UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (48 page)

CHARLES I. HALT was a Lieutenant Colonel when he was assigned to RAF Bentwaters, England—the largest Tactical Fighter Wing in the U.S. Air Force—as Deputy Base Commander and then as Base Commander. After becoming a full Colonel, he was Base Commander at Kunsan Air Base in Korea, the F-16 base responsible for any offensive action required on the Korean peninsula, and also was instrumental in establishing the Cruise Missile Base in Belgium. Finally, he served as Director, Inspections Directorate, for the DoD Inspector General, with total inspection oversight of the entire Department of Defense. Colonel Halt retired in 1991 and now manages a large gated community.

OSCAR SANTA MARÍA HUERTAS was a jet fighter pilot with the Peruvian Air Force (FAP) for many years, with flying experience in T-41D, T-37, A-80, T-33, A-37, MB-399, and SU-22 aircraft. He was stationed in numerous military bases throughout Peru and was chief of the Academic Department and a flight instructor in the Officers School of the FAP. Santa María also spent eleven years in the Air Force Accident Prevention and Investigation Department. He retired with the rank of comandante (equivalent to a colonel) in 1997 but remains active, currently working as a consultant in Flight Safety and Accident Prevention for the airline industry in Peru.

PARVIZ JAFARI is a retired General of the Iranian Air Force. After joining the Air Force, he spent two years training in the United States, at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Craig AFB in Alabama, and Nellis AFB in Nevada. In his country, Jafari served as a base commander for several bases and an Air Force Headquarters operations officer. As a General, Jafari became the coordinating officer between the Iranian Army, Navy, and Air Force. He retired in 1989 and lives in Tehran.

DENIS LETTY is a well-known fighter pilot and Major General in the French Air Force. He was head of the Fifth Fighter Wing, Strasbourg Air Base, French Air Force South East Defense Zone, and the French Military Mission near Allied Air Forces Central Europe. As a commander, he was decorated with the Legion of Honor. After retiring, General Letty served as president of the joint venture company Aviation Defense Service, which provided electronic warfare training for the armed forces. He also became chairman of the COMETA group, a private, in-depth fact-finding committee formed to study the UFO phenomenon, which published the report “UFOs and Defense” in 1999.

JAMES PENNISTON entered the Air Force in 1973 and was assigned to the Strategic Air Command Elite Guard in Omaha, Nebraska, working security for the SAC Command Post. Subsequent assignments took him to RAF Alconbury in England and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, as a Flight Security Controller for the protection and launch readiness of Minuteman ICBMs. In 1980, he was placed in charge of Security Police Plans and Programs at RAF Bentwaters, England. Numerous other assignments followed, including service in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He retired from the military in 1993 and now works as a Human Resource Manager for manufacturing and county government in Illinois.

JOSÉ CARLOS PEREIRA is a Brazilian four-star Brigadier General, now retired. He was a commander of several air bases in Brazil and commander of the Brazilian Air Force Academy. In 1999, he became a commander of the Brazilian Airspace Defense Command, known as COMDABRA. From 2001 to 2005, he served as General Commander of Air Force Operations, which required his supervision of thirteen generals and 27,000 subordinates. In 2006, after retiring from the Air Force, Brigadier General Pereira was appointed President of the Brazilian Airport Infrastructure Agency, the government agency responsible for airport management, from which he has now retired.

JOHN PODESTA was the White House Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton. He also served in the president’s cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. Most recently, he was a co-chair of President Obama’s transition team, for which he coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees. Since 2003, he has been the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a leading organization in the development of and advocacy for progressive policy. Podesta is the author of
The Power of Progress: How America’s Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country
.

NICK POPE worked for the British Ministry of Defence for twenty-one years, from 1985 to 2006. His career involved postings to policy, operations, personnel, finance, and security divisions. During the first Gulf War he was recruited into the Joint Operations Center, where he worked in the Air Force Operations Room as a watchkeeper/briefer. From 1991 to 1994, Pope’s primary duty was to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects and assess whether any sightings were of defense interest. Various promotions followed, and his last posting was to the Directorate of Defence Security. Now retired, Nick Pope works as a freelance journalist and broadcaster.

