Hangar 1: The UFO Files (2014) s02e09 Episode Script
Cops vs. UFOs
If you're a civilian and you spot a UFO in your area, you don't call the military, you call the police department or you call your local sheriff.
As a police officer, when you're involved in a UFO case, things can get tricky.
They can get very political, and that's just the nature of the beast in this country.
10X31, clear.
[ police radio chatter .]
[ sirens wailing .]
120 West 81st Street.
Ravenna, Ohio, April 17, 1966.
It's just before dawn on a midnight shift that Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and Deputy Wilbur Neff will never forget.
All morning their police radio had been filled with all sorts of chatter from witnesses near Akron, Ohio claiming to have seen a large, bright disc flying through the sky.
[ police radio chatter .]
With just a few hours left of their day, they noticed something unusual, an abandoned car on Route 224.
Just as Neff is about to reach the car, Spaur senses something.
In Spaur's written report, he states he feels the need to look behind him.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ crickets chirping .]
[ whistles .]
Spaur tells Neff to look over his shoulder.
They're suddenly engulfed in light, and the only thing they can hear is a hum, like a transformer being overloaded.
Both police officers are frozen underneath this light.
Spaur remembers moving his right foot slightly to make sure he could still move, and when they realize they aren't actually paralyzed, they run as fast as they can for the patrol car.
Can you imagine, two veteran officers used to dealing with local domestic issues now find themselves facing a UFO? Immediately, Spaur gets on the radio and reports what they just saw.
Dispatch tells them not to move and to wait in the car, they're sending immediate backup.
Spaur and Neff nervously wait as the light engulfs their car.
The officers are starting to panic, and they're thinking, should we shoot at it or should we get out of here? They're absolutely terrified, but they have their orders to wait for backup, if they survive that long.
And this is just the beginning of one of "Hangar 1's" extraordinary stories of close encounters with the police and UFOs, some of the best documented cases in MUFON's archives.
The Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON, is an independent organization not bound to any government.
They investigate reports of UFO sightings from around the world.
Over the past five decades, they have collected more than 70,000 files, stored at a secure location known as Hangar 1.
Now, MUFON is granting access to their vast archive.
These are the files of Hangar 1.
Officer Spaur and Neff are engulfed in the light of this UFO, paralyzed with fear wondering, is this it? Is this how we're going to die? But then, inexplicably the UFO just takes off.
They're stunned and relieved and once they regain their composure, they do the unthinkable.
They actually chase this thing.
[ sirens wailing .]
These two officers are actually pursuing this UFO, going about 100 miles an hour Though it's the Pennsylvania border along U.
S.
Route 224.
As the sun rises, the UFO continues traveling east approaching the Pennsylvania state line.
Patrolman Frank Panzanella, Conway, Pennsylvania is sitting in his squad car drinking coffee when he sees a large object fly over him.
His first instinct is also to pursue the UFO.
[ siren wailing .]
Panzanella radios dispatch to see if they have anything on their radar.
They pick up an unidentified object on their screen.
The officers aren't the only ones interested in this craft.
Four fighter jets appear in the sky.
The police receive confirmation on their radios that the jets are pursuing the UFO.
[ sirens wailing .]
The police officers must be thinking, wow, this is really happening.
The Air Force is going to take down a UFO right in front of us.
But the UFO then shoots upward into the sky at an incredible speed until it disappears, gone, before the jets can make a move.
Within hours, this case was picked up by the press.
And from there, the Air Force gave it a lot of attention.
All of the police officers involved are then contacted by the military's UFO investigative unit, Project Blue Book.
This is where the Air Force cover-up begins.
Blue Book Chief, Major Hector Quintanilla, arrives on the scene.
Hector Quintanilla headed Project Blue Book from 1963 until its closure in 1970.
In addition to his degree in physics, he was recruited to the position because they needed a man who was, quote, "cool under pressure.
" He gets to Dale Spaur and the first thing he says to him is, "Tell me about this mirage that you saw.
" Can you imagine, you're a police officer and you've just seen the most incredible thing and the first thing the Air Force does is accuse you of seeing a mirage.
Could the officers have witnessed a top secret military plane, forcing the Air Force to try and deflect attention from the truth? Spaur describes exactly what he saw in great detail, but Quintanilla doesn't ask anymore questions, and he doesn't attempt to interview the other three officers who also saw the UFO.
Major Quintanilla holds a press conference to release the Air Force's official findings on the incident.
Quintanilla's explanation was simple, the officers had been chasing an echo communication satellite and then after the sun came up, that changed to them chasing the planet Venus.
Quintanilla also denied that any jet fighters had been in the area attempting to engage or intercept a UFO.
Unsatisfied with the official explanation, a number of investigators, including famed ufologist, William Weitzel, are determined to find out what really happened.
William Weitzel got on the scene and found three other police officers and four other civilian witnesses who had seen a UFO between 5:00 and 5:30 that morning.
[ eeric music .]
[ swooshing .]
After Weitzel's findings, Quintanilla is forced to reopen the case.
Realizing simple deflection was not effective, stronger tactics are employed.
Quintanilla and Spaur sit down for another meeting, this time attended by William Weitzel and local reporters, but afterwards, Quintanilla stands by his original conclusion that the police officers were chasing Venus.
He says, "There was never a UFO.
Case closed.
" Project Blue Book head, Quintanilla, successfully closes the case.
The police officers who witnessed the UFO find themselves discredited, left trying to understand what they did wrong.
After this whole event was over, the officers involved really took it hard.
Officer Houston quit the force and moved off to Seattle just to get away.
Officer Neff became a recluse.
And I think Dale Spaur had it the worst.
He lost his job and his marriage, and for years was hounded by the press, everyone trying to debunk his case and make him look like he didn't know what he was doing.
And this just made him crazy because he knew that what he saw was real.
He knew it was legitimate.
During this Cold War era, UFOs were treated primarily as a threat.
These military people come in and intimidate the officers, discredit them for something that obviously the government knows is going on.
