CNI News - Volume 18.7
May 23, 1996
Published by the ISCNI News Center
Editor: Michael Lindemann
The stories in this edition of CNI News are:
1) ALIENS CAPTURED IN BRAZIL? FIRST DETAILED ACCOUNT
2) UFOS SIGHTED IN NEW ENGLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA
3) FILMMAKER PAUL DAVIDS SENDS UFO INFO TO CLINTON
Says President's Response Could Be Hint of Inside Knowledge
4) "AIRSHIP" CRASHED IN TEXAS IN 1897 -- OR DID IT?
ISCNI encourages you to respond to stories in CNI News.
* Public responses can be posted on the Forum message board in "News
Center Feedback"
* Private responses can be emailed to ISCNI, subj: CNI News Editor
The subject matter of CNI News is inherently controversial, and the views and
opinions reported in the news are not necessarily those of ISCNI or its
staff.
The next edition of CNI News will appear on Monday, May 27.
========================================================
1) ALIENS CAPTURED IN BRAZIL? FIRST DETAILED ACCOUNT
[The May 13 edition of CNI News carried a brief mention of rumors concerning
the possible capture of one or more alien beings in Brazil. Now we have
learned that the story has made major headlines in that nation. The
description given of the alleged aliens is oddly similar to descriptions of
the so-called Chupacabras, whose activities have been often reported in CNI
News. So far, however, we are not aware of any claim directly linking the
Brazilian events with the Chupacabras. CNI News thanks James Sutton for
forwarding this item, received from a woman named Regina
(reginag@originet.com.br) and compiled from Brazilian news sources.]
Regina writes:
The [alleged] incident involving the capture of an ET in Varginha, a small
town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is being considered the most
impressive example of immediate contact with aliens here in Brazil. The story
made headlines in all Brazilian newspapers, magazines and TV programs. Here
are the details:
On January 20, three girls were walking across a vacant lot on their way
home. It was a bright sunny afternoon. All of a sudden one of the adolescents
(16 years old) looked left and screamed. A strange creature was squatting by
a wall with its long arms between its legs; it had shiny, slippery skin and
what looked like three short horns on its head.
"But what I noticed first of all were his eyes, huge and red," says the girl
who saw it first. She was so frightened she turned to run but her sister and
her friend couldn't move from sheer terror and just stared.
"It was the most horrible sight I've ever seen," said one of the girls later
on. "It didn't look like anything I've ever seen. It was neither an animal
nor a human being," said one of the girls who is married and has three
children. "The creature seemed afraid and only made a slight movement with
the head. We ran like hell," she said.
Apparently, the day before, an elderly couple living on a small farm a couple
of kilometers from Varginha woke up to the noise made by the cattle. They
went out of the house to see a UFO over the front yard, about 5 meters from
the ground.
Ufologists have been to Varginha and concluded that this apparition was not
only authentic but also the most extraordinary contact ever registered in
Brazil. Professor John Mack, Ph.D., from Harvard came to Varginha with the
specific purpose of talking to the women who had seen the alien. Ten
organizations which study UFOs have signed a document testifying the
seriousness of the incident.
The complete story seems to indicate that the ET seen by the girls in broad
daylight was the second one to be captured; the first one was spotted 5 hours
before, at 10:30 a.m., precisely, in a wood about three blocks from the place
the girls are said to have seen it . This first creature was said to be
captured by the fire brigade. In an article written for one of the most
respected magazines in Brazil, the reporter wrote that this first ET was
captured by the firemen, put inside a wooden box in an army truck and taken
to an army camp a few kilometers from Varginha.
The day after, some people report having seen unusual movement in front of
the local hospital (where supposedly, the girls' ET was taken) before being
again removed -- this time already dead -- to Campinas, a big city in the
state of Sao Paulo. Army officers who were accused of conspiracy to hide the
whole episode from the public, strongly denied everything. However, the
Ufologists who were in Varginha claim to have a recorded statement given by
somebody from the army who was directly involved in the rescue operation.
This person, according to the specialists, said that when the ET was removed
from Varginha to Campinas, the body was already smelling pretty bad.