RICARDO BERMÚDEZ SANHUEZA is a retired General for the Chilean Air Force who served as Chilean Air Attaché in London and was Chief Commander of the Air Force’s Southern Area. He was also Director of the Technical School of Aeronautics. In 1998, he co-founded the Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (CEFAA), a branch of the General Administration of Civil Aeronautics, Chile’s FAA, to study aviation incidents involving anomalous aerial phenomena. He was appointed first President of the CEFAA and served until 2002. In January 2010, he was reinstated as Director of the CEFAA and now works full-time investigating UFO incidents involving civil or military aeronautic personnel.

FIFE SYMINGTON III was the Republican Governor of Arizona from 1991 to 1997. He was also Chairman of the Western Governors’ Association. A decorated Air Force veteran of the war in Southeast Asia, Symington is a cousin of the late Stuart Symington, Democratic Senator from Missouri. After leaving office, Mr. Symington co-founded the Arizona Culinary Institute and the Symington Group, a strategic, political, and business consulting company. In 2007, he and his partners founded the Independent Energy Group of Arizona, which specializes in the development of commercial solar arrays. A long-time pilot, he frequently flies his twin-engine Beechcraft Baron plane between his two homes in Phoenix and Santa Barbara, California.

JEAN-JACQUES VELASCO was an engineer at the French National Center for Space Studies (Centre Nationale d’Études Spatiales, CNES), specializing in satellite research. In 1977, he joined a new French team formed to study unidentified aerospace phenomena within CNES. He became the director of this agency in 1983, and remained in that position until 2004, becoming an international authority on the scientific study of UFOs. His advice was sought by countries wishing to establish their own government agencies to investigate UFOs, such as Chile and Peru, and by the European parliament in 1994. He is the author of several books on the subject of UFOs.

ALEXANDER WENDT is Mershon Professor of International Security at the Ohio State University. Previously, he taught at Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Chicago. He is interested in philosophical aspects of international politics, and has published a number of articles in leading political science journals, as well as a 1999 book,
Social Theory of International Politics
(Cambridge University Press), which received the International Studies Association’s Best Book of the Decade Award in 2006.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LESLIE KEAN is an independent investigative journalist with a background in freelance writing and radio broadcasting. She has contributed articles to dozens of publications here and abroad, including the
Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Providence Journal, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, Sydney Morning Herald, Bangkok Post, The Nation
, and
The Journal for Scientific Exploration
. Her stories have been syndicated through Knight Ridder/Tribune, Scripps-Howard, the
New York Times
wire service, Pacific News Service, and the National Publishers Association. While spending many years reporting on Burma, she co-authored
Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity
(Aperture, 1994), and she has contributed essays for a number of anthologies published between 1998 and 2009.

Kean was also a producer and on-air host for a daily investigative news program on KPFA radio, a Pacifica station. In 2002 she co-founded the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi), an independent alliance advocating for greater government openness on information about UFOs and for responsible coverage by the media based on a rational and credible approach. As director of the CFi, she was the plaintiff in a successful four-year Freedom of Information Act federal lawsuit against NASA. Kean was a producer for the 2009 independent documentary
I Know What I Saw
and is currently working with Break Thru Films, an award-winning film company, on a new feature documentary.

NOTES

I
NTRODUCTION

1
Now known as the COMETA Report
The acronym COMETA is an abbreviation for Comité d’Études Approfondies (Committee for In-Depth Studies), the name of the committee that conducted the study.

2
“the most logical explanation for these sightings”
The COMETA Report, “UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?” Written by the French association COMETA, 1999. “Le rapport Cometa, les Ovni et la Defense, A quoi doint-on se preparer?” G.S. Presse Communication, 1999. Editions du Rocher, 2003. Appeared in the magazine
VSD
in France, July 1999.

