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Leslie Kean
Author Leslie Kean has written possibly the most important UFO book in years, it is called UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record. In it, she details the most UFO compelling cases as told by the most credible witnesses in the history of the phenomena. You can check out the book, which is rising on the New York Times Bestseller List, at Amazon.com:
UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record
Here’s The Kindle Edition:
UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record (KINDLE EDITION)
You can learn more about the book at Leslie’s site: UFOsOnTheRecord.com
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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
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JIM HAROLD: … our guest tonight is Leslie Kean. She is the author of what I think may be the most important UFO book in years, and I’m not the only one. It’s called UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record. A little bit about Leslie before we start off: Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist who has been published internationally and nationally, in The Boston Globe, The Baltimore Sun, and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Star Ledger, and The Nation, among many other publications. She’s co-author of Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity. She is a co-founder and director of the Coalition for Freedom of Information, and again she has written this most important book, just out, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. Leslie Kean, welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight.
LESLIE KEAN: Thanks, Jim. It’s really great to be here.
JIM HAROLD: So, before we get into it, what I love about this format is we got a little bit of time to talk, so we don’t have to rush to get everything in. Tell us a little bit about your background before you got into the UFO area, because that’s something that’s really important for people to know.
LESLIE KEAN: Okay, sure. Well, I have a background as a journalist, as you said, and I focused a lot around issues in the country of Burma for many years. I was sort of an activist/journalist on that issue, and I actually went to Burma and I co-authored a book about it, and I published a lot of freelance stories about it when I got back. This was in the mid-to-late 90s, and I was also simultaneously working as an on-air host and a producer for a daily investigative news show on public radio, for a station called KPFA radio, which is part of the Pacifica network in Berkley California, so people may be familiar… it’s very progressive, listener-sponsored, you know, grass-roots kind of a station, and I was just busy doing my show, and of course I was covering lots of different topics for the show, not just Burma. Once I started work at KPFA, of course, I expanded the things I dealt with. And one day this colleague of mine from France sent me an English translation of a report that had been done by mainly retired generals in France; it also included an admiral, it included a former head of the French National Space Agency, a former chief of police, scientists, engineers… a group of very distinguished mainly-retired people, and they had done a three-year study on official UFO data, and the title of the report was UFOs and Dissent. It was about preparation, and it was very focsed on whether UFOs are a national security issue. So in the process of studying and looking into all this stuff, these guys investigated some of the best cases that are out there, and they reported on them in the report. And what was extraordinary to me as a journalist at the time was their conclusion. It was, number one, the quality of the people that had written it; the fact that we had a group of generals here. The second thing was what the conclusion was. What they had stated in this report was that they thought the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most logical and the most valid explanation for the cases that they had looked into. And again we’re talking about a small percentage of all the sightings. These are among the best cases and best evidence. So, anyway, that was where I was at at the time that this report came along. I was just doing my journalism, and this thing arrived at my desk, and I thought, ‘this is an incredible story. This is news. You have a bunch of high-level military people stating that UFOs could be extraterrestrials and that in fact that was a very logical and likely explanation for them.’ And I was just sort of blown away by it. And I just recognized that this was a big story, as far as I was concerned; that’s sort of how I shifted gears from doing a whole lot of more “normal” kind of subject matter and shifting into the UFO subject.
JIM HAROLD: Why don’t you think more journalists have that reaction when they see the data?
LESLIE KEAN: Boy, that’s a interesting question. I bet some of them do, actually. A lot of journalists are more restricted than I was. I mean, they work for a newspaper, or a magazine, or radio, or something, and they have a very specific job, and they’re assigned to cover certain subjects, and they don’t have the freedom; but I have to say, I had a job, too, I just took the time in my life to do what was needed to look into this, and to write my first story. So, you know, I’ve asked myself that question many times, and I never quite understand why more people aren’t sort of blown away by it, but I also think that most journalists don’t get their hands on the right kind of information. I mean, I was given this report in advance, before anybody else in the United States had seen the English translation of it, and this colleague who had a very deep interest in this said, you know, “here it is. It’s all yours. Break the story.” So I think part of it is, how many journalists are presented with real, serious, high-level information? Unless they have an interest in it, they’re not going to even see it. And that’s one of the things I’m hoping this book will do. I’m hoping it will inspire journalists, because we’re bringing to them the kind of information that should inspire them to take more of an interest.
