Decorated Air Force Captain and Former AZ Governor Fife Symington reports Close Encounter with UFO
William W. Warwick IV
March 26, 2007
“Phoenixgate ?”
Byline: Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington III comes clean about Close Encounter with UFO during Phoenix Lights
Written By: Investigative Journalist - William W. Warwick IV
Copyright 2007 - William W. Warwick IV – All Rights Reserved
By the time this story reaches you the Anderson Cooper 360 daily news program on CNN will have already aired their short segment about former Governor of Arizona Fife Symington III’s sudden change of heart in revealing that he too saw strange and still unexplained immense triangular or boomerang shaped objects “floating,” over Phoenix Park at 8:25pm MST on March 13, 1997.
This stunning revelation by the former highest elected official in Arizona marks a historic turning point for UFO enthusiasts who have been waiting for such a disclosure for decades. Phoenix Lights eyewitness Mike Fortson said, “This is huge, no other publicly elected official besides former Phoenix city councilwoman Francis Barwood has ever come out to report a UFO sighting publicly before.”
Unlike most uncorroborated UFO stories, the former Governor appears to be backed up by no less than 700 individual witnesses who, according to Frances Barwood, “jammed the telephone lines at City Hall with over 1200 calls,” shortly after it was publicized that Mrs. Barwood had simply asked her fellow councilmen if anyone was looking going to look into all the reports of massive objects that had apparently visited the Phoenix area on March 13, 1997.
In one of many exclusive interviews she has given me over the past three months, Barwood says that over the next few months after her questioning the city council about these events, she personally spoke to over 700 of the nearly 1200 callers who flooded the city hall switchboard demanding that action be taken to investigate the lights. She said her efforts to investigate the situation were thwarted at every step and now Governor Symington has revealed in his CNN interview on Anderson Cooper 360, that he too was unable to get any information from Federal or other officials when he made private inquiries as to the events that he now says he also personally witnessed on the evening of March 13, 1997.
For those unfamiliar with this story, the Governor’s revelation comes as a total shock to those following what has become the most widely publicized UFO event in modern history. Certainly no other alleged UFO event has garnered as much attention since the alleged infamous Roswell crash of a flying disc.
Former President Jimmy Carter reported a UFO when he was still Governor, and apparently while President he asked the CIA for information regarding UFO’s. The former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George H. Bush was alleged to have replied that the President didn’t have the “clearance,” for access to such information.
More recently in 2004, when UFO investigator and UFO civil rights activist Steven Greer held a conference in Washington D.C. called the X-conference, more than 50 high ranking retired military officers and other competent officials gave their testimony of alleged UFO cover-ups and other UFO information.
When Steven Greer attempted to present his evidence to Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19, 2004, asking Hatch to hold a congressional hearing on the matter, Senator Hatch (according to a congressional staff member) says in his reply on April 22 that, “no such hearing would ever be given, now, nor ever," and that, "UFO's and ET's will never be the topic of a Congressional hearing."
Even more disturbing according to Greer is that the Senator’s staff member said that the decision to ignore his evidence was made without even consulting the documentary materials provided.
In the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 interview aired on Wednesday evening March 21, 2007, Governor Symington admitted publicly for the first time that, “The lights were really bright and it was just fascinating, and it was enormous, it just felt otherworldly, you know in your gut you could just tell it was just otherworldly,” Symington says describing the giant solid object that he witnessed in Phoenix park at 8:25pm on March 13, 1997.
When questioned about the origins of the craft he witnessed, the former Vietnam War pilot and US Air Force Captain told CNN reporters that, “I suspect that unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise, I think it was an alien spacecraft,” making this already bizarre story one for the history books, squarely putting the burden of proof on the US Department of Defense to prove that his UFO sighting was NOT of a man made craft.
Symington’s challenge to the U.S. military establishment to prove him otherwise comes on the heels of more recent alleged UFO sighting’s in Phoenix in February 2007, when military aircraft alleged that they were dropping flares on bombing ranges 130 miles away from Phoenix, giving rise to UFO skeptics assertion that the Phoenix Lights sightings in 1997 were all due to the same type of flares.