Check the following website for additional information:
A "portrait"of this ET based upon witnesses discriptions:
========================================================
2) UFOS SIGHTED IN NEW ENGLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA
[CNI News thanks UFO ROUNDUP editor Masinaigan for permission to reprint the
following story, which appeared in UFO ROUNDUP on May 19. If you would like
to receive UFO ROUNDUP free by email, contact Masinaigan@aol.com. Say you
heard it in CNI News.]
The International Center for Aerial and Abduction Research (ICAAR) of
Goffstown, NH is investigating three recent UFO cases in northern New
England.
On March 14, 1996, according to ICAAR, a Weare, NH man awoke in the middle of
the night and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. The kitchen clock
read 3:24 a.m. As he looked out the window, he saw a UFO some distance away.
It had "the size and shape of a dinner plate." He said "orange sparkles
were shooting out of it." The object descended with "a falling-leaf motion"
and "disappeared in the southeast."
On March 16, 1996, a waitress in Manchester, NH was walking down the street
at 4:30 p.m. when she saw several people at the corner pointing to the sky.
Joining them, she looked up and saw "a shiny triangular object." She added
that "the UFO was motionless and hovered at 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the
outskirts of Manchester's airport." She and the crowd watched the object for
20 minutes, and then she entered a nearby restaurant. When she came outside
again, the UFO was gone.
ICAAR has also unearthed an interesting case from Vermont. On January 15,
1996, at 5:15 p.m., a man driving through his neighborhood in Bennington saw
a strange light off to his left. He described it as a bright spotlight
shining down from the sky. Looking up, he saw "a circular disc-shaped object,
black in color, with four lights...about 200 feet in diameter." The UFO made
absolutely no sound, he said, adding that he was "astounded by its size, low
altitude and circular shape." He pulled over to the road's shoulder and
observed the UFO for several minutes. The object flew away to the northwest
at about 100 miles per hour, heading for Hoosick Falls, New York.
UFO ROUNDUP has also learned of a triangular UFO sighted recently near
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Sunday night, May 12, at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, a
19-year-old male driver heading east on Route 76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
spotted a UFO just north of the highway. He said, "I looked up and saw a
huge black triangle. It was not moving. It had a bright light at each tip."
At the time of the sighting, the witness was heading home after a visit to
Pittsburgh. There were no other cars on the road. The UFO was seen hovering
above the Conodoguinet River, about two miles west of Carlisle, near an Army
base.
At the time he spotted the UFO, the witness was listening to a cassette. He
reported no interference with the car's electrical system. "I did hear a
buzzing in my left ear, though," he said. "I saw it for at least three
minutes. As I pulled over to stop, the UFO disappeared."
========================================================
3) FILMMAKER PAUL DAVIDS SENDS UFO INFO TO CLINTON
Says President's Response Could Be Hint of Inside Knowledge
[On May 21, CNI News received the following statement from Paul Davids,
producer and co-writer of the acclaimed 1994 film "Roswell."]
by Paul Davids
Following President Clinton's December, 1995, statement in Ireland about the
Roswell Incident, I decided to contact the President on this issue. The
President had said that as far as he knows there was no spaceship recovered
at Roswell in 1947, but added that, if it did happen, and if alien bodies
were recovered, "the Air Force didn't tell me about it, and I would like to
know."
In response to his statement that he would like to know, I sent the President
a two page letter urging a change of policy regarding the secrecy and
classification of documents surrounding the UFO issue in so many cases. I
enclosed four videotapes: the movie, "Roswell" (of which I was Executive
Producer and co-writer), and three documentaries I prepared that present UFO
evidence: "Down in Roswell" (a compendium of news coverage through the years
on the Roswell Incident), "Reply to the Air Force Report on the Roswell
Incident" (an indictment of the Air Force "Mogul Balloon" report), and
"Golden Anniversary UFO Briefing for the White Sands Missile Range Pioneers,"
based on a UFO presentation I was asked to make as keynote banquet speaker
for the 50th anniversary of the founders of White Sands Missile Range and
Proving Grounds -- a presentation that was attended by representatives of all
branches of service, the Defense Department, and major military research
labs.
In urging a change in the policy that results in an intense aura of secrecy
around the "extraterrestrial issue," I cited President Clinton's much
appreciated precedent in releasing documents, through the Department of
Energy, that revealed details of secret radioactivity testing programs on
civilians, as an example of disclosures his Administration initiated that
greatly served the public benefit and the public's right to know.
