My first UFO Conference

From: http://lucianarchy.proboards21.com

Okay, My name is Andy Murray aka murnut and here is my report of my first UFO conference. It was sponsored by the Budd Hopkins Intruders Foundation… http://www.intrudersfoundation.org/ … The ticket cost thirty bucks.

It was held in NYC, I live about an hour and a half away by train away from it. The event was within 2 blocks of Penn Station. It was to start at 7:30 pm but as excited as I was, I arrived at 7.

The event was held in a small room and there were about 60-70 people in attendance. The crowd was mostly older, late 50’s -60’s and all of the seats were taken.

Budd opened the meeting at 7:35pm and thanked us all for coming. He proceeded to thank James Fox www.outofthebluethemovie.com/ …and the main speaker for the night, Leslie Kean www.freedomofinfo.org

Budd went on to tell us about Leslie’s background as a reporter.
She is the one who got a judge to force NASA to search its records about the Kecksburg, PA. UFO crash.

Leslie came to the podium with heavy applause. She mostly spoke about the Press conference held on Nov 12 at the National Press Club. She and James Fox organized the event. The planning took place for over a year, starting in August of 2006.

During the planning, there were certain principals that she and James wanted to maintain.

Summary of the principles

The main principle was to increase credibility. It seems to have worked.

The witnesses were to read their accounts from a pre-approved script, Leslie and James did not want to give any fodder to the media.

They only wanted the best UFO witnesses, pilots, Govt employees, military, documented cases…etc.

They also invited the USA Govt to participate in the event. No reply was received. They took a non-accusatory stance towards our lack of government action.

They purposely left the ET/Alien question out of the discussions as a way to not cloud the issue.

Part of the serious hook was the Aviation safety aspect. Did you know that the FAA radars have many types of filters built in that screen out most unknowns? I did not.
They only track “knowns” for the most part. This is the way the FAA wants it. They want nothing to do with UFO’s.

Back to the planning stages Leslie briefed us on….the witnesses arrived 3 days before the event. James Fox filmed the whole 3 –days as material for a new movie he has coming out, to be released in theaters.

The witnesses had not met each other before and they enjoyed some time together practicing for the big day.

Leslie Kean went on to emphasize that she was extremely concerned about the media taking the issue seriously. She stressed that the witnesses were to stay on script and not give any potential fodder to the media.

They kept the press conference secret until 1 week before the event.
A list of the witnesses is list on her website mentioned above.

She then played select parts from a DVD of the 11/12/07press conference giving us a little background on each witness. She did not play them all, as there was not enough time.

She played Fife Symington remarks first; he moderated the conference as well as told of his experience with the Phoenix lights.

I had always held a grudge with Fife, for that press conference he held after the Phoenix lights sighting, trotting out his assistant dressed up as an alien in handcuffs.

But his speech was in fact pretty convincing as to why he did it, and his own account of sighting the craft that night was moving. He was credible, convincing, and encouraged openness and a logical pursuit of the facts.

He points to two events that night, the original large craft that he and others saw at 8:30pm and the flares at about 10pm. Most of the footage you see about this event are the flares.

Next the video turned to Ray Bowyer http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=25606
What I was left with about his testimony was the stark difference between our FAA and Airlines, and the British.

Ray Bowyer stated that it would be against the law for him not to report the incident.

He has suffered no ridicule or repercussions from his report. Just compare that with the FAA and United airlines handling of the O’Hare sighting.
Extremely credible he was in his presentation. He stated that it his understanding the FAA refers all attempted reporting of UFO reports to the National UFO reporting center, www.nuforc.org . The FAA does not investigate.

All through these video replays, Leslie continued to add insightful comments.

Next up on the DVD, was Nick Pope, who ran UFO sighting investigations for the British MOD http://www.nickpope.net/ . Again a stark difference was apparent between our Govt’s lack of investigation and the rest of the worlds. He spoke of his background and said that out of 10,000 ufo reports in the UK, 5% remain unexplained.

