(NECN: Greg Wayland) - They may be out there. UFOs may exist and aliens could be trying to communicate with us. That was the message in Washington from a group of former Air Force officers who've gone public on UFOs.
"I believe, these gentlemen believe that this planet is being visited by beings from another world," said Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites."
Don't believe it? Don't believe all the reports about UFOs or trust any of those sightings, even when they are recorded on film? That would probably have been true of many skeptical reporters attending the National Press Club briefing Monday, September 27,. hosted by Hastings, a true believer who says mysterious visitors, over four decades, have, based on testimony, actually shut down nuclear missile sites.
Hastings introduced eight retired U.S. Air Force officers who related incidents at missile silos in Montana and England and Strategic Air Command bases, including one in Maine.
Former missile launch officer Robert Salas remembers that night in Montana when he got a call from his topside flight security officer back in 1967 reporting strange lights.
Salas: "I kind of dismissed the call. Then he called back about five minutes later -- this time he was screaming into the phone, saying they are looking at an object, a red-glowing object hovering just above our front gate. "
But no testimonial was more remarkable than that of retired Air Force colonel Charles Halt -- a former deputy base commander at a nuclear site in East Anglia. England. He described two sighting in the forest outside the base in December, 1980. He personally went out with a security patrol to explore the second one.
Halt: "While we were milling around, trying to make sense of the whole thing, one of the individuals with me suddenly spotted something.All through the forest was a bright, glowing object. the best way I can describe it, it looked like an eye. it was bright red with a dark center."
"I think it's very serious," says Steve Fermani. He is Massachusetts director of the National Mutual UFO Network -- a national network of volunteers who take calls about UFO sightings and evaluates them. He's aware that people are skeptical, but says the issues here transcend the usual debate, since missile silos were shutdown.
"Isn't it serious enough that something is breaching security?
Fermani, Hastings and the retired officers all believe the government is suppressing information about the sightings.The officers claim they all had to sign secrecy agreements.
(Note: film in the NECN report is not film of the actual military sightings. There is no video or physical evidence of those, though Colonel Halt describes in detail his own sighting and the group also cites declassified military documents to make some of its points.)