3
Among them, all retired, were a four-star general
COMETA members and contributors include: General Bernard Norlain, former commander of the French Tactical Air Force; Andre Lebeau, former head of CNES; General Denis Letty of the Air Force, former auditor (FA) of IHEDN; General Bruno Lemoine of the Air Force (FA of IHEDN); Admiral Marc Merlo (FA of IHEDN); Jean-Jacques Velasco, head of SEPRA/GEPAN; Michel Algrin, doctor in political sciences, attorney at law (FA of IHEDN); General Pierre Bescond, engineer for armaments (FA of IHEDN); Denis Blancher, chief national police superintendent at the Ministry of the Interior; Christian Marchal, chief engineer of the national
corps des Mines
, research director at the National Office of Aeronautical Research (ONERA); General Alain Orszag, Ph.D. in physics, engineer for armaments. Other contributors include François Louange, president of Fleximage, specialist in photo analysis; General Joseph Domange of the Air Force.

4
UFOs became the focus
Leslie Kean, “UFO Theorists Gain Support Abroad, but Repression at Home,”
Boston Sunday Globe
, May 21, 2000.

5
Volumes of case studies have been published
There are too many to mention, including many white papers, transcripts, magazine stories, journal articles, and books about a specific case or one particular aspect of UFO research. Much outstanding work is also published on a number of credible websites, and other books have been written more recently. The following works cover the UFO topic in general and were of particular importance to me personally during my first few years of study, from 1999 to 2001: Edward J. Ruppelt,
The Report on Unidentified
Flying Objects
(Doubleday, 1956; revised edition 1959); Richard H. Hall, editor,
The UFO Evidence
(NICAP, 1964); Edward U. Condon,
Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects
(Bantam Books, 1969); J. Allen Hynek,
The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry
(Marlowe & Company, 1972); David Jacobs,
The UFO Controversy in America
(Indiana University Press, 1975); Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood,
Clear Intent
(Prentice-Hall, 1984); Timothy Good,
Above Top Secret
(William Morrow, 1988); Don Berliner,
UFO Briefing Document
(Dell, 1995); Budd Hopkins,
Witnessed
(Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, 1996); Stanton T. Friedman,
Top Secret/Majic
(Marlowe & Co., 1996); Clifford E. Stone,
UFOs Are Real
(SPI Books, 1997); Jerome Clark,
The UFO Encyclopedia
, 2nd edition, vols. 1 and 2 (Omnigraphics, Inc, 1998); Peter A. Sturrock,
The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence
(Warner Books, 1999); Richard M. Doland,
UFOs and the National Security State
(Keyhole Publishing Company, 2000); Terry Hansen,
The Missing Times
(Xlibris, 2000); Bruce Maccabee,
UFO/FBI Connection
(Llewellyn Publications, 2000); Richard H. Hall,
The UFO Evidence: A Thirty-Year Report
, vol. 2 (The Scarecrow Press, 2001). More comprehensive reading lists can be found at
http://www.cufon.org/cufon/rlist/a-n.htm
and
http://www.cufos.org/books.html
.

6
through any one short news piece
Some examples of my additional stories are: “Pilot Encounters with UFOs: New Study Challenges Secrecy and Denial,”
Providence Journal
and Knight Ridder wire service, May 3, 2001; “Open UFO Files to Rest of Us Earthlings,”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and Knight Ridder/Tribune wire service, December 13, 2002; “Forty Years of Secrecy: NASA, the Military and the 1965 Kecksburg Crash,”
International UFO Reporter
(IUR), the journal of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, vol. 30, no 1, October 2005; “Just What Was That Object Hovering Overhead at O’Hare?” Scripps-Howard News Service, February 26, 2007; “Former Arizona Governor Now Admits Seeing UFO,”
Arizona Daily Courier
, March 18, 2007. See
www.freedomofinfo.org
for more about my work.