◆ SpookStack

Canadair CL-227 Sea Sentinel military drone. Right: This Sikorsky “Cypher” surveillance drone is used by the U.S. Army in urban conflict situations. JANAP (Joint Army, Navy, Air Force Publication) 146 applies to military personnel but also to some civilians (flight captains of commercial aircraft, merchant marine captains) in the United States and Canada. It stipulates that an urgent report should be filed with certain authorities, which must in turn file a report, namely with the Air Operations Command (now NORAD [North American Air Defense]) in Colorado Springs, when objects requiring very urgent defensive action and/or an investigation by the armed forces of the United States or Canada are sighted. -Among these objects, UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are listed along with missiles and hostile or unidentified submarines, etc. Disclosure of the contents of these reports is subject to the penalties of the laws cracking down on espionage. JANAP 146 was in effect in recent years and perhaps is still in force. This regulation may explain the frequent reticence of American military personnel, aviators in particular, to bring up the subject of UFOs. The members of American ufological associations number several thousand. These associations attempt to fill the gap left by the public authorities in the field of “UFO” studies. The FOIA brought them a resurgence of activity, showing them that contrary to . their statements, the Air Force and various special departments, namely the CIA, are very much interested in the subject of UFOs and have been for some time. It permitted them to learn of certain spectacular cases, such as the overflight of missile bases in 1975, or the 1976 Tehran incident related in Chapter 2. DIA deemed this a “radar/visual” case: “A classic case that meets all the conditions required for a legitimate study of the UFO phenomenon.” In recent years, the three main ufological associations have been brought together by a leading U.S. personality, Marie Galbraith, to conduct a joint study. She is the wife of Evan Griffith Galbraith, who was U.S. ambassador to France from 1981 to 1985. Thus she is well-acquainted with our country and our language, since she lived on Avenue Gabriel. Supported both morally and financially by Laurance Rockefeller, brother of the famous David Rockefeller, she traveled the world to meet the principal scientists interested in UFOs and to collect the best cases. She then oversaw the drafting of a clear and documented book entitled Unidentified Flying Objects, Briefing Document, the best available evidence, which was endorsed in 1995 by the chairmen of the three associations CUFOS [Center for UFO Research], FUFOR [Fund for UFO Research], and MUFON [Mutual UFO Network]. She had this work sent to more than a thousand prominent figures throughout the world and, namely, to a large number of U.S. congressmen. Her goal is to get the U.S. government and possibly other governments to end the secrecy surrounding UFOs. For the editors of the book, this secrecy is essentially military in origin: the nation that is first to reproduce the exceptional characteristics of UFOs will dominate the world. The secrecy was justified during the cold war, but it is no longer justified now given the scientific and technical breakthroughs useful to humanity that one can expect [to obtain] from the study of UFOs. On the whole, Marie Galbraith’s book is descriptive. It does not interpret the phenomena sighted (physical modeling or hypotheses regarding the origin of the objects). Such was also the spirit of the international scientific colloquium organized in September