Was Quintanilla simply employing the same techniques that began with Project Blue Book regarding deflection and discrediting witnesses? And when did these techniques come into play? Up next Zamora starts to back away, a huge flame bursts out of the craft.
[ thunderous explosion .]
Military and media descend on a small town after one police officer's incredible close encounter when we return.
If I had been working back in the fifties and sixties, I don't think I would've wanted to make a UFO report.
Something like that could destroy your credibility.
You just turn your head and look the other way.
But, you know, that's stressful, and you have to carry that with you.
Police officers are trained to be meticulous about details.
But when it comes to UFO sightings, their reports are often challenged or the incident is dismissed as a hoax.
Hangar 1 files suggest that this treatment lines up directly with how Project Blue Book and the military dealt with civilian UFO witnesses and that these protocols were applied to police officers as well.
April 24th, 1964.
Socorro, New Mexico.
Officer Lonnie Zamora is driving in his car outside of Socorro, New Mexico.
He's chasing a speeder.
All of a sudden, Zamora hears this roaring sound, and he sees what he thinks is a flame object in the sky.
[ intense roaring .]
Zamora breaks off from the chase to investigate.
He thinks that a local dynamite shack may have exploded.
He's moving closer to where this event was taking place.
It's then that he notices a shining object, which at first he thought was an overturned car.
Zamora gets on the radio and tells the dispatcher he's leaving his car to check out a situation in the arroyo.
[ birds warbling .]
[ crickets chirping .]
[ intense dramatic music .]
Suddenly, a loud roar emanates from the craft.
[ roaring .]
A huge flame bursts out of the craft.
[ thunderous explosion .]
The craft begins lifting up and then immediately takes off.
Zamora radios a fellow officer, Sergeant Chavez, asking him if he sees a craft in the sky.
Radio silence.
When Chavez finally got there, the two of them found four indentations in the ground where the object had sat, some burnt vegetation, and they took very detailed notes and pictures of the whole area, and they put together a complete report.
Two days after the incident, Major Quintanilla, the head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book shows up to investigate the report, but he isn't the only one who descends on the town.
The sleepy little town of Socorro, New Mexico was overrun.
Overrun by major journalists, UPI, AP were there.
Government agents, FBI, military intelligence were there, and private UFO investigators were also there.
Everyone wanted to look for answers.
The evidence gathered by the police appears to be compelling.
Subsequent research and analysis of ground samples and photos revealed that some of the sand in the ground appeared to have been fused together as if it had come in contact with some very high, intense form of heat.
[ thunderous explosion .]
Then, on June 8th, 1964, Quintanilla issues his formal Project Blue Book report.
Not surprisingly, this report turned all the evidence right on its head.
It stated no substantial evidence had been found to support any kind of event, none of the witnesses were reliable, and so on.
Now, in the classified version of that report, it was a little bit of a different story.
I have Hector Quintanilla's words right here and I quote, "There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object that left an impression on him and scared Zamora to the point of panic.
" Zamora became so hounded by the Air Force and ufologists that he quit law enforcement, and he took a job managing a gas station.
If I were in the shoes of these officers that saw these things and were then shut up and intimidated, I would absolutely lose faith in myself.
This, I mean, this has to be a profound effect on their whole sense of who they are, the fact that the government would step in after these careers of service and treat them like crazy people when we know the government knows a heck of a lot more than than what they're telling us.
Based on Quintanilla's report, the case was closed.
But shortly thereafter, a UFO researcher named James McDonald locates a local scientist who claims to have analyzed a soil sample from the Socorro landing site.
Mary G.
Mayes was a doctoral student in radiation biology at the University of New Mexico and she was asked to analyze some of the soil samples from the Socorro case.
So she didn't find any radiation in the soil, but she did find two organic substances that she was not able to identify.
This is an important detail.
It proved that whatever landed there had organic material that is not found on earth.
[ engine winding up .]
[ thunderous explosion .]
The analysis on the soil samples really opens up the possibility, maybe the likelihood that we're talking about two different kinds of investigations, or two versions of the investigation, the public one and the not so public one.
What it looks like to me is that Quintanilla and Blue Book were sent in basically to mess up the investigation and make Zamora look like a fool.
Civilian police officers are not the only ones who meet resistance when it comes to reporting UFO incidents.
Up next, military police officers find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and the outcome becomes deadly.
[ gunshots .]
Many agencies are not open to these types of investigations because the upper echelon don't want the media.
They don't want to deal with it.
That's the biggest problem with law enforcement, dealing with the upper hands.
When it gets from local government up to the military, well, then, that's a little bit different.
[ suspenseful music .]
Hangar 1 files contain remarkable encounters of police officers and UFO sightings.
Some of these incredible events occur with officers who provide security for military bases.
In 1978, I was working at McGuire Air Force Base at 21st Air Force as the Deputy Director of Intelligence.
On January 18th, 1978, I drove onto the base and noticed that off to my right was a number of crash trucks and lights out on the runway.
And the sergeant in charge of the command post came up to me and said that an alien has been found at the end of the runway, that he was shot by a military policeman.
[ dramatic music .]
[ jet engine whining .]
January 18th, 1978, between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.
Radar from Fort Dix picks up an unidentified object between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.
The military police officer on duty is patrolling the outside of the base when he sees a large object hovering over the road.
He stops his car and radios in what he sees.
He's looking out through his windshield through the falling snow and explaining to the dispatcher what the craft looks like.
Right in the middle of a sentence [ radio screeches .]
the radio goes dead.
The officer looks up and that's when he sees the unimaginable, a small figure in the shadows that he later describes as having an unusually large head, long arms, and a slender body.
And this creature is standing right in front of his police car.
The officer panics.
[ gunshots .]
[ gunshots .]
Here's a man who is told to protect the base.
He's an armed guard, and he's seen a monster run around.
He does what probably a lot of guys would do, he shoots at the thing.
He runs back to his car and his radio is now working again.
He tells the dispatcher that he just shot a strange creature and it's now headed for McGuire Air Force Base.
