UFOs - Leslie Kean [134]
If indeed the DoD did not have any information about the 1997 unidentified objects of unknown origin operating over the United States, anywhere within the department, this in itself is a remarkable state of affairs. Were officials there alarmed by the information provided by witness affidavits through the court, and did they want to find out more? Some might consider such disregard of a massive, intruding object hovering over an American state to be grossly irresponsible, especially by those in charge of defending our country. Others might consider it so inexplicable that they would speculate whether DoD personnel were instructed by emissaries from the “controllers” of UFO information within a secret black program to keep quiet. Perhaps things have changed since 9/11, for it now seems hard to imagine that such an apparently advanced technological object, stealthily evading radar detection, could travel silently over a capital city and escape notice by federal authorities. Nonetheless, to this day, U.S. officials continue to keep the lid on the Phoenix Lights and other American sightings of mysterious giant triangles that have occurred since.
The case simmered for the next seven years until former Arizona governor Fife Symington brought it into the limelight in 2007, at the time of the tenth anniversary of the Phoenix Lights. He unexpectedly made a dramatic surprise announcement: that he, himself—despite his spoof press conference while governor—had actually witnessed what he called a “craft of unknown origin” along with his fellow citizens on that same March evening, but had decided not to make this public. In addition, he stated that the case remained unsolved, that it should be officially investigated, and that UFO incidents in general need to be taken seriously by the U.S. government.
On that unforgettable March evening in 1997, Symington had already arrived home and was watching the news when he received some calls about the sighting. He jumped into his car, and without his usual security detail, which had just left, he drove to a park near Squaw Peak, outside Phoenix, and amazingly enough, saw something highly unusual, brightly lit, overhead. “It was dramatic,” he said in our first interview. “And it couldn’t have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.”
A Harvard graduate and decorated Air Force veteran of Vietnam, Symington is a great-grandson of Henry Clay Frick, the coal and steel magnate, and a cousin of the late Stuart Symington, Democratic Senator from Missouri. He served as the Republican governor of Arizona beginning in 1991, and was reelected in 1994. A longtime pilot, he frequently flies his twin-engine Beechcraft Baron plane between his two homes in Phoenix and Santa Barbara, California.
Symington was first nudged into coming forward in late 2006, when my colleague James Fox, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, sent him a copy of his UFO documentary Out of the Blue, which includes coverage of the Phoenix Lights. Fox was adding new material to the acclaimed film for a second release. He had never spoken to the former governor and decided to approach him to see if he could find out why Symington had staged the infamous spoof press conference. Fox had interviewed numerous witnesses who did not think Symington’s spoof was funny, and were still rather upset by what, to them, was the governor’s mockery and ridicule. He assumed that, given this behavior, the conservative governor did not take UFOs seriously, and he had no expectation that Symington would agree to an interview.
When he received Out of the Blue, Symington watched it and apparently found it fascinating, but at first was hesitant to reply. Eventually he came around. At that point, Symington says, he decided that when he met with the filmmaker, he would tell him the whole story. “I was sick and tired of people being ridiculed for reporting legitimate sightings,” he later explained to me, and he decided that it was