UFOs - Generals, Pilots And Governmant Officials Go On

Page 160 of 229

Page 160 of 229
UFOs - Generals, Pilots And Governmant Officials Go On

Page Content (OCR)

controller, Ms. Callahan was branch manager for Flight Service Data Systems (FSDS) of the Airways Facilities organization, the part of the FAA which provides the hardware support for all its air traffic control systems. She later became division manager for the Automated Radar Terminal Systems (ARTS) software programs, and retired from the FAA in 1995, after twenty-eight years there. Dori Callahan remembers well that this high-level debriefing was called a short time after her husband presented his data to the admiral, and also that he told her what happened there immediately afterward. In addition, as an FAA expert, she later analyzed the radar printouts on the Alaska case, which Callahan had provided for the CIA at the meeting, along with the explanatory drawings prepared by the engineering and software staffs from the Tech Center. "And since I had worked in both hardware and software organizations at one time, I understood all of it," she explained in a 2009 e-mail. John Callahan points out that, when looking at the unusual radar data during the briefing, the hardware department said it was obviously a software problem, and the software department said it was clearly a hardware problem. "Both teams were fully experienced and knew the air traffic software system, and both were fully capable of knowing when the system was not working correctly," Ms. Callahan stated in her e-mail. "In other words, there was nothing wrong with the hardware at the time of the JAL 1628 sighting, and the software was working as well. Looking at the radar display of the object darting in and around JAL 1628, it was obvious that there was an object changing positions around the jet. If it had been ghosting [a false target] as suggested by the FAA, all traffic in that control area would have had ghosting, and it would not have moved in front of and behind the aircraft." In contrast to the O'Hare incident, the FAA did conduct an official investigation two months after the Alaska event—mainly because there was radar evidence, and because "public interest" forced the issue. The FAA wanted "to ensure that somebody didn't violate airspace we control," a spokesman explained at the time. [20] But maybe there were other reasons the agency looked into this. Despite the FAA's proclaimed disinterest in UFOs, Richard O. Gordon, an official from the FAA's Flight Standards Office, informed the JAL captain of a surprising scenario during a lengthy 1987 interview. He said that the captain's detailed account was "very, very interesting and we need to see if we can figure out what is there” As revealed in a verbatim transcript, [21] Gordon then described plans to take the information provided by the captain and send it to Washington so authorities there could find out if it matched any previous reports. "We have a lot of stuff where pilots have had other sightings," he declared. He told the captain that maybe his description and drawings will be the same as what happened "in Arizona and New York or wherever," and that "we got a place in Washington, D.C.,