Sci Fi Channel-backed researcher sues NASA over UFO files

First Amendment Center Online ^ | Wednesday, December 17, 2003 | The Associated Press

[Momaw Nadon]

PITTSBURGH — A researcher backed by cable television’s Sci Fi Channel sued NASA for the release of records she contends the agency has of a UFO that reportedly crash landed and was recovered by government workers in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1965.

The lawsuit was filed Dec. 9 in U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of Leslie Kean, a San Rafael, Calif., investigative reporter backed by the cable channel and a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information.

“Our lawsuit is aimed at getting NASA to tell the public what it knew and when it knew it,” said Ed Rothschild, a lobbyist the Sci Fi Channel hired from the Washington firm PodestaMattoon, who is also identified as CFI’s executive director. Former President Clinton’s one-time chief of staff John Podesta is backing the Sci Fi Channel’s efforts, and his brother, Anthony, is a principal in the lobbying firm hired by the channel.

Bob Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said he was unaware of the lawsuit and could not comment.

The filing marked the 38th anniversary of the Kecksburg UFO incident, which occurred in the unincorporated hamlet about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Witnesses described a “fireball” in the evening sky, and a metallic, acorn-shaped object about 12 to 15 feet high and 8 to 12 feet in diameter that landed in the woods, according to news media accounts in the Tribune-Review of Greensburg and other outlets at the time.

Military personnel quickly surrounded the site, removed the object, threatened residents who tried to inquire about it, and left — later calling the object a “meteor,” according to news accounts.

James Romansky, 57, of Derry Township, was then a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter. He told the Associated Press that he was among those who drove to the landing site.

“Now, I’m prepared for a smashed-up airplane ... and I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell is this?’ I’m looking for wings, propellers, motors, a fuselage — but there’s none of that,” Romansky said. “There’s no rivet marks on it, no weld marks on it, no windows, no doors — no possible way of getting in and out of this thing that I seen.

“There was writing on it, but not writing that you or I could understand. I always referred to it as something like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. There was dots and dashes and circles,” Romansky said.

The cable network announced in June that it was backing the effort to research the Kecksburg incident in promoting a documentary, “Out of the Blue,” which examined various UFO reports.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” Romansky said. “The United States government has given us a snow job for the last God knows when. I can’t understand it for the life of me. They can’t come out and say it’s nothing because I was 10, 20 feet away from it.”

Sci Fi Channel officials said they’re looking for an explanation of what occurred. They’re also looking for viewers.

A November 2002 documentary on the suspected 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., was the highest-rated special in the network’s 11-year history. It was seen by nearly 2.4 million people, or about 2 1/2times Sci Fi’s usual prime-time audience.

The lawsuit contends NASA has thwarted Kean’s efforts to retrieve official files on the incident by sending her irrelevant information or nothing in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

[banjo joe]

LOL! I can hear the media now... it will be the only possible explanation to them... har!

[Keith]

Frankly, Duke, my present theory involves the concept that we are someone elses garden, and that many of these visitors are checking in from time to time to see how things are going. The reason this phenomenon started in earnest in 1947 when the sighting that coined the term "flying sauces" happened at that time was that it was shortly after we exploded our first nuclear device. I think that made several interested parties sit up and take notice.

[SquirrelKing]

Whew.

[VaBthang4]

"It's gonna take a bit of time to search the whole universe for them."

Why? If they're bopping around here with all their ubertechnology you'd think they'd be able to make themselves known to all quite easily.

[Momaw Nadon]

Conception and birth serve as a stargate for immaterial intersteller travel. But abortion leaves souls stuck "in transit"(limbo). That's why those souls appear to us as gray, nearly featureless beings that can only approach us in our half-dream states. That's also why they are so curious about human sex organs. They cannot figure out why so many souls are being stuck in limbo. That we would be voluntarily aborting, is beyond their comprehension.

Interesting theory!

[EveningStar]

calling Agents Mulder and Scully...........

You rang?

[RadioAstronomer]

I have my reservations. Thanks for the ping. I can write more this evening.

[CaptRon]

What a coincidence! I'm currently reading "Saucer" by Stephen Coonts. I see tidbits of this discussion in the book, including the theological.

[DLfromthedesert]

I know a guy who was an engineer at a prominent company, who quit his job and went to Ecuador to try to get picked up by a UFO.

I think he got tired of paying child support, and thought leaving the planet would be a good way to evade his responsibilities.

[CJ Wolf]

"tell of being floated aboard spacecraft by gray, four-foot-tall creatures with big heads who subjected them to clinical examinations." I believe! here is an artist rendition:

[Keith]

LOL! Your right! Proof! ;)

[pctech]

Yeah man, got a couple of fruitcakes over at Sci Fi who I think are aliens in disguise. Can you check it out???

[Flightdeck]

Don't you think the "UFO" sightings could be defense projects? Whether or not they were piloted by aliens, there definitely were flying objects that were unfamiliar to air force pilots. I worked for two years for Air Force Research Laboratories (Propulsion Directorate) at Wright Patterson AFB. I know all the stories about the aliens supposedly being autopsied there are bogus, but there are a bunch of underground tunnels, and I know there are some deep black projects being worked on just yards from my old office. That being said, I'm also Christian, but I don't find any conflict between the bible's message and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

[Fledermaus]

What evidence is there that they are all one alien species visiting us? Am I now supposed to go beyond the idea of "we can't be alone" to "only two of us exist"? Why not 3 races...4,5,6?

Lack of factual evidence makes all possible. And all as unbelievable.

[VaBthang4]

I think every single unidentified aircraft ever seen was either a defense bird or a civilian one.

"Deep Black" doesnt mean "spacemen" it means deep black. The SR71 was deep black, the F117 was deep black, the B2 was deep black etc, etc. There's nothing spooky about "Deep Black" unless you're predisposed to seeing a conspiracy in common R&D protocols.

[Jim Cane]

A motherlode of irony

LOL! That and a diaperload. Behold the human ego - center of the universe!

[Jim Cane]

Get saved, submit yourself to the truth and learn God's ways.

Spoken like a true talibani. islam = submit. Congratulations, you enemy of the U.S.

[DannyTN]

"..God gave them dominion over "all" the works of His hand... "

I think that applies only to earth, not to the universe. We are not "it", because we know from God that angels and other creatures exist and we don't have dominion over them.

What's more one of the prophets, I think it was Exekiel described an angelic chariot that had "wheels within wheels". Therefore we know that angels use technology that is more advanced than we are.

What we don't know is whether God created any other life outside of our planet and those in the spiritual realm. He doesn't say.

[ASA Vet]

will never be - and should not be expected to be - released

Your basic premise is correct.
SCI is almost "never" released due to law suits, FOIA requests, etc.
Even the existence of the data is SCI.
Those with access to an SCI will have it only on a "need to know" basis.

[Landru]

re#14?

HA!!!

...kinda says it all, doesn't it.