UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (41 page)

If indeed the DoD did
not
have any information about the 1997 unidentified objects of unknown origin operating over the United States, anywhere within the department, this in itself is a remarkable state of affairs. Were officials there alarmed by the information provided by witness affidavits through the court, and did they want to find out more? Some might consider such disregard of a massive, intruding object hovering over an American state to be grossly irresponsible, especially by those in charge of defending our country. Others might consider it so inexplicable that they would speculate whether DoD personnel were instructed by emissaries from the “controllers” of UFO information within a secret black program to keep quiet. Perhaps things have changed since 9/11, for it now seems hard to imagine that such an apparently advanced technological object, stealthily evading radar detection, could travel silently over a capital city and escape notice by federal authorities. Nonetheless, to this day, U.S. officials continue to keep the lid on the Phoenix Lights and other American sightings of mysterious giant triangles that have occurred since.

The case simmered for the next seven years until former Arizona governor Fife Symington brought it into the limelight in 2007, at the time of the tenth anniversary of the Phoenix Lights. He unexpectedly made a dramatic surprise announcement: that he, himself—despite his spoof press conference while governor—had actually witnessed what he called a “craft of unknown origin” along with his fellow citizens on that same March evening, but had decided not to make this public. In addition, he stated that the case remained unsolved, that it should be officially investigated, and that UFO incidents in general need to be taken seriously by the U.S. government.

On that unforgettable March evening in 1997, Symington had already arrived home and was watching the news when he received some calls about the sighting. He jumped into his car, and without his usual security detail, which had just left, he drove to a park near Squaw Peak, outside Phoenix, and amazingly enough, saw something highly unusual, brightly lit, overhead. “It was dramatic,” he said in our first interview. “And it couldn’t have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.”

A Harvard graduate and decorated Air Force veteran of Vietnam, Symington is a great-grandson of Henry Clay Frick, the coal and steel magnate, and a cousin of the late Stuart Symington, Democratic Senator from Missouri. He served as the Republican governor of Arizona beginning in 1991, and was reelected in 1994. A longtime pilot, he frequently flies his twin-engine Beechcraft Baron plane between his two homes in Phoenix and Santa Barbara, California.

Symington was first nudged into coming forward in late 2006, when my colleague James Fox, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, sent him a copy of his UFO documentary
Out of the Blue
, which includes coverage of the Phoenix Lights. Fox was adding new material to the acclaimed film for a second release. He had never spoken to the former governor and decided to approach him to see if he could find out why Symington had staged the infamous spoof press conference. Fox had interviewed numerous witnesses who did
not
think Symington’s spoof was funny, and were still rather upset by what, to them, was the governor’s mockery and ridicule. He assumed that, given this behavior, the conservative governor did not take UFOs seriously, and he had no expectation that Symington would agree to an interview.

When he received
Out of the Blue
, Symington watched it and apparently found it fascinating, but at first was hesitant to reply. Eventually he came around. At that point, Symington says, he decided that when he met with the filmmaker, he would tell him the whole story. “I was sick and tired of people being ridiculed for reporting legitimate sightings,” he later explained to me, and he decided that it was time to take a stand. Still, James Fox had no idea what was in store when he first met the former governor in Santa Barbara, and started his cameras rolling.

The two men seemed to hit it off right away. At one point during the filmed interview, Fox pulled out his cassette tape recorder. While the camera held a close-up of Symington’s face, capturing his subtle change in expressions, Fox played for Symington a personal message he had recorded from one of the governor’s former constituents, Stacey Roads. Roads and her teenage daughter were witnesses to the Arizona UFO, and she began by describing exactly where they were when she saw the craft. “A massive triangle came over I-10 and over my car. It was so large that if I’d opened a newspaper and laid on my back I couldn’t have blocked out the entire object. It was traveling very slow without any noise,” she said on the tape. The recording continued as Fox asked Roads whether she had a question she would like to ask the governor, and she replied: “Is this still a matter of ridicule to him, after he came out on TV with his alien, making us all look a little foolish? We’ve all been unwavering on our descriptions and a lot of evidence has come out since then. Does he still feel this is a matter of ridicule or has he taken a new stance?”

Governor Symington responded immediately and thoughtfully, without the least bit of fanfare. “I never felt the overall situation was a matter of ridicule, although we certainly took advantage of it, no question about it,” he admitted. “But I don’t consider it a matter of ridicule. It was a legitimate occurrence; a craft of unknown origin; who knows where from; inexplicable, and probably one of the major sightings in modern history in the country, because so many people saw it in Maricopa County—and
I saw it, too.”

James Fox was absolutely unprepared for such a response. “I was shocked,” he recalls. “It took me a moment to process it. I was thinking, did I really hear what I think I just heard? My immediate impulse was to make sure the cameras had been running, and they were. I didn’t want to press the point right away, but wanted him to feel at ease. I left and reviewed the tape. It took a day or two for this to really sink in, and for me to realize I had something huge here.”

Having kept the Symington story under wraps for about six months, James Fox called me in early 2007 to tell me about it, because we were approaching the tenth anniversary of the Phoenix Lights, with commemorative events planned in Arizona. We discussed the possibility of breaking the story in the print media at that time, just in advance of the updated film’s release, which included the original interview. Symington seemed pleased with the idea of having the first written piece about his witnessing the UFO presented by someone who understood the bigger issue and proper context for the story, and who would treat it with respect. As a journalist, I was of course delighted with this “scoop” and knew that the mainstream media reporters would run with it afterward, including those who had made light of the incident in the Phoenix press years ago. But this time, they would be forced to read a proper, well-researched, serious piece before they could grab the news for themselves. This was an opportunity, although fleeting, for me to present a breaking UFO story in the way it should be told.

