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WORLD WAR II VETERAN SPEAKS
OUT ON FOO FIGHTERS
capacity, he had occasion to learn about the
foo fighters, as recounted in the following
text:
capacity, he had occasion to learn about the know perfectly that anonymity could
foo fighters, as recounted in the following undermine the credibility of the informa-
text: tion I am about to reveal, but I have no
choice, and, as a consequence of this, nei-
During the Spring of 1998 I went with _ ther have you.
another person to an inland village of Di Rado: Okay. You say that you have
Sicily to meet an 80-year-old man who _ pictures and documents which are extra
claimed to have some unknown docu - evidence of the foo fighters’ existence. Is
ments about foo fighters. this right?
When we arrived at a farmhouse in the Witness: Of course! To be more pre-
heart of the countryside, our witness cise, the documents bear witness to the fact
showed us into a room which seemed to be _ that I was directly involved in some opera-
his private study... We were ordered not to tions of the British intelligence service,
take pictures; we could only make notes. _ while the pictures have been taken out from
To our disappointment, we had to accept some filming photograms shot both from
this. I was given a copy on high resolu - inside military aeroplanes and at some
tion CD-ROM of the pictures and docu - Italian Allied bases.
ments that I saw there in the original ver - | Di Rado: How did you manage to take
sion, with some censored parts. part actively in the operations of the British
A synopsis of the interview follows. intelligence service, although you are not
British?
Di Rado: Why do you want to remain Witness: I was a convinced antifascist.
anonymous? Do you know that you risk Towards the end of 1943, I was in Bari [a
not being believed? Sometimes a witness town in southern Italy] and got to know
who speaks openly can be more reliable _ that the only way to get some money and a
than one hundred pictures. warm meal was to be taken on at the PWB
Witness: You should know that people [Psychological Warfare Branch of British
who have some secret information—and__ intelligence]. The PWB, which was the
there are not more than four or five of us __ organ for the propaganda of the war, was
[in Italy]—risk their lives even if they _ the political-cultural mind of the Allied
change their identity. I've always boasted authorities. It had under its control all the
of having lived through two World Wars newspapers and transmitting stations; it
without once being shot, and I wouldn't _ printed its own newspapers for its soldiers;
want that to happen to me right now. I _ it sent out films to the cinemas; it acted as a
hey remain one of the great unsolved
Tosser of the Second World War.
Foo fighters—often described as
highly manoeuvrable glowing balls of
light—were seen and reported by pilots in
all the theatres of war.
Both Allied and Axis fliers saw them.
The Allies thought foo fighters were a
secret Nazi weapon, but after the war ended
it was learned that the Nazis suspected they
were an Allied creation.
Various conventional theories were put
forth to explain them, including ball light-
ning and electrostatic discharges from the
planes themselves. But, whatever they
were, the foo fighters didn't act like
weapons. They acted like observers, some-
times running harmlessly alongside a war-
plane for miles before suddenly departing
at high speed. And, for many of the pilots
who saw the strange, glowing objects, it
did not seem possible that the foo fighters
were a human creation.
Most accounts of foo fighters date from
the period during and just after the war.
CNI News recently presented a new
account from Italian researcher Fabio Di
Rado at