He introduced James Penniston – TSgt, US Air Force (Ret.) of the Rendlesham Forrest sighting. http://www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/ .
Again this witness was credible. James stated that there were over 60 witnesses to this event. He was told never to discuss the event by a DIA debriefer.


Here are some more of the participants that Leslie played from the DVD

Parviz Jafari – General, Iranian Air Force (Ret) Excellent witnesses and there is a DIA report of this encounter. http://www.nicap.org/tehran1.htm

Wilfried De Brouwer - Major General, Deputy Chief of Staff Operations and Planning (Ret.)
Belgian Air Force. He investigated the Belgium UFO Black triangle flap of the late 1980’s. http://www.nationalufocenter.com/ufo/images/Belgian%20Triangle.jpg

Jean-Claude Ribes - Astronomer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, 1963-1998. He commented on the Cometa report, and talk about the French releasing their UFO files on line.

John Callahan - Division Chief of Accidents, Evaluations and Investigations, FAA (Ret.)

Callahan’s remarks were impressive. Leslie stated he was the only one to go off script, but it was not to the detriment of his testimony.
Most should be aware of his story having to do with Japanese pilots sighting of an enormous UFO over Anchorage Alaska. http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/JALalaska.htm

He stated that the CIA took over the case and swore everyone to secrecy.

But John kept copies of all the data. Leslie commented that they tried to find the actual pilots in Japan, even hiring a private investigator. They did locate one of the pilots, but his wife was opposed, saying “No UFO, No UFO”

After a short break for refreshments, a short question and answer period ensued, most having to do with the perception of the U.S. media with regards to the UFO question.

Leslie offered comments from her experience, notably her discussions with other reporters. Apparently there is a UFO bias among reporters.

One reporter related to Leslie that he does not want to cover UFO’s for fear that he would get stuck with all the “weird” stories.

Leslie also went on the say that she has made many contacts in the media, Govt, and military over the past year and she is working on a number of UFO projects. Most of her attention now is on keeping these credible stories in the media’s eye.

The main focus of the Press Conference, according to Leslie, was to bring attention to the fact that there is no official Govt investigating body here in the States. At the end I will post a link to the Declaration.

She did say that with the upcoming election, no lawmakers will take a stand now, although some have expressed an interest.

After the event ended, I took the opportunity to briefly speak with Leslie.

I asked if John Callahan could remember the name of the CIA official who debriefed him, and apparently, he can’t remember.

I asked her about making Freedom of Information requests, since my own request has been not been answered yet.

She stated that all requests should be done with certified mail, so that someone has to sign for it.

We also had a brief discussion about which Govt agency should over see the new initiative…a la Project Blue Book.

All agreed that Blue book was a failure. Some wanted an independent commission, some wanted it done at the University level, some suggested NASA, and however, Kean laughed at that. She is suing NASA at the moment.

My idea was Homeland Security. The only trouble is that I have little faith in any of these really. Most likely it would just be spun whatever way the real insiders want it spun. A sham commission, if you will. But I remain open minded that Leslie can find a way.

The general consensus of this group was the US govt maybe investigating UFO’s privately. The testimony of the witnesses seems to confirm this. Many FOI documents indicate a private effort as well.

There was speculation as to why the public silence from the US Govt. Some expressed opinions that the Govt just does not know what to tell us.
The Govt has no answers to give us.
Others think that the answers lie in U.S. Black projects.

At this point, it was almost 10pm and we all were being asked to leave.

Luckily, I bumped into Robert Morningstar on the way out who proceeded to tell me about his latest project “The Battle of Los Angeles” sighting of the 1940’s.

He stated to me that he has credible information, that the UFO was a giant Black triangle. He is in the process of preparing his report.


All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this meeting and I was left with the hope that Leslie Kean is the best hope the UFO community has for mainstream acceptance.

She is media savvy, and has added much needed credibility to this subject. I am going to follow her work closely in the future.

Will certainly be attending more events in the future.

Budd Hopkins told me he is working on getting the Rendlesham Forrest witness, James Penniston for the next event. I will be there.


Andy Murray

http://www.freedomofinfo.org/national_press_07/declartion.pdf