'UFOs' excerpt: A look at the Phoenix Lights • Latest UFO Sightings

by Leslie Kean, the author of the New York Times best-seller “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record” (Amazon link / Kindle edition)

September 12, 2010 – It was March 13, 1997, a pleasant spring evening in Arizona, clear and still. Countless families were outside in larger-than-usual numbers gazing at the sky because Comet Hale-Bopp was to be visible that night.

Instead, beginning about 8 p.m, they were provided with an even more astounding aerial spectacle: a series of massive, eerily silent craft gliding overhead.

One central object moved from the north, southeast across the state, traveling about 200 miles from Paulden to Tucson, passing near Phoenix and surrounding communities. It was on display from 8:15 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Many hundreds – more likely thousands – saw it that night.

Police phone lines were jammed, and Luke Air Force Base was overwhelmed with calls. Reports of sightings from around the state flooded the lines at the National UFO Reporting Center, a well-known Seattle-based repository for UFO reports cited in the Federal Aviation Administration manual.

Even so, air-traffic controllers apparently did not register the strange objects on radar. Although descriptions of the array of lights differed, one overriding characteristic prevailed: The craft was massive; it was a solid object, not merely lights; and it often appeared to be low in the sky, blocking out the stars behind it.

No government officials were dispatched to investigate or respond to questions from alarmed and awestruck citizens. To put it bluntly, the federal government failed to react to the presence of something huge and unknown invading restricted airspace over a capital city in the United States.

Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood, responding to pressure from journalists and her constituents, was the only elected official to launch a public investigation.

But she said that she, too, received no information from any level of government. Barwood says she spoke with more than 700 witnesses who called her office, including police officers, pilots and former military personnel, all providing similar descriptions of the objects.

Minimal coverage was provided at the time of the incident by the media, even in Phoenix, with a few local papers and news stations making note but few following up.

Three months later, on June 18, that all changed when USA Today brought the case into the national spotlight with a front-page story. It was further catapulted onto the network evening news when the sightings were covered, although minimally, by ABC and NBC, and became known as the Phoenix Lights.

The next day, on June 19, Gov. Fife Symington announced that he was ordering a full investigation and would make “all the necessary inquiries.”

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “We’re going to find out if it was a UFO.”