In 1986, a Japan Airlines pilot saw what he described as an unidentified flying object over Alaska closely tailing his 747. He made an evasive move. His career was thrown into turmoil, but he never recanted what he claimed he saw.
• In 1987, a Federal Aviation Administration executive says the CIA warned him not to talk about UFOs because the public would panic.
• In 1997, former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington mocked thousands of people who said they saw mysterious lights over Phoenix, calling out a staffer dressed in a cheesy ET costume at a press conference. Ten years later, he apologized for lying to the media and the public.
What these events have in common is that they are unveiled on a new two-hour History Channel special, "Secret Access: UFOs On The Record," that features in-depth accounts from people who have been willing to risk their jobs and reputations to speak out about their remarkable experiences with UFOs.
"The theme of the program is that UFOs exist, but there's a small percentage of sightings that are significant and haven't been explained," said Leslie Kean, author of The New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record, which forms the basis of the History Channel special.
Here's a collection of images that Leslie Kean put together for The Huffington Post on Aug. 23, 2010, to promote the publication of her book:
Of all UFO sightings reported, most can be explained as ordinary phenomena, and therefore discarded. However, there are some spectacular, well-documented UFO events have been officially investigated by government agencies, witnessed by pilots and confirmed by Air Force generals. No conventional explanations were found despite extensive efforts by experts to do so. These are the cases explored in "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record" and in the History Channel special, "Secret Access: UFOs On The Record." Photo: U.S. Coast Guard, Salem, MA; 1952
Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek was scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book -- its group receiving UFO reports and investigating cases -- for over twenty years. In 1977, he wrote:
I had started out as an outright 'debunker,' taking great joy in cracking what seemed at first to be puzzling cases. I was the arch enemy of those 'flying saucer groups and enthusiasts' who very dearly wanted UFOs to be interplanetary. My own knowledge of those groups came almost entirely from what I heard from Blue Book personnel: they were all 'crackpots and visionaries.' My transformation was gradual but by the late sixties it was complete. Today I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didn't seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real and that efforts to investigate and understand it, and eventually to solve it, could have a profound effect -- perhaps even be the springboard to mankind's outlook on the universe.
Photo Copyright: Collection of J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies
