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privately many have a keen, persistent interest in getting to the bottom of the problem. They want to know what it was they themselves have seen, or what their trusted military colleagues have encountered, and this desire does not diminish over time. These witnesses and insiders recognize the 1 1 : 1.” 1 va sae. extraterrestrial, or maybe interdimensional, possibility; once you have observed one of these bizarre manifestations at close range, your mind is newly opened, through no choice of your own. Even those who were prior debunkers, who would have scoffed at the mere notion of a UFO, are forced to recognize the once inconceivable. They often feel isolated, afraid of ridicule, unsupported by the world around them. But collectively, they may be able to make a difference. a aad 1 oo : 1 1 .o4 thousands of compelling case reports and first-person accounts. We now have accumulated enough data to establish the reality of some kind of consistent physical phenomenon without a doubt. Still, the American government lags behind, refusing to acknowledge any of this, leaving us American citizens stuck in a perpetual stalemate. How can we overcome this? In terms of finding a workable model, we can look to France's UFO agency as the mother of them all, because, as we have seen, its office within CNES has been diligently working on the problem for over thirty years, from a research perspective rather than a military one. By seeking knowledge purely for its own sake, the French have been open to a wide range of explanations for UFOs, as scientists should be. The historic COMETA Report of 1999 broke a barrier when its generals, admirals, and engineers, along with a former head of CNES, brought the issue into the military realm and declared with great authority that even though it had not yet been proved, the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most likely explanation of the phenomenon. Will we ever be able to find out, to the satisfaction of scientists in the world community, what UFOs are and where they come from? Is this something we, as a planetary society, would be capable of deciding to do? If so, we would have to be proactive, rigorously seeking a resolution to this problem, making it a priority. Alternatively, would we prefer to sit back and wait for the seemingly all-powerful flying objects to reveal themselves more fully to us? Nearly all of the most concerned, most credible, and most serious of the government and military officials I have talked to agree on three basic points, when it comes to moving the issue forward: that further scientific investigation is mandated, partly because of the impact of UFOs on aircraft and aviation safety that this investigation must be an international, cooperative venture involving many governments and transcending politics that such a global effort cannot be effective without the participation of the United States, the world's greatest technological power Credible witnesses and government investigators have documented We are locked in by the stifling UFO taboo, which has served to