JIM HAROLD: That’s why I love what you’re doing. It’s kind of breaking template because, particularly with television news, for example — and I’ve spoken about this many times in my frustration — is any time there’s a UFO story, immediately the X-Files music comes out. (laughs)
LESLIE KEAN: Exactly. I was on MSNBC last week and I think they did that. Or something comparable.
JIM HAROLD: Exactly. It’s always the cliche, they always go for the cliche. So, tell me: what makes this book different? Because when I first heard about it, and I didn’t know all about your background, you know, a month or so ago, this is different. Something about this I sense is different. How do you… not pit it against, but… how do you compare this to the big UFO genre that’s out there? How is this book different?
LESLIE KEAN: Well, I mean, I think in a number of ways it’s different. I mean, I think the most important way is the fact that it includes 17 pieces written by officials and experts… let’s say, all official people. Half the book is not written by me. Half the book is submitted pieces by five generals, a former governor of Arizona, former FAA director of investigations, a whole group of high-level people from around the world have written their own first-person accounts about official investigations that they’ve conducted and actual encounters that they’ve been involved with personally. So, what UFO books have done in the past, they may report on cases but they just quote people and kind of give you some information. This is the first time that these people have actually written something in the detail they have here — written it themselves. And also brought into it their own personal reactions, their own their own thoughts and emotions, what it was like being up in an air force plane trying to shoot down a UFO, for instance. And the level of detail is also extraordinary, you know, in terms of the actual facts of what happened. I think that’s one really important aspect of it. Number two, I am a journalist with a track record. If you look at it, it’s approached entirely from a journalistic point of view, which means that only credible, corroborated information is included. And I think lots of UFO books tend to push the envelope, and speculate, and makes claims. There’s just not that sort of clean quality that I really try to achieve in this book, where I tried to include only the information that really could not be argued with, and that could appeal to somebody in a position of power, such a government official or a scientist or someone in the aviation community, who’s not going to argue with it. They can’t.
I think the other thing that I’m really lucky to have on this book is an incredible publisher. I mean, this book is published by Random House, a very highly respected publisher.
JIM HAROLD: It makes a difference.
LESLIE KEAN: It makes a big difference. They give a certain class to it, they have great editors, great designers; they’ve worked with me very hard on creating a really quality book. And they have an incredible public relations and marketing team. So, you know. Most UFO books just don’t have that kind of power behind them, and I feel extremely fortunate that I have this incredible team of people helping to get the book out there.
JIM HAROLD: Well, we’re extremely fortunate to have you on the Paranormal Podcast…
(breaks for commercial)
Leslie, I was looking over some of the material sent over by your publisher, and I really liked this quote… this is Miles O’Brien, he’s of course the excellent former CNN space and science correspondent. He says, “like me, Leslie Kean is an agnostic on the issue of UFOs. Her book is a fine piece of journalism – not about beliefs, but about facts. Kean presents the most accurate, most credible reports on UFO’s you will ever find. She has fought long and hard to discover the facts and let the chips fall where they may. She may not have the final smoking gun, but I smell the gunpowder.” And that’s high praise from a very recognised mainstream journalist. So, I wanted to ask you; he said that you, like he… you’re an agnostic. You’re both agnostics. What do you think he meant by that, and do you consider yourself a UFO agnostic?
LESLIE KEAN: Yeah. I’m really glad you asked that question, because some people see that quote sort of out-of-context from the book; they don’t really know what that means, because I do talk in the book about agnosticism with respect to UFOs and what it actually means, just in terms of what UFOs are. We make the point in the book that we don’t yet know what they are. We really need more of a scientific study before we can definitively determine, to an extent that everybody can accept, that we know what they are. So the agnosticism comes in, not in terms of saying that they don’t exist or anything like that, but he certainly recognises the milestone of the fact that there is a phenomenon. But what we mean by “agnostic” there is simply that we do not yet know what these objects are, so we’re agnostic about whether they’re extraterrestrial or not. That’s what it really boils down to. And I think it’s important to maintain that position until we have a definitive investigation. Partly because that’s what people in power need to hear. I mean, you cannot walk up to somebody and say “guess what? We’ve got extraterrestrial crafts visiting earth” even if to us it might seem very clear that that’s what’s going on.