The police officer drives to the gates of McGuire Air Force Base where he is told to wait.
Sergeant Jeffrey Morse from McGuire Air Force Base is called to the front gate to meet with the officer from Fort Dix to discuss the incident.
The officer is really shaken up.
He tells Morse that he shot at a strange entity, but it escaped and climbed over the fence into McGuire Air Force Base.
Sergeant Morse says that he'll handle it from here.
Sergeant Morse has to be thinking this other police officer is crazy, but he was about to get a big surprise.
[ car door opens, closes .]
[ footsteps on gravel .]
Morse and several other MPs head to the area where the entity reportedly climbed over the fence.
At the end of the runway they see a dead creature with a large head and slender body.
Sergeant Morse can't believe his eyes.
He reports that the smell is so bad they have to stand back several feet just to be able to breathe.
[ men coughing, gagging .]
He calls in a report and within hours the Air Force OSI takes control of the situation.
AFOSI is the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and they report directly to the Office of Security to the Air Force.
Technically, this means that they provide independent investigations outside the traditional military chain of command.
Sergeant Morse reports that he is surprised to see a military team responding to the incident in a way that suggests this wasn't the first encounter like this they had dealt with.
Sergeant Morse is not only brought in for questioning, but threatened.
Morse went through several days of intimidating interrogations where he was told to keep his mouth shut or else.
As incredible as this story sounds, it is corroborated by George Filer who was brought in to investigate the incident.
When I was investigating the case, I did interview Sergeant Jeff Morse who claims to have been out at the place where they found the ET.
Within a couple of days after he was out there, he was transferred to Okinawa.
They more or less arrested him and held him for awhile and essentially gave him a hard time.
When it comes to military officers who witness UFOs, did the protocol escalate from discrediting witnesses to completely removing them? Now, what happened to Jeffrey Morse in the aftermath of all of this is kind of symptomatic of how military personnel were held to different standards of accountability than, say, civilian police officers had been.
It's one thing for a small town cop to be ridiculed, but when you're a military person and you start talking privately to investigators about this, they're going to come after you.
[ dramatic music .]
[ gunshots .]
It's almost as if the military learned from previous reports that if you remove the witness, the media and investigators don't have any leads.
If this was the military's new protocol, how far will they go to ensure the silence of highly credible witnesses? Up next, military police officers [ alarm bell ringing .]
report a UFO landing on a nuclear base.
[ intense music .]
The Federal Government is going to give you exactly what they want you to hear.
I don't think they're afraid of anything, they just want to control things.
And as police officers, we're caught in the middle because the government does not want this information to get out.
MUFON investigators have uncovered evidence indicating the military's desire to undermine and discredit law enforcement testimony regarding UFO encounters.
However, despite the intention to keep these stories hidden, information is still often leaked.
1980, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Ten minutes before midnight on August 8th, 1980, three security policemen are on duty at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area just east of Kirtland Air Force Base.
The Manzano Weapons Storage Area consisted of a series of tunnels that had been excavated into three mountains.
In these tunnels is where the nuclear weapons would be stored.
On this night, three guards at the base saw a very bright light about three miles northeast of their position.
The men noticed this light traveling very fast before it suddenly stops over Coyote Canyon.
Coyote Canyon was a restricted area and so all three officers became very nervous when they saw this lighted object begin to descend into the canyon.
About three miles east of that position, there was another military police officer.
He was on patrol, and he was told to check out the weapons barracks area.
This officer drove down an access road to Coyote Canyon, and when he got there, he saw a very bright light in the air.
And above it was a disc-shaped object.
He starts to panic.
He tries to radio for help, but his radio doesn't work.
The officer grabbed his rifle, got out of his Jeep, and decided to pursue it.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ rifle shot .]
[metal richochet .]
He heard the sound of metal, and before he knew it, the ship just took off.
The lone patrolman who fired at the object, reports the incident to Sandia Base security headquarters.
The officer on duty reported the incident on August 9th, but Sandia Base didn't report it until August 11th, and they were supposed to report it to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
Protocol dictated that anything like that had to be reported immediately, but it wasn't.
But here's where things get more interesting.
For some reason, the AFOSI office at Kirtland informs Sandia that the Air Force no longer investigates such sightings unless they specifically occur on a base.
This doesn't make any sense because the incident did happen around a U.
S.
Air Force facility, and furthermore, near nuclear weapons, and yet AFOSI is not interested.
The AFOSI's main directive is to provide investigative services to protect the national security of the U.
S.
So to claim that a UFO that lands near a nuclear weapons storage unit is out of their jurisdiction is ludicrous.
On the night of August 11th, the UFO returns to the exact same location.
At that point, the Air Force just couldn't deny it.
On August 22nd, Major Edwards from Kirtland Air Force Base interviews every officer who was involved in these multiple sightings.
Major Edwards informs an intelligence officer named Richard Doty of the persistent accounts of UFO sightings near their nuclear weapons storage site.
Richard Doty is a controversial character in the whole history of UFOs.
Doty was expert at leading people on a wild goose chase.
It appears that once Officer Doty became involved, the case was doomed and eventually buried.
This is an important case because you have multiple witnesses of a multiple sighting that took place over several days all claiming to see the same object near Coyote Canyon.
So it appears there was a cover up.
Once again, we see forces from above come in and take these credible men, these servants to our country, and make them feel like they've done something wrong when they were just doing their duty.
If it was a cover up, who are they hiding the information from? The public was not involved in this, it was strictly military.
Was the military hiding information from the military? Up next, these incidents aren't just confined to the ground.
Two respected police helicopter pilots go head to head with a UFO.
The unbelievable dog fight when "Hangar 1" returns.
When you're involved in a UFO case, your credibility is in question.
The first thing they're going to do is perform a psych test on you, then they're going to do a drug test on you.
They want to intimidate you and a lot of police officers don't want to go through that.
Louisville, Kentucky, 1993.
At 11:50 P.
M.
, Officers Graham and Downs are in the middle of a routine patrol flight when they receive a call about a possible break in near Sanford Avenue and Buechel Bank Road.
