Page Content (OCR)
Department in Connecticut, was standing outside talking with a police officer in July 1984 when both saw a row of lights in a circular pattern. "I would say it was something man-made except that two of the red lights dropped down from the group and went in a different direction behind the mountains. One came back and the other didn't” - Athens reported. [3] Jim Cooke, a biomedical engineer, was shocked to see a triangular object hovering no more than fifteen feet above the water of the Croton Falls Reservoir late one October night in 1983 while driving home. He got out of his car and watched from the edge of the water. "Something came from the underside of the object, a red beam of light or something solid that was glowing red—TI really don't know what. But it seemed to be probing the water," [4] he said. According to Cooke, the object moved slowly over the reservoir, and at each stop the "red probe" interacted with the water, and was then retracted. Like the Belgian craft displaying essentially the same thing, this one was triangular. Heinrich Nicolls description was remarkably similar to Cooke's. He also witnessed the phenomenon over a body of water, which he, too, interpreted to be a probe of some sort. We may never know the purpose of this strange red offshoot of the UFO, but this suggests that very similar objects may have visited both locations in the 1980s. Despite the intriguing similarities, there was a major difference between these events in upstate New York and those in Belgium—not in the details of what actually happened, but in the way these extraordinary close encounters, repeated year after year, were handled by the authorities—those in charge of protecting citizens and monitoring close handled led by the monitoring encounters, year close encounters, repeated year after year, were handled by the authorities—those in charge of protecting citizens and monitoring unregistered air incursions over populated areas. We must remember that the 1989-90 UFO \ wave in Belgium was 1 144 4 14 1 were charge : and handled rationally, openly, and responsibly by the government. The Belgian Air Force was called into action immediately, and other agencies, such as the Gendarmerie Nationale (a combination of police and army) and the Belgian equivalent of our FAA, also cooperated in the mobilization to identify the objects. The Air Force was not only responsive, but was even proactive in its investigation, looking for craft on multiple radar systems, scrambling F-i6s to intercept one on three occasions, and then holding a press conference to explain all this to the public. In addition, state-of-the- art analysis was provided by a number of laboratories on the superior photograph of a craft, one of the best UFO pictures on record. And to take it one step further, the Belgian Air Force made all its data and every resource, including radar stations and even aircraft, available to a highly competent group of civilian scientists who organized data, interviewed witnesses, and kept extensive records. All of these important developments were covered in the European media, with some reporting in the United States, as well. Through it all, the Belgian government did not hide information, issue false explanations, or ridicule witnesses. In fact, we know that Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer, head of the Air Force The head of the authorities—those States, as well.