This interview first appeared in the December/January 2011 edition of “Open Minds Magazine”

Here is a link to “Open Minds”: 
http://www.openminds.tv/magazine/

Leslie Kean Q. and A.

By Sean Casteel

            When this interview was conducted on Labor Day of 2010, Leslie Kean had just found out her book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots And Government Officials Go On The Record” had entered the New York Times bestseller list at number 29, a feat unheard of for a book about UFOs. That kind of encouragement from the mainstream was thrilling for Kean, who commented that her book had been out less than a month at the time.

But it is also thrilling for the UFO community in general. Not since the summer of 1987, when Whitley Strieber’s groundbreaking, first-person abduction history “Communion” went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, followed closely by Budd Hopkins’ “Intruders,” has a book about UFOs seen that kind of real-world success. [On February 26, 2011 , a couple of months after this interview was published, Leslie Kean was presented with the Ufologist of the Year award at the International UFO Congress in Phoenix , AZ. She’s obviously also drawing accolades from within the field as well!]

Kean’s concept is disarmingly simple and one can only wonder why no one had ever thought of it before. In “UFOs,” she has assembled an assortment of case studies that rely completely on factual information, backed up by the testimony of high-level military, aviation and government officials who were, as the title implies, willing to go on the record about cases that fell within their purview as well as their personal experiences with UFOs. The cases include the Bentwaters U.S. Air Force case of 1980-81 and the Belgian wave of 1989-90. While those events may already be familiar to a great many UFO enthusiasts, Kean is able to breathe exciting new life into them with personal testimony, exclusive to her book, by such stalwart military figures as Colonel Charles Halt (retired), who was part of the team investigating the strange lights in Rendlesham Forest near Bentwaters, and Major General Wilfried De Brouwer (retired), who stepped in to deal with the great Belgian wave of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

All of the contributors help Kean to reinvigorate numerous cases that remain unsolved, and by going on the record for her they step out into what are presently uncharted waters. As the status quo of cover-up and denial slowly erodes, thanks to Kean and the others working tirelessly to bring the facts before a public that they believe deserves to know, we can only wonder what the eventual results will be. If it is no longer possible to deny the presence of intelligently controlled unidentified aircraft in our skies, what form will that new openness take?

What Kean proposes is that a new office be set up in the United States to deal with the UFO problem, an office that can avoid the pitfalls that marred the now defunct Project Blue Book. The small office staff would work in conjunction with scientists and experts who contribute their expertise on a volunteer basis and all the information gathered there would be made public.

In the following interview with Leslie Kean we hear a voice that displays not only a rare intelligence and restraint but also the kind of courage that is surely required to deal with the subject of UFOs head-on in the increasingly contentious public arena of believers, skeptics and less-than-honest debunkers. Leslie Kean’s “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record” is more than essential reading for the UFO community. It should be essential reading for everyone else as well.

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Casteel: Can we start with some biographical background? Please talk about your career prior to your interest in UFOs.

Kean:  Before I became interested in UFOs, I was a freelance print journalist and was working as a producer and on-air host for an investigative news program on KPFA radio, a Pacifica station in California . Previously, I had done a lot of freelance publishing on different topics in various newspapers and magazines, both in America and internationally. A lot of these dealt with Burma and the struggle for democracy there. I co-authored a book on this and went to Burma , came back with much footage and important interviews. One of my stories, co-authored with Dennis Bernstein, was a cover story for the Nation magazine about the heroin trade in Burma , which the Nation   selected as its nominee for the Polk Award that year. When I started working at KPFA, my focus broadened to include many topics, with a particular interest in wrongful convictions and the death penalty.  So when everything changed for me with the UFO subject, I already had an established track record as a journalist, which helped a lot in terms of being able to publish on a subject that was actually considered taboo in the culture.

Casteel: Why did you become interested in UFOs? What led you to make them the focus of your work?

