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One of the most puzzling and controversial UFO sightings in U.S. history occurred nearly

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27 years ago in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.

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To this day, many people who have studied this sighting believe there is a continuing

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government cover-up of what really happened in 1965.

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As I discovered on my trip to Kecksburg, some believe the UFO was a meteor, others that it

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was an alien spacecraft, and still others that it was all an elaborate hoax.

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It used to be just like a lot of other small villages in western Pennsylvania.

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But in 1965, Kecksburg lost its anonymity when it became one of the world's most famous

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UFO landing sites.

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I happened to look up in the sky and I seen this red farball.

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It sure wasn't a meteor, because I've seen them fall before.

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I've never seen any of them with blue lights on.

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And it looked like it made a turn and it came back again.

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And when it came back, it seemed like it went down.

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It was December 9th, 1965, a night that many townspeople will never forget.

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I got my flashlight and I started down through the woods up to where it was at.

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There was no wings, there was no tail section, there was no motors, there was no windows,

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there was no doors.

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There was big enough for a grown person to stand up in.

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It had like Egyptian writing, like backwards writing on it.

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Stars and circles and dashes and lines and things like that.

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It looked like an acorn.

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It was really weird.

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Some claim the UFO wasn't the only thing to arrive that night.

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It wasn't too much longer down through the woods come two gentlemen.

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The one gentleman, very ramrod straight, very authoritative voice, crew cut hair.

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I mean, he just wreaked a military.

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He looked at the object and he looked at us and he says, alright, this is not a restricted

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area.

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These were all ordered out of here.

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Some military people come to the house and just said they'd like to use the phone.

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They sort of took the house over and start talking among ourselves.

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What's going on?

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About that time up through on the road comes a big flatbed truck in the flatbed went down

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and empty and they come back out with something on the back of it covered up about the size

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of a Volkswagen.

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That truck was hell bent for leather.

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And if you walked out on that road, you'd have still been there.

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They'd have scraped you up with a putty knife.

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They weren't stopping for anything or anybody.

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And that began the real mystery of this whole thing.

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Twenty seven years later, what happened down there in that woods surrounded by fields,

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if anything happened down there at all, is still a matter of bitter controversy.

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You've got this town split into two groups.

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You got the believers and the nonbelievers.

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There's been some friendship lost and it's foolish as far as I'm concerned.

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I have a brother-in-law that he hadn't spoke to me for two years and said that I lied about

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everything that I never lied about a thing.

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You got neighbors and neighbors that have known each other all their life.

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Now they don't want to talk cause one believes it and one don't believe it.

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Just as the town is divided, so too are experts who have researched what really happened in

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Kecksburg.

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Planetary expert Robert Young believes that some citizens may have perpetrated a hoax.

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He claims the UFO was merely a meteor known to have passed over Ontario and several northern

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states that evening.

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Probably all of the accounts can be explained by people having looked toward and seeing

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the Ontario meteor.

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How about the accounts though of the military that turned out in large numbers, kept people

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away from going down there, truck that went down into the area and came out.

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You got eyewitnesses that say, this happened.

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I understand.

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I have written signed eyewitness accounts from 61 local people who say that that did

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not.

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There was nothing crashed here, it was recovered, there was no military occupant.

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A lot of people probably think you're the government.

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Well sure, yeah, but I'm not.

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I don't know how some people can say that nothing ever happened when there was so many

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people that saw things that night.

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Something had to happen.

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I know what I saw and I'm not going to deny it.

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They can tell me I'm lying but I know that I've seen the military in my house that night.

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The Department of Information Act states there was 212 military personnel here that

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night.

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Sightings attempted to speak with the Kexburg residents who deny anything extraterrestrial

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ever happened here, but they all refused our invitation to talk.

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Even the landowner whose property was the alleged crash site remains silent.

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I think the government bought them off or threatened them with something that got them

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scared half to wits.

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Ironically, their refusal to talk has only deepened the controversy.

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UFO researcher Stan Gorton heard about the Kexburg incident on the radio.

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The night had allegedly happened in 1965.

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He's been investigating the sighting ever since.

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So much of what we know about the case now, we've learned since about 1987 with the fact

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that now we have at least four different eyewitnesses who apparently saw the object on the ground

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at Kexburg.

