I know what I saw...The Phoenix Lights

October 2, 11:14 AMPhoenix UFO ExaminerLarry Lowe

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Phoenix Lights witness Sue Watson.
Photo:James Fox

The Phoenix Lights is the premiere UFO event examined in a groundbreaking new documentary film set to air on the History Channel Sunday, October 4 with an encore on Monday the 5th. Veteran UFO journalist James Fox has managed against all odds to create and secure an air date for a paradigm-shifting examination of what we know–and what we don't–about unidentified flying objects. The result is must-see television for everyone who has yet take the subject seriously. The veteran UFO student will be familiar with the material, but may surprised at the tone of the presentation.

In a textbook example of the proper use of television as a means to educate and inform a mass audience, Fox has taken a step towards rectifying the greatest failure of modern mass media to achieve its potential—the industry assumption that the UFO story is 'only good for entertainment' as one industry executive put it to Fox.

The industry also said you could not base a documentary around a press conference, but Fox disagreed and persevered. He gathered a prestigious panel from around the world that in 2007 presented a tour-de-force review of best evidence at the National Press Club in Washington DC. In it, high-ranking military and well-qualified civilian witnesses from around the world made two things startlingly clear: something of truly incredible capability is operating in Earth's biosphere and has been for at least the last half century or more—and the United States is woefully behind the rest of the planet in acknowledging that simple fact.

A year after the conference Fox had a rough cut of the film ready to distribute and the real difficulty of his project became apparent: No one was prepared to air a documentary of this caliber, tone and quality, which presents the best evidence at face value and asks the embarrassing question "Why are we ignoring this?"

Fox's work was too good to be presented and it was in his words, 'almost impossible' to get a deal to put it on the air. It took eight weeks of negotiation with CNN alone just to include their footage. Finally with the influence of an anonymous media insider of considerable power, a deal was finally struck to air his work on the History Channel.

That is fitting, for a work of this tone and scope to be presented to a mass television audience is something of an historic event.

1500 foot v-shaped object observed south of Camelback Mountain               Image ©2009 Larry Lowe

"In 1997, during my second term as Governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality. I still don't know what it was. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can definitively say this craft did not resemble any man-made object that I had ever seen." – Fife Symington, November 12 2007

"If you can imagine something the size of Camelback mountain floating down Scottsdale road, you have some idea of the intensity of this thing. I saw an Unidentified Flying Object of massive proportions float over the city of Phoenix and Scottsdale and I don't have the damnedest clue what it was." – Trig Johnston

"I know what I saw and that is not what you are telling me I saw. I didn't see flares, I didn't see A-10 Warthogs – so why don't we work together and try and figure out what this thing is?" – Brian Watson

After revisiting Phoenix in the opening sequence, Fox takes us to London, Paris, Tehran, Anchorage and points around the globe to see the glaring consistencies of the reports and growing openness with which the global community is treating them.

Taking UFO reports seriously–or at least at face value–gained a social stigma in the years after the Robertson Panel decided that the biggest threat to national security from the UFO was the potential for mass reaction to sightings to overwhelm the communications system of the military, which actually happened in 1952. The Panel recommended a policy of deliberately down-playing, denying or explaining-away the 5-10% of UFO reports that do not succumb to investigation as identifiable objects.

The National Enquirer was funded with CIA money and soon aliens, dead Elvis sightings and big-foot were inextricably woven into a fabric of cheesy fabrication. Over time the subject of UFO's came to be understood in polite society to be taboo for serious consideration–that anyone reporting one was implicitly delusional and that good, rational citizens did not take the matter seriously.

The strategy worked all too well.

American society effectively stuck its ostrich head into a small, safe hole in the sand of denial and ridicule and thought that the UFO 'problem' had been 'solved'.

The problem the Robertson Panel was concerned about was, but the real problem of determining what – or whom – is operating massive, silent objects with preposterous performance around the world was never addressed openly and comprehensively. For one thing, no credible system for gathering data and correlating reports was put in place. For another the considerable capabilities of academia to solve difficult problems was hamstrung, unable to begin with hypotheses that might account for the performance demonstrated.