Kean: Well, in 1999, a colleague from France sent me a copy of the COMETA Report, a 90-page study written by a group of mostly retired military officials from France – including four generals, one of them a four-star, and an admiral – and the former head of the national space agency in France . It included scientists and engineers as well, a group of very competent professional people.  And they spent three years studying official data about UFOs, which they collected from all over the world. They were curious about the national security aspects of it, being mainly military people, and they studied some of the best cases on record. Then, they came to the conclusion that what they called “the extraterrestrial hypothesis” was the best, most rational, and most likely explanation for the cases that they studied. They made the point that it hadn’t been proven, of course, it was only a hypothesis, but to them it was the most reasonable one and they recognized that the phenomenon needed further study. And they discussed what the implications might be.

            So when I received an advance English translation of this report, which had not yet been released in America or given to any other journalist, I recognized that this was news. As a journalist, I thought, my God, this is a big story! You had a group of high-level officials declaring the legitimacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis and that these things are real, and that they even have military implications.

            So I began looking into the subject professionally, and wrote my first story about the COMETA Report for The Boston Globe, which was published in May of 2000. That was how the whole thing got started for me. I wanted to find out more about the cases and points made by the French group, so I tried to learn more, and that set me on this path of being absolutely fascinated and mystified by the UFO phenomenon, and I haven’t stopped working on it since. My focus as a journalist has always been to apply high journalistic standards to my reporting on this, as I had done with everything else.  Along the way, I’ve published a series of serious stories concerning the UFO subject for the mainstream media, each one requiring a good amount of research on my part.

Casteel: It took ten years to compile all the information in your book. How do you feel looking back at all that effort? What do you think the book will accomplish for the UFO community in general? It’s being hailed by many as a milestone along the road to the truth. So what are your feelings about all that?

Kean: Well, I’m hoping this book can present the best information we have which is absolutely factual, corroborated, irrefutable, within a narrative that is accessible to the mainstream. The book is written for the intelligent, open-minded skeptic who wouldn’t normally read a UFO book, for people who might not normally think about UFOs or be concerned about them. I want to show them that we have incredibly solid information on the record, both in government documents and from high-level sources, that establishes without a doubt that there is some real, physical phenomenon in the sky that we call UFOs, and that we don’t yet know what these things are. For many, this will be a breaking new story, because they’ve never considered it before. So many people have been confused by all the hype, misinformation and sensationalism that’s out there…everything mixed together so that a person can’t separate the facts from the fanciful.

My goal is to bring forward only the kind of information that, let’s say, government officials could accept and relate to. No claims or assumptions. I was very careful, meticulous in that process. Actually, we don’t need to embellish the facts, because they are extraordinary enough.   What’s really unusual about the book, of course, is that the sources have written their own unique pieces. It’s not just me telling you what they say. There are 17 detailed, exclusive pieces in this book written by people other than myself, including five generals and a former U.S. governor, and we also have a foreword by John Podesta.  The readers can hear from them directly and make up their own minds. This is the kind of information that you simply can’t argue with.  I hope the skeptics will read it from beginning to end. That’s what you have to do – you have to read the whole thing, because I’ve presented a cohesive narrative that builds as it goes along. It deals with the taboo as well.  I’m hoping this book can become a tool for change, and be used as a call for action. That’s really the purpose of it.

Casteel: Let’s talk about some of the major cases covered in the book. What do we now know about Bentwaters, for example?

Kean: We know a great deal about Bentwaters, and for those diehard researchers, the book probably will not have many more actual facts than they already know. But what we offer here that’s new are original, exclusive pieces written by the two key witnesses, Colonel Charles Halt and Sergeant James Penniston, specifically for this book.  They write with new detail about their personal involvement and reactions to what happened to them.  James Penniston was profoundly affected by this incident; he was only 25 at the time.  Colonel Halt writes about his men being threatened and drugged after the incident, and this may be new to many people.

 As best they can, the contributors in the book describe their emotions, their responses, what they were thinking and feeling at the time that these things were happening to them, how they handle it now.  They address the kinds of questions that so many people have, that normally we don’t hear such people talk about.  Some of them are reflective, even philosophical. So the book is about presenting the facts of each case, as a priority, but it’s also about letting these people speak for themselves and describe their personal journey, both as official investigators and as firsthand witnesses. And all of them are either military, aviation or government people, as the title says. So it’s the combination of the facts with their own personal experience that I think makes it so compelling.