The officers fly over the area when suddenly Graham notices a small light below them.
Downs points the helicopter spotlight on the object to get a better look.
Downs and Graham see a glowing, pear-shaped object about the size of a basketball.
Suddenly, the object shoots up, right in front of the helicopter and then spins counterclockwise around them until it stops right behind the two pilots.
Graham has never seen anything like it.
Now he's afraid the object is going to ram the tail rotor, so he pushes the helicopter forward at a 100 miles an hour.
Incredibly, the UFO chases them and at one point even shoots past them.
All of the sudden, the UFO appears to shoot three fireballs at the helicopter.
Graham is able to bank his helicopter away from the blast.
The pilots are panicking, but then the UFO just zips away.
[ phone ringing .]
The officers wake up their boss, Lieutenant David Pope, to give him their full report.
Pope can't believe what he's hearing.
He knows that his officers are credible.
He stated in a report that Graham was a veteran pilot and that both he and Downs were military veterans with many years of service.
So, look at the facts here.
These are police officers who work in the air.
They work in the sky every single day.
Well, of course they know the difference between a star, a planet, and some bell-shaped thing flying around their helicopter.
Lieutenant Pope submits his report to superiors, but it goes unnoticed.
Downs and Graham can't believe the report isn't being taken seriously.
And then if that isn't enough, fellow colleagues warn them to just let it go because it was starting to make the department look bad.
It makes you wonder if these police officers were hung out to dry with nowhere for them to go and no one to provide any answers.
Is the military now intentionally ignoring UFO reports by police officers in order to protect law enforcement authority or to protect themselves by avoiding a paper trail? It's almost a relief when I hear that there is some official involved, someone who is trained to observe because the credibility of these things is so often challenged.
One thing that I want to see in my lifetime is some answer for these experiences that I've had.
I want to see some kind of government recognition.
If they would just, you know, come out and say, yes, it is real, this is actually happening.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ thunderous explosion .]
With the majority of UFO sightings at night, it makes sense that the officers working these late shifts would be the most likely witnesses of such phenomena.
[ helicopter blades whirring .]
[ sirens wailing .]
Coming up, another predawn UFO chase leaves the police with nowhere to turn until MUFON uncovers the files.
When government policy states that UFOs do not exist, what happens when their local law enforcement agents see and report UFO sightings? Over the years, it appears policy has changed from deflection to disaccreditation to disregarding entirely, leaving police officers with nowhere to turn when it comes to reporting these incidents.
January 5th, 2000 near Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.
Melvin Knoll, a local Highland, Illinois truck driver pulls into his company office at 4:00 A.
M.
[ motor shutting down .]
He looks up and notices this really bright light in the sky that's moving towards him, and he realizes that the light is actually coming from a huge triangle-looking craft.
A recording from the county radio dispatcher documents the driver's report to the Highland Police Department.
We received a call from the Highland PD in reference to a truck driver who just stopped in and said there was a flying object.
Officer Ed Barton responds to the call at 4:10 A.
M.
He asks the county dispatcher if she's joking.
The dispatcher says, "No, the man who stopped in was totally serious.
" Just a quick question.
If I happen to find it, what am I supposed to do with it? As soon as Officer Barton turns onto Route 4 there's a bright light coming from a large triangle.
He pulls over to the side of the road, kills the car lights, and turns off his radio to see if this thing is making any noise.
The object makes no sound, but he can see every detail on this craft because it's moving right above him at a steady speed.
As soon as it passes, he radios the sighting into central command.
He predicts that the object should be hitting the town of Shiloh, Illinois at any moment.
In Shiloh, Officer David Martin soon radios in that he sees the craft as well.
What does it look like to you? It's kind of V-shaped.
[ police radio chatter .]
Several minutes later, at 4:29 A.
M.
, Officer Craig Stevens, who is in the nearby town of Milstadt radios in that he also sees a triangular UFO passing over his patrol car.
And then at 4:35 A.
M.
, another officer in Dupo, Illinois reports that he can also see the craft, but at this point, it's climbing altitude fast and he's losing track of the light.
If you would, contact Scott Air Force Base and see if they have anything flying in this area.
The dispatcher calls Scott Air Force Base, who report that they have not detected any unidentified object on their radar.
But here you have no less than four different officers all witnessing the same craft, yet Scott Air Force Base claims they've got nothing.
It just doesn't add up.
This was a huge case.
You have four police witnesses, media interest, and yet the military claims that they have no knowledge about anything that happened in the vicinity.
I find it impossible to believe Scott Air Force Base is not going to be able to detect a 75-foot triangular craft in its vicinity, and yet this is exactly what they claim.
Does the government and military now turn a blind eye when it comes to these kinds of sightings? The government knows what's going on.
They don't talk about it.
They won't report it.
Any singular event that has happened with pilots reporting and the police department on the ground reporting this, and then the story dies the next day.
You don't know if there's an investigation going on internally.
We know that there is, but the government doesn't talk about it, any government.
As a son of a cop and having grown up around cops my whole life and knowing the kinds of witnesses that they are, I find it offensive when you start seeing all of the ridicule that so many of them have been facing.
Once a police officer has seen a UFO, they very adamantly will defend what they saw against all odds.
Many of these police cases go unreported because of a fear of ridicule, but some brave officers do come to us to report their story.
They recognize that these are important cases that shouldn't be swept under the rug.
And they'd also like some answers to what they've witnessed.
We have now become the place for police officers to come to to report UFO encounters.
When you have this kind of experience seeing a UFO or something as unexplainable, and you try to report it, they'll tell you, we don't investigate this kind of phenomena.
If you want answers, you have to go to someone outside of the system because chances are it's not going to be investigated through law enforcement channels.
Police encounters with UFOs are some of the most detailed witness reports on record and yet they are continually disregarded by higher authorities.
Despite the government distancing themselves from these UFO accounts, MUFON remains a source that our law enforcement, both civilian and military, can turn to and be taken seriously.