JIM HAROLD: Because they’ll think you’re crazy.
LESLIE KEAN: They’ll think you’re crazy. And we cannot assume that, because it has not been shown to the extent that scientists, let’s say, are willing to accept it. I mean, you just have to recognize that, that there’s not been enough official, above-board, mainstream scientific work done on the subject for them to be comfortable that we know what they are yet, so it’s not good strategy to go around talking like that to people. And it’s really the truth; we do not yet know what they are for sure. It’s a problem that so many people have just assumed that they’re extraterrestrial and go around talking about it like the extraterrestrials are already here, they’ve been here for decades, the government’s covering it up, they know everything about it… I mean, all that kind of stuff is exactly what alienates the people that are capable of making the kinds of change that we want. So this book is written for those people.
JIM HAROLD: Now, when you talk about people at high levels of government, you don’t get too much higher than the gentleman who wrote your foreword, John Podesta, chief of staff, right, formerly for President Bill Clinton?
LESLIE KEAN: Exactly. And a co-chair for Obama’s transition team, also.
JIM HAROLD: There you go. Why do you think someone of his gravity went out on a limb and did this?
LESLIE KEAN: He has been somebody who has been supporting my work on the subject for, I’d say, about eight years now, and I’m just so fortunate. And the reason is that back in 2002 I got involved with the Freedom of Information Act effort on the Kecksburg UFO case, which took place in 1965, and John Podesta is a big advocate for government openness for the people’s right to information. This has been one of his major causes. Under Bill Clinton he played an instrumental role for all kinds of reforms that took place in the Freedom of Information Act. So he’s really an advocate for the release of information. He also happens to be curious and interested in UFOs. And so, when we launched this effort, and I was with a whole team of people and he was willing to come aboard publicly and just sort of stand behind us and say “hey, I support what these guys are doing.” He became interested in it and kind of followed the process. I ended up filing a lawsuit against NASA — I don’t know if you heard about it, but we were in the federal court for many years — and we actually settled it to our favour, and he just was curious about the whole thing, and so I kept him informed. There were a number of press conferences we gave where he spoke on behalf of what we’re doing. So the reason he was willing to come forward here is because we had this relationship and was already very familiar with the kind of work I do. He saw an earlier version of the book, and he could see the credibility of all the people that had participated in it, and he respects the work that I do, and I was just thrilled, of course, when it didn’t take him very long at all to agree to do it. So he’s just somebody who has really been out publicly about his interest in this, in a really great, great way, and he’s just been a tremendous help just by doing that.
JIM HAROLD: I think that lends… what’s the word that was so popular awhile back in political circles? Gravitas. It adds gravitas.
LESLIE KEAN: I agree with you. I agree, it’s just been a tremendous boost to the book. I was so pleased about it.
JIM HAROLD: I want to get into some specific stories, but first I want to talk to you about the issue of pilots, because they play a big role in this book. You have a number of pilots who have contributed, and talked about their experiences. Now, personally, to me, they would be some of the best witnesses. On the other hand, I’ve heard people say — skeptics or debunkers or people of that ilk — that pilots, they may be trained, but they’re really not trained in something like this, and they’re the most unreliable. I’ve heard both extremes. Tell me what your thoughts are on pilots, and why they’re good witnesses for this type of thing.
LESLIE KEAN: Okay, well, the people that I’ve talked to, some of them who have contributed to my book that have studied pilot cases for many many many many years, and are real experts on them, do not have a concern that pilots are not good witnesses. I think, and again James Oberg has posted something about this recently, and I’m writing a response to, it seems to me that the point they’re making is that when pilots see something that requires a split-second diagnosis — that was how Oberg described it — something they have to respond to really, really fast, they may not be in a position to identify it perfectly because their focus is on getting away; if they feel threatened, they want to get away as quickly as possible. Okay, that’s fine, but the problem is that the cases that I’m concerned with do not involve anything like that. The cases in the book involve pilots who interact and watch something for long periods of time, they involve many other witnesses besides the one pilot, there were communications with the ground through the radios in the airplanes, there’s radar that picks it up, sometimes there are ground observers. There are so many other factors that come into play in these cases that to say that these pilots are not good observers are in those cases is kind of ridiculous. Especially because those cases involve sightings of long durations. I mean, yeah; anybody who sees something for a split second may not be able to identify it, so I’m really trying to figure out what the point is that they’re trying to make. I mean, I read the recent piece by James Oberg carefully, I looked at the data that he cited to back up his position, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the cases that are in the book. So, I don’t know if it’s just that the debunkers are looking for something to hang their hat on on this issue, but I have not interviewed any authorities on pilots, and authorities on pilots involving sightings of these things, that have any doubt that they’re absolutely great witnesses. Probably the best witnesses.