One retired Northwest Airlines Captain and original Phoenix Lights witness I interviewed, Trig Johnston, said that, “the flare theory is just a cover story and I can prove it.” He plans to attend the Eyewitness 2007 – You are not Alone conference on March 31, 2007 near Phoenix to prove it in a demonstration he will give for the attendees. Trig also made a good point that, “the types of flares that the military says they are dropping are meant to be dropped at 1,000 feet altitude to illuminate the ground so that troops on the ground can see the terrain.”
Since the most recent flares dropped by the military in February of 2007 had to be at least 10,000 -15,000 feet high to be seen in Phoenix from 130 miles away, Captain Johnston remarks, “why are they dropping ground illumination flares so high?”
Captain Johnston says, “I was there, what I saw in Phoenix at 10:22pm MST in Phoenix was not flares, it was a solid boomerang shaped object, nearly a mile wide.”
Many other witnesses, like former Navy man Mike Fortson, said that, “there is no way what we and our neighbors saw was a flare, it was a solid boomerang shaped object that was nearly a mile wide.”
Now that former Governor Symington has come forward and said on national TV that he thinks the craft he saw was of alien origins, the close lipped US government will be hard pressed to dismiss so many witnesses that are all describing the same objects on the same night. When asked to describe his feelings about his UFO encounters on CNN, Symington responded that, “If you had been here ten years ago and looking up at the lights and the view, um, you would have been astounded, you would have been amazed.”
When asked why he put on the bizarre alien costume and press conference on June 19, 1997 in an attempt to ridicule the situation, Symington responded, “I think as a public figure, you have to be very careful about what you say, because people can have pretty emotional reactions, and I said my goal wasn’t to try and stir the pot.” He went on to say that, “I still behind the scenes tried to find out more about the incident, but didn’t get anywhere,” Symington says.
Regardless of what you believe about UFO’s and ET, no one can argue that at least two publicly elected officials now, have gone on record attesting to the events that transpired in Phoenix on March 13, 1997, something which UFO researchers have been waiting to happen for nearly 60 years since the infamous alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell New Mexico in 1947.
Having been investigating this story for over 10 years, I can tell you that there is far more to this story than we can fit in an article, and only time will tell how much of an impact this will have on people’s beliefs in UFO’s and other paranormal activity. Certainly more people will be emboldened to come forward as this story develops and I for one will be watching to see what happens next. I have yet to see a Hollywood Sci-Fi script that has as many twists and turns as this story has.
This could potentially become the biggest story on the planet and given the US government’s long assertion that UFO’s don’t exist, Governor Symington’s account of what happened in Phoenix could become the next big government scandal, eclipsing even the Watergate break ins. Perhaps we should be calling this, “Phoenixgate?”
Many questions are still unanswered though, like what exactly happened that evening and why is the government lying about it. If all the UFO sightings in Phoenix are due to advanced military aircraft like the B-2 or F-117, why not just tell the American people that these UFO sightings are due to secret military test aircraft and end all the commotion.
Backed up by over 700 reported eyewitness testimonies from concerned Phoenix citizens, documentary film director and producer James Fox interviewed Phoenix resident Stacy Roads who asked many questions about the events that took place on March 13, 1997 which Fox made an audio recording of.
When Fox took the tape recording to Fife Symington’s Santa Barbara home in August of 2006 he never expected anything but a denial of the events. To Fox’s surprise, Symington was visibly upset by his former constituents questions and after playing the tape, Symington admitted for the first time that he too was not only a witness to the immense UFO’s, but that he did in fact make official inquires, but to no avail.
Symington’s unscripted reactions and thoughts were captured by Fox on video tape and will be released in late April 2007, when Fox finishes re-editing and including the new material in his hit documentary UFO movie, Out of the Blue.
