1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 If there really have been UFO landings in the United States, why isn't there any hard evidence? 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Why haven't UFOs appeared on radar? 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:15,000 Ufologists answer that our government has purposely and systematically suppressed information 4 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,000 about alien spacecraft. 5 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:22,000 And they point to an astonishing case on a U.S. military base in Great Britain. 6 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:28,000 For nearly 50 years, UFO researchers have maintained that the U.S. government 7 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:32,000 has systematically withheld information about encounters with aliens. 8 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:37,000 Such contact may have occurred in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. 9 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,000 The U.S. government says it never happened. 10 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:48,000 Some believe that alien technology is currently being tested in the notorious and top secret area 51 in the Nevada desert. 11 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:50,000 The U.S. government refuses to comment. 12 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:56,000 But under the authority of the Freedom of Information Act, previously classified documents have been released. 13 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:02,000 They shed light on what may have been an intentional U.S. government cover-up of UFO contact, 14 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:05,000 occurring in England in 1980. 15 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:13,000 The 81st Tactical Fighter Wing of the U.S. Air Force was located 60 miles northeast of London 16 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:16,000 between the towns of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. 17 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:21,000 It was here on December 26, 1980, members of base security claimed to have witnessed 18 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:25,000 one of the most bizarre events in UFO history. 19 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:28,000 The whole thing was weird. It just didn't seem right. 20 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:34,000 Airman 1st Class John Burroughs and his partner were on a routine patrol around the base perimeter 21 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:38,000 when they spotted unusual activity in the nearby woods. 22 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:40,000 My partner initially saw some strange lights. 23 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:44,000 So we went ahead and looked at each other and we decided we'd better kind of see what's going on 24 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:46,000 and see if it didn't seem normal. 25 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:51,000 At the very same moment, the control tower at London's Heathrow Airport 26 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:56,000 reported the sudden appearance of several unidentified flying objects on radar. 27 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:59,000 I think if we would have been armed, we might have been fired on it. 28 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,000 I mean, it really still was whatever it was, scarier than this. 29 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:10,000 I was going to bed and through the side windows here, and I saw these lights. 30 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,000 Local resident Jerry Harris was one of a handful of civilians who reported strange phenomena that night. 31 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:18,000 He recalls the encounter. 32 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:20,000 Well, they moved sort of sideways. 33 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:24,000 This way, you know, they'd go down and they'd come back up again. 34 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:27,000 Most peculiar. 35 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:32,000 The next morning, British police investigated the area around the alleged sighting. 36 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:36,000 They found three circular impressions in the ground, exactly 12 feet apart, 37 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,000 forming a perfect equilateral triangle. 38 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:41,000 The surrounding trees had been damaged. 39 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:44,000 It looked like something had landed there. 40 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:53,000 It came straight down through the trees and rested long enough to leave three, four inch indentations in the ground. 41 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000 I was kind of hoping we'd go out there and we wouldn't find anything. 42 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:02,000 We just, you know, it'd be like, because if you can't explain it, it bothers you. 43 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:06,000 The next night, strange lights were reported again. 44 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000 Deputy base commander Colonel Charles Halt quickly assembled a special investigative team to search the woods. 45 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:18,000 Lights were observed moving in geometric patterns, mainly in squares. 46 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:24,000 Everything traveling at right angles, they'd go for a set distance and do a sharp left or right bank. 47 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:29,000 Colonel Halt and his team not only witnessed the light phenomenon, 48 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:33,000 but they were also able to document their sightings on film and audio tape, 49 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,000 listened to part of Halt's recording at the scene. 50 00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:02,000 In the distance, you could see lights flying around and you could see like a stream of white light that came down to the ground. 51 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:09,000 Soon after that initial sighting, another strange UFO appeared at the airman, a single red, hovering light. 52 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,000 We followed it for quite a distance, two, three miles. 53 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:16,000 All the time it stayed just a bit ahead of us. 54 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Then the most extraordinary event of the night occurred. 55 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:22,000 It looked like a shaft of light came down from the sky. 56 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:26,000 It was momentary, couldn't have lasted more than five seconds. 57 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:31,000 But I observed it, Colonel Halt observed it, and the two other individuals with us observed it. 58 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:34,000 It was like, it hurt your eyes almost, it was so bright. 59 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:43,000 Because of this inexplicable encounter, a special unit from European headquarters was dispatched to Bentwaters to take over the investigation. 