Casteel: I wanted to talk about the 1976 Iranian case. The pilot’s ability to fire his weapons was canceled repeatedly in a manner that could be neither random nor coincidence. Also, you have stories about near collisions between UFOs and military and civilian aircraft, how those collisions were averted at the last possible moment, which was also not likely a coincidence. So can you fill in some of the details on these kinds of cases? What do you think it all means?

Kean: That’s a really big question. The Iranian pilot writes his own story about this in the book, and the best way to try and understand it is directly from him. He had a heat-seeking missile locked on and targeted on the object that was heading right for him, a number of times. But when he was just about to press the button that would have fired the missile, he lost control of all of his equipment.  So, yes, as you point out, it’s hard to believe that this was a coincidence, given that it happened repeatedly.  In terms of its meaning, it certainly appears that the object was under intelligent control. That sounds like an understatement in this case, but it’s a point many of the book’s contributors made.

The bottom line is that these objects directly affect aircraft. In some situations, pilots feel they have to maneuver suddenly to avoid colliding with UFOs. Whether it be because a pilot has to dive to avoid them, whether they feel threatened and actually attempt to fire, or whether an aircraft is pulled off course by proximity to one – there is a physical affect, and pilots sometimes are forced to respond.  This occurs with military aircraft, prepared to defend themselves, and commercial aircraft, in which case the pilot is simply concerned with passenger safety and avoiding all safety hazards.   

            I think this component adds another level of seriousness to the issue. It also gives us more legitimacy when we ask to have it officially investigated, a right to expect to have it be recognized as a serious issue and not just be ignored. If something is having this kind of affect on aircraft, it’s a safety hazard. So I think this is a very important point, because it gives people in positions of authority a reason to care, a reason to be concerned about UFOs.  It’s much more than just curiosity about what they are: they actually have an impact that has been physically documented.   The aviation safety aspect is a theme that is woven throughout the book, raised by many experts, and brought forth in case reports, such as the Iranian one you mentioned. Also, there was a pilot in Peru who actually shot at one, and he tells his story in UFOs as well.

Another kind of hazard arises when an object is hovering right over an airport, such as one did at O’Hare Airport in 2006 above the United Airlines terminal, undetectable on radar and unpredictable in its behavior. And yet the government completely ignored this and none of the people who witnessed it had any preparation as to how to deal with such an event. Not one witness went on the record, due to concerns about job security and ridicule.  This irrational approach needs to change for the safety of everybody involved.

Casteel: What stands out for you as some of the most compelling stories of all your contributors? Which stories would most likely lead to an open scientific study of the UFO phenomenon?

Kean: That is a good question because there are so many compelling cases that make it hard to pick just one. But I would certainly highlight the Belgian wave of 1989/1990, the chapter written by Major General Wilfried De Brouwer in the book. That was an extraordinary situation of a year and a half of repeated sightings over the small, peaceful country of Belgium . We have much, much evidence including a spectacular photograph of one of the objects. And we have a Major General presenting the evidence, who was head of the Air Force investigation when he was a Colonel. He is convinced that these were not some secret technology being tested by another country, which he checked out carefully with the relevant countries at the time. Even today, he states, we do not have the technology to do what these objects did.

            The Bentwaters case, that you’ve already mentioned, is a very, very strong case. There a number of pilot cases in which there was radar that captured the object, so you have the visual sightings corresponding with the radar targets both in the airplane and from the ground. And those cases are very significant. In Brazil , Brigadier General

Pereira writes about the 1986 event in which many aircraft were involved with a fleet of UFOs that were picked up on radar. Then there’s the 1986 case over Alaska , with a number of objects seen for half an hour by three pilots flying in a Japan Airlines jet, as presented by former FAA official John Callahan in the book. And the Phoenix Lights is another really important one, in 1997 over Arizona ; we have former governor Fife Symington telling his story with regard to that incident.

