UFOs - Leslie Kean [99]
An object also sent down beams that night near or into the weapons storage area. I was several miles away, but we could see a few beams, and they were reported on the radio from the location. Later, others from the weapons storage area told me they had seen the beams. That caused me a great deal of concern. What was it doing there?
The whole time we had difficulty communicating with the base as all three radio frequencies—command, security, and law enforcement—kept breaking up. This activity continued for about an hour. During this entire event, I taped the various sightings as they unfolded on my pocket tape recorder, turning it on and off, and accumulated about eighteen minutes of recorded information.
The day after the incident, I ran into Colonel Gordon Williams, Wing Commander of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF Bentwaters, in the common hallway. He had heard my radio transmissions the night before, and I played the tape for him. He asked to borrow it and took it to the Third Air Force staff meeting, where he played it for the staff, and for his boss, General Robert Bazley.
Williams told me that nobody had any ideas at the meeting, and they responded with silence. But he instructed me to contact the British RAF liaison officer, Don Moreland, stating that since this happened off base, General Bazley had declared it “a British affair.” It turned out Don was on vacation, but when he returned, he asked me to file a memo (his absence explains the delay in the date of the document). I wrote up the details in my January 13, 1981, memo, “Unexplained Lights,” and a copy was sent to the British Ministry of Defence and to the Third Air Force. The memo described the sighting of Penniston and the two patrolmen of the triangular object on the ground; the depressions and other physical evidence we found at the landing site; and the various lights and objects that I and numerous others witnessed subsequently.
Sometime later, my new boss found my tape and, unbeknownst to me, started playing it at cocktail parties. Word of it got out, and an American researcher started digging for more information. In 1983, I got a call from Pete Bent, acting Third Air Force Commander, and he told me that my memo from the Third Air Force files was going to be released under the Freedom of Information Act. I knew Pete and asked him to please burn it, to destroy it, and told him my life and his would never be the same because of what would happen if this were released. He said that too many people knew of the statement, so he had no choice. In October 1983, my worst fears were realized: The popular British tabloid News of the World ran a huge headline with the story on its front page, and reporters were swarming the base looking for the author of the memo. Fortunately I was already on a flight to the United States at the time, but this was only the beginning. In 1984, the audio tape was made public as well. The original tape was returned to me, and I also have the actual pocket tape recorder that was used that night.
If the memo had not been released, I would have continued to remain silent. This experience is not something I ever wanted to speak about publicly. On the other hand, no one has ever tried to influence me not to do so. When I had my final debriefing before leaving the Air Force, it wasn’t even mentioned, so I asked if I could talk about the case, and was given permission, as if it really didn’t matter.
Over the years, I have heard privately from many other witnesses. The weapons