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people in Arizona, and my office was at once besieged with phone calls from concerned Arizonians. Even so, I managed to keep my head down — until two months later, when a story about the sightings appeared in USA Today. Catalyzed by the article, hysteria intensified to a point that I decided to lighten the mood and add a note of levity by calling a press conference at which my chief of staff arrived in alien costume. Originally my idea, this was one my team immediately embraced with enthusiasm. Not only would it dampen any incipient panic, it would show the human face of those who hold public office. In the event, we did manage to calm the public's developing anxiety and, despite the fact that, in the process, we also upset a few of my constituents, I felt that our approach had ultimately served a greater good. With hindsight, however, I would like to set one part of the record straight. As I assured James Fox when he interviewed me for his n ew nT documentary film, Out of the Blue, it was never my intention to ridicule anyone. My office did make inquiries—of the Department of Public Safety, the Air National Guard, and the lead officers at Luke Air Force Base—as to the origin of the craft, but to this day all of these remain unanswered. Eventually, the Air National Guard claimed responsibility, stating that at the time its pilots had been dropping flares. This explanation, however, defies common sense, for flares do not fly in formation. Indeed, such a narrative seems indicative of the attitude one all too often encounters in official channels, which provide ex post facto rationales— e.g., weather balloons, swamp gas, and military flares—apparently meant to accord with our experience and expectations rather than our 4 accord with and expectations to our our observations. I was never satisfied by this silly explanation. For, although, as suggested by analysis (by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, among others) of a video taken then, there may well have been military flares in the sky later that evening—around ten o'clock, to be exact—what I and so many others observed between eight and eight-thirty was, on inspection, something else entirely: a huge and mysterious craft. Today, of course, I know that I was not alone in having witnessed something so extraordinary. There are many high-ranking military aviation and government officials who have witnessed similar apparently and who have and government officials who have witnessed similar apparently inexplicable things at other times and in other quarters of the sky, and who share my concern that our government disparages these facts at its, and our, peril. Some of them have come together in this book, and I join them in suggesting a new approach to this problem. With due respect, we want the United States government to cease perpetuating the myth that a// UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms. Instead, our country needs to reopen the official investigation it shut down in 1970. We should no longer shun international dialogue on this important subject. Rather, we urge the appropriate agencies of our government to work in cooperation with countries that have already begun exchanging reports of