Is that really Venus?

Interesting to note that the official policy is to "ignore radar
returns that don't comply with the operational characteristics" of
conventional fixed wing aircraft or helicopters.

Controller 1: Anything exciting happen on your shift?

Controller 2: Naw, just 150 or so of those radar returns we're
supposed to ignore because the government says they don't exist.

Controller 1: Is that all? Sounds like you had a quiet shift.

Some of his political detractors probably assert that Dennis Kucinich
routinely sees things that don't exist. (Ronald Reagan, of couse *did*
see one.)

:-)

Item:

WASHINGTON (Nov. 12) - Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis
Kucinich may have been ridiculed for saying he had seen a UFO, but for
some former military pilots and other observers, unidentified flying
objects are no laughing matter.

An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government
officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its
generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security
given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other
strange sightings.


"Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to
ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances
of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement
released at a news conference.

The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military
officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official
investigation into UFO phenomena.

The subject of UFOs grabbed the spotlight in the U.S. presidential
race last month when Kucinich, a member of Congress from Ohio, said
during a televised debate with other Democratic candidates that he had
seen one.

Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter are both reported to
have claimed UFO sightings.

Most turn out to be misidentified aircraft, satellites or meteors. A
panelist who once worked for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5
percent of incidents cannot be explained.

But the sightings are often dismissed by authorities without proper
investigations, UFO activists say.

"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the
government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation
Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up
the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet
in Alaska.

The panel, organized by a group dedicated to winning credibility for
the study of UFOs, urged Washington to resume UFO investigations
through the U.S. Air Force or NASA.

"It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue,"
said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among
hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently
traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.

The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in
what was known as Project Blue Book. Investigators concluded that the
incidents posed no threat and there was no evidence of space aliens or
a super technology in operation.

"Since the termination of Project Blue Book, nothing has occurred that
would support a resumption of UFO investigations," the Air Force said
on its Web site.