JIM HAROLD: That’s exactly what I was going to say. I would think that they would be the best witnesses because, you know, they kind of have the old Jack Webb ‘just the facts, ma’am” kind of viewpoint…
LESLIE KEAN: Exactly! And they’re trained.
JIM HAROLD: Exactly. They can judge speeds, they can judge whether something’s weather phenomena, if it’s another fixed-wing aircraft… it would seem to me, as you say, that they would be the best, particularly in aviation situations, something in the sky, they would be some of the best witnesses.
LESLIE KEAN: Yeah, that makes total sense to me, that’s the only thing I’ve ever gathered from people that I’ve interviewed or talked to. So, you know, I don’t quite understand this other perspective, to tell you the truth. I agree with you completely on that.
JIM HAROLD: Let’s get in to some of these stories. Now, this one doesn’t circle around one pilot per se, but we were just talking about this on the video show, and it was so great to have …. segment that he taped with you at …, that was fantastic.
LESLIE KEAN: That was so much fun to do that. It was totally spontaneous, it was great.
JIM HAROLD: I loved it. I think he shot it with his iPhone?
LESLIE KEAN: Yeah, we just went into a little back room with boxes and we just sat down and it was really fun.
JIM HAROLD: It was great. But one thing we talk about on that episode of the Paranormal Report was this famous sighting at the O’Hare airport in 2006. And it really, to me, was one of the most striking sightings in modern history, you know, just a few short years ago. It was publicized by mainstream media and then it just seemed to go away. Can you retell that story for folks that may not be familiar with it, and just kind of take us through it?
LESLIE: Sure, I’d be glad to, and I agree with you that it’s an extremely important sighting, part of the reason being because it was so recent, and it gives us an accurate picture of the scenario with how the US government uses to handle these things. Here’s what happened:
It was rush hour at the O’Hare airport on a November afternoon, between 4:30 – 5:00 in the afternoon, on a bit of a hazy day, and there was seen, hovering over the United Airlines terminal, a metallic-looking disc, just hovering up there right below a cloud bank. It was about 1,500 feet up. At the bottom of the disc there was a cloud bank that went up higher. And the United Airlines employees, including pilots, spent at least five minutes looking at this thing, maybe even longer. There was a buzz all over the place, pilots were leaning out of the windows of their planes on the ground and looking at it, they were talking on their radios bak and forth to other airplanes on the ground, you know, and the baggage claim people and the managers were running outside looking, and people were calling up the tower, the FAA tower… there was a lot of discussion about it as it was happening. Then the disc suddenly, from a stationary position, within the blink of an eye, shot straight up through the cloud bank above it, cut a crisp hole through the cloud, clear like a cookie cutter would cut dough. An absolutely clearly outlined circle, and if you were directly underneath you could see the blue sky right up through the cloud bank. So this is actually what happened that day at O’Hare airport. It was covered by the Chicago Tribune about two months later. Most witnesses did not report it, and the witnesses that did would not go on the record with their names, which was very interesting; that these people are actually afraid for their jobs, if they talk about something they’ve actually seen. What happened was, enough pressure was finally put on the FAA that they were required to respond, and the first thing they told reporters was that this was the airport lights reflected off the bottom of the cloud bank. The irony of that… well, of course it’s an absurd insult to the people who reported seeing the disc, but, number two, it just so happened that the airport lights hadn’t been turned on yet, because it was too early in the day. So they weren’t even on. Second explanation was that it was weather. Some kind of weather phenomenon. And after that, you’re right, the story was reported that the FAA said it was a weather phenomenon, and the witnesses were quoted, and it just kind of faded away. Like you said, it was a big story for a day or two. I went back to the FAA guy a couple months later, the one who had said it was a weather phenomenon. I just wanted to ask him, I said, “what kind of weather phenomenon was that?” and he told me — which is what I thought he would say — he said, “my best guess for