History Channel encores 'I know what I SAW' due to popular response

October 19, 6:21 PMPhoenix UFO ExaminerLarry Lowe

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Set the TIVO for the History Channel, 9:00 p.m. 10/19/09. The highly acclaimed UFO documentary film by James Fox, "I know what I SAW" is being rebroadcast due to the quality of the popular response to the film and the network's failure to properly promote the film prior to the first airing, over a week ago.

The film itself is a case of I know what I want to see, as those lucky enough to catch the first broadcast are heaping accolades on the film.

The film should be nominated for a Peabody award for video journalism due to the even-handed, straightforward documentary style that permeates the work. It is the first time in over 50 years that a major mass media outlet treated the subject with simple curiosity and sincerity. The last time the country was exposed to a thoughtful examination of the evidence and it's implications was in 1952, when LIFE magazine printed an article that was the result of a year-long effort in collaboration with the United States Air Force, a cover story titled 'There is a case for interplanetary saucers'.

Life Magazine, April 7, 1952

In that article, LIFE put together the best witnesses, the best scientific minds, the best military minds and came to the conclusion that the interplanetary origin hypothesis was the best answer to the reports that had been coming in since before the Second World War. Fox, to his credit, does the same thing, interspersing a healthy dose of history with credible witness testimony to provide the best introduction to the subject matter that any rational thinking person could ask for. This is the film you show to the Mayor and City Council to provide a briefing on a subject that has been dismissed for far too long for all the wrong reasons.

Gordon Cooper, 1998

At one end of the scale, Fox assembled a blue-ribbon panel of highly credible observers in the aerospace industry-airline pilots, astronauts, air traffic control personnel as well as military and government officials from around the world to provide dramatic, credible and intelligent descriptions of sightings that, by the end of the film begin to sound routine: mile wide craft, hovering silently, no visible means of propulsion or lift that suddenly accelerate without pitch change to enormous speeds and are gone in the blink of an eye.

Trig Johnston

 At the other end of the scale, Fox presents the unvarnished reports of equally credible people just like you and I, who describe the same thing. The sincerity with which ranchers, housewives, artists and citizens of all ages explain their 'impossible' observations is treated kindly by Fox's camera, without the seemingly obligatory eye-rolling and excessive disbelief to which witnesses are usually subjected.

Equally sincere is the public reaction streaming into Fox's email box in the wake of the first screening:

Your program, "I Know What I Saw" on the History Channel, is one of the most credible, well-produced pieces I have ever seen.—Jenifer M.

I saw a great 2 hour show on UFO’s called “I Know What I Saw” on the History Channel. It really does look like there have been UFO’s on earth. I especially liked the 1971 UFO sighting in Costa Rica by an aerial mapping project.  The government has kept these files closed, but is slowly opening them.   That also answers the question posed by life elsewhere in the universe, that they’d already be here. And I guess they are. —Peter L.

Thank you for an awesome documentary. I have many times questioned what I and my family saw and had concluded it was unexplanable. It was silent, close, and controlled by something or someone. It was never reported because my father felt that "they will just think your a nut". Your film has helped me because now I can say I know what I saw. —Ricky T.

That documentary you made "I Know What I Saw" is really going to hit home with a lot of people. I'm 41 years old now and I've seen only one UFO in my lifetime and the whole thing lasted about 10 seconds.  If I had been in the same place at the same time and was bending over to tie my shoe, I would have missed the whole thing and wouldn't be here right now typing this.  I either wouldn't be paying attention to the topic at all or I'd be laughing at the topic along with the other idiot debunkers. —Jeff E.

Your movie "I Know What I Saw" is truly the best UFO documentary my husband and I have ever seen. Thank you for doing such a fantastic job on this. In 1974 at Canyon Lake, AZ, we laid in the back of his 1956 Ford pickup watching an object in space moving erracticlly crossing vast distances, stopping, moving straight up, then down, back, forth....we watched for 30-minutes.  Today I don't believe there is anything capable of those maneuvers let alone in the 70s. —Debra B.

[I have] been an EBE/UFO Researcher/Investigator for almost 24 years James. Your documentary is perhaps the best I've witnessed to date. —Scott F.

I have seen your documentary “I Know What I saw” and applaud what you have done to bring this subject out, with what I would call one of the most definitive pieces of work, on this subject, to date. The sightings and close encounters we have experienced from the dawn of our existence, are starting to beckon a response more than our simple observance. —Trent B.

During the film we see the core problem with UFO analysis in mainstream America, when a woman from Texas says she is afraid she will be ridiculed for telling her story, because she used to ridicule others before she saw what she saw. Forty years earlier a gentleman in Michigan swears to the camera that if the 'thing landed right there' in the driveway of his gas station, he would not tell anyone about it because of the same fear of ridicule.