The media fell into a comfortable pattern of snide comment and rolling eyes when forced to report a UFO sighting on the evening news. Documentaries, claiming to be 'even-handed' would roll out a thoughtful observer and then juxtapose a sound byte from a zealous debunker, letting the audience 'decide for itself' who was right–the guy who said he saw an object the size of an aircraft carrier zoom silently out of sight in a heartbeat or the professional astronomer who would point out that such behavior defies the laws of physics as we know them.

Perhaps it does, but if that is what the witness actually saw, shouldn't we then be asking what is capable of defying physics as we know it, rather than discrediting the witness?

For over half a century, not since LIFE Magazine published the case for flying saucers as most likely interplanetary in origin, the media has not treated this subject sensibly or rationally.

Until now.

The new film "I KNOW WHAT I SAW" is everything one would expect from James Fox, whose earlier work, "Out of the Blue" has become a standard within the UFO community for quality documentary.

Good journalism is not rocket science. Fox simply gathers up the best evidence he can find, talks directly to the witnesses who observed the events and deftly assembles both, along with key pieces of historical film around elements of the 2007 National Press Club conference.

The result, tastefully accented with a subtle musical score, is a clear look at the objects that routinely appear in the skies around the world which we cannot identify–through the eyes of the people who saw them. These people, from ranchers to Presidents, astronauts to artists, know what they saw. What they saw was nothing that has any precedent in human aeronautical achievement – and no concrete explanation.

Mile-wide trianglular object observed over Scottsdale.                     Image ©2009 Larry Lowe

The patterns of the reports are consistent across time and around the globe: impossibly large objects–big enough to land an airliner on–that float or hover silently, with no visible or audible means of propulsion or support, that can achieve supersonic velocity with sudden acceleration, conduct 90 degree turns in an instant and leave no sonic boom or wake turbulence.

If these objects exist–and there is well past enough evidence to assure that they do–then it is incumbent upon a mature humanity to figure out what they are. The process begins with rational presentation in the media, of which Fox's work is certainly going to become a watershed example.

It must continue with formal acknowledgment that the objects exist–denial is the first stage of response to a traumatic experience and western society has had enough time to wallow in denial. After acknowledgment, the tools of information science must be brought to bear on the reports–extraordinary evidence requires an extraordinary investigation.

Finally, Fox's witnesses shed some clarity on the real reason for secrecy and denial–it is not likely the panicked reaction of the populace but more likely the paranoia of a small percentage of managers of power with a vested interest in the status remaining quo that is holding back progress towards widespread understanding.

"If a [superior technological capability] exists from an unidentified origin without explanation, this could be very threatening for our system of world power." – Dr. Anthony Choy

"If these phenomena are as technologically advanced as they appear to be, then one could say that we are completely vulnerable as a civilization. And to some people, that might be horrifying" – Fife Symington

Symington is right: if these objects are what they appear to be, we certainly are vulnerable. But there has been no dramatic devastation wreaked upon a defenseless humanity by ruthless alien conquerers outside the confines of the movie theater for as long as the phenomenon has been demonstrating itself. Do we really think that if we finally decide to admit it exists, that it will suddenly change a policy of incredibly patient observation and exposure without direct contact on a mass scale until we are ready?

We must take the first steps in any inter-species diplomacy.

“I would have thought that they would have wanted to do an investigation. But apparently they would rather ignore it. I don't know why.” – Frances Barwood, Phoenix City Councilwoman, 1997

“Our country needs to re-open its official investigation that it shut down in 1969. The United States government can no longer shun an international dialog about this phenomena.” – Fife Symington, 2007

If the current Governor of Arizona, the Mayors of Phoenix and the surrounding towns and their respective city council members have any respect for the citizens they represent, they will make it a point to watch this movie and, having seen it, commission a full, fair and comprehensive statewide investigation into the events of March 13, 1997 and related reports.

An independent investigator operating outside the chain of command of the Air Force, the FAA, the state and city governments, but with the authority to call witnesses and deliver a report to the Governor and the people of the state should be appointed and a task force funded. The results should be made part of the public record.

Phoenix was, in the spring of 1997, the center of attention and the source of questions.

In 2009 it should strive to be the center of inquiry and the source of answers.

There are only two possible answers for what flew over Phoenix over a decade ago, Fox concludes, and either are worthy of sincere and thoughtful investigation:

"Maybe someone involved the US government knows the origin of these craft, but I don't. If they are ours, then someone has been hiding revolutionary technology for over 50 years. If any of them are not man-made, then we are not alone." – James Fox

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