that” — of course, they don’t want to say definite, because then they could get into trouble — “is that we think it was a hole-punch cloud.” Which is a very rare, natural hole that doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally it does happen, where you see a hole in a cloud because of ice crystals that have fallen from above and melted a section of the cloud, and it makes kind of a large hole. It doesn’t have really defined edges, but it is round. So that was his explanation for this. Well, I then went to a number of climatologists, cloud physicists, weather experts, and asked them about this. And I learned that they only way that a hole-punch cloud can occur is at below-freezing temperatures that involved the ice crystals. And it just so happens that the weather at O’Hare that day was way above freezing. I think it was in the low 50s or something. So the bottom line is that their second explanation was actually a physical impossibility. And what’s really interesting to me is that that’s what we get from our government. We get a group of witnesses who won’t even go on the record because they’re afraid. They’ve witnessed something that is a safety hazard, you know? A foreign object in controlled airspace, operating freely right over an airport, with no transponders, no means of communication, and they’re afraid to report that. And then, what do they get from the government? These ridiculous stories. That’s it. That’s what happened.
JIM HAROLD: And you talked about the reaction of the US government, kind of just shuffling it aside and said “yeeeah, it was a hole punch cloud. That’s the ticket!” (laughs)
LESLIE KEAN: Exactly! Whatever they can come up with, you know? It’s not like they really thought about it.
JIM HAROLD: It was ball lightning. Or Chinese lanterns.
LESLIE KEAN: It’s extraordinary, you know, when you think about how the witnesses feel, who have seen something absolutely extraordinary that’s not supposed to exist, but yet they see it; and they’re patriotic people, and they report it, and this is how they’re treated.
JIM HAROLD: That’s very true. How does that differ from the way that other governments approach UFOs. How is the US government different, or is it?
LESLIE KEAN: That’s a really interesting point, too, and one of the themes of the book, is the fact that it is different. Other countries, which we have in the book, and some of the officials — high level people — that head up some of these government agencies of countries have written about in the book, they have their own government agencies, already set up, which do nothing but investigate UFO events. The United Kingdom had what they called their “UFO Desk”, within the ministry of defense. Actually, they just closed down about a year ago. They’d been there since the 50s. The French had had an agency within their national space agency, which is like our NASA, they’ve had something there since the mid-70s. Countries in South America have their agencies. And even ones that don’t have agencies, such as Belgium, when something happens and the air force gets involved, or their civil aviation — like our FAA — gets involved, they don’t pretend it’s something that it’s not. Other countries will give press conferences, even. They’ll give press conferences and inform people. They’ll tell the media what happened. And the most important part: they’re willing to acknowledge that they can’t explain what it was.
JIM HAROLD: And I guess then the question is why. Why is the US government stone-walling?
LESLIE KEAN: And that’s the big question. You know, the “why” question that is always so hard to answer. And you know, you get into a little bit of a speculative area there, which I try to avoid, but you know there are documents that go back to the 50s that show that there was a concern about panic in the very beginning, when there weren’t a lot of sightings and the air force was just trying to grapple with it in the very beginning, and they couldn’t explain what these things were, and they eventually found out, well, they’re not Russian, and they were kind of overwhelmed and they were worried about people’s reactions and then there was the CIA panel that was convened in the early 50s where they decided that the UFOs should be debunked, and that’s a whole story in itself, but the US government sort of got into this groove of one of the ways they manage this problem, which was to just sort of deny that it exists, to give ludicrous explanations for cases, and they did that throughout the life of Project Blue Book, which was in the 50s and 60s.
JIM HAROLD: Some people would have called it Project White Wash.