As these officers continue to spend so much time on the front lines of our streets and military bases, the unusual sightings they document will be revealed in the files of "Hangar 1.
"
As a police officer, when you're involved in a UFO case, things can get tricky.
They can get very political, and that's just the nature of the beast in this country.
10X31, clear.
[ police radio chatter .]
[ sirens wailing .]
120 West 81st Street.
Ravenna, Ohio, April 17, 1966.
It's just before dawn on a midnight shift that Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and Deputy Wilbur Neff will never forget.
All morning their police radio had been filled with all sorts of chatter from witnesses near Akron, Ohio claiming to have seen a large, bright disc flying through the sky.
[ police radio chatter .]
With just a few hours left of their day, they noticed something unusual, an abandoned car on Route 224.
Just as Neff is about to reach the car, Spaur senses something.
In Spaur's written report, he states he feels the need to look behind him.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ crickets chirping .]
[ whistles .]
Spaur tells Neff to look over his shoulder.
They're suddenly engulfed in light, and the only thing they can hear is a hum, like a transformer being overloaded.
Both police officers are frozen underneath this light.
Spaur remembers moving his right foot slightly to make sure he could still move, and when they realize they aren't actually paralyzed, they run as fast as they can for the patrol car.
Can you imagine, two veteran officers used to dealing with local domestic issues now find themselves facing a UFO? Immediately, Spaur gets on the radio and reports what they just saw.
Dispatch tells them not to move and to wait in the car, they're sending immediate backup.
Spaur and Neff nervously wait as the light engulfs their car.
The officers are starting to panic, and they're thinking, should we shoot at it or should we get out of here? They're absolutely terrified, but they have their orders to wait for backup, if they survive that long.
And this is just the beginning of one of "Hangar 1's" extraordinary stories of close encounters with the police and UFOs, some of the best documented cases in MUFON's archives.
The Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON, is an independent organization not bound to any government.
They investigate reports of UFO sightings from around the world.
Over the past five decades, they have collected more than 70,000 files, stored at a secure location known as Hangar 1.
Now, MUFON is granting access to their vast archive.
These are the files of Hangar 1.
Officer Spaur and Neff are engulfed in the light of this UFO, paralyzed with fear wondering, is this it? Is this how we're going to die? But then, inexplicably the UFO just takes off.
They're stunned and relieved and once they regain their composure, they do the unthinkable.
They actually chase this thing.
[ sirens wailing .]
These two officers are actually pursuing this UFO, going about 100 miles an hour Though it's the Pennsylvania border along U.
S.
Route 224.
As the sun rises, the UFO continues traveling east approaching the Pennsylvania state line.
Patrolman Frank Panzanella, Conway, Pennsylvania is sitting in his squad car drinking coffee when he sees a large object fly over him.
His first instinct is also to pursue the UFO.
[ siren wailing .]
Panzanella radios dispatch to see if they have anything on their radar.
They pick up an unidentified object on their screen.
The officers aren't the only ones interested in this craft.
Four fighter jets appear in the sky.
The police receive confirmation on their radios that the jets are pursuing the UFO.
[ sirens wailing .]
The police officers must be thinking, wow, this is really happening.
The Air Force is going to take down a UFO right in front of us.
But the UFO then shoots upward into the sky at an incredible speed until it disappears, gone, before the jets can make a move.
Within hours, this case was picked up by the press.
And from there, the Air Force gave it a lot of attention.
All of the police officers involved are then contacted by the military's UFO investigative unit, Project Blue Book.
This is where the Air Force cover-up begins.
Blue Book Chief, Major Hector Quintanilla, arrives on the scene.
Hector Quintanilla headed Project Blue Book from 1963 until its closure in 1970.
In addition to his degree in physics, he was recruited to the position because they needed a man who was, quote, "cool under pressure.
" He gets to Dale Spaur and the first thing he says to him is, "Tell me about this mirage that you saw.
" Can you imagine, you're a police officer and you've just seen the most incredible thing and the first thing the Air Force does is accuse you of seeing a mirage.
Could the officers have witnessed a top secret military plane, forcing the Air Force to try and deflect attention from the truth? Spaur describes exactly what he saw in great detail, but Quintanilla doesn't ask anymore questions, and he doesn't attempt to interview the other three officers who also saw the UFO.
Major Quintanilla holds a press conference to release the Air Force's official findings on the incident.
Quintanilla's explanation was simple, the officers had been chasing an echo communication satellite and then after the sun came up, that changed to them chasing the planet Venus.
Quintanilla also denied that any jet fighters had been in the area attempting to engage or intercept a UFO.
Unsatisfied with the official explanation, a number of investigators, including famed ufologist, William Weitzel, are determined to find out what really happened.
William Weitzel got on the scene and found three other police officers and four other civilian witnesses who had seen a UFO between 5:00 and 5:30 that morning.
[ eeric music .]
[ swooshing .]
After Weitzel's findings, Quintanilla is forced to reopen the case.
Realizing simple deflection was not effective, stronger tactics are employed.
Quintanilla and Spaur sit down for another meeting, this time attended by William Weitzel and local reporters, but afterwards, Quintanilla stands by his original conclusion that the police officers were chasing Venus.
He says, "There was never a UFO.
Case closed.
" Project Blue Book head, Quintanilla, successfully closes the case.
The police officers who witnessed the UFO find themselves discredited, left trying to understand what they did wrong.
After this whole event was over, the officers involved really took it hard.
Officer Houston quit the force and moved off to Seattle just to get away.
Officer Neff became a recluse.
And I think Dale Spaur had it the worst.
He lost his job and his marriage, and for years was hounded by the press, everyone trying to debunk his case and make him look like he didn't know what he was doing.
And this just made him crazy because he knew that what he saw was real.
He knew it was legitimate.
During this Cold War era, UFOs were treated primarily as a threat.
These military people come in and intimidate the officers, discredit them for something that obviously the government knows is going on.
Was Quintanilla simply employing the same techniques that began with Project Blue Book regarding deflection and discrediting witnesses? And when did these techniques come into play? Up next Zamora starts to back away, a huge flame bursts out of the craft.
