duties were, among others, to head the regular sessions of the staff and members of the group, to guide the research efforts, and to provide the logistical framework for implementing those efforts. In addition, I promoted cooperation with university and scientific organizations, both national and foreign. These included working with Dr. Richard Haines and NARCAP, and the French government’s GEIPAN. Every day I would check the progress of these various investigations and would oversee the design of their procedures. At times I carried on research myself, and was actively involved with case investigations.

Like America’s FAA, the DGAC’s legal mandate is to manage the national airspace and to ensure the safety of all civil, military, and commercial air operations. For the CEFAA, as well, working within this authority, aviation safety of commercial flights is the priority. Air operations demand careful preparation and execution, without any element of distraction for the pilots. The sighting of an unknown phenomenon is certainly a great distraction that could affect both the crew of the aircraft and the air traffic personnel in the control tower. It could potentially overload the radio communications for both the pilots and air traffic controllers if operators were to focus on the bizarre phenomenon, relaying details and questions, a fact that should concern the officials of any country. The policy of the CEFAA is to pursue solid cases with adequate scientific data, but only if there is an indication that the safety of the aircraft might have been at risk.

As the director, I stated early on that the CEFAA is committed to international cooperation for the following reasons:

• To share relevant information and new findings
  

• To provide an incentive for universities and scientific organizations to work on this in multidisciplinary teams in many branches of science
  

• To marginalize charlatans and pseudoinvestigators, and to denounce frauds
  

• To have a uniform method of investigative processes and analysis
  

• To coordinate recommendations for air traffic control operators when there are risks of electromagnetic effects or other hazards on board aircrafts
  

Chile has undoubtedly taken a great step forward in the investigation of anomalous aerial phenomena. And just as the Chilean Air Force was one of the first to be created in the world, it is also historic that we are also one of the first to officially recognize these phenomena and to form a government agency specifically for their investigation.

The CEFAA’s official position has always been to recognize that something is happening in our skies, but we, as yet, do not know what it is. A large percentage of reports we’ve received have upon investigation been confirmed to be planets, meteorites, or weather phenomena, or do not provide sufficient data for analysis. Occasionally we are unable to make a ruling because witnesses refuse to be interviewed, are not credible, or are even committing fraud. Sometimes our pilots are afraid of ridicule, although that problem is improving somewhat. Of all the cases that have been analyzed, about 4 percent have no explanation, meaning that using all the technical means available, we cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion.

We believe there is a possibility that we will be forced to confront greater interference from UFOs in the future, especially considering the documentation of incidents by experts in other countries. We believe it is of utmost importance to be prepared.

Officially, Chile has not directly requested the cooperation of the U.S.A. However, in April 1998, the CEFAA informed the adjunct aeronautic official at the U.S. Embassy in Chile about our existence and mentioned Chile’s interest in working with the appropriate agency in the United States to share experiences, policies, procedures, etc., regarding this topic. In July 2000, the CEFAA sent the embassy a document asking to consult the Pentagon about whether a sighting witnessed by a large number of people along the central coast of Chile the previous February had been due to activity by the National System of Antimissile Defense. Both requests went unanswered. To be frank, we’ve had no response from the United States any time we’ve tried to enlist its cooperation.