Meanwhile, Phoenix residents and witnesses don’t have to wait for answers since Francis Barwood, Captain Trig Johnston, Mike Fortson and other witnesses have organized and will be participating in a grassroots conference called Eyewitness 2007 – You are Not Alone, near Phoenix this weekend on March 31 and April 1, 2007. According to organizers, the conference is being held to support, document and share information regarding the Phoenix Lights and related events. Professional videographer’s, will be present to take video testimony from any witnesses that wish to have their sightings documented.
Eyewitness 2007 Executive Producer Carrie Clark of Sirius Seminars said that, “This conference will give the Phoenix Lights witnesses a voice that has yet to be heard. Governor Symington’s revelations, although ground breaking, do nothing to diminish the weight of the testimony that hundreds of other people will be giving at this conference. Fife Symington is just one person, if anyone doubts that something extra-ordinary happened that evening we will have the video testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses to back him up. This conference will mark the largest gathering of video taped UFO eyewitness testimonies in history.”
In addition to being Governor of Arizona, Fife Symington also proudly served with the United States Air Force and was stationed at Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, Arizona. He received the Bronze Star for service in Vietnam and he attained the rank of Captain.
When Symington contacted the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the general of the National Guard, and the head of the Department of Public Safety, none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were all, “perplexed.”
In the meantime, despite Senator Orrin Hatch’s assertion that, “no hearing will ever be held on the subject of UFO’s,” the American people have a right to know what’s going on in their skies and they certainly don’t deserve to be lied to. There seems to be only one question left for the Phoenix Lights and other UFO eyewitnesses, “When will they be back?”
Eyewitness 2007 – You are Not Alone: Beyond the Phoenix Lights
March 31, 2007 and April 1, 2007
Thunderbird Executive Inn and Conference Center – Glendale AZ
For Tickets call: 1-800-900-7030 or www.siriusseminars.com
Thanks to Leslie Kean for breaking this story: www.freedomofinfo.org
Thanks to Producer and Director James Fox: www.outofthebluethemovie.com
Investigative Journalist William W. Warwick IV: mmmceo@cs.com
For more information on Eyewitness 2007: www.TheNorfolkIncident.com
Byline: Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington III comes clean about Close Encounter with UFO during Phoenix Lights
Written By: Investigative Journalist - William W. Warwick IV
Copyright 2007 - William W. Warwick IV – All Rights Reserved
By the time this story reaches you the Anderson Cooper 360 daily news program on CNN will have already aired their short segment about former Governor of Arizona Fife Symington III’s sudden change of heart in revealing that he too saw strange and still unexplained immense triangular or boomerang shaped objects “floating,” over Phoenix Park at 8:25pm MST on March 13, 1997.
This stunning revelation by the former highest elected official in Arizona marks a historic turning point for UFO enthusiasts who have been waiting for such a disclosure for decades. Phoenix Lights eyewitness Mike Fortson said, “This is huge, no other publicly elected official besides former Phoenix city councilwoman Francis Barwood has ever come out to report a UFO sighting publicly before.”
Unlike most uncorroborated UFO stories, the former Governor appears to be backed up by no less than 700 individual witnesses who, according to Frances Barwood, “jammed the telephone lines at City Hall with over 1200 calls,” shortly after it was publicized that Mrs. Barwood had simply asked her fellow councilmen if anyone was looking going to look into all the reports of massive objects that had apparently visited the Phoenix area on March 13, 1997.
In one of many exclusive interviews she has given me over the past three months, Barwood says that over the next few months after her questioning the city council about these events, she personally spoke to over 700 of the nearly 1200 callers who flooded the city hall switchboard demanding that action be taken to investigate the lights. She said her efforts to investigate the situation were thwarted at every step and now Governor Symington has revealed in his CNN interview on Anderson Cooper 360, that he too was unable to get any information from Federal or other officials when he made private inquiries as to the events that he now says he also personally witnessed on the evening of March 13, 1997.
For those unfamiliar with this story, the Governor’s revelation comes as a total shock to those following what has become the most widely publicized UFO event in modern history. Certainly no other alleged UFO event has garnered as much attention since the alleged infamous Roswell crash of a flying disc.
