Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

A Governor's gut: They're out there

Arizona's ex-exec says he thinks that a 1997 sighting was a UFO.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 24, 2007

PHOENIX - Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who trotted out an aide dressed as an alien 10 years ago to spoof the frenzy surrounding mysterious lights in the Phoenix sky, now says the lights were actually an alien spacecraft.

Symington is keying in on the anniversary of the sighting of the so-called "Phoenix lights" by reversing course, saying the lights were really extraterrestrial and that he saw a UFO himself.

"I know just about every machine that flies," Symington said. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. I don't know why people would ridicule it."

During a news conference in 1997, Symington told a press conference that an alien had been captured. He then ushered out his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, dressed in an alien costume.

Symington recently told a UFO investigator that he hadn't acknowledged his encounter at the time because he didn't want people to panic. He repeated the story in media interviews, saying the craft he saw was "enormous. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly."

The lights, which appeared on March 13, 1997, were widely explained as flares dumped by a military training flight, though many doubt the official story.

Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he investigated two sightings over Phoenix that night and traced them to A-10 aircraft flying at high altitude.

"It was clearly aircraft in formation, flying at two different times and then dropping flares, and it's clear to any rational person that's what it was," McGaha said.

McGaha said Symington "is not a trained observer and what he feels in his gut doesn't make any difference."

[Last modified March 24, 2007, 08:50:58]