UFO Phenomenon (7NEWS Spotlight, 2021)

UFO Phenomenon is a documentary episode of 7NEWS Spotlight, broadcast on 2021-09-06, presented by investigative journalist Ross Coulthart.¹ The programme is the product of a year-long investigation by Coulthart, whose findings were recorded both on camera and in a companion book, In Plain Sight Book Coulthart.² Coulthart opens by stating that for 50 years a deliberate stigma and ridicule had been attached to the subject of UFOs,³ a position echoed by historian David Marler, who argues that the Air Force, FBI, and CIA maintained a policy of denial for decades⁵ before recent US government admissions about UAP became a turning point in public perception.⁴

The documentary situates the shift in official disclosure against a sequence of dateable events. The culture of government denial changed significantly when Department of Defense (DoD) UAP videos were leaked in 2017,⁶ the tapes consisting of infrared imagery captured from US fighter jets and Navy ships.⁷ Christopher K. Mellon, who served as a deputy assistant secretary in the DoD during the Clinton and Bush administrations,⁸ is identified as the source who released those videos to The New York Times.⁹ In 2017-12 the Times revealed the existence of a Pentagon unit secretly investigating UFOs.¹⁰ Journalist Leslie Kean broke the story,¹¹ reporting that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) had started in 2007 and had been secretly studying UAP for ten years,¹² and that the second major revelation was the 2004 Nimitz UAP Encounter.¹⁵ Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence officer placed in charge of the AATIP,¹³ and Kevin Day, the radar operator aboard the USS Princeton,¹⁸ both provide testimony about the encounter. Day states the objects had been tracked for multiple days before an intercept was ordered,¹⁹ and that on 2004-11-14 the USS Nimitz was performing drills off the Southern Californian coastline.¹⁶ The UAP, described by Elizondo as having taken evasive manoeuvres against David Fravor’s F/A-18F Super Hornet,²⁰ was observed on radar by Day to descend from approximately 28,000 feet to the ocean surface in 0.78 seconds,²¹ before reappearing at a combat air patrol rendezvous point approximately 60 miles (approximately 97 kilometres) away that was known only to a handful of Navy personnel.²² Elizondo states that the objects observed had no visible propulsion system, no wings, no rudders, no control surfaces, no ailerons, no elevators, no cockpit, and no rivets.²³ In 2020-04 the DoD made an unprecedented public admission acknowledging the footage was real.¹⁴

The programme devotes substantial time to Australian UAP cases centred on Australia, Western Australia, Exmouth and the Harold Holt Naval Communications Station, described by Coulthart as an extremely secret military base built to radio nuclear attack orders directly to US submarines during the Cold War.²⁴ Annie Farinaccio was 25 years old in 1991 when she experienced the Exmouth Annie Farinaccio Sighting (event).²⁵ She was accompanied in her vehicle by two officers from the Australian Federal Police.²⁶ Farinaccio describes observing a diamond-shaped craft hovering directly above the vehicle,²⁷ approximately two to three car lengths in size,²⁸ and completely silent.²⁹ A few days later, two US military police from the Harold Holt Naval Communications Station arrived at her home and requested she accompany them to the base.³⁰ During the Exmouth Farinaccio Military Interrogation (event), Farinaccio and the Australian Federal Police officers were cross-examined by American personnel,³¹ and Farinaccio states she was instructed to tell people she had seen a weather balloon.³² Coulthart also covers the Gordevich Exmouth Light Sighting 2015-02, in which Nikolai Gordevich saw a pure bright white, solid, oval-shaped object approximately the size of a car in early morning near Exmouth,⁴⁷ and the Arnold Exmouth Drive-In Sighting 1973, in which Adrian Arnold, then 12 years old, observed three dots moving in changing triangular formation at the local drive-in, departing at a speed he estimated as approximately ten times that of a jet aircraft.⁴⁸ Coulthart also states that anomalous activity near Northwest Cape has been reported by multiple witnesses, with sighting reports from Australian Defence Department personnel held in the National Archives.

The documentary addresses the correlation between UAP activity and nuclear facilities. Bob Salas, a retired US Air Force weapons operator who commanded an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) nuclear missile launch facility in the 1960s,³³ describes the Bob Salas Malmstrom Incident: on 1967-03-24, while underground in a weapons silo at a nuclear ICBM facility at the Montana ICBM Facility, guards reported seeing an orange-red pulsating light hovering above the front gate,³⁴ and the missiles at the facility went offline one by one with klaxon alarms sounding.³⁵ Marler separately observes that there is a strong correlation between nuclear weapons, nuclear storage sites, and UFO sightings.³⁶

A significant segment covers the Westall UFO Sighting, which witness Colin Kelly describes as the largest group UFO sighting in the Southern Hemisphere, with over 200 witnesses.³⁷ Westall High School was a college of approximately 600 pupils in Melbourne’s south-east.³⁸ Science teacher Andrew Greenwood observed a cigar-shaped grey metallic object directly over the far side of the school oval,³⁹ while student Joy Clarke described the object moving in an extraordinary manner and appearing to have a hump on top with a silvery appearance. The Westall Government Cover-Up is detailed through Kelly’s account that Air Force and Army personnel arrived within 40 minutes with trucks,⁴⁰ and through Greenwood’s testimony that approximately 14 days later, two men on official government business visited his home⁴¹ and threatened him with losing his job if he continued to speak about the sighting.⁴² Approximately 12 months afterwards, the office of the US President contacted Greenwood and requested he speak about the sighting,⁴³ sending a representative identified as Professor James MacDonald, who investigated approximately 50 to 60 UAP cases in New Zealand and Australia and found them essentially similar to those in the United States.⁴⁴ The resulting MacDonald Westall Greenwood Interview Recording documents Greenwood’s account. Coulthart states that Australia has never had any official investigation into the Westall sighting and believes a report by the Department of Supply Australia was buried.

The final portions of the programme address alleged crash retrievals and anomalous phenomena linked to UAP. Coulthart states that multiple former and serving senior US defence and intelligence officials told him that America has recovered alien extraterrestrial technology, including spacecraft,⁴⁵ with one recovery attributed to near USA, New Mexico, Aztec.⁴⁶ Researchers Scott Ramsey and Suzanne Ramsey are interviewed about the Aztec New Mexico UAP Crash: Scott Ramsey states that on 1948-03-25, oil workers discovered a lenticular craft following a brush fire,⁴⁷ which he describes as approximately 5.5 metres tall and just short of 30 metres across,⁴⁸ while Suzanne Ramsey states that 16 non-human bodies were found aboard.⁴⁹ The programme also covers the Grant Denyer Narre Warren Sighting, in which television personality Grant Denyer, described as a former Sunrise weatherman,⁵⁰ recounts seeing approximately five bright dots hovering low in the sky over Narre Warren Melbourne at around 21:00,⁵¹ one of which moved from a standing start to supersonic speed before stopping instantly.⁵² The programme closes with an account of US cattle mutilation cases: ranchers Mick Cook and Judy Cook, who run a 14,000-hectare station in North Queensland Cattle Station,⁵³ describe discovering cattle with heads surgically removed and no blood at the scene,⁵⁴ with 15 animals dying in similar circumstances.⁵⁵ Coulthart states that the FBI told him there are 10,000 unsolved cattle mutilation cases across the United States.⁵⁶