Meet the Phoenix UFO hunters

February 19, 4:06 AMPhoenix UFO ExaminerLarry Lowe

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UFO Artist Jim Nichols speaks to Phoenix MUFON

The best-kept secret of the UFO phenomenon has always been the unsung effort of local Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) state and section directors. Their effort is composed mostly of normal everyday tasks, such as keeping a section's bank account in the black, finding venues, arranging for speakers, organizing skywatches, maintaining a website, keeping track of the myriad details that make any volunteer organization run. And this does not include hours spent keeping up to date on current research.

What is remarkable is that every quarter generation or so, a new cadre of volunteers take on that responsibility and keep the process moving forward. Seemingly, human determination to resolve the unresolvable will not cease. Which is a good thing, because neither does reports of unusual and unidentified objects in the sky, which increase at a substantial rate worldwide each year.

The Maricopa County Section of MUFON, popularly known as Phoenix MUFON, is one of the city's best-kept secrets.

Without the dedication of a series of MUFON section directors and investigators, Phoenix would not have a viable source of public education and event analysis. Which is a good thing for the thousands of valley residents interested in the issue, many of whom provide hundreds of UFO reports each year. No one ever becomes a MUFON section director to increase their public profile. Attrition enforces a 4 or 5 year life cycle of active support that a section can depend upon.

Phoenix is the first word in one of the most recognizable phrases in popular UFO lexicon, the second being Lights. Taken together they form a meme as widely recognized as 'Roswell Incident', 'Flying Saucer' or 'alien abduction' in the public psyche. Maricopa County's MUFON section and the individuals who have served it over the years are inextricably connected with a case that to this day generates more controversy, passion and public attention than any other —save Roswell.  Last May, Dateline NBC named the Phoenix Lights as the number one of the top ten Close Encounters caught on tape.  Phoenix MUFON was among the first to analyze videotape of the event, with startling results.

The events of March 13, 1997, would make–and nearly break–Phoenix MUFON in the late 1990's.

Today a new generation has dedicated their effort to the organization and the results are becoming apparent.

• • •

In late 1996 Phoenix MUFON was waning. Meeting attendance had dwindled to low double digits and eventually became bi-monthly. Then in early 1997 one the most sensational mass sighting of the modern era took place and literally overnight, Phoenix MUFON was at the center of public interest.

Former Air Force military policeman Jim Kelly was in training as a field investigator at the time and had an inside look at one of the most tumultuous episodes in MUFON history.

After the appearance of numerous lights in the Phoenix nighttime sky—whatever they would ultimately prove to be —reports and queries flooded television and radio stations across the valley. When public interest escalated wildly, Phoenix city councilwoman Francis Emma Barwood asked in open session if the City could look into the event.  The lack of response from the Council and  local military authorities frustrated both her and the public.

At Phoenix MUFON, the effort began to sort the reports out and try to determine what had actually gone on that night.

Image analysis efforts were lead by Richard Motzer, with investigative support from William Hamilton, backed up by Kelly. An independent effort was centered around Tempe's Village Labs, lead by Jim Dilettoso and Michael Tanner, both veterans of other high profile UFO cases.

"The Phoenix Lights episode saved the chapter," Kelly, now retired from UFO investigation, recalled. "We were dying before they appeared. After the lights, attendance increased dramatically." People wanted information, they wanted answers, and they turned to MUFON to provide them.

Unfortunately, there were no easy nor fully satisfying answers to an event as large and complex as the March 13 sighting turned out to be. To this day there remain two polarized camps on what the sightings really were. A fair number of observer conclusions lie somewhere in between the two.

Motzer, however, was able to analyze a video provided to Phoenix MUFON by a valley witness and demonstrate conclusively that it showed flares disappearing behind South Mountain. This was by no means the ultimate summation of the entire event but it underscores the value of a local MUFON section.

Many reports prove, upon examination by a MUFON field investigator, to be something in the normal, familiar world. By resolving those cases, MUFON reduces the volume of reports down to the single-digit percentage for which there is no clear explanation. That allows ufologists  to focus their attention where it is needed most.

Motzer's conclusions, not to mention his process, did not match that of the other investigating team and eventually matters came to a head. Before it was over, voices were raised, resentment flared, accusations were made and the gap between conclusions widened into an ideological chasm. When the worst incident in May was over, Hamilton had to resigned his position to join forces with Tanner. Each team called the other team's conclusions 'theories' and labeled the other team's methods bogus.

Kelly, for his part, stands by Motzer's work. “The preponderance of evidence,” says Kelly, “says that Motzer's analysis was correct.”