LESLIE KEAN: Project White Wash… that’s a much better name! Exactly, that’s exactly what it was about: public relations. And then that closed down in 1970, Jim, and there’s just sort of been this void. There have been a lot of very good researchers that have carried on the work, but in terms of any kind of official involvement with this phenomenon just has not existed since Project Blue Book closed down. And I think it’s just sort of a habitual groove that they would just prefer to not pay attention to this. The officials all busy with lots of other things. There haven’t been any really dangerous — I mean, really life threatening — situations so far, and it’s just something they would rather not mess with, you know? It’s just too big, it’s too disturbing, it just doesn’t happen that often, that’s just sort of my take on it. We don’t know to what extend there might be some kind of secret or very hidden research project going on within the government, we don’t know what they might know deep down, within some small group that could be working on studying cases and investigating cases. We know that there’s certainly been an interest in UFOs since Project Blue Book closed down, because we have all kinds of documents that show that our government has been very curious and has filed reports on it, and looked into cases. So, to what extent…? And that’s why the “why” question is hard to answer. All we really know is what’s actually happened, and because the government isn’t giving us any answers, it’s very hard to explain why except to look at the whole history of it and how the whole thing evolved. And I try to give all the most important parts of that in the book. I think if somebody were to read this book, they would have a very good sense of the history unfolding. And going in from that sense of what’s going on with the US government, but we don’t have the answers.
JIM HAROLD: It’s always interesting asking the questions and getting more of these stories. Now there are a couple of stories in here that fascinate me, you know, when we usually think of military aircraft and UFOs, we kind of envision the scenario where they’re spotted, perhaps the military aircraft give chase, and then the UFOs fly off and that’s the end of it. But there have actually been cases, haven’t there, where there’s been almost dog-fighting between UFOs and military aircraft to some extent?
LESLIE KEAN: Yeah, there have been, and these are some of the cases that really floored me the most when I was researching this book. There are two cases, and I’m sure there have been others, but two that we actually have a lot of information about, and the two pilots involved with each of these cases have written their own stories for the book, which are really riveting to read. And in both cases, the air force pilots attempted to shoot at the UFOs — very different situations, but they did attempt to shoot down UFOs. I don’t know if you want me to talk more about what actually happened?
JIM HAROLD: Absolutely.
LESLIE KEAN: One of the cases was in 1976 in Iran. It’s a very famous case so people may have heard of the 1976 Iranian case. It was actually documented by the Defense Intelligence Agency. An American military official debriefed General Jafari, who was the person who wrote the piece, who was the pilot in the case. He has since become a general, at the time he was an air force pilot. He was debriefed by an American and the US government filed a secret memo all about the events. We have so much information about it. What’s really fascinating — and I won’t give you all the details, but — the most fascinating element of it was the he was sent up with another pilot. There were two planes sent up, four pilots all together, were sent up via a general to go check it out. They just wanted to find out what it was. There was this huge, brilliant diamond shaped strobe-light kind of thing that was just sort of up there in the sky, it looked kind of like a star only much bigger and brighter, and lots of colours and they just wanted to check it out, and what happened to this pilot was that these spherical kind of projectiles started coming out of the larger object and heading right for his plane, and he attempted to fire missiles at them in self-defense because they were heading right for him. And each time he was about to press the button, just at the moment that he had the heat seeking missiles just so they were locked on to the objects, and just about to press this button to fire, he would lose control over his equipment. It would just go out.
JIM HAROLD: Almost like they knew.
LESLIE KEAN: Almost like they knew. That’s what it seemed like. It happened always at the last minute, and it happened three or four times. It was more than coincidental. So he’d try again, and he’d see the things jumping around, and they’d move 25 miles in a second, and all this extraordinary stuff, but that was one thing. He was never able to fire his missile, and they never did hurt him, either. The UFOs do not seem to be aggressive or hostile, and all the officials that I’ve interviewed all agree about that. None have cases of them actually hurting anybody. Even in situations where we fire at them ourselves, they don’t retaliate. So that’s kind of an interesting thing.
The other case was a Peruvian pilot who actually did shoot huge 35mm shells right into a UFO, and it absolutely had no effect on the object. He said these would have completely destroyed anything that was man-made, because he was quite close, but these objects, he said they seem to have absorbed the ammunition in some way. Then he got involved with all this kind of chasing, chasing and trying to shoot this thing down. It’s fascinating to read about it. So, those are amazing stories. I don’t think many people know about events like that that have actually taken place.