            I would say those are some of the stronger cases. But even some of the cases that are just touched on in a few pages by, let’s say, Major General Denis Letty of France, who writes about some of the pilots he knows and some things that happened there, some of those cases are really important also. They may not be as well known as the ones I mentioned, and they may not be treated in as much detail in the book, but a lot of these government investigators who have headed up government agencies for decades have some very interesting cases they bring forward. And they’re not necessarily ones that even UFO researchers have already heard about.

            Overall, it’s the accumulation, the aggregate of all the evidence, of all these cases brought together in one place, told by the highest level sources, that makes such a strong statement.  When you combine them all, rather than singling out any one case, that’s when you really get that there’s got to be something going on.

Casteel: How does your approach to governmental openness about UFOs differ from someone like Stephen Bassett or the Disclosure movement in general?

Kean: We’re suggesting that a small government agency, or let’s call it an office, be set up within some department within the U.S. government, such as the Air Force or the Department of Defense, or within NASA.   This could be done quietly, without being a big deal. It would basically be an office with possibly only one staff person, maybe two, that would have a civilian board working very closely with it, a group of retired military people, scientists who have studied this, competent people who could be associated with this office on a volunteer basis to guide it and to make sure that everything is above board.  Obviously we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of Project Blue Book.

            This would be an official focal point for the future study and investigation of significant UFO events.  We need to have that if we’re going to move forward.  If such an office had been in place during the Chicago O’Hare incident, that situation would have been handled completely differently. This office would have an established network within the United States , with all kinds of trained professionals in many different disciplines throughout the country, ready to help when needed.  When an event occurred, we would be in a position to do a proper investigation, and the results would be made public.  The official office would have access to all data right away, which is of course something civilian groups don’t have. In addition, the staff person would interact and coordinate with agencies around the world that already exist, their counterparts who are already investigating UFOs on behalf of governments. So the United States would become one of many agencies working together to try and solve this problem.

            And we’re hoping that, if such an agency or office were to be set up, which wouldn’t cost much at all, a lot would change simply as a result of this step being taken. It means that the government is acknowledging that there is something here worthy of study, and this would be a breakthrough.  It opens up the door for scientists to become involved, for attitudes to change and become more rational, and resources would eventually be increased for scientific investigations.  In other words, scientists at universities would no longer have to shun the subject for fear of professional ridicule or losing grants. If the U.S. government has this focal point office set up, a fundamental shift would occur. The scientists will be able to get the funding they need and eventually we can build an international investigation and they can solve the mystery once and for all, at a level that everybody can accept, as to what UFOs are.  I offer more detail and rationale for this in the book, and I hope people will read this part and consider “a new way forward,” as John Podesta calls it. This approach has the support of Fife Symington, and I’ve consulted with many others about it. It’s strategically sound, because it provides an invitation to government agencies to lend a hand, rather than accusing them of misdeeds that occurred decades ago in the context of presenting unfounded claims.

Casteel: Why does America lag so far behind the rest of the world? Why are they stubbornly refusing to do exactly what you’re talking about?

Kean: That’s a good question, and the “why” questions are always so hard to answer. In the book, we look very carefully at what actually is going on. It’s not always easy to say why it’s going on. But without a doubt, the United States government lags behind, as you said. When Project Blue Book closed, the United States announced that it was no longer interested in investigating UFOs. But, in fact, it did, as we now know, from documents such as the Bolender memo, which actually states that the investigations pertinent to national security will continue despite the close of Blue Book. There are other   government documents that show that our own agencies have been interested in UFO cases post Blue Book, despite public statements to the contrary. We know that NORAD has scrambled jets when UFOs have come around over military bases, and that sensitive facilities have been flown over by UFOs.

