He either had a very active imagination and a talent for story telling or he witnessed something at the time that was highly classified and far beyond our understanding.
...and now we have this report that more or less matches his description.
Perhaps they (TPTB) thought they might use him to get the wild stuff out into the public fringe in case disclosure was ever needed. In other words, he was used to soften up the public...to prepare the soil, so to speak.