[ thunderous explosion .]
Military and media descend on a small town after one police officer's incredible close encounter when we return.
If I had been working back in the fifties and sixties, I don't think I would've wanted to make a UFO report.
Something like that could destroy your credibility.
You just turn your head and look the other way.
But, you know, that's stressful, and you have to carry that with you.
Police officers are trained to be meticulous about details.
But when it comes to UFO sightings, their reports are often challenged or the incident is dismissed as a hoax.
Hangar 1 files suggest that this treatment lines up directly with how Project Blue Book and the military dealt with civilian UFO witnesses and that these protocols were applied to police officers as well.
April 24th, 1964.
Socorro, New Mexico.
Officer Lonnie Zamora is driving in his car outside of Socorro, New Mexico.
He's chasing a speeder.
All of a sudden, Zamora hears this roaring sound, and he sees what he thinks is a flame object in the sky.
[ intense roaring .]
Zamora breaks off from the chase to investigate.
He thinks that a local dynamite shack may have exploded.
He's moving closer to where this event was taking place.
It's then that he notices a shining object, which at first he thought was an overturned car.
Zamora gets on the radio and tells the dispatcher he's leaving his car to check out a situation in the arroyo.
[ birds warbling .]
[ crickets chirping .]
[ intense dramatic music .]
Suddenly, a loud roar emanates from the craft.
[ roaring .]
A huge flame bursts out of the craft.
[ thunderous explosion .]
The craft begins lifting up and then immediately takes off.
Zamora radios a fellow officer, Sergeant Chavez, asking him if he sees a craft in the sky.
Radio silence.
When Chavez finally got there, the two of them found four indentations in the ground where the object had sat, some burnt vegetation, and they took very detailed notes and pictures of the whole area, and they put together a complete report.
Two days after the incident, Major Quintanilla, the head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book shows up to investigate the report, but he isn't the only one who descends on the town.
The sleepy little town of Socorro, New Mexico was overrun.
Overrun by major journalists, UPI, AP were there.
Government agents, FBI, military intelligence were there, and private UFO investigators were also there.
Everyone wanted to look for answers.
The evidence gathered by the police appears to be compelling.
Subsequent research and analysis of ground samples and photos revealed that some of the sand in the ground appeared to have been fused together as if it had come in contact with some very high, intense form of heat.
[ thunderous explosion .]
Then, on June 8th, 1964, Quintanilla issues his formal Project Blue Book report.
Not surprisingly, this report turned all the evidence right on its head.
It stated no substantial evidence had been found to support any kind of event, none of the witnesses were reliable, and so on.
Now, in the classified version of that report, it was a little bit of a different story.
I have Hector Quintanilla's words right here and I quote, "There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object that left an impression on him and scared Zamora to the point of panic.
" Zamora became so hounded by the Air Force and ufologists that he quit law enforcement, and he took a job managing a gas station.
If I were in the shoes of these officers that saw these things and were then shut up and intimidated, I would absolutely lose faith in myself.
This, I mean, this has to be a profound effect on their whole sense of who they are, the fact that the government would step in after these careers of service and treat them like crazy people when we know the government knows a heck of a lot more than than what they're telling us.
Based on Quintanilla's report, the case was closed.
But shortly thereafter, a UFO researcher named James McDonald locates a local scientist who claims to have analyzed a soil sample from the Socorro landing site.
Mary G.
Mayes was a doctoral student in radiation biology at the University of New Mexico and she was asked to analyze some of the soil samples from the Socorro case.
So she didn't find any radiation in the soil, but she did find two organic substances that she was not able to identify.
This is an important detail.
It proved that whatever landed there had organic material that is not found on earth.
[ engine winding up .]
[ thunderous explosion .]
The analysis on the soil samples really opens up the possibility, maybe the likelihood that we're talking about two different kinds of investigations, or two versions of the investigation, the public one and the not so public one.
What it looks like to me is that Quintanilla and Blue Book were sent in basically to mess up the investigation and make Zamora look like a fool.
Civilian police officers are not the only ones who meet resistance when it comes to reporting UFO incidents.
Up next, military police officers find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and the outcome becomes deadly.
[ gunshots .]
Many agencies are not open to these types of investigations because the upper echelon don't want the media.
They don't want to deal with it.
That's the biggest problem with law enforcement, dealing with the upper hands.
When it gets from local government up to the military, well, then, that's a little bit different.
[ suspenseful music .]
Hangar 1 files contain remarkable encounters of police officers and UFO sightings.
Some of these incredible events occur with officers who provide security for military bases.
In 1978, I was working at McGuire Air Force Base at 21st Air Force as the Deputy Director of Intelligence.
On January 18th, 1978, I drove onto the base and noticed that off to my right was a number of crash trucks and lights out on the runway.
And the sergeant in charge of the command post came up to me and said that an alien has been found at the end of the runway, that he was shot by a military policeman.
[ dramatic music .]
[ jet engine whining .]
January 18th, 1978, between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.
Radar from Fort Dix picks up an unidentified object between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.
The military police officer on duty is patrolling the outside of the base when he sees a large object hovering over the road.
He stops his car and radios in what he sees.
He's looking out through his windshield through the falling snow and explaining to the dispatcher what the craft looks like.
Right in the middle of a sentence [ radio screeches .]
the radio goes dead.
The officer looks up and that's when he sees the unimaginable, a small figure in the shadows that he later describes as having an unusually large head, long arms, and a slender body.
And this creature is standing right in front of his police car.
The officer panics.
[ gunshots .]
[ gunshots .]
Here's a man who is told to protect the base.
He's an armed guard, and he's seen a monster run around.
He does what probably a lot of guys would do, he shoots at the thing.
He runs back to his car and his radio is now working again.
He tells the dispatcher that he just shot a strange creature and it's now headed for McGuire Air Force Base.
The police officer drives to the gates of McGuire Air Force Base where he is told to wait.
Sergeant Jeffrey Morse from McGuire Air Force Base is called to the front gate to meet with the officer from Fort Dix to discuss the incident.
