SUBJECT: COVER-UP OF ALASKA SIGHTING ALLEGED FILE: UFO2933
SPECIAL RELEASE:
COVER-UP OF ALASKA SIGHTING ALLEGED
PARANET ALPHA 08/22 -- The information contained in radar tapes relating
to last November's sighting of a giant UFO by a Japan Airlines crew may
have been altered, says a respected researcher for MUFON.
Writing in the latest issue of California UFO Magazine, T. Scott
Crain of the Mutual UFO Network also claims to have been told by an
informant that "the Air Force did indeed have more than a passing interest
in the event," and that "a number of F-15 jets were scrambled" to search
for a giant walnut-shaped UFO reported by Capt. Kenju Terauchi on Nov. 17,
1986. The informant, an anonymous officer at Elmendorf Air Force Base in
Anchorage, AK, told Crain that, to his knowledge, the jets found nothing
unusual.
The informant said he was "puzzled the tapes didn't reveal another
object, since the radar operators were certain they observed another
target on their screens."
"I don't know how to explain it," Crain quotes the informant, who
told him that "radar tapes record images similar to VCR tapes. If
controllers saw it live, it should be on the tape."
Crain then proceeded to follow the route of the tapes when they were
shipped from Elmendorf and the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center
(ARTCC) to Washington for evaluation by the FAA. Crain was informed by
another UFO investigator that the tapes may have made a detour to the FAA
Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ. The purpose of the detour may have
been to alter the images, Crain muses.
According to the article, a preliminary investigation found that the
tapes did indeed go to Atlantic City. The March 12, 1987, edition of the
Wall Street Journal reported that "Technical experts in Atlantic City said
blips on a radar screen that appeared to confirm an object in the vicinity
of the JAL jet were actually 'split radar returns' -- shadows of the
plane's primary echo."
Crain followed up with a Freedom of Information Act request to the
FAA in Atlantic City, which was answered by a form letter referring him to
the Public Affairs Office in Anchorage.
END SPECIAL RELEASE
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COMMENT FOLLOWS
It should be noted that the FAA never claimed that there was
"nothing" on the tapes, merely nothing that would corroborate Terauchi's
claim. The image did not simply "disappear" from the tape; the FAA is
merely claiming that it was misinterpreted. While I'm not familiar with
the taping of radar images, it occurs to me that to "alter" such an image
to make it appear as a secondary return would require a painstaking pixel-
by-pixel reconstruction of the image in a computer graphics laboratory.
Such technology does, indeed, exist, but we find it highly unlikely. We
will, however, follow up with one of the country's leading computer
graphics labs, which is right here in Phoenix.
We also find it interesting that the Air Force may have scrambled
jets, but we are leery of anonymous sources.
JS
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