The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Figaro, Paris, France, on March 17, 2008.
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CANAL +
"UFOs: When the Army Investigates"
French and foreign military personnel break their silence and recount the unidentified aerospace phenomena they have witnessed.
"DURING your career as a pilot, have you ever observed a phenomenon in flight that you were unable to identify? Could the phenomenon have posed a threat to internal security?" This questionnaire is now being distributed to all pilots in the French military by the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), which is expected to publish the results at the end of the year. Authorities are now paying close attention to UFOs (unidentified flying objects) or, more precisely, "UAP" (unidentified aerospace phenomena).
For a year, two experienced journalists, Patrice des Mazery and Dominique Filhol, collected testimonies from former military pilots and air traffic controllers who, despite ridicule, agreed to share what they had seen over the decades.
They notably describe the mysterious encounter experienced on September 25, 1975, by one of the Spanish Air Force’s training pilots aboard a Mirage F1. That day, he took off from the Manises Air Base in Valencia when he was alerted by air traffic control that an unknown object was flying near his plane.
At the Group for Studies and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEIPAN), cases like this are numerous, yet very few of them become known to the general public.
CNES, which operates under the Ministry of Research, has studied 1,600 troubling cases recorded between 1954 and 2008. One of the strangest incidents, also investigated by GEIPAN, is the Hessdalen sightings, where residents of this small Norwegian village have reported strange appearances for years.
Another case involved a bizarre craft encountered by Commander Santa Maria Huertas, a fighter pilot in the Peruvian Air Force, in 1980:
"I fired a burst of shots at it. I remember seeing a huge explosion of light. I expected it to disintegrate, but when the light faded, it was still there, like a massive metallic structure."
These are authentic accounts—neither hallucinated nor manipulated—which give strength to the documentary airing tonight on Canal+.
The power of the documentary lies in the testimonies of those who have witnessed these unidentified aerospace phenomena.
To avoid any sectarian drift, explains Patrice des Mazery, "we consulted scientists who provide a rational hypothesis for each case presented."
However, even if 95% of cases can be explained, there remains a small fraction of incidents for which no scientific explanation exists.
Muriel Frat
(Tonight at 8:50 PM.)