JIM HAROLD: Another amazing incident in… folks, we can’t cover all the stories in here, there’s a ton of information. We have books where we interview people, and we say it’s a nice book and so forth, and I think all of our books are interesting in their own right, but this is a must-have. If you are into UFOs, this book is a must-have.
But I do want to talk about a couple of more cases. Rendlesham Forest. Amazing case.
LESLIE KEAN: I agree with you. I think it’s one of the most extraordinary cases on record, and there’s so much to it. It would be hard to calculate it, it happened over three different days. Two of the key witnesses to that event have written pieces for the book that will make your hair stand on end. One of them actually touched a landed UFO. This is the first time he’s ever written anything about it. He’s spoken about it before, but never in the kind of detail or with the kind of personal, emotional responsiveness that he’s given in this piece. It’s really phenomenal.
But, over a series of days at this base in the United Kingdom in 1980, there were a series of sightings, some of which were seen landing. A couple days later, more objects were seen in the woods, some were shooting down light near to where groups of individuals were standing. Those were the events that Colonel Halt documented on his tape recorder. People may be familiar with that famous tape of him out in the woods with his men, and he’s talking into his pocket tape recorder and recording what was going on as it happens. And he has also written a piece for the book about what he went through that night. There is so much evidence, and so many people involved in the Rendlesham Forest case. Lots of physical evidence of the landing as well, it’s just really, really an interesting case.
JIM HAROLD: It absolutely is. Now amongst the stories here, if you had to pick a… well, it’s like asking which one of your children is your favorite, it’s a no-win situation… but what story — maybe we’re already talked about it, I don’t know — what story really says “wow! If I had to point to that story, that would be the one”?
LESLIE KEAN: There is one. I think they’re all incredible, but there’s one that I think is particularly incredible… well, I mean, they all are. But I’d just like to mention this one incident that took place in Belgium. It’s the case that opens up the whole book, and I put it in the beginning of the book because it’s just such a comprehensive and extraordinary case with lots of illustrations and such. And this was the wave over Belgium, which took place over 1989 and 1990. A series of these triangular craft with a light on each of the corners and a reddish light in the middle were seen by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. The first night there were something like fourteen police officers witnessed this thing. There were a couple of them that were going over Belgium for something like an hour or so, and hour and a half? And reported by hundred of people, including police officers, and they kept coming back and they kept coming back. And Major General Wilfried De Brouwer, who was a colonel at the time — is now a major general — was placed in charge of the air force investigation of this, and he worked really hard at trying to figure out what these things were. And it partially involved sending F-16s up to chase them at certain times, it involved coordinating with other branches of the government, it involved working with a group of scientists outside of government who were responsible for collecting hundreds and hundreds of witness reports. The witnesses in Belgium had a place to go to file reports and they were not worried about doing that, although some people were. Some people wouldn’t go on the record, but that’s another story. There were volumes and volumes of case reports, recorded interviews with people, et cetera. He went to the highest levels of government, of other NATO countries, to United States embassies, spoke with high-level officials, trying to find out what these things were that kept coming back to Belgium, and he never got an answer. And he is absolutely convinced that they were not some kind of stealth bomber from the United States or some kind of secret air craft that was being tested. He would have been informed of that. When you get to high levels, NATO countries do not send bizarre flying craft over other countries repeatedly and not tell them anything about it. It’s just not the way things work. Plus, the capabilities of these crafts, according to General De Brouwer and other people, and he’s an expert, he says that we don’t have anything even today that can do what these things did. So his chapter is really definitive, because it has a series of great drawings that were made by witnesses independently from different locations, and it has an absolutely incredible photograph that some people may have seen of this craft from underneath, very close up. It’s one of the best pictures I think we have of a UFO and it’s been analyzed by three or four labs, General De Brouwer interviewed the photographer, I mean, that photograph has been vetted as much as you can ever vet anything, and they’ve learned a lot from analyzing the photograph. It’s really, really cool. So, I was just sort of blown away by that case. And also by the General’s comments about it. He’s written about it, what he thinks of the fact that there’s so much ridicule and what needs to be done, and how much he wants there to be an investigation of this case in Belgium — and he’s still very perplexed about it — some of the relationships he’s had with high-level witnesses who would not go on the record about it. The whole thing. It’s so convincing to read about this Belgian case. And I thought it was just a really great way to open up the book. I was just blown away by that case.
