UFO Year in Review

In a 4-hour special on Coast to Coast AM, George Knapp welcomed Alejandro Rojas and James Carrion, both of MUFON to review UFO sightings and events of 2008. They were joined by special guests throughout the evening. Rojas said it was a wonderful year for media coverage, with the UFO subject being covered both more extensively, and seriously. Carrion noted that one continuing obstacle is government involvement-- they may be using the UFO field as a convenient cover for their own testing of exotic weapons, or psychological warfare experiments.

MUFON believes the California Drones were a hoax, partially because all of the witnesses chose to remain anonymous, Carrion commented. The drones recently surfaced in the plot of the TV show, Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles, and Carrion said he spoke with one of the producers' who said they took the images off the Internet, rather than creating them on their own. One of the strongest pieces of evidence this year was the radar data retrieved from the Stephenville incidents on January 8th, which correlated with the sightings, and indicated an unknown object was heading toward the Crawford Ranch, said Carrion. Reporter Angelia Joiner appearing for a segment, noted that many F-16s were in the area during this sighting, and the fact that they paid no attention to the UFO, indicates they already knew what it was.

UFO researcher Stanton Friedman discussed the continued efforts of debunkers to besmirch ufology even though they know little about the field, including two professors at Florida State University at Tallahassee, who referred to Friedman as a "pseudo-scientist" after he lectured at the college. Author William Birnes spoke about the sea change in media coverage of UFO stories, including the Peckman/Romanek alien video. Activist Stephen Bassett suggested this past year was an extremely important one for UFO disclosure, with the release of declassified documents in foreign countries, and Obama's selections for his administration, including John Podesta, an advocate for ending UFO secrecy. Frank Costigan, a witness of the Needles UFO crash, also appeared with an update.

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