From: Stig Agermose <Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 03:54:07 +0200
Fwd Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 23:49:03 -0400
Subject: Re: Book Reveals Secret UFO Investigation
[List Only, Please]
Source: The Press
http://www.press.co.nz:80/40/98100537.htm
For copyright reasons list only!
Stig
*******
New Zealand news from The Press - October 05, 1998
Book reveals secret UFO investigation
from The Press
WELLINGTON -- A book on New Zealand UFO sightings reveals the
air force, police, and other agencies secretly shared
information about a UFO scare off the Kaikoura coast in 1978.
They (the ministry) just made a complete shambles of the whole
affair.
--Peter Hassall
Upper Hutt writer
The NZ Files, by Upper Hutt writer Peter Hassall, covers
sightings of unidentified flying objects in New Zealand since
the 1880s, along with claims of alien abductions.
The book includes a Ministry of Defence report about sightings
of bright white lights off the Kaikoura coast in 1978 and 1979.
The lights were seen in December 1978 by two air freight pilots
and, in January 1979, Australian and New Zealand television news
teams filmed the lights.
The report, held at National Archives in Wellington, was not to
be released until 2004. However, Mr Hassall said that after an
Official Information Act request to view it, the ministry
allowed him to reproduce the entire report in his book.
He said the report explained the official line at the time was
that the air force, police, the Carter Observatory in
Wellington, and other agencies were not co-operating in
investigating the sightings.
Mr Hassall said the report detailed several meetings of the
agencies.
"They discuss how to deal with the problem of reports and they
all agree to co-operate and investigate secretly, but not tell
the public they were exchanging information," he said.
"Secretly they were trying to figure it out. No-one wanted to
deal with the problem of UFO reporting. They didn't know what to
do about them, partly through a lack of resources to adequately
investigate them."
The report concluded that the Kaikoura UFOs were Venus or
reflections from squid boat, train and car lights -- the same
explanation given publicly by scientists in 1979.
Mr Hassall said the report was a whitewash.
"Venus had not risen (over the horizon) when some of the
sightings were made," he said.
"No-one knows for sure what the Kaikoura sightings were. It
could have been an unusual natural phenomenon . . . they (the
ministry) just made a complete shambles of the whole affair."
Mr Hassall also viewed ministry reports on other sightings
detailed in the book. He said he remained "a fair-minded
sceptic" over whether even one was an alien spacecraft.
-- NZPA
Copyright =A9
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