Truth Seeker Forum

May 31, 8:34 PM Memphis UFO Examiner Eddie Middleton

On April 16, 2010, around 3:30 pm, a prominent Memphian (who wishes at this time not to be identified) was reclining in his garden chair on his back patio gazing up at the cloudless sky. [As a possibly important side note, this person is an aritst who loves to paint skyscapes, so is a frequent and careful observer of what goes on up there.] While thus engaged in one of his favorite pastimes, he suddenly noticed with utter astonishment a brilliantly glittering cyllindrical object sitting stationary high in the sky slightly to the southwest. At first he thought this had to be some kind of experimental military aircraft, but he was quickly disabused of this explanation because this thing was, as he put it, “glittering like diamonds in the sky” and with such an unearthly beauty about it that he just knew that he was face to face with something utterly wondrous and totally unknown, absolutely unlike anything he had ever seen before in all his many years of sky-watching.

He said that six or seven very bright and large stars touching side to side like a row of marbles would give one a pretty good picture of what this object looked like. Though these lights were not blinding to look at, they made it difficult for our witness to discern any other features of this sighting. This object (or craft) was positioned at an approximately 45 degree angle with the upper part of it pointing towards the southwest. And it was so large that the commercial planes and/or jets our witness observed flying under it appeared tiny by comparison. And here’s a real kicker for you, what may make this unique in the annals of so-called cigar-shaped UFO craft sightings : it held its same place in the sky, seemingly without any movement whatsoever, for thirty-minutes!!! After this lenth of time, the witness went back insde his house to do something, and when he quickly returned to check on his celestial visitor, it had departed.

He thought that this would be all over the news the next day as many thousands must have seen it. But there was nothing at all reported—anywhere! And this often happens, even with the most amazing and seemingly public of UFO sightings. One has to seriously wonder if this was intended only for the eyes of this lone witness. He is now willing to entertain the thought that it could have been a spiritaul vision of some kind or possibly even an omen as he learned of the death of a very dear friend the next day. However, our witness did not feel any kind of apprehension or forboding during his experience—rather a sense of elation. And this kiind of psychological reacton to a dramatic UFO sighting is actually quite typical. The credibility of this person who reported this to the Memphis UFO Examiner is absolutely impeccable. If anyone else saw this or knows of anyone who did or of any news report about it, please let us know.

[Postscript : this story takes on even more interest in the light of what happened to this witness two days after his sighting. "Curiouser and couriser" as Alice would say. But this will have to wait until the next installment.]

Brigadier Jose Carlos Pereira confirms that on the Official Night Mirages and F-5Es were carrying missiles. Didn’t they have the intention to fire?

No. They had missiles because that was a mission for interception when all aircraft take off carrying weapons. That was just in case, because if force is needed we must be ready whether to defend or to attack.

Wasn’t there any fear on the part of the military that the jets could be viewed as a threat by the UFOs?

Yes, I feared that. I wanted we to check, but not to get much closer [The interviewee falls into contradiction, since we previously stated he couldn’t have followed the Official Night because he was in Rio]. Also, how could they know we carried weapons?

Maybe they have technology enough to detect it.

Yes, it can be. Technology is an interesting point. We know that our limit is the speed of light, for now. However, we shall cross that frontier one day. Only then maybe we can understand what is happening today.

Brigadier, what do you say about all the huge amount of documents still held at official archives? What should be done about that?

What should be done is what is being done, that is, the disclosure triggered by ufologists. The government should call for intelligent people who are interested in the subject and put those materials in their hands – or at least facilitate their access to those files.

Do you support our campaign UFOs: Liberdade de Informação Já which calls for the government to open those files?

You can be sure about that! Files must be opened and you should go on with your campaign towards the government in order to make that happen [emphatic]. Then you come to tell me what you’ve got besides what you already have now.

This interview was conducted in collaboration with Marco A. Petit, Francisco Pires de Campo, and Arthur S. Ferreira Neto, consultants and co-editors to the Brazilian UFO Magazine. All rights reserved. Thanks to the volunteer translator Eduardo Rado, from the Brazilian UFO Magazine team: www.ufo.com.br

Location. Near Temple, Texas
Date: March 22 2009
Time: night
The main witness and his wife were heading southbound on I-35 from Waco when his wife pointed to a strange light in the sky moving at incredible speed. It suddenly stopped on a dime over a field about a mile or so off the highway. He pulled his car over to the shoulder as they wondered what it was. Suddenly it appeared to land in the field and when it did they could make out a disk shape but dud to the darkness it was hard to tell exactly. It was a cloudy night. He pulled his binoculars out of the back seat and when he focused in he saw what did indeed appear to be a saucer like object on the ground. At first he dismissed it as a feeder for livestock due to the poor visibility but soon realized this object had what appeared to be a door of some sort that opened up and a reddish orange light could be seen when it opened from what appeared to be the interior. Then suddenly 3 men walked out of the craft and the door shut. The craft then after about 3 minutes rose upward hovered for a brief time and then took off northbound at a very high rate of speed and the witness lost sight of it. He then refocused on the field to see if he could see any one or anything in the field but visibility was very poor. He did note that the men appeared to have been walking in the direction of a rest stop that was just off of the field near the highway. He wanted to make a turn and go northbound and stop at the rest stop but his wife would not let him, she was getting concerned that it could be “aliens”. He never regained sight of the three figures.