Former President Jimmy Carter reported a UFO when he was still Governor, and apparently while President he asked the CIA for information regarding UFO’s. The former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George H. Bush was alleged to have replied that the President didn’t have the “clearance,” for access to such information.
More recently in 2004, when UFO investigator and UFO civil rights activist Steven Greer held a conference in Washington D.C. called the X-conference, more than 50 high ranking retired military officers and other competent officials gave their testimony of alleged UFO cover-ups and other UFO information.
When Steven Greer attempted to present his evidence to Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19, 2004, asking Hatch to hold a congressional hearing on the matter, Senator Hatch (according to a congressional staff member) says in his reply on April 22 that, “no such hearing would ever be given, now, nor ever," and that, "UFO's and ET's will never be the topic of a Congressional hearing."
Even more disturbing according to Greer is that the Senator’s staff member said that the decision to ignore his evidence was made without even consulting the documentary materials provided.
In the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 interview aired on Wednesday evening March 21, 2007, Governor Symington admitted publicly for the first time that, “The lights were really bright and it was just fascinating, and it was enormous, it just felt otherworldly, you know in your gut you could just tell it was just otherworldly,” Symington says describing the giant solid object that he witnessed in Phoenix park at 8:25pm on March 13, 1997.
When questioned about the origins of the craft he witnessed, the former Vietnam War pilot and US Air Force Captain told CNN reporters that, “I suspect that unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise, I think it was an alien spacecraft,” making this already bizarre story one for the history books, squarely putting the burden of proof on the US Department of Defense to prove that his UFO sighting was NOT of a man made craft.
Symington’s challenge to the U.S. military establishment to prove him otherwise comes on the heels of more recent alleged UFO sighting’s in Phoenix in February 2007, when military aircraft alleged that they were dropping flares on bombing ranges 130 miles away from Phoenix, giving rise to UFO skeptics assertion that the Phoenix Lights sightings in 1997 were all due to the same type of flares.
One retired Northwest Airlines Captain and original Phoenix Lights witness I interviewed, Trig Johnston, said that, “the flare theory is just a cover story and I can prove it.” He plans to attend the Eyewitness 2007 – You are not Alone conference on March 31, 2007 near Phoenix to prove it in a demonstration he will give for the attendees. Trig also made a good point that, “the types of flares that the military says they are dropping are meant to be dropped at 1,000 feet altitude to illuminate the ground so that troops on the ground can see the terrain.”
Since the most recent flares dropped by the military in February of 2007 had to be at least 10,000 -15,000 feet high to be seen in Phoenix from 130 miles away, Captain Johnston remarks, “why are they dropping ground illumination flares so high?”
Captain Johnston says, “I was there, what I saw in Phoenix at 10:22pm MST in Phoenix was not flares, it was a solid boomerang shaped object, nearly a mile wide.”
Many other witnesses, like former Navy man Mike Fortson, said that, “there is no way what we and our neighbors saw was a flare, it was a solid boomerang shaped object that was nearly a mile wide.”
Now that former Governor Symington has come forward and said on national TV that he thinks the craft he saw was of alien origins, the close lipped US government will be hard pressed to dismiss so many witnesses that are all describing the same objects on the same night. When asked to describe his feelings about his UFO encounters on CNN, Symington responded that, “If you had been here ten years ago and looking up at the lights and the view, um, you would have been astounded, you would have been amazed.”
When asked why he put on the bizarre alien costume and press conference on June 19, 1997 in an attempt to ridicule the situation, Symington responded, “I think as a public figure, you have to be very careful about what you say, because people can have pretty emotional reactions, and I said my goal wasn’t to try and stir the pot.” He went on to say that, “I still behind the scenes tried to find out more about the incident, but didn’t get anywhere,” Symington says.