• • •

The other MUFON mandate is public education. In the years immediately after the Phoenix Lights main event, Phoenix MUFON excelled in that role.  All of the pieces fell into place. A framework of core MUFON members, a stunning mass sighting with national publicity, the acquisition of an iconic venue gave Phoenix MUFON the ability to attract nationally recognized speakers and enabled their public outreach program to blossom.

"We brought everyone who was anyone to town, " remembers Kelly.

Writers like Stanton Friedman and Kevin Randle, investigative reporters like George Knapp and Linda Moulton Howe—even the media-adverse Travis Walton made the journey to Phoenix to appear before local MUFON audiences.

The National Guard Armory near Papago Park provided a 283 seat stage and video equipment to accommodate the people who showed up to hear, first-hand, the stories of unsolved mysteries and detailed investigation. Eventually the Armory theatre could no longer accommodate the need. "I got a call from the gate one night when we had Linda Moulton Howe," Kelly said in a recent interview. "He wanted to know what the hell we were doing in there because the base was filled to capacity and he had thus far turned away over 100 cars."

For several years Phoenix MUFON went on a roll. It garnered national attention, with advertising and support from Art Bell's Dreamland radio show as well as extensive support from local media personalities like KTAR's Marconi Award winning  Preston Westmoreland, a talk radio host and pilot willing to examine the subject evenly, without the snide derision that had typified media response to the subject ever since the days of the Condon Report.

Phoenix MUFON at the transition of the century may have been a victim of its own success. When crowds began to overwhelm the facilities at the Papago Armory, something changed in the tenor of the support the chapter leaders received. On one occasion, power inexplicably went out in the theater just as the program was about to start. Guest Travis Walton didn't skip a beat, raised his voice and launched into his talk in front of a standing-room-only crowd that was now standing in the dark. It eventually became clear that the local MUFON was no longer entirely welcome at a government facility—some will tell you that perhaps they were providing a little too much good information to the growing crowds who came to watch, listen and learn.

Eventually, the cycle of volunteer support went past apogee and headed downward. And then came 9/11. That, Kelly says, changed everything. Public interest waned as other issues pervaded the national consciousness and the Phoenix Lights began to seem like just another unsolved mystery from somewhere in the past.

Attendance fell and eventually leadership was handed over to caretaker volunteers as the heyday of the Phoenix MUFON show came to a close.

• • •

By the time Stacey Wright turned to Phoenix MUFON to take a report of her 2007 sighting, the Maricopa County MUFON Section had been dormant for years. Realizing that the fifth most populous city in the United States had no support for public interest in local UFO sightings, she and fellow researcher Jim Mann decided to pour time and energy into the empty shell of Phoenix MUFON. In October 2007, drawing on the legacy from the post-Phoenix Lights, pre-9/11 era, the chapter was reignited by an appearance by Stanton Friedman, noted author, ufologist and nuclear physicist.

In 2008, the chapter rose like a phoenix from the ashes of disinterest as now Maricopa County Section Directors Wright and Mann put together a series of presentations including those by contactee and author Jim Sparks, long time Arizona experiencer support facilitator Ruth McKinley-Hover, Ph.D., video journalist Jeff Willes, Dr. Lynne Kitei, UFO artist Jim Nichols, and author Joe Lewels, Ph.D., to name a few.

The 'new' Phoenix MUFON still emphasizes on-the-ground observation with skywatches after selected meetings and in November, 2008 hosted an intensive workshop on the CSETI-style skywatch protocol conducted by Charlie Balogh and Dr. Joe Burkes. On several occasions anomalous phenomena have been observed.

With new leadership came a shift in the mission philosophy of Phoenix MUFON.  “Traditionally, MUFON has been very left-brain, very nuts and bolts oriented, very data oriented,” Wright said in a recent interview on the Sedona Lights radio network, referring to the vision of Walt Andrus, who founded the national organization in 1969.  “They were interested in finding out about the unidentified flying craft.  We are interested in finding out about who is flying them.”

Attendance has grown by steadily, a larger venue has been obtained, and the local section is enjoying resurgent popularity. The section supports this growth with donations and other fund raising means, but does not not charge for attendance to their meetings.

To kick off the 2009 presentation calendar, Wright and Mann have secured the appearance of 14 time Emmy award winning investigative reporter George Knapp, a highly respected mainstream media professional with a reputation for hard-nosed, no-nonsense investigation into some of the most intriguing cases in the field. Knapp investigated the activities of the air base at Groom Lake, looking into the story of Bob Lazar who claimed to have worked there, and John Lear, who took some of the first photos of the base. By the time that investigation had run its course, Knapp had introduced the phrase 'Area-51' into the lexicon of the American cultural consciousness.

The March meeting will be held in conjunction with a screening of The Phoenix Lights Documentary at the Harkins 14 theaters in Scottsdale.