The officer is really shaken up.
He tells Morse that he shot at a strange entity, but it escaped and climbed over the fence into McGuire Air Force Base.
Sergeant Morse says that he'll handle it from here.
Sergeant Morse has to be thinking this other police officer is crazy, but he was about to get a big surprise.
[ car door opens, closes .]
[ footsteps on gravel .]
Morse and several other MPs head to the area where the entity reportedly climbed over the fence.
At the end of the runway they see a dead creature with a large head and slender body.
Sergeant Morse can't believe his eyes.
He reports that the smell is so bad they have to stand back several feet just to be able to breathe.
[ men coughing, gagging .]
He calls in a report and within hours the Air Force OSI takes control of the situation.
AFOSI is the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and they report directly to the Office of Security to the Air Force.
Technically, this means that they provide independent investigations outside the traditional military chain of command.
Sergeant Morse reports that he is surprised to see a military team responding to the incident in a way that suggests this wasn't the first encounter like this they had dealt with.
Sergeant Morse is not only brought in for questioning, but threatened.
Morse went through several days of intimidating interrogations where he was told to keep his mouth shut or else.
As incredible as this story sounds, it is corroborated by George Filer who was brought in to investigate the incident.
When I was investigating the case, I did interview Sergeant Jeff Morse who claims to have been out at the place where they found the ET.
Within a couple of days after he was out there, he was transferred to Okinawa.
They more or less arrested him and held him for awhile and essentially gave him a hard time.
When it comes to military officers who witness UFOs, did the protocol escalate from discrediting witnesses to completely removing them? Now, what happened to Jeffrey Morse in the aftermath of all of this is kind of symptomatic of how military personnel were held to different standards of accountability than, say, civilian police officers had been.
It's one thing for a small town cop to be ridiculed, but when you're a military person and you start talking privately to investigators about this, they're going to come after you.
[ dramatic music .]
[ gunshots .]
It's almost as if the military learned from previous reports that if you remove the witness, the media and investigators don't have any leads.
If this was the military's new protocol, how far will they go to ensure the silence of highly credible witnesses? Up next, military police officers [ alarm bell ringing .]
report a UFO landing on a nuclear base.
[ intense music .]
The Federal Government is going to give you exactly what they want you to hear.
I don't think they're afraid of anything, they just want to control things.
And as police officers, we're caught in the middle because the government does not want this information to get out.
MUFON investigators have uncovered evidence indicating the military's desire to undermine and discredit law enforcement testimony regarding UFO encounters.
However, despite the intention to keep these stories hidden, information is still often leaked.
1980, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Ten minutes before midnight on August 8th, 1980, three security policemen are on duty at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area just east of Kirtland Air Force Base.
The Manzano Weapons Storage Area consisted of a series of tunnels that had been excavated into three mountains.
In these tunnels is where the nuclear weapons would be stored.
On this night, three guards at the base saw a very bright light about three miles northeast of their position.
The men noticed this light traveling very fast before it suddenly stops over Coyote Canyon.
Coyote Canyon was a restricted area and so all three officers became very nervous when they saw this lighted object begin to descend into the canyon.
About three miles east of that position, there was another military police officer.
He was on patrol, and he was told to check out the weapons barracks area.
This officer drove down an access road to Coyote Canyon, and when he got there, he saw a very bright light in the air.
And above it was a disc-shaped object.
He starts to panic.
He tries to radio for help, but his radio doesn't work.
The officer grabbed his rifle, got out of his Jeep, and decided to pursue it.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ rifle shot .]
[metal richochet .]
He heard the sound of metal, and before he knew it, the ship just took off.
The lone patrolman who fired at the object, reports the incident to Sandia Base security headquarters.
The officer on duty reported the incident on August 9th, but Sandia Base didn't report it until August 11th, and they were supposed to report it to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
Protocol dictated that anything like that had to be reported immediately, but it wasn't.
But here's where things get more interesting.
For some reason, the AFOSI office at Kirtland informs Sandia that the Air Force no longer investigates such sightings unless they specifically occur on a base.
This doesn't make any sense because the incident did happen around a U.
S.
Air Force facility, and furthermore, near nuclear weapons, and yet AFOSI is not interested.
The AFOSI's main directive is to provide investigative services to protect the national security of the U.
S.
So to claim that a UFO that lands near a nuclear weapons storage unit is out of their jurisdiction is ludicrous.
On the night of August 11th, the UFO returns to the exact same location.
At that point, the Air Force just couldn't deny it.
On August 22nd, Major Edwards from Kirtland Air Force Base interviews every officer who was involved in these multiple sightings.
Major Edwards informs an intelligence officer named Richard Doty of the persistent accounts of UFO sightings near their nuclear weapons storage site.
Richard Doty is a controversial character in the whole history of UFOs.
Doty was expert at leading people on a wild goose chase.
It appears that once Officer Doty became involved, the case was doomed and eventually buried.
This is an important case because you have multiple witnesses of a multiple sighting that took place over several days all claiming to see the same object near Coyote Canyon.
So it appears there was a cover up.
Once again, we see forces from above come in and take these credible men, these servants to our country, and make them feel like they've done something wrong when they were just doing their duty.
If it was a cover up, who are they hiding the information from? The public was not involved in this, it was strictly military.
Was the military hiding information from the military? Up next, these incidents aren't just confined to the ground.
Two respected police helicopter pilots go head to head with a UFO.
The unbelievable dog fight when "Hangar 1" returns.
When you're involved in a UFO case, your credibility is in question.
The first thing they're going to do is perform a psych test on you, then they're going to do a drug test on you.
They want to intimidate you and a lot of police officers don't want to go through that.
Louisville, Kentucky, 1993.
At 11:50 P.
M.
, Officers Graham and Downs are in the middle of a routine patrol flight when they receive a call about a possible break in near Sanford Avenue and Buechel Bank Road.
The officers fly over the area when suddenly Graham notices a small light below them.