HC addendum
Source: http://mufoncms.com
Type: B

On 19 May 1986, Brazilian jets could not force the UFOs to land. The recently disclosed report tells how every jet was launched, what they saw, and how they unsuccessfully tried to approach the objects. There were times when they turned from hunter to prey. One of the UFOs reached 180 km in a matter of seconds going Atlantic Ocean inwards at Sao Paulo coast, then turned back to chase Brazilian jets.

That’s true. What we see is that one can not approach these objects. During this specific incident, pilots tried many times, but UFOs simply sped up and left them behind.

Impressive. And all was recorded by ground and cockpit radars. The UFOs were being observed both by the pilots and Ozires Silva.

Those were “visual electronic anomalies” [laughing each time more when quoting the term].

Have you had the chance to talk to those pilots or other military involved, such as the commander of Comando de Defesa Aérea (CODA), Major Ney Cerqueira, now a retired Colonel? Or have you talked to the then minister of Aeronautics, Brigadier Octavio Moreira Lima?

No. I didn’t talk to them because I had no intentions of carrying out a profound investigation on that. I knew it would lead us nowhere.

How did you know it would lead you nowhere?

Because it was always like this, at least here in Brazil.

But researching takes us somewhere, at least.

Yes. One day we’re going to get there.

Sources say that 21 round-shaped objects, 100m in diameter each, were involved. Such a massive manifestation of UFOs wouldn’t be a threat to national security, to civil air traffic, especially at the time of the occurrence?

No, we knew there wasn’t any threat. We were convinced that their intention was to know better.

To know what or who? Us?

Yes, to know us.

So it means you admit “they” exist and are intelligent beings trying to know us.

Well, they were electronic anomalies [laughing even more]…

At a time when even the government discloses information it’s becoming more and more difficult to deny it, isn’t it?

My friends, I can assure you one thing: if I had any concrete evidence about the reality of UFOs, I would pass it on to you immediately. Unfortunately I don’t have any, but I do know a lot of credible people who experienced the phenomenon and I can give you their names. For example, Jose Aluizio Borges, a general manager to Banco Real. He was at his farm near Campo Grande (MS) and saw a flying saucer. “It was a huge light that crossed in front of us in the middle of the night”, he told me [that witness was not found to give his interview].

So your friend was impressed just like you when you saw that light together with your wife?

Yes. Humans are naturally inclined to look for the unknown. Brazilians have such inheritance from the Portuguese people. Some 300 years ago, someone called Bartolomeu Gusmao did something incredible. He made a small balloon go up inside the Portuguese royal palace, so that he could prove his point that flying was possible. Before that, when he was only describing what he would do, everybody laughed. Then, when people saw the balloon going up, they started to clap. Gusmao then asked the king’s permission to develop that means of transport. After him, how many people got inspired to conduct similar experiments? Would you believe that someone thought about that means of transport 300 years ago?

You have mentioned the event within Cindacta facilities in Gama. Do you know of any other case in which UFOs were shot at by the military? Do you know of any jet fighters having targeted objects in the air?

I don’t know any case of that. Actually, at the time we followed the doctrine of non-aggression.

That doctrine was enforced by whom?

By no one. That was just a logical conclusion, once we knew that an artefact capable of such flying maneuvers could never be hit. It would be even crazy on our part to attempt anything against it. We knew that and no one would be fool enough to try an attack. That “thing” could simply pulverize us with a beam of light. However, we were never prevented from trying to approach the ships in order to see them closely. Actually, all the military were dying to see a UFO at close range.

Was that a formal doctrine within your regulations?

No, it was rather informal. It was a natural behaviour for pilots and commanders. One would ask, “Hey, would you shoot that?” and the other would reply, “Of course not. I’m not stupid”. In fact, as we didn’t believe one could get even close to those objects, we never had a procedure to be adopted in these cases.
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What do you mean? When did that happen?

In 1950, when I was still a cadet. I was flying a training session over Barra da Tijuca and saw something similar to a balloon, as I can describe it. My trainer saw that as well and agreed that that could be a balloon, but the object suddenly disappeared. Not long after that, the magazine O Cruzeiro published a report entitled Disco Voador na Barra da Tijuca (Flying Saucer over Barra da Tijuca). If you check the magazine archives, you’ll get to the description of what was seen that day. I think that was the same object I saw during my training along with other colleagues. O Cruzeiro even mentioned that a group of aircraft flying that zone might have spotted the object. They were talking about us.

Indeed, a passage in Fernando Cleto Nunes Pereira’s book A Bíblia e os Discos Voadores (The Bible and the UFOs) [Editora Ediouro, 1986], says that a cadet from Campo dos Afonsos would have seen the UFO pictured by magazine O Cruzeiro.