I was introduced to Symington via telephone, and conducted a long interview in which he expanded on what he had said to James Fox. I was struck by his sincerity, and although he was now a relatively private man who had no further interest in running for political office and did not relish exposure in the media, he voiced his commitment to helping both James and me in our efforts to bring greater credibility to the subject of UFOs and to impact government policy.

On March 18, 2007, I broke the Symington story in a front-page article for a relatively small Arizona newspaper,
The Daily Courier
, headlined “Symington Confirms He Saw UFO 10 Years Ago.” I selected the
Courier
because it had a past record of providing good, fair coverage of the Phoenix Lights. As anticipated, the story had a dramatic impact and swept through national television newsrooms for days afterward, putting Symington in great demand. He made appearances on CNN and FOX News, but turned down all other requests.

Over the years, I’ve interviewed Symington several more times and come to know him. His remarkable personal journey as both a governor and a UFO witness, forced to contend simultaneously with the impact of his own sighting and the restrictive force of the UFO taboo on elected officials, is highly unusual. It certainly gives him a unique perspective, and has led him to become an advocate for change to an outdated and counterproductive UFO policy—or nonpolicy—in Washington.

But what makes Symington’s situation even more exceptional is that although he was awestruck by his sighting, and believed this craft could not have been man-made, he didn’t just simply ignore it. He went so far in the other direction as to stage a farcical press conference featuring a costumed alien that inadvertently insulted his fellow witnesses. How could he have laughed about this, and made a public joke out of it, given his direct experience of the physically real, inexplicable event a few months earlier?

Symington, in retrospect, says, “If I had to do it all over again I probably would have handled it differently.” But the state of Arizona was “on the brink of hysteria” about the UFO flyover when he called the press conference, and the frenzy was building. “I wanted them to lighten up and calm down, so I introduced a little levity. But I never felt that the overall situation was a matter of ridicule,” he says. That was why, ten years later, free of the constraints of political office, he wanted to set the record straight and make amends to constituents like Stacey Roads.

Now, we can gain insight from the former governor into what drives government officials to intensely resist the simple acknowledgment of the mere existence of something unidentified in the sky that does not
have
to be associated with anything extraterrestrial or alien. In this unusual case, the official knew it was real because he had seen it with his own eyes and didn’t have to rely only on other witness reports. But hundreds of others also saw it! He still held back. How could he have restrained himself? And why did he feel compelled to do so?

He explains it this way:

You’re not a normal person when you’re a governor. You have to be extremely careful about public statements and how you handle yourself. A public figure is fair game for attack. Everything is picked over by the media and your political opposition. You try to avoid being the subject of harsh ridicule because you have a serious responsibility while in this role, and your public stature is directly related to your ability to get things done. If all of a sudden you’re typed as a buffoon or a loony, you won’t be effective. I had to make a choice. My top priority was to fulfill the responsibilities I had been elected to accomplish as governor.

In the months following the event, Symington had observed the press making fun of his friend Frances Barwood for simply taking the sighting seriously in response to public pressure—and she wasn’t even a witness. He was also dealing with his share of political battles within the vicious world of Arizona politics, and says today, “Can you imagine what would have happened if I had said anything?” Although his decision is understandable, this is a sad commentary on our unspoken political policy toward UFOs, and the power of that irrational, habitual taboo that most of us have not questioned and that led Governor Symington to believe he would be branded a “buffoon” or a “loony” if he acknowledged something he and countless others had seen in the sky. Although he was at risk politically, such damaging labels are not only dangerous for political figures such as he, but are also harmfully applied to many everyday people who witness the phenomenon. Imbued with prejudice and an irrational fear of the unknown, these attitudes have been entrenched in our culture for over fifty years, and have not been well understood. But Symington’s experience, for one, shows why elected officials and military brass in America wait until after retirement before risking saying anything at all about UFOs, no matter what their experience.

At the time, this governor found himself facing an unprecedented situation. Suddenly confronted with an escalation of public outcry following unanticipated national news coverage of a state-wide UFO sighting, he had to act fast. He felt it had become urgent that he change the mood. His administration was on its own in that moment, with no idea what had passed through the skies over Phoenix, or how to handle the aftermath of this momentous event. There was no support coming to state officials from the federal government, no answers from local authorities, and public ridicule had been unleashed against those daring to question what happened. So, relying on his own personal strengths in dealing quickly with a highly unusual problem, Governor Symington opted for a public spoof to lighten things up and cut the momentum with one sharp blow. “I never felt this sighting represented any kind of a threat,” he explains. “I also had a good sense of humor. Everyone, including the media, was caught off guard. This seemed like an effective way to change things.”

Imagine, for a moment, if a government office tasked with the investigation of UFO events such as this—exactly what we’re hoping to establish now—was in place at the time of the Phoenix Lights, and the case had been properly handled. One can envision the following: During the actual event, as the result of a few calls from Washington, pilots already aloft could have been asked to fly near the objects, observe them, and photograph them if possible. Air Force jets would have been scrambled to get a closer look and attempt to engage the objects further. Civilian and military air traffic controllers could have attempted to catch them on radar, and military bases could have tried to contact the objects via communications signals sent out from the best technology for doing so. High-powered telescopes would have been aimed at the skies, at the proper altitude to possibly view the objects. The lead investigator from our UFO desk would have been in phone contact with a local team of scientists and aviation experts, already on the ground in Arizona or nearby states as part of an established network.