Was the Secret Service Overruled in the Release of FAA Radar Data on the Stephenville UFO?
I have learned that a UFO researcher, BJ Booth, had posted an article on his website with evidence for his theory that the UFO sighted in Stephenville Texas, was headed towards the Crawford Ranch on January 8, 2008. He claims that he was subsequently contacted by a government agency and told to take down the offending article within a few hours of its original posting on January 25 since it might cause public panic. According to an individual who was subsequently contacted by Booth sometime in January/February, the agency was the Secret Service (click here). I have subsequently been able to confirm the individual's claim that Booth did confide these events to him. Here is what Booth wrote after the MUFON radar report came out on July 4, 2008:
This amazing report will show that theories of UFOs moving in the direction of President Bush's Crawford, TX ranch were accurate, a theory that I agreed with, and proposed in an article. I posted photographs of the no-fly zone, and proposed the possibility of the Air Force's involvement being related to UFOs approaching the no-fly zone. However, under direction from a government agency [Secret Service], I was told to remove this page from the Internet. The reason given was that the information and theory might cause "public panic, and public distrust in our government." [click here]
If confirmed, Booth's claims demonstrate the important national security concerns surrounding the Stephenville UFO sighting in relation to President Bush's Crawford Ranch. The last radar sweep released by the FAA at 8 pm (MUFON only requested radar evidence between 5:30 to 7:30 PM in its FOIA requests] showed the UFO 10 miles outside the Crawford Ranch and on a direct trajectory towards it.
This object was traveling to the southeast on a direct course towards the Crawford Ranch, also known as President Bush's western White House. The last time the object was seen on radar at 8:00pm, it was continuing on a direct path to Crawford Ranch and was only 10 miles away (Stephenville Report, p. 7).
Two questions arise. Did the UFO Stephenville actually continue its trajectory and fly over the Crawford Ranch? Second, why did the FAA release to the public radar sweeps confirming behavior of a UFO that might cause, according to the Secret Service, "public panic, and public distrust in our government."
It is highly unlikely that the FAA would have released the radar sweeps requested by MUFON without at some point having to deal with objections by the Secret Service. According to the authors of the MUFON report, the FAA released its radar data on February 19, 2008, five weeks after the FOIA requests were sent out after January 16. That suggests that some time after the Secret Service contacted Booth to remove the incriminating evidence of the UFO heading towards the Crawford Ranch, the FAA released radar sweeps confirming this had indeed happened. It is highly unlikely that the Secret Service would have changed its policy between the time it objected to Booth's evidence going on his website in January and the FAA releasing its UFO data on February 19. I strongly doubt that the FAA would have had the authority on its own to release the Stephenville UFO data and overrule the Secret Service. The question then arises, who overruled the Secret Service?
In an earlier article, I discussed the testimony of former FAA section chief, John Callahan, concerning an interagency group of national security officials who were convened to decide the fate of FAA radar data of a UFO witnessed over Alaska in 1986. Callahan says the following happened at a briefing over the FAA radar data:
They [a group of national security officials] brought in three people from the FBI, three people from the CIA, and three people from Reagan's Scientific Study team - I don't know who the rest of people were but they were all excited. When they got done, they actually swore all these other guys in there that this never took place. We never had this meeting. And this was never recorded. [http://preview.tinyurl.com/6g7nxu ]
If the same circumstances described by John Callahan in relation to FAA radar data of the 1986 Alaska UFO case also applied to radar data of the 2008 Stephenville case, then at some stage an interagency group of national security experts drawn from the FBI, CIA and President Bush's scientific study team, would have reviewed the FAA data of the Stephenville UFO sighting. If Booth's claims are substantiated and the precedent of Callahan's 1986 FAA case is applied to the FAA's handling of the Stephenville UFO, it appears that an interagency group overruled objections by the Secret Service to the release of the radar data. More research is needed to confirm Booth's claims, what agencies were involved in the FAA's decision to release the Stephenville radar files, and to find further radar data of the UFO's trajectory after 8 PM when it may have overflown the Crawford Ranch.
Michael
E. Salla, Ph.D
Kona, Hawaii
07/24/08
www.Exopolitics.Org
Further Reading
FAA Release of Radar Data Signals a new 'Openness Policy' on UFOs - 07/18/08
Busting the no-fly zone myth - 07/23/08
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