I also cited the fact that in the President's recent document
declassifications, documents were made available to the public going back to
a 1917 troop deployment order from World War One. If such documents survived
from that time period, one wonders why the crucial outgoing messages from the
Roswell base of 1947 were all destroyed long ago, according to the findings
of the recent GAO report about the Roswell Incident. I pointed out this
discrepancy as a reason the public cannot take comfort in the Air Force's
recent explanations. I rejected the Air Force Roswell Report as a
self-serving effort to "spin" the issue rather than provide consistent and
sensible answers, and I asked that the President consider following
recommendations of men of stature such as astronaut Gordon Cooper and
Lawrence Rockefeller, who have publicly decried the government's
unwillingness to confirm publicly what is known and what remains classified
relating to the so-called "ET issue."
On previous occasions, the President had answered two of my letters on other
subjects, so I held out hope of a response -- especially after I was able to
confirm that my correspondence and videotapes were received at the White
House in January. My family has felt a deep respect and high regard for Bill
Clinton for decades, going back to the 1960's when my father was one of his
professors in U.S. Diplomatic History at Georgetown University, and I felt my
inquiry, as the Executive Producer of a movie that called the government to
task in a very serious way, would get his attention.
To my surprise, a brief reply was sent to me by the President immediately
following the date of Richard Hoagland's Washington Press Conference in which
Hoagland cited lunar and Martian anomalies that support possible conclusions
of ancient alien artifacts existing on those worlds. The reply was
overnighted by Priority Mail in a priority envelope. (Previous
correspondence from Bill Clinton was always by standard first class mail.)
My letter to the President had been marked Personal and Confidential. His
signed reply was marked Personal.
The President expressed gratitude and appreciation for my having sent him the
videocassettes, calling it both generous and thoughtful on my part, and he
passed on Hillary's best wishes to me as well.
It did not surprise me that he did not discuss any of the issues in writing.
It was gratifying that there was no denial expressed, no belittling of the
issue or reference to check the findings of Blue Book or the Condon Committee
Report, which have been staple government replies to UFO questions for
decades to turn aside the issue. I also appreciated that the materials I
sent, which were a firm and rather merciless frontal assault on what has
seemed to be a longstanding, entrenched government position, were received
with gratitude and were not in any sense taken as unacceptable or as an
embarrassment or a problem.
The timing of the reply, which could have been a coincidence, seemed more
likely to me to be a "wink" in my direction -- a strong hint that something
related to this issue is in progress. It was not only the timing in regard
to Hoagland's controversial Washington appearance (which was unfairly and
viciously debunked and assaulted by the national press, only a small part of
which realized and reported that Hoagland was presenting evidence that
absolutely demands to be answered). It was also interesting that just a few
days later, papers across the country carried a front page story about how
NASA was making its biggest priority the search for extraterrestrial life,
not just in the universe but in our own solar system, right in our own
backyard. It was as though Hoagland's gameplan (with no credit to Hoagland
acknowledged by NASA) had suddenly moved to someone's "front burner."
All of this raises questions as to what developments we might see in a
Clinton second term.
[Editor's note: Paul Davids has just completed producing and directing a
feature documentary about the enigmatic Dr. Timothy Leary, called "Timothy
Leary's Dead," after the words of the Moody Blues song that is included in
the soundtrack. Davids says: "The film is in part an exploration of the way
Leary was incarcerated by the government (spending about five years in
prison) not so much for drug charges, which were an 'excuse,' but for his
writings and philosophy, which attacked and threatened the Establishment in
the 1960's and early 1970's. President Nixon called Leary 'the most
dangerous man alive' -- and those who get a chance to see this intimate
portrait of the former Harvard professor who fostered the 'psychedelic
revolution' in the 1960's will form their own conclusions as to whether
Leary's threat to the established order was like that of Charles Manson (he
was put in a cell next to Manson at Folson for awhile) or whether it was more
like that of Socrates in ancient Greece. Socrates, you'll recall, was forced
to swallow the poison hemlock because he had been found guilty of 'corrupting
the youth,' but his contributions as a philosopher have out-survived the
contributions of any of his adversaries." Davids says he hopes "Timothy
Leary's Dead" will be theatrically released like other recent documentaries
such as "Crumb," "Unzipped," and "Hoop Dreams."]
