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objects were cruising overhead, some perhaps moving rapidly between locations. It took many months for the civilian investigators who took on the case to compile all the reports, map the trajectories, and determine that indeed several objects had been seen. Once again, as in the Hudson Valley wave, no government officials were dispatched to investigate or respond to questions from alarmed and awestruck citizens. To put it bluntly, in 1997 the federal government failed to react to the presence of something huge and unknown invading restricted airspace over a capital city in the United States of America. Phoenix city councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood, responding to pressure from journalists and her constituents, was the only elected official to launch a public investigation. But she said that she too received no information from any level of government. Barwood says she spoke with over seven hundred witnesses who called her office, including police officers, pilots, and former military personnel, all providing very similar descriptions of the objects. Still, government officials seemed uninterested. "They never interviewed even one witness/' Barwood told me in a wre 444 a4 .4 4 conversation a few years ago. "How could they possibly not know about these huge craft flying low over major population centers? That's inconceivable, but it's also frightening." Due to her willingness to respond to public concerns about the incident, Barwood was ruthlessly ridiculed by much of the Phoenix media, including a well-known cartoonist in Arizona's leading newspaper, and she also suffered from disparaging comments by male political figures. "What happened to me was a lesson for other elected officials," she told me. "If you talk about this, you will get ridiculed, chastised, pummeled with everything you can imagine, and eventually lose credibility." Minimal coverage was provided at the time of the incident by the media, even in Phoenix, with a few local papers and news stations making note but not following up. Three months later, on June 18, that all changed when USA Today brought the case into the national spotlight [2] with a front-page story. It was further catapulted onto the network evening news when the sightings were covered, although very minimally, by ABC and NBC, and became known as the "Phoenix Lights." By the time the USA Today story broke, pressure had been mounting within the state of Arizona and public reaction was intensified by this new level of national media attention. Frustrated citizens wanted answers. The next day, on June 19, Republican Governor Fife Symington announced on morning television that he was ordering a full investigation and would make "all the necessary inquiries. We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to find out if it was a UFO."[3] Later that afternoon, he called a press conference, telling people that he would reveal the source behind the Phoenix Lights. With an excited media covering it live, and citizens glued to their sets awaiting the news, Symington shocked some, angered others, and amused many more when