Regardless of what you believe about UFO’s and ET, no one can argue that at least two publicly elected officials now, have gone on record attesting to the events that transpired in Phoenix on March 13, 1997, something which UFO researchers have been waiting to happen for nearly 60 years since the infamous alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell New Mexico in 1947.
Having been investigating this story for over 10 years, I can tell you that there is far more to this story than we can fit in an article, and only time will tell how much of an impact this will have on people’s beliefs in UFO’s and other paranormal activity. Certainly more people will be emboldened to come forward as this story develops and I for one will be watching to see what happens next. I have yet to see a Hollywood Sci-Fi script that has as many twists and turns as this story has.
This could potentially become the biggest story on the planet and given the US government’s long assertion that UFO’s don’t exist, Governor Symington’s account of what happened in Phoenix could become the next big government scandal, eclipsing even the Watergate break ins. Perhaps we should be calling this, “Phoenixgate?”
Many questions are still unanswered though, like what exactly happened that evening and why is the government lying about it. If all the UFO sightings in Phoenix are due to advanced military aircraft like the B-2 or F-117, why not just tell the American people that these UFO sightings are due to secret military test aircraft and end all the commotion.
Backed up by over 700 reported eyewitness testimonies from concerned Phoenix citizens, documentary film director and producer James Fox interviewed Phoenix resident Stacy Roads who asked many questions about the events that took place on March 13, 1997 which Fox made an audio recording of.
When Fox took the tape recording to Fife Symington’s Santa Barbara home in August of 2006 he never expected anything but a denial of the events. To Fox’s surprise, Symington was visibly upset by his former constituents questions and after playing the tape, Symington admitted for the first time that he too was not only a witness to the immense UFO’s, but that he did in fact make official inquires, but to no avail.
Symington’s unscripted reactions and thoughts were captured by Fox on video tape and will be released in late April 2007, when Fox finishes re-editing and including the new material in his hit documentary UFO movie, Out of the Blue.
Meanwhile, Phoenix residents and witnesses don’t have to wait for answers since Francis Barwood, Captain Trig Johnston, Mike Fortson and other witnesses have organized and will be participating in a grassroots conference called Eyewitness 2007 – You are Not Alone, near Phoenix this weekend on March 31 and April 1, 2007. According to organizers, the conference is being held to support, document and share information regarding the Phoenix Lights and related events. Professional videographer’s, will be present to take video testimony from any witnesses that wish to have their sightings documented.
Eyewitness 2007 Executive Producer Carrie Clark of Sirius Seminars said that, “This conference will give the Phoenix Lights witnesses a voice that has yet to be heard. Governor Symington’s revelations, although ground breaking, do nothing to diminish the weight of the testimony that hundreds of other people will be giving at this conference. Fife Symington is just one person, if anyone doubts that something extra-ordinary happened that evening we will have the video testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses to back him up. This conference will mark the largest gathering of video taped UFO eyewitness testimonies in history.”
In addition to being Governor of Arizona, Fife Symington also proudly served with the United States Air Force and was stationed at Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, Arizona. He received the Bronze Star for service in Vietnam and he attained the rank of Captain.
When Symington contacted the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the general of the National Guard, and the head of the Department of Public Safety, none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were all, “perplexed.”
In the meantime, despite Senator Orrin Hatch’s assertion that, “no hearing will ever be held on the subject of UFO’s,” the American people have a right to know what’s going on in their skies and they certainly don’t deserve to be lied to. There seems to be only one question left for the Phoenix Lights and other UFO eyewitnesses, “When will they be back?”
Eyewitness 2007 – You are Not Alone: Beyond the Phoenix Lights
March 31, 2007 and April 1, 2007
Thunderbird Executive Inn and Conference Center – Glendale AZ
For Tickets call: 1-800-900-7030 or www.siriusseminars.com
Thanks to Leslie Kean for breaking this story: www.freedomofinfo.org
Thanks to Producer and Director James Fox: www.outofthebluethemovie.com
Investigative Journalist William W. Warwick IV: mmmceo@cs.com
For more information on Eyewitness 2007: www.TheNorfolkIncident.com
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