And I'll bet he's still pretty sure of that. I'm not so much interested in hearing what he thought it WAS -- he knows he doesn't know the answer to what it was. I'm interested in hearing what he knows it wasn't. He knows it wasn't Santa's Sleigh. He knows it wasn't like any airline contrail he's ever seen. When he says "jet or missile," it's wide open as to what KIND of jet -- a military jet, or an airliner? They are two very different animals with very different connotations for national security.
Me, looking at the video, am not sure what the object creating it was, though it looks a whole helluva lot exactly like the many, many missile lauches I have witnessed live from a variety of distances both with the naked eye and with the help of binoculars. But I'm sure the trail that it left behind wasn't an underlit horizontal contrail; I'm sure it was a vertical plume because the lighting says so.
I would be surprised and frankly, pretty skeptical, if Leyvas claimed he WAS sure of what the object was that created a vertical plume. On the other hand, his knowing what it WASN'T is key to a lot of things -- first and foremost, why he filmed it in the first place.
Simple.
1) He was there to film the sunset as a back drop to the weather forecast. He saw it while he was filming the sunset.
2) It was sweeps week. They are encouraged to find interesting video or stories for sweeps week. During sweeps week, they go out in the helicopter just to locate and film interesting video for the news production. From that perspective, it was very successful sweeps week video footage. And the TV station made the most of it.