That ridicule was culturally crafted by the CIA in the aftermath of the Robertson Panel when it funded in part the National Enquirer and began to insure that UFO reports would become perceived as the purview of the delusional by intertwining outlandish UFO tales with equally outlandish tales of Dead Elvis sightings, two headed turtles who speak Spanish and ghosts that thrive on anchovy pizza.

President Truman, 1952

The CIA claimed to be concerned that an overwhelming set of responses would disable communications systems in the event the public were to panic as they did in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of the 'War of the Worlds' — as deft piece of radio stagecraft as was ever presented by a master showman. More likely they simply wanted the issue to 'go away' from serious concern and decided the way to accomplish that was to make it become a joke.

So, a few rare exceptions aside--one of the most notable being the very-nearly-documentary mini-series 'Taken' presented by Steven Spielberg in 2002, another being Spielberg's equally close to the truth motion picture 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'--the reality of the UFO sighting and encounter data has not seen wide public dissemination.

Fox manages what many have said could be done, but few have accomplished: he lets the phenomenon, through the voices of witnesses and the data they provide, speak for itself.

Rickey Sorrels, 2008

At the conclusion it boils down to two possibilities, one hopelessly implausible, but not a threat to the prevailing paradigm, the other a challenge to the world view most of us were trained into by a half century of public ridicule and official denial.  

Either the U.S. or Soviet governments, or both, have had at their disposal for well over a half a century secret propulsion technology of awe-inspiring capability that they have tested in over 135 countries—but never deployed for any recognizable public purpose; or we have operating in Earth's biosphere structured craft employing propulsion technology of awe-inspiring capability deployed by advanced beings of an indeterminate origin.

It's that simple.

There is enough credible evidence to make the case in any rational mind—LIFE Magazine felt that was true over a half a century ago. Our best and the brightest minds have never been exposed to that evidence, nor encourage to study it and the enigma remains as incomprehensible now as the day LIFE made their case on the new-stands.

James Fox's excellent documentary may well be component of a perfect storm of events that will change mankind's perception of themselves and our place in the galaxy forever.  

Jean-Charles Duboc, Captain, Air France, Retired, 2007

A growing series of efforts aimed at disclosure are gaining momentum worldwide. Steven Bassett is in the midst of a barnstorming tour of Europe in the wake of the World Exopolitics conference earlier this year and packing houses with a stem winder of straight talk on the issue. Jeff Peckman's ballet initiative is gaining momentum in Colorado. A well crafted "Plan C" is underway to engage academia in responsible inquiry into the UFO data. UFO sightings are increasing in frequency and decreasing in ambiguity world wide. Releases of UFO reports from other countries continue unabated. Independent filmmakers are addressing the issue in a refreshingly straightforward manner. Rumors are circulating that the air time has already been arranged for President Obama to make the formal address announcing disclosure of the truth to the American public.

This perfect little film is exactly what a certain segment of the population needs to see--a segment who would dismiss the possibility that a UFO film can be credible out of hand. A nationwide tour of the film in the company of a few select other recent works, including Daniel Pace's 'The Appearance of a Man', if properly planned, funded and executed could be the trim tab that turns the ship of state by deflecting the rudder of public opinion.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, 1998

All disclosure is effectively a personal decision and discovery. Until recently the public has been content to wallow in the comfort of official denial and speculate about 'what if?' But as economic systems crumble, wars continue, ocean fisheries disappear, the lungs of the planet are burned away in the Amazon, as the quality and availability of food diminishes while the cost of energy in environmental degradation increases, as it becomes increasingly clear that business as usual cannot be sustained in the long run, the general public is becoming restless inside the cocoon of denial. It will only take a viewing of this film or a sighting of their own for many people to reach the tipping point.

At that point, disclosure will become a political necessity, not a political liability.

The History Channel is to be commended to responding to public acclaim for the film by airing it again, but frankly the work suffers from the barrage of commercial interruptions and the constant dancing eye candy in the lower third promoting other History Channel episodes. If they wanted to make history instead of just report it, the Channel would show the piece in its entirety, uncut, uninterrupted, sponsored by a thoughtful entity and followed by an interactive discussion, once a week for a year.

What is more likely to happen is that the viewers will take matters into their own hands, buying DVD's and showing them to friends and family. Or follow the model of the viewer-powered hit 'Paranormal Activity' and arrange the sale of tickets and screening of the full screen version of the film at local theaters. As it is, 'I know what I SAW' has been selected to join Daniel Pace's provocative and highly complementary film 'The Appearance of a Man' as the two films in a novel community driven film distribution project of Evolver Phoenix, which is intended to be a model for the Evolver Network's independent film distribution project.

As the website for 'Paranormal Activity' puts it, "This is a film you must see in theaters." Until that is possible locally, the History Channel broadcast tonight is the first option and DVD's will be available by the end of the year.

'I know what I SAW' is a milestone in UFO documentary film making. Phoenix viewers in particular should be keenly interested as the Phoenix Lights is one of the many cases world wide that simply stand on their own as credible evidence we are not alone.

James Fox's film is credible evidence that we can handle the truth of that fact.

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