60 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:48,000 We were told that whatever we saw there from then on, we were not to call in on the radio or report in. 61 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:52,000 People were aware of something had happened or something could still be going on. 62 00:04:52,000 --> 00:05:01,000 The team confiscated all physical evidence of the encounter, including Colonel Halt's tape recordings, films and memos. 63 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:09,000 All of that material was gathered up, it was considered technical intelligence, therefore it went to Ramstein Air Force Base. 64 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:16,000 Now retired from Army Intelligence, Clifford Stone was stationed at Hanau West Germany at the time of the Bentwaters investigation. 65 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:21,000 According to Stone, news about the UFO landing spread like wildfire. 66 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:27,000 I know that they consider that crack to be under intelligent control, and they did not consider that intelligence to be of this earth. 67 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:33,000 With so many credible witnesses, there's little doubt that something anomalous occurred that night. But what was it? 68 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:37,000 There was no doubt it was an identified flying object, which is what the UFO is. 69 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:45,000 The blue light that we saw and what they were capable of doing could lead you to believe possibly that they were intelligent. 70 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:54,000 It was not a natural phenomenon, it was some sort of a manned or unmanned craft, and it was being controlled by someone. 71 00:05:54,000 --> 00:06:01,000 Despite so much eyewitness testimony, skeptics maintain the encounter was not the result of other worldly phenomena. 72 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:04,000 Let's say that this wasn't a UFO incident. 73 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:14,000 What is it that can cause highly trained Air Force security policemen who are armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, pistols? 74 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:20,000 What can cause them to run away from a light in the woods? 75 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:26,000 Chuck DeCarro was a Defense Department correspondent for CNN who traveled to England to research the Bentwaters incident. 76 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:30,000 He's heard many explanations for the strange lights. 77 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:34,000 This was an important face. It had a nuclear weapon storage dump. 78 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:43,000 If these guys were hallucinating, as some debunkers have claimed, what were they doing guarding those self-same nuclear weapons the next day and the next week? 79 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:52,000 Others have speculated that the UFO was a top secret U.S. military aircraft used to test the responses of base security forces. 80 00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:03,000 We exercised on a regular basis through every possible contingency at the ground troops, and there was no need for the Air Force to come up with something extra. 81 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:10,000 There is another possibility involving technology known as psychotronic or radio frequency weapons. 82 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:27,000 There are those experts in the area of radio frequency weapons who say that RF energy can be delivered in such a form as to have an effect on human psychology or physiology. 83 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:34,000 Sightings of unexplained lights identical to those reported in Bentwaters had also been reported in the former Soviet Union. 84 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:39,000 Experts suggest these reports may be the result of experiments using similar weaponry. 85 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:47,000 Unfortunately, none of these theories can be fully explored because the U.S. Air Force has refused to acknowledge that any encounters occurred. 86 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:49,000 Some believe there's been a cover-up. 87 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:59,000 I ended up going to Korea and I can't prove it, but there was, I really wasn't due for an assignment and they kind of got me out of here in the hurry. 88 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:03,000 The attempt to gather physical evidence at the site is now impossible. 89 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:05,000 The alleged landing site has been destroyed. 90 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:10,000 When our sightings crew visited Bentwaters, this was all that remained of the woods. 91 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:15,000 All that there, yes, the whole lot, 10,000 acres was absolutely devastating. 92 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:21,000 British UFO researcher Brenda Butler has been investigating the Bentwaters sightings since 1981. 93 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:26,000 She claims that her efforts have been sabotaged by the U.S. and British governments. 94 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:33,000 The Ministry of Defense have been on to us and telling us to keep quiet and, you know, not to say anything about it. 95 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:39,000 What we can't understand is why this case, when all the other cases we've been on, we've been allowed to talk about it. 96 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:44,000 I have no doubt that our government and other governments are withholding information. 97 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:50,000 They don't know what's going on or if they do, they're not willing to share that information with the general populace. 98 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,000 And sooner or later, it's all going to come out. 99 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:59,000 It wasn't until one of the base commanders, Top Secret Memos, was released in 1983 100 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:04,000 that any information about the Bentwaters UFOs was made public. 101 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,000 The U.S. Air Force still refuses to comment. 102 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:10,000 Could it have been a weapons experiment? Possibly. 103 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:14,000 Could it have been a visitation from a UFO? Possibly. 104 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:17,000 Is there a cover-up? Probably. 105 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:22,000 Is there more to come from the Bentwaters incident? You bet. 106 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:30,000 The United States Air Force continues to deny that a UFO encounter occurred at Bentwaters. 107 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:35,000 Without the military's cooperation, the documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act 108 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:40,000 remain just one more tantalizing clue for scores of conspiracy theorists. 109 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:47,000 They remain convinced that the government has Top Secret UFO information and plans to keep it that way.