It might be me or any other cadet. I saw that “thing” at Barra da Tijuca, which could be a balloon. That happened at the same time and same place in which the UFO was photographed. To my understanding, that was a balloon. However, when O Cruzeiro hit the stands the next Sunday, the report defined that as a flying saucer. I didn’t see anything that seemed like a saucer, but only a balloon, as I can describe it. [When inquired about it, the interviewee revealed he was never aware of the controversy surrounding Ed Keffel’s pictures of an alleged UFO. Ed Keffel was a reporter for O Cruzeiro and worked in partnership with Joao Martins. Those pictures are considered to be a hoax by most of the Brazilian ufology community].

Was the object just hanging still in the air? Didn’t it move to any direction?

When you are flying, it’s difficult to observe the movement of other things in the sky. It’s hard to tell if that moved or not.

Brigadier, you already know that our main wish today is having government ackowledgement of UFOs existence as well as the disclosure of official archives. Brazilian ufologists also want to establish a research committee to work in cooperation with Air Force officials, be them retired or not. We wish to conduct joint operations for case analysis aiming both military and civil data files. Can we count on your support for that?

Of course you can. Sure. As for the Aeronautics as an institution I think that, if you’re able or lucky to reach most concrete data, they will use you in order to find explanations or collect more information.

How do you suggest we could approach the Aeronautics with such a proposal for a joint work?

It maybe by finding out more new facts.

We have hundreds of facts. What we need now is an institutional and bureaucratic breakthrough so that our idea is officially made into effect.

How did you get access to all these information you’ve just brought to show me?

We made formal requests to the Aeronautics and many other bodies as part of procedures put in place after the Carta de Brasilia and, later on, by the Dossiê UFO Brasil [See UFO 155 and 158]. Most of materials were released by the Centro de Documentação e Histórico da Aeronáutica (Cendoc).

If that was the case, I believe you should follow on the same path. The body you said to have released most of materials is, in fact, the most accessible one to that kind of proposal. I’ll see what I can get to you in that sense.

We thank you very much for that. Regarding the time you served in Manaus as a commander to the VII Comando Aéreo Regional (COMAR VII), was there any UFO sighting you could tell us about?

No. Despite the intense air traffic in that area, I didn’t get any information of that kind. Roraima’s Boa Vista airport used to be the most requested one in Brazil that time due to mining activities in the region. There were more than 200 daily flights, normally monomotors. There was a huge exploration of cassiterite at that time.

Such an aircraft traffic demands extreme caution on the part of controllers, isn’t it?

Yes. That’s the reason why after two months in office as a minister I took the president to the region and proposed him the implementation of a surveillance system in order to keep track of anything that happens in the Amazon. This is what we know today as Sistema de Vigilância da Amazônia (SIVAM). It was prepared by the Armed Forces in order to monitor the air space in all of that area. The initiative has its civil part, which is denominated Sistema de Proteção da Amazônia (SIPAM). The president accepted the suggestion and the system was put in place years later.

When SIVAM started operations you were not at the Ministry anymore, correct? Despite that fact, didn’t you know of any occurrence in the Amazon, either through civil or military pilots?

No, nothing. That time there was nothing in the Amazon, only rains.

Regarding the Official Night, there is another question. Some sectors in the press attempted to discredit the importance of the case, while others argued that the Air Force would never launch 7 jet fighters to intercept something of little importance. In fact, an operation like that would be too expensive.

Of course they wouldn’t. However, this kind of interception operation is short. There’s no interception lasting 2 or 3 hours. It normally takes no more than 30 or 40 minutes. The aircraft goes, checks, identifies the target or not, then returns to the base. But you’re right, the costs are really high.

So you mean the Aeronautics would never deploy jets if the case was not very serious?

They would not, but let me tell you a story. During the conflict in Malvinas islands, in 1982, I was a commander at Cindacta when we spotted an aircraft entering Brazilian air space from the North, through Belem region. We knew that was a Russian Ilyushin flying from Havana to Buenos Aires whose route crossed Brazilian air space. We didn’t know the pilot, but we knew the Cuban ambassador to Argentina was onboard carrying US$ 200,000 – and that I don’t know what for. The aircraft entered Brazilian skies without contacting controllers in Brasilia. The Military Operations Center immediately launched two Mirage against the intruder. It was a Thursday, a day before Good Friday, with a heavy storm falling over Brasilia. The air strip was dark, we had lost the lights. So we put lamps on in order to make the taking-off possible. The Mirage would take off at 22h00 in order to intercept the Cuban aircraft. They ordered the intruder to come back and land in Brasilia, but their pilots pretended not to listen. Then the Mirages turned on their lights behind the Cuban aircraft and its pilots understood they had no other choice. So they returned and landed in Brasilia. What I want to say is that our system for interception really works! [emphatic] However, if the HIlyushin had not landed in Brasília, we wouldn’t know what to do, because none of our authorities would have the courage to authorize an attack against the intruder. Now it’s a different situation because we have a legislation regulating the possibility of putting an intruder down.

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