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The fact that there are dozens of people independent of each other who don't even know each other

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yet who have given us detailed information about what they experienced and saw that night

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and they're giving us confirming information that has not been published yet.

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The skeptics, and these include the people who own the land and some very substantial

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citizens of Kexburg, think that this whole thing is loony.

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Why do they feel so strongly the other way?

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Could be that some of these people were in the wrong places at that time.

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They were in a position where they didn't see what was going on.

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And if you see the geography of the area and where the majority of people were that night,

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they could not have seen the military activity that was happening on the land on the other

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side of the area down there.

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Do you have any hard evidence at all that what went down in the woods near Kexburg was

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something other than a meteor or was anything at all?

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Unfortunately not.

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As in so many of these cases, you have to go by the eyewitness accounts.

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And in this case, the eyewitness accounts are very, very strong.

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And again, unfortunately, we don't have that type of information.

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If this was the case, whether it be a space probe or in other UFO cases, sure, if we had

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the physical hardware, the mystery would be over.

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What do you think it is?

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What do I think it is?

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At this point, and again, this is not conclusive, at this point, the weight of evidence would

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point in the direction that this may have been a Soviet space probe.

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If the object were proven to be a Soviet space probe, then many questions would be answered.

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If a Soviet device landed in Kexburg, the government would have been required by international

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treaty to recover and return immediately any space debris to the country of origin.

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But retired Army Sergeant Clifford Stone doesn't believe the Soviet probe theory.

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If this was of Soviet origin in 1965, the State Department would have released documentation

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to me under their Moondust files.

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To date, none of that information has been forth.

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Clifford Stone collects government documents about space debris recovery operations like

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Project Moondust and Project Blue Fly.

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He began his investigations in 1965 when, as an Army Sergeant, he witnessed a top-secret

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delivery to Lockborn Air Force Base about 200 miles from Kexburg.

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I noticed that on the back of the vehicle, it had something that was covered by a tarp.

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It was about 10 to 12 foot at the base, 12 foot tall.

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It looked like a chocolate drop.

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When my friend told me that every question I ever had about UFOs was under that canvas,

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I was mystified.

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Since that time, Stone has repeatedly attempted to obtain information from the government

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regarding that object.

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Each time the government's response has been the same.

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They have taken the stance by direction of the President of the United States.

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We may neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any information that all

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involve the recovery of unknowns.

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Kexburg remains a town divided.

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The only thing on which believers and non-believers can agree is that all they want to know once

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and for all is what really happened on December 9th, 1965.

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What would you like to see happen next?

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It's time after 27 years that the public has to write to know the true facts regardless

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of what the object was and what really occurred.

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Something came down from numerous eyewitness accounts to a lot of military activity into

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this small village.

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Then an object was located, that it was recovered, it was transported away for study.

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What was the object and why after 27 years having there revealed what really was found?

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Joining us now from Houston is space flight engineer and author James Oberg, who has studied

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the reported sighting in Kexburg and has his own theory about what landed there in 1965.

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Mr. Oberg, first of all, do you believe that something crashed in Kexburg in 1965?

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Was it a UFO?

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If it's anything, it might be something a lot more earth-like.

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It might be a spacecraft from Russia and not from Mars.

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It turns out we do know that a Russian probe fell back to Earth that day and it was a special

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kind of probe.

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It was one of their probes to the planet Venus.

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It failed, was trapped in Earth orbit and eventually fell out of orbit.

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What might have been on that Russian space probe that the U.S. would have been so interested

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in?

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Oh, the most important thing about the probe would be the heat shield.

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How thick it was, what material was made out of, how heavy it was.

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Once we knew that, we could then analyze how big their warheads would be in their ICBMs.

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The same kind of material was used there.

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Also, their most advanced electronics would be in that probe.

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Their most heat-resistant kinds of materials.

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The very best of their entire military industrial complex technology.

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It would have been a treasure trove in terms of the Russian space and missile technology.

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Do you think we will ever know with certainty what really happened in Kecksburg?

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Well I guess the dream is that someone will go forward with an official government report.

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It might exist, it might not.

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Twenty, thirty, forty years ago, people's memories, as you know, tend to keep changing

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and growing as the stories get told and retold.

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I think there's lots of stories in UFO folklore that will never really know what happened

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behind them.

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That's the fascination.

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James Oberg, thank you very much for joining us.