UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean Page B

often not detected on radar, even when physically present and seen by multiple witnesses, and obviously this doesn’t mean they aren’t there. In many other cases, radar tracks are captured, providing valuable data on the object’s movements. What determines this variability in detection is unknown.
    Fortunately, a team of experts from Dr. Richard Haines’s group NARCAP spent five months rigorously investigating the incident and its safety implications, and analyzing all possible explanations for the sighting. Their 154-page report was co-authored by Haines; meteorologist William Pucket, formerly with the Environmental Protection Agency; aerospace engineer Laurence Lemke, also previously with NASA on advanced space mission projects; Donald Ledger, a Canadian pilot and aviation professional; and five other specialists. 2 They concluded that the O’Hare disc was a solid physical object behaving in ways that could not be explained in conventional terms. It had penetrated Class B restricted airspace over a major airport without utilizing a transponder.
    The NARCAP study stated:
This incident is typical of many others before it in that an unknown phenomenon was able to avoid radar contact and, thus, official recognition and effective response. When combined with the deeply entrenched bias pilots have against reporting these sightings, the FAA seemingly had justifiable grounds for ignoring this particular UAP as non-existent. 3
     
    And indeed the FAA tried hard to ignore the incident despite its safety implications, but pressure from the Chicago Tribune and others forced a response. Initially an FAA spokesperson attempted to explain the incident as airport lights reflecting off the bottom of the cloud ceiling. However, the event occurred in daylight and the airport lights hadn’t been turned on yet! In a second try, a different spokesperson wrote the whole thing off as a “weather phenomenon.” Obviously, these United pilots and airport employees know how to recognize airport lights on clouds and unusual weather conditions, though it was a normal overcast day. They would not have described a flying disc, each providing the same independent description from different vantage points, if some strange weather was unfolding, and to suggest otherwise is an insult to those doing their duty by reporting the incursion.
    Transportation expert Hilkevitch, who routinely covers the much less exciting, mundane events that occur on a regular basis at O’Hare Airport, was mystified by the FAA disinterest in the incident. “If this had been a plane, it would have been investigated,” he told me. “The FAA treats the smallest safety issue as very important. It will investigate a coffeepot getting loose in the galley and falling while a plane is landing.” Brian E. Smith, a former manager within NASA’s Aviation Safety Program, told me that “managers should want to hear about such vehicle operations before they become accidents or disasters.” He said the safety implications of anything operating outside the authority of air traffic control at a major airport are obvious, no matter what type of vehicle it is.
    The NARCAP experts concurred:
Anytime an airborne object can hover for several minutes over a busy airport but not be registered on radar or seen visually from the control tower, it constitutes a potential threat to flight safety. The identity of the UAP remains unknown. An official government inquiry should be carried out to evaluate whether or not current sensing technologies are adequate to insure against a future incident such as this. 4
     
    So, what exactly was going on here?
    I decided to call FAA spokesperson Tony Molinaro and ask him for more details about the bizarre “weather” that he said United Airlines pilots mistook for a physical object—weather so freakish that it was able to cut a round, sharply defined hole though a thick cloud bank in a split second. Such a phenomenon would certainly be worthy of study