Downs points the helicopter spotlight on the object to get a better look.
Downs and Graham see a glowing, pear-shaped object about the size of a basketball.
Suddenly, the object shoots up, right in front of the helicopter and then spins counterclockwise around them until it stops right behind the two pilots.
Graham has never seen anything like it.
Now he's afraid the object is going to ram the tail rotor, so he pushes the helicopter forward at a 100 miles an hour.
Incredibly, the UFO chases them and at one point even shoots past them.
All of the sudden, the UFO appears to shoot three fireballs at the helicopter.
Graham is able to bank his helicopter away from the blast.
The pilots are panicking, but then the UFO just zips away.
[ phone ringing .]
The officers wake up their boss, Lieutenant David Pope, to give him their full report.
Pope can't believe what he's hearing.
He knows that his officers are credible.
He stated in a report that Graham was a veteran pilot and that both he and Downs were military veterans with many years of service.
So, look at the facts here.
These are police officers who work in the air.
They work in the sky every single day.
Well, of course they know the difference between a star, a planet, and some bell-shaped thing flying around their helicopter.
Lieutenant Pope submits his report to superiors, but it goes unnoticed.
Downs and Graham can't believe the report isn't being taken seriously.
And then if that isn't enough, fellow colleagues warn them to just let it go because it was starting to make the department look bad.
It makes you wonder if these police officers were hung out to dry with nowhere for them to go and no one to provide any answers.
Is the military now intentionally ignoring UFO reports by police officers in order to protect law enforcement authority or to protect themselves by avoiding a paper trail? It's almost a relief when I hear that there is some official involved, someone who is trained to observe because the credibility of these things is so often challenged.
One thing that I want to see in my lifetime is some answer for these experiences that I've had.
I want to see some kind of government recognition.
If they would just, you know, come out and say, yes, it is real, this is actually happening.
[ suspenseful music .]
[ thunderous explosion .]
With the majority of UFO sightings at night, it makes sense that the officers working these late shifts would be the most likely witnesses of such phenomena.
[ helicopter blades whirring .]
[ sirens wailing .]
Coming up, another predawn UFO chase leaves the police with nowhere to turn until MUFON uncovers the files.
When government policy states that UFOs do not exist, what happens when their local law enforcement agents see and report UFO sightings? Over the years, it appears policy has changed from deflection to disaccreditation to disregarding entirely, leaving police officers with nowhere to turn when it comes to reporting these incidents.
January 5th, 2000 near Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.
Melvin Knoll, a local Highland, Illinois truck driver pulls into his company office at 4:00 A.
M.
[ motor shutting down .]
He looks up and notices this really bright light in the sky that's moving towards him, and he realizes that the light is actually coming from a huge triangle-looking craft.
A recording from the county radio dispatcher documents the driver's report to the Highland Police Department.
We received a call from the Highland PD in reference to a truck driver who just stopped in and said there was a flying object.
Officer Ed Barton responds to the call at 4:10 A.
M.
He asks the county dispatcher if she's joking.
The dispatcher says, "No, the man who stopped in was totally serious.
" Just a quick question.
If I happen to find it, what am I supposed to do with it? As soon as Officer Barton turns onto Route 4 there's a bright light coming from a large triangle.
He pulls over to the side of the road, kills the car lights, and turns off his radio to see if this thing is making any noise.
The object makes no sound, but he can see every detail on this craft because it's moving right above him at a steady speed.
As soon as it passes, he radios the sighting into central command.
He predicts that the object should be hitting the town of Shiloh, Illinois at any moment.
In Shiloh, Officer David Martin soon radios in that he sees the craft as well.
What does it look like to you? It's kind of V-shaped.
[ police radio chatter .]
Several minutes later, at 4:29 A.
M.
, Officer Craig Stevens, who is in the nearby town of Milstadt radios in that he also sees a triangular UFO passing over his patrol car.
And then at 4:35 A.
M.
, another officer in Dupo, Illinois reports that he can also see the craft, but at this point, it's climbing altitude fast and he's losing track of the light.
If you would, contact Scott Air Force Base and see if they have anything flying in this area.
The dispatcher calls Scott Air Force Base, who report that they have not detected any unidentified object on their radar.
But here you have no less than four different officers all witnessing the same craft, yet Scott Air Force Base claims they've got nothing.
It just doesn't add up.
This was a huge case.
You have four police witnesses, media interest, and yet the military claims that they have no knowledge about anything that happened in the vicinity.
I find it impossible to believe Scott Air Force Base is not going to be able to detect a 75-foot triangular craft in its vicinity, and yet this is exactly what they claim.
Does the government and military now turn a blind eye when it comes to these kinds of sightings? The government knows what's going on.
They don't talk about it.
They won't report it.
Any singular event that has happened with pilots reporting and the police department on the ground reporting this, and then the story dies the next day.
You don't know if there's an investigation going on internally.
We know that there is, but the government doesn't talk about it, any government.
As a son of a cop and having grown up around cops my whole life and knowing the kinds of witnesses that they are, I find it offensive when you start seeing all of the ridicule that so many of them have been facing.
Once a police officer has seen a UFO, they very adamantly will defend what they saw against all odds.
Many of these police cases go unreported because of a fear of ridicule, but some brave officers do come to us to report their story.
They recognize that these are important cases that shouldn't be swept under the rug.
And they'd also like some answers to what they've witnessed.
We have now become the place for police officers to come to to report UFO encounters.
When you have this kind of experience seeing a UFO or something as unexplainable, and you try to report it, they'll tell you, we don't investigate this kind of phenomena.
If you want answers, you have to go to someone outside of the system because chances are it's not going to be investigated through law enforcement channels.
Police encounters with UFOs are some of the most detailed witness reports on record and yet they are continually disregarded by higher authorities.
Despite the government distancing themselves from these UFO accounts, MUFON remains a source that our law enforcement, both civilian and military, can turn to and be taken seriously.
As these officers continue to spend so much time on the front lines of our streets and military bases, the unusual sightings they document will be revealed in the files of "Hangar 1.
"