JIM HAROLD: There’s a case — and I know we’re drawing a little short on time here — but there’s a case I wanted to ask you about, because I always thought that it’s interesting to see the conversion here. The Phoenix Lights, of course, one of the most famous cases in UFO lore and recent history. And then, if those of you who were paying attention at the time remember, a few days after, I believe. A day or two after. There was a press conference, and the governor at the time of Arizona, Fife Symington, came out and they had a person dressed up in an alien suit walk out. He addressed it, and the gist of it was that it was a big joke. But he’s actually had… I guess, kind of come to Jesus.
LESLIE KEAN: A conversion, right?
JIM HAROLD: A conversion, exactly. So, let’s take people through that, and why did we see the big conversion from the former governor?
LESLIE KEAN: That’s a fascinating story as well, and — as you said — he sort of ridiculed it back in ‘97. Ten years later he came out and described the fact — acknowledged, actually — that he had actually seen it, so he himself was a witness to the event in ‘97. And I don’t want to give the whole story away, but he basically tells when he was governor that there was too much political pressure on him, and too much a risk of ridicule and distraction if he had talked about it. He just decided with his wife that he just shouldn’t do it. You can read in the book in his own words why he said he did that. He just explains it as best he can. Ten years later he was no longer in office. He saw James Fox’s film Out of the Blue, was very impressed by it, and he just thought, ‘look, it’s time for me to come out with this,’ and he decided to do it. And he’s since become a real advocate for a new government policy and talked about how he would never want any other governor to go through what he went through, and you can read in the book in his own words exactly why he did this and what he has to say about it. But it’s so fascinating to have someone who was actually a governor of a state to have been in the role of an actual witness, and at the same time an official who was trying to suppress all that, really. He didn’t know how to handle it… and then later, somebody who was sort of an advocate for new policy and for openness and investigations into UFOs. So he has played all those roles, and he’s just an absolutely great guy, really wonderful guy who’s extremely supportive of all the witnesses who have had sightings, and very much wants to help bring about change, and he’s going to be an important part of any change that happens. He’ll play an important role in making that happen.
JIM HAROLD: And I’m sure you will as well, especially with a great book like this. It’s been great to talk to you, Leslie. If folks want to know where to go to find out more about Leslie Kean and UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record, where on the web would you direct them?
LESLIE KEAN: Great, well I love for people to go to my website, set up just around the book, it’s called ufosontherecord.com, sort of like an abbreviation of the title. And my last name is spelled K – E – A – N, which is sort of an odd spelling. And if people go to that website there’s lots of information there about the book, pictures of some of the contributors including Fife Symington, with some of the stories that they’ve presented in summary. There’s a blog that we post all the media that’s going on, and there’s been a lot of media interest in this, and people can also go to my author facebook page, which is an open page. So on the website too, if they’re interested in getting a copy of the book, which I hope they are, there are buttons that make it easy to order it online. And Amazon has a very good price on the book, it’s not the full listed price that they’re offering. So that’s another way to actually get the book, to go to that website.
JIM HAROLD: And, as always, at jimharold.com with the post of the show I’ll have links to Leslie’s site and to the book on Amazon as well. Leslie, any plans — it sounds like reaction has been fantastic — or thoughts for a UFOs on the Record 2?
LESLIE KEAN: Oh gosh, Jim, I can’t even contemplate it right now, I’m so busy! The book’s only been out three weeks or so, and I’m so busy just getting it out there and talking to great people like you who are interested in it. I’m just so thrilled with the response, and more than full-time involved with getting the word out. And the next step after that is going to be just trying to implement the change that we described in the book. And when people read it, I’d love to hear people’s comments regarding what they think about the proposed plan we have in the book for a new policy on this. And we want to see that happen, so before I do any other books I want to try to get something concrete happening in Washington so our government can change its policy toward how it handles UFOs.
JIM HAROLD: Well, you certainly made an important step with this book, and I’d like to thank you so much for being on the Paranormal Podcast tonight.
LESLIE KEAN: It’s been really a pleasure and I appreciate your great questions and it’s been great talking with you, Jim. Thanks for having me.
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