billy.cox@heraldtribune.com
Friday, Jan. 25, 2008-So the Air Force reverses itself Wednesday and cops to a mistake in its initial statements on the Jan. 8 UFO sighting in Stephenville, Texas. But why? Why bother? It’s dumb.
“Their irrational behavior is just fascinating,” says longtime UFO investigator Don Berliner from his home in Alexandria, Va. “They’d be better off just shutting up. You can’t jump on them for anything if they don’t say anything.”
Imagine being the one getting hung out to dry. That’d be Maj. Karl Lewis. For a Jan. 14 Associated Press story, the spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing announces that no military aircraft whatsoever were in the area that evening.
Lewis says the UFO — seen by dozens of eyewitnesses, some of whom describe it as longer than three football fields, with lights as harsh as welders’ torches — is probably a high-altitude passenger liner ... despite the fact that many of those witnesses reported seeing the UFO being pursued by jet interceptors, most likely F-16s.
“I’m 90 percent sure this was an airliner,” the poor guy insists. “With the sun’s angle, it can play tricks on you.”
Later, Lewis says — whoops — there’s been “an internal communications error.” And the 457th Fighter Squadron press release adds, uh, yeah, we had 10 F-16 fighters performing “training operations” near Stephenville at the time. But we can’t release details due to “operations security.”
So why make any public statement at all? The USAF looks foolish, and its embarrassing admission extends the shelf life of a story destined to go away anyway. Because the media always goes away. Always.
“And now, it’s even on ... NPR,” says documentary producer Tom Tulien of Minneapolis. “They should’ve just let it die.”
For nearly 10 years, Tulien has been collecting first-person stories from the early postwar UFO era and compiling them into the Sign Oral History Project. He takes the long view on these things and suspects the USAF had few attractive options on Stephenville because of the media attention.
“I suspect they (USAF) were probably getting some pressure,” he says. “Maybe a lot of people down there were calling their congressmen. That does happen.”
And sometimes, with extraordinary results, most notably in March 1966. That’s when 87 college coeds and a couple of cops saw a huge glowing UFO in the night skies above Michigan. In an age when the media were far more skeptical of official explanations than they are today, USAF-contracted astronomer Allen Hynek uttered his infamous “swamp gas” bromide, which insulted everybody.
Bottom line: House Minority Leader Gerald Ford was forced to mollify constituent incredulity. Enough political levers were pushed to shuffle the USAF’s ongoing public UFO investigation over to the University of Colorado. The Colorado study, known as the Condon Report, turned out to be bunk, but so what? It let the Air Force off the hook, and it cooled the kettle.
The USAF continues to collect UFO data today, but it doesn’t have to say anything because those back-channel studies remain unofficial. Silence is always its best policy, as demonstrated during the countdown to the 50th anniversary of the 1947 Roswell incident.
In the 1990s, contradicting many eyewitnesses testifying to the recovery of a crashed flying saucer, USAF authorities issued two reports with alternative explanations. The silliest attributed tales of alien bodies to a mixup with military parachute dummies from the 1950s.
“Those Roswell reports were so full of errors, you didn’t even have to be familiar with the case to understand the problems,” says Berliner, who once investigated the phenomenon as a member of the prestigious National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. “And the crash-dummy report was just laughable. If that’s the best we can do, we might as well surrender. I don’t know to who, but ...”
Why did the Stephenville incident create enough heat to lure the USAF out of its bunker? Who knows. President Bush’s ranch in Crawford is just 60 miles to the southeast (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
But here’s a check that won’t bounce: The USAF won’t be making another screwup like this anytime soon. And without another sighting, or an MSM appreciation of its richer context, Stephenville will fade like a summer tan.
On January 8, 2008 in Stephenville, Texas, one of the larger UFO sightings in the United States occurred. A few days ago the UFO investigative organization Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) released a 77-page report on the sighting. MUFON is a UFO investigative organization in the United States. Founded in 1969, it now has 3,000 members and is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The MUFON report, entitled "Special Research Report Stephenville, Texas" was written by Glen Schulze and Ropert Powell. Shulze has radar experience from working at the White Sands Missile Range. Powell has a chemistry degree and has extensive experience with semiconductors from working for Advanced Micro Devices.

The report is an analysis of radar records from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Weather Service, obtained through several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and comparing them to witness accounts.

Shulze/Powell concluded that the radar data confirms the witness observations of an object, as well as the Air Force's statement that said ten aircraft were operating in the area. They say that it is too difficult to say what the witnesses saw, but that there was something there. Twice, they say, radar picked up an object travelling at nearly 2,000 mph, and at other times it showed a slow moving object.
George W. Bush and Germany's Angela Merkel in front of Prairie Chapel Ranch in November 2007.
Much media attention has been focused on the report's observation that radar records show one of two objects moving directly toward the Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford. This is the home of United States President George W. Bush, which has been nicknamed the Western White House. They did not draw any conclusion as to why such movement was observed.

The authors also concluded that military air activity was heavy at the time, but that the radar records show no overt action toward the unknown object. They express concern about the possibilty that this could have been a terrorist aircraft with no transponder.

Shulze/Powell stated that they felt that they had been stonewalled in some of their FOIA requests by some government agencies. They encouraged the government to more readily provide more information about the incident.

Location of Stephenville within Texas.
The Stephenville incident on January 8, saw dozens of witnesses reporting a large object in the evening sky that hovered above the community before it took off at high speed. Steve Allen, a pilot, observed the object from the ground and described it as being a half-mile with flashing strobe lights. He also said that it was pursued by two fighter jets, when it disappeared at a speed he estimated to be 3,000 mph.

"I don't know if it was a biblical experience or somebody from a different universe or whatever but it was definitely not from around these parts," Allen said. 

Another witness was local law enforcement officer Leroy Gateman  who reported it as a red glowing object suspended 3,000 feet in the air. "It was so fast I couldn't track it with my binoculars," said Gateman.

Rick Sorrells says he saw the object while deer hunting in the woods. "You look at the trees, and it was right here," he told ABC News. He estimated it to be the length of "three or four football fields," though he could not be entirely sure due to his vantage point.

Sorrells has later claimed that military helicopters have since overflown his property at low altitude and that he has been getting strange phone calls. He also claims that an unknown man came to his door, even once told him that,"Son we have the ''same'' caliber weapons you have, but we have more of them.", after Sorrells grabbed his rifle, and, "You need to shut your mouth about ''what'' you saw."

"I'm trying to decide whether or not to open the door," Sorrells said to the ''Empire-Tribune''. "We're just standing there face to face looking at each other. I'm thinking he's dressed for the elements and the dogs are raising such a ruckus he must know he's in danger of being caught. That's when I realized he wanted me to see him." The man then turned away and walked into the woods.

The United States Air Force initially said witnesses must have seen reflections coming from commercial airliners. However, they later clarified that ten F-16 Fighting Falcons had been on a night-time training mission in the area on January 8.

"In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft," said the statement.

According to Air Force spokesperson Karl Lewis, the aircraft were from the 457th Fighter Squadron and the error in the initial report was due to an internal communications problem between offices at the base.