========================================================
4) "AIRSHIP" CRASHED IN TEXAS IN 1897 -- OR DID IT?
[CNI News thanks Rebecca Schatte for forwarding this story, found on FIDONET
and originally published in the Fort Worth Star Telegram on April 19, 1996;
written by Jo Virgil.]
AURORA - April nights in North Texas haven't changed much in 99 years. Clear
skies splattered with stars. The smells and the sounds of crickets.
But legend has it that one night, 99 years ago, the Texas sky contained more
than stars and pollen.
In the tiny Wise County town of Aurora, between Boyd and Rhome on Texas 114,
the night of April 19, 1897, was marked by a mystery -- or a hoax -- that
lives on in the stories of oldtimers.
Newspaper accounts from that week tell of an "airship" that crashed into the
windmill in Aurora in the middle of the night, exploding, spreading metal
debris accross several acres and destroying the windmill.
The remains of the body of the pilot were gathered, according to reports from
newspaper correspondent F.E. Hayden, and were buried in the town's cemetery.
Hayden's report assured readers that "enough remains were gathered to
determine it was not an inhabitant of this world."
Hayden's story describes papers that were found at the crash site with
hieroglyphic-looking writing, and scraps of metal that were unfamiliar to
town residents.
Although the tale may sound like an episode from the X-Files, this was 1897,
six years before the Wright brothers made their airplane stay aloft long
enough to call it flying.
The only visible reminders of the incident still remaining in Aurora are a
small piece of the pilot's headstone (vandals made off with most of it) and a
historical marker at the cemetery that mentions the legend.
After the initial flurry of publicity in 1897, the legend was nearly
forgotten until the early 1970s, when UFO researchers heard the story and
came to investigate.
In 1973, the Mutual UFO Network in Seguin sought legal permission to exhume
the gravesite, but the Aurora Cemetery Association obtained a court injuction
prohibiting the exhumation.
The International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma sent investigators with metal
detectors to the site of the reported crash.
Brawley Oates, who in the 1970s owned the land where the windmill once stood,
told newspaper reporters that when he bought the property he cleaned out a
well and recovered large amounts of metal the size of a man's fist. Although
Oates had heard the airship stories, he said he didn't think much about the
metal and simply junked it before capping the well.
Investigators found bits and pieces of metal at the site, however. Some were
pot lids or tack rings, but a few pieces were unidentifiable.
"The recovered metal puzzled our metallurgists," Walter H. Andrus Jr.,
international director of the Mutual UFO Network, said this week [mid-April].
Tom Gray, a physicist during the 1970s at North Texas State University, now
the University of North Texas, examined some of the unusual, brownish metal.
Gray determined at the time that it was about 75 percent iron, but said it
lacked some of the properties common to iron, such as the ability to be
magnetized. Gray acknowledged that it was an unusual metal but cautioned that
he couldn't draw any conclusions about its origins.
However, Gray, who now teaches at Kansas State University, said this week
that he eventually learned that the metal he examined was probably roofing
material.
"It turned out to be an iron-zinc alloy that, because of the way it was
processed, was not magnetic," he said. "Nothing necessarily extraterrestrial
about it."
All strange stories have more than one side, though. Many Aurora residents
today believe that the story was a hoax, a practical joke that took on a life
of its own.
The late Etta Pegues, a local writer and historian, wrote in a town history
book that the tale began as a publicity stunt by Hayden to draw attention to
the town, which had been declining in population in the mid-1890s.
Tales of sightings of airships circulated throughout the Midwest in early
1897. Skeptics claim that the stories were started as a practical joke by
railroad telegraphers.
Joseph E. "Truthful" Scully, a Forth Worth railroad conductor at the time,
acted as a spokesman for the telegraphers and acknowledged to reporters that
bogus reports of sightings had apparently touched off a rash of imagined UFO
sightings by people across North Texas.
Hayden, said some locals, grabbed the idea of a UFO and took off with it.
Others pointed out that, during the late 1890s, science fiction writers H.G.
Wells and Jules Verne were popular, firing imaginations.
"Probably 30 to 40 people a year come in looking for information about the
airship crash," said Ruth Hollinsworth of the Wise Ccounty Heritage Museum in
Decatur.
# # #