The hottest ticket in the Phoenix UFO scene in February isn't even in Phoenix. John Burroughs, USAF, (Ret) will be delivering a much-anticipated preview of his personal two year investigation into the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. The talk begins at 7 PM on the 17th of February during the MUFON Sedona meeting at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 100 Arroyo Pinon Drive, West Sedona.
Burroughs, one of the active military witnesses most directly involved in the December 1980 events near RAF Bentwaters, and generally one of the most publicly circumspect, will be making a rare public appearance to outline the case as it is now understood prior to a conference slated for June 16-17 in Woodbridge, England. At the Rendlesham Forest 2012 Conference, Burroughs and his investigative partner Jim Penniston also USAF retired, will present the results of an unprecedented investigation into the event which former MOD UFO manager Nick Pope has called 'the holy grail' of UFOlogy.
Pope, who conducted a cold-case review of the files during his tenure at the MOD, was instrumental in the development of Gorgina Bruni's landmark book You Can't Tell The People. He has gone on record stating:
"Rendlesham might be some sort of turning point in history. It may be that if any one case leads to an explanation of the UFO phenomenon, this case might be it."
— Nick Pope
In Bruni's book the following is attributed to Lt. Col. Charles Halt, according to radio presenter Lee Speigel:
"What [Halt] and others had experienced out in Rendlesham Forest was so extraordinary that if the public were made fully aware of the circumstances, it would completely change the way people look at reality and the nature of the universe."
— Lee Speigel
It would appear from the results gathered thus far by Burroughs and Penniston that neither statement is hyperbole. And fresh information is now arriving on a daily basis as witnesses and well placed military, industrial and media personnel lend their support to the project.
The scope of the investigation is unprecedented for three reasons:
Burroughs and Penniston between them had more direct contact with the phenomenon than any other witnesses willing to go on record to date, and baring a last minute emergence, any witnesses, period.
They both have extensive contacts within the military, media, scientific and UFO communities and thus the ability to draw on a wide range of expert opinion and witness accounts, some of which have remained off public record for over three decades.
Most significantly, John Burroughs is no longer an Airman First Class caught up in a bewildering series of events that defy conventional explanation. He is now a career veteran in law enforcement with finely honed skills in eliciting and assessing testimony and is armed with a profound sense of mission to uncover the truth behind the enigma. Not for nothing is his avid interest in TV crime procedurals. Few UFO investigators, much less prime witnesses, are as skilled in the process of turning evidence into a case.
Like virtually all UFO cases involving the military, the Bentwaters/Rendlesham Forest incident has been shrouded by misinformation, disinformation, confabulation and secrecy over the years. Thus true accounts have been muddled over time, despite the best efforts of a half a dozen authors to deliver definitive examinations, the most recent and currently most viable being Bruni's work. Many accounts simply have not come to light, for the obvious reason that anyone actively engaged in a military career has no motivation what so ever to reveal anything that would jeopardize their career path.
After more than 30 years, of confused information and denial by the USAF that anything went on, Burroughs has had enough. He forged a collaboration with Penniston, his partner on the night of the 25/26th December, 1980.
Amid the wide range of purported explanations, Penniston’s description of what he encountered is telling about the initial assumptions made going into the investigation. What he encountered, Penniston maintains, was “A craft of unknown origin. Meaning it was a unidentified craft and where it came from is still unknown.”
The inception of the investigation can be traced to a December 2010 reunion at the town hall in Woodbridge, which brought together a number of witnesses on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the original event. During a pre-conference field trip Penniston experienced what he calls 'Total Recall' of the original encounter. This was one of the events that prompted them to launch the investigation.
Adding to the motivation was Penniston's revelation of a set of hand-written 1's and 0's in the notebook he carried on the night of his encounter to a film crew shooting an episode of Ancient Aliens. The broadcast of that information was a bombshell which incited further speculation--and from some sources skepticism as to the reasons the 'binary codes' as they are now known were not publicly discussed.
Indeed they were discussed by researcher Linda Howe in 1998, but at the time the significance was not clear to anyone and the lead was not followed.
Penniston allowed only a portion of the binary codes to be made available to the film crew and subsequently other investigators for possible decoding, wisely keeping the bulk of the transmission in reserve until a methodical process for decoding and interpretation could be developed. A better process now has and the remainder of the mysterious transmission is one of the most anticipated aspects of the June conference. Recent enhancements of the decoding algorithm have made the remaining contents even clearer.
Part of the redacted information is a series of coordinates world wide with intriguing implications.
One of those coordinate pairs is a location in the Sedona area.
Burroughs has personally investigated the Sedona location and later, with Penniston, made a wider examination of the Sedona area.
In the ensuing two years since the 30th anniversary, the pair have taken unprecedented, although in retrospect rather obvious, steps in legal, scientific, political and forensic work to generate a multi-disciplinary picture that reveals an understanding of Rendlesham Forest—and by straightforward extrapolation, many related cases—that will surprise both a skeptical public and those who have significant investments in more limited hypothesizes within the UFO community.
Details of that picture are closely guarded as the pair are adamant about not revealing piecemeal and thus defusing the impact of their work. This policy has tended to irritate some arm-chair internet investigators who feel that any scrap of information is somehow required to be released and examined as soon as possible.
A full understanding of what the pair have uncovered cannot be presented however, until the total of the resulting information, along with new information that is emerging a daily basis is put into proper context with prior documentation and scientific theory.
John Burroughs will be providing a limited preview in Sedona, a rare opportunity to hear this witness turned investigator profile the case. For the full story, the world will have to wait until June.
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