Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998

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and inll•llectually dishonest tactic.
Three ti llll' space veteran Wally ::ichirra,
who according to lffOlogisls saw
"glowing masses"( actually lightning-lit
clouds, over the Indian Ocean) hos
written. "I do not know enough about
this subject to render an opinion of
any kind. The o!lly information l ~ave
is that which has been released to the
public through the years by the
various news media". UFO writers
would ha,·e us belieH~ that this is part
or a ,·ast conspiracy of lies which only
they can penetrate.
,Accil~ t:l.,.
The actual answi!r to the "shapeless
light" mystery illustrates the wa~·
NASA races real space mysteries. The
crew was puzzled by the sighting but
reported it to space officials who made
• no effort to conceal the incident. If
NASA were trying to co,·er up actual
UFO sightings by astronauts, this was
a good candidate for one-and it
would never have been publicized.
Astronaut Dick Gordon revealed to
me the unpublicized solution to the
..,
publicized mystery. In a letter dated
Septemhcr 15. 1976, Cordon wrote:
" I ,•i\'idly re..:a!I the incident which
oc.:11rrcd when a light of indistinct
shape and size was spolled on our
return to earth... (it) did appear lo be
in the Indian Ocean. ln our discussions
and debriefings that occurred l:iter.
Rusty
Schwcikart
provided
the
answer. He simply said, 'how about
the moon's reflection?' and, of course,
that is what it was... How often those
of us in aviation have seen the moon's
reflection on the water in the course
of a nom1al flight. We simply did not
put it together in returning from lunar
distance, where we had the black back­
ground of space, the dark night of the
earth. and the moon behind us."
Other spacemen have been asked to
answer these questions). They have
been forthright in their denials: "I
never ha\'e personally seen anything I
could identify as a UFO", says John
Glenn, now a Senator Crom Ohio.
Astronauts Grissom and Young said,
"We have never seen any UFOs".
Richard
Gordon,
who was
with
A common sourco of space and othor UFOs
is shown hore. The aura and the lens-shaped
disc Is actually a sunrise photographed from
Skylab. NASA photo SL3-118,2177.
Conrad on Gcmini-11 and Apollo-12.
writes that " I never s:iw a l.Jf'O".
Astronaut "Dcke" Sla}·tor, claims t!1at
"[ don't recollect anyone u,porting
any UFOs on any of our nights''.
"'Buzz" Ald rin went to the moon
on Ai,ollo-11, on which the l.iFO
press lists at least three separate UFO
incldenls.
There were no
UFOs:
"There are people who say there's a
go\"ernment conspiracy to covu up the
• existence of flying saucers." Aldrin
told a
Reuters reporter in 1973,
"That's a lot of hogwlsh."
The L.M pilot on the next fligh~.
Apollo-'12, was Alan Bean. Following a
new press conference in 1975 when
James Harder repeated his stories of
Apollo-11 and Apollo-12 UFOs, Bean
told UPI that at no time during his
mission did he ever see an unidentified
object. "At no time did we see
anything which was not of our
spacecraft, either during lunar orbit or
during the voyage to and from the
moon," Bean stated.
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