LEIR, SIMS, THIRD WITNESS SAY L.A. "METEOR" WAS UFO
Alleged Military Source Says Craft Landed, Took Off Again
[In the last edition of CNI News, we reported on a spectacular aerial event
that occurred the night of October 3, 1996 and was viewed across the western
United States from the Mexican border to northern California. Experts at
UCLA
and Sandia National Laboratory labeled the phenomenon an extraordinary meteor
that may have entered the earth's atmosphere, bounced back into space,
orbited the planet and re-entered again before falling to earth somewhere
in
California -- a sequence of events calculated to explain the wide variety
of
sighting reports that flooded police, radio and television news lines that
night. But that explanation does not begin to square with a sequence of
events described by noted abduction researchers Dr. Roger Leir and Derrel
Sims, who were not only eyewitnesses that night but continued to track a
bizarre series of further events over the next four days.
Leir and Sims were joined by a third witness who wishes to remain anonymous.
CNI News editor Michael Lindemann has met this third witness and can attest
not only that he is real, but that he shows every sign of being highly
credible. This man is a practicing surgeon and also a Brigadier General
in
the Air Force reserves. In the following text, this man's testimony is
reported second hand by Roger Leir, his long-time friend.
The following story was written by Don Robertson, a reporter for the
Carpinteria (California) Coastal View Newspaper, and is reprinted with
permission. Additional remarks by CNI News editor Michael Lindemann are
inserted in brackets.]
By Don Robertson
Carpinteria Coastal View
About 9pm [on October 3], the sky over Los Angeles, and indeed the western
United States, lit up as if it were day, and an object described as green
in
color raced across the sky at a very high altitude, leaving behind it a
trail
that witnesses described as white sparks or star dust. All manner of experts
described the object as a "meteor" or "shooting star."
But, according to Dr. Roger Leir and UFO investigator Derrel Sims, there
was
another event the night of October 3rd, which occurred fifteen minutes before
the one mentioned above.
Leir reported, "Derrel and I were making a trip to the airport in Burbank
last night, and at exactly 8:46pm, on the north side of the 101 freeway,
approximately one-half mile west of Parkway Calabasas, the whole sky lit
up,
and night turned to day! I was driving in the fast lane of the freeway,
and
my mouth fell open, because I saw a huge burning gold ball with a tail coming
out of it that looked something like a comet. It was the most brilliant
silverish-white I've ever seen, and it was dropping sparks toward the ground.
This was traveling just above the level of the hills somewhere between the
area of Bell Canyon and the freeway. And, incidentally, Rocketdyne is in
this area too."
[Rocketdyne used to be one of the primary rocket engine testing facilities
in
the U.S., located in the Simi Hills about six miles southwest of the town
of
Chatsworth, California. It has been shut down and inactive in recent years.
Much of the area remains restricted due, in part, to industrial pollution.
However, there are public thoroughfares in the area that are normally open
to
traffic.]
Leir continued: "We saw this thing and couldn't believe what we were
seeing!
It looked like it was coming down, so we thought it must have smashed into
the hills somewhere, and there's probably going to be a fire. So on the
way
back, we went real slow by there to see if anything's burning, but we didn't
see anything. The only thing we saw that was peculiar was that the lights
on
the north side of the freeway were all out.
"When we got home, we turned on the news, and Channel 2 was broadcasting
interviews and different stories from northern California, to Nevada, to
San
Diego. People were seeing things going in the OPPOSITE direction, and seeing
something that was green... but that's not what Derrel and I saw! We guessed
that if this thing came down, it would be somewhere between the north side
of
the Ventura Freeway (Hwy 101) and where Rocketdyne is, in the Santa Susannas
[south of Hwy 118]."
But Leir and Sims were not the only ones to see this show in the night sky.
Another man, a medical doctor who wishes to remain anonymous, related his
version of the early sighting.
"I saw this!" he said. "I was a skeptic about UFOs, but I
happened to be at
Lake Encino, way up on top of the mountain, above the smog, walking through
the area, and I saw this unusual light. [The doctor's vantage point was
about
8 miles east where Leir and Sims saw the aerial event.] I turned around,
and
in the sky, headed toward Rocketdyne, was a huge red ball of fire with a
gold
center, and just like Roger said, a tail with flakes of silver, and red
surrounding it all. This thing SLOWED DOWN in the sky going toward
Rocketdyne.
"I know Rocketdyne very, very well! I used to practice there,"
the doctor
continued. "The whole mountain top is black with radiation. People
living
near there are trying to sue the city and the government because of it.
"I'm on inactive status in the service. [Actually, this man was recently
promoted to Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserves. Information he
has
given CNI News editor Michael Lindemann suggests that he has high security
clearances.] So I went up the road to Rocketdyne [the next] morning [Friday,
Oct 4]. All of a sudden I saw a bunch of soldiers with blockades there,
and I
couldn't go up. I asked them what was going on. They said, 'Something has
happened and you can't go through.' They had very strange uniforms on. Not
the normal uniforms; not the same color. These guys were the special forces
type; no nonsense. They had been brought in from somewhere else, and spoke
with a southern accent," said the doctor. "And they all seemed
to look
alike.
"My feeling is that nothing CRASHED. The object SLOWED DOWN and came
to rest
up there for some reason," he concluded.
According to Roger Leir, "The doctor went back to Rocketdyne on Saturday
[Oct
5] with his military credentials. After checking them out, the military
asked
him what he wanted. He asked them what was going on up there, and why the
public road was blockaded. He was allowed to continue up the road and saw
a
hillside that was charred where something had burned."
Returning again on Sunday morning, the doctor found the military types gone,
and talked to two civilian security officers. [According to Leir], "He
was
told that 'a space vehicle came down,' and that, 'It was one of ours!' The
military people had conducted a clean up operation. The security men
concluded, 'The vehicle was repaired, and took off early this morning. It's
no biggie, these vehicles land here twice a week,' the doctor was told.
"Something went wrong with the craft," Roger Leir says, "that
caused the
tremendous flash in the sky that we saw. A friend who is an airline pilot
saw
the whole thing while flying. He said there was no way it was a meteor."
[CNI News recognizes that the claim of "space vehicles" landing
in the
California hills "twice a week" borders on preposterous, whether
those
vehicles are "ours" or not. On the other hand, the witnesses in
this case are
impressive. It is possible that the alleged military sources who spoke to
the
anonymous physician fed him disinformation, for reasons unknown. But strange
events were certainly observed in the sky and on the ground, and explanations
remain unsatisfactory. CNI News will continue to track this story and report
further information as it becomes available.]
ALMOST 50% IN FRANCE, OVER HALF IN U.S. BELIEVE IN E.T.
Many Expect Alien Wisdom, Few Expect War
[CNI News thanks James Sutton for forwarding this item from the Reuters
newswire, dated September 30, 1996.
PARIS (Reuter) -- Almost half of the French people believe there is life
on
other planets but just one in 10 fears a war with another world, according
to
a public opinion poll.
The SOFRES poll for the weekly Tele K7 magazine found that 48 percent of
those surveyed believe in extraterrestrials while 45 percent do not.
Asked what extraterrestrials could bring to Earth, 33 percent responded
wisdom and 28 percent said progress.
Meanwhile, according to a Harris poll conducted in August, 53 percent of
adult Americans believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe
and 40 percent believe it exists within our solar system.
Even the skeptics say those numbers are going to increase as the coming
millenium conjures visions of apocalypse and television and film studios
capitalize on the intrinsic appeal of chracters like "ET."
Background Image courtesy H.R.Giger