Despite the documentation showing that our government has had some role in investigating these phenomena since the close of Project Blue Book, it still publicly ignores cases, sticking with the public position of non-involvement. Officials make silly assessments when forced to, like they did during the O’Hare incident, saying that the witnesses saw “weather.”  The reasons why? There are so many aspects, and it’s complex, as I see it.  I think it’s become a kind of habit. In the early 1950s, we were concerned about panic, as documents show. The Air Force couldn’t explain these things so they didn’t know what to tell people. Reports were pouring in and the media was on the story. Government agencies – partly motivated by the CIA’s Robertson Panel conclusions - got on the track of ridiculing these events as a way of controlling the public’s reaction to them and trying to minimize their impact. Project Blue Book contributed to this problem for 20 years, and the Condon Report put the final nail in the coffin.  I think the whole thing just sort of developed its own momentum and has carried itself through. And now, UFOs are not at all what government officials are thinking about, far from it. And they’re not forced to deal with the issue, because it’s not really a serious danger.

We don’t know for sure to what extent there might be some kind of secret program going on. That could be going on too, but we can’t adequately document it, because if it’s going on, it’s deeply buried. Sources with information about such a program cannot go on the record. So that leaves us to speculate, relying mostly on unnamed sources. All of us, I’m sure, have our own opinions as to why the government behaves like this. But I think what’s most important is just to establish the fact that it DOES behave like this and that that behavior needs to change, regardless of the reasons. It’s just inappropriate and irresponsible, and out of sync with the rest of the world. We need to do something to change it.

Casteel: We wanted to ask you about John Podesta, who wrote the foreword to your book. What’s your relationship with him like? Is he an important ally in the overall movement for government openness and responsiveness?

Kean: His main concern in getting involved with this issue is promoting government openness and the people’s right to information. And back in 2002, when I first started working with the Coalition for Freedom of Information and we began our Kecksburg initiative, John Podesta became a supporter of this work because it involved Freedom of Information Act issues. He spoke out publicly to support the effort because we were challenging the Freedom of Information Act, attempting to push beyond the government’s normal refusal to release information. We treated this as a serious matter, not one having to do with entertainment or titillation. We ended up filing a lawsuit against NASA, for which I was the plaintiff, and John Podesta was interested in following that process. He’s also curious about UFOs – a skeptic, as he calls himself, but a curious skeptic and an open-minded person. I happen to think he’s brilliant, and he’s been willing to go out on a limb with this issue. Since he has stood behind this work for many years, he was willing to write the foreword to the book.   He believes the government should release everything it has and that government officials, scientists and aviation experts need to work together to get to the bottom of the UFO mystery.

Casteel: Is there anything you wish to add? Is there some question I haven’t asked or some kind of final comment you’d care to make?

Kean: Again, I think the deepest purpose of this book is to be a tool for change. That’s why I’m so intent on getting it out there. The first step is to get the information into the right hands and get people realizing that there is very legitimate, solid, factual information without all the hype and sensationalism, and all the stuff that people read into UFOs because of the way the culture has treated the subject.  I just wanted to clean all of that up and present the clearest, cleanest, most fact-based picture that I possibly could, in a way that’s accessible.  And I think the book has achieved that goal. I just want as many people as possible to read it because I think that it could help facilitate some kind of fundamental shift in attitude. That’s what we all want to see happen. And then hopefully we’ll get an actual change within the structure of the government, such as we proposed, where we can really move forward and get our scientists involved with this issue.

So I feel very positive about it. I’m thrilled with the response that the book has received so far and that we’re actually already on the New York Times bestseller list when we haven’t even been out for a month. I have a lot of hope – maybe conviction is a better word – that this book is going to achieve the goals that have been set out for it to achieve. I’m just so grateful for everybody’s participation and feedback. I have a website at www.UFOsOnTheRecord.com which I would love for people to visit, and there’s a comment board there; also on the Facebook page, same thing. There is a great discussion underway in response to my reply to James Oberg’s criticism, on the MSNBC site. We can discuss all of this.  I hope that people will tell other people to read the book, and I promise not to drop the ball. I intend to work very hard to bring about change, and give it everything I’ve got. And I have an impressive team willing to work with me.  The more respect and recognition we get for the book – for its message – in the mainstream, the more effective we can be in our effort.  It’s that simple. Momentum is building, and we need to keep it growing. Thanks to everyone for helping out with this process.

[If you enjoyed this interview with Leslie Kean, read more of Sean Casteel’s work at www.seancasteel.com]

THE END