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Ex-Norad Officer calls in to c2c with George Knapp

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RobDel

RobDel

Skilled Investigator
From 8/26/11 episode of Coast to Coast -
A man claiming to be an officer at NORAD during the Phoenix Lights incident calls in to C2C. I edited this from the show recording and saved it because it sounds legit and could be valuable information for a researcher (he makes mention of the code name F-Con). I've been meaning to share this, but wasn't sure until today how to do it. I've uploaded the mp3 file. Have a listen, you won't be disappointed. He struck me as being genuine. The call is 13 minutes long. Please leave comments.
 

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Nice tip. Very interesting listen. It's been 15 years plus already. This sort of thing gets skeptics in an uproar, but anyone with a knowledge of any type of history knows full well that it often takes many years for the full story to come out.
 
That was worth listening to. He seemed to have a good working knowledge of NORAD operations. True story or disinformation?
The guy said he had a heart condition, I wonder if he's still alive.
Not knowing who he is, or having anything to follow up on, I regret I have to put this into my gray box.
 
Here's are the first clues that the story is either erroneous or fabricated:

Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer): "There was a UFO over the top of Phoenix. We contacted Luke Air Force Base; scrambled two F4s. They went up and verified it."

The Phoenix Lights happened on and around March 13, 1997
  • The last USAF Phantoms, F-4G Wild Weasel Vs from 561st Fighter Squadron, were retired on 26 March 1996.
  • The last operational flight of the F-4G Wild Weasel was from the 190th Fighter Squadron, Idaho Air National Guard, in April 1996. ( Gowen Field Air National Guard Base )
  • The last operational USAF/ANG F-4 to land was flown by Maj Mike Webb and Maj Gary Leeder, Idaho ANG.
  • Any other operational versions of the F4 in the USA are/were used by the US Navy as target drones in Florida.
Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer ): "So what we did is scrambled two C-131s out of Monthan Davis Air force Base and instructed them to drop night flares."
  • Nearly all of the C-131s left the active USAF inventory in the late 1970s.
  • The U.S. Coast Guard operated the aircraft until 1983.
  • The Air National Guard and U.S. Navy units operated additional C-131 airframes, primarily as Operational Support Aircraft (OSA) for Air National Guard flying wings and as naval air station "station aircraft" until 1990.
Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer ): "Like I said, NORAD scrambled two C-130s out of Monthan Davis Air force Base."
  • The C-130 ( Hercules ) is a substantially different aircraft than the C-131s. So which is it? How does a NORAD officer confuse them?
  • The base is not called Monthan Davis but Davis-Monthan AFB. It may seem like a minor point but any NORAD officer should automatically get this right.
  • From what I've read in the past, transport aircraft are not typically "scrambled" in any short period of time. They are seldom in a state of "alert readiness". Because they are in high demand, they are usually in service on some delivery or another at any given time. It would make no sense to keep them grounded so that they can wait around and drop flares during UFO malfunctions. Alert readiness is something that certain bases maintain with fighter/interceptors and/or attack/bombers. A regular helicopter would be more suited for the job of spontaneous flare dropping, and if I know that, any alleged NORAD officer should also know that.
Given the above, the caller sounds more like a sci-fi writer with his head stuck back in the 1970s. Given all this and no verifiable ID on the caller there is little reason to take anything he says as more than sheer entertainment. Interesting post though ... :) !
 
It was a bad mistake to make one way or the other, either a memory mistake if the story is legit or a research mistake if it's just a fake story. In fairness to the possibility it's a legit account with a factual error, the F-4 was a stalwart, widely-used jet for a great many years and they did the final shift over to the F-16 just a year before the PL incident. Knapp led Mike a couple times, "you were at Cheyenne Mountain?" "Yeah," whereas just asking open ended questions might have worked better, but Knapp wasn't expecting the call to be fair to him.
 
ufology said:
Here's are the first clues that the story is either erroneous or fabricated:

Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer): "There was a UFO over the top of Phoenix. We contacted Luke Air Force Base; scrambled two F4s. They went up and verified it."

The Phoenix Lights happened on and around March 13, 1997
  • The last USAF Phantoms, F-4G Wild Weasel Vs from 561st Fighter Squadron, were retired on 26 March 1996.
  • The last operational flight of the F-4G Wild Weasel was from the 190th Fighter Squadron, Idaho Air National Guard, in April 1996. ( Gowen Field Air National Guard Base )
  • The last operational USAF/ANG F-4 to land was flown by Maj Mike Webb and Maj Gary Leeder, Idaho ANG.
  • Any other operational versions of the F4 in the USA are/were used by the US Navy as target drones in Florida.
Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer ): "So what we did is scrambled two C-131s out of Monthan Davis Air force Base and instructed them to drop night flares."
  • Nearly all of the C-131s left the active USAF inventory in the late 1970s.
  • The U.S. Coast Guard operated the aircraft until 1983.
  • The Air National Guard and U.S. Navy units operated additional C-131 airframes, primarily as Operational Support Aircraft (OSA) for Air National Guard flying wings and as naval air station "station aircraft" until 1990.
Caller Mike ( Alleged NORAD officer ): "Like I said, NORAD scrambled two C-130s out of Monthan Davis Air force Base."
  • The C-130 ( Hurcules ) is a substantially different aircraft than the C-131s. So which is it? How does a NORAD officer confuse them?
Click to expand...
Damn that Vulcan brain of yours! hehe I knew if anyone could find inconsistencies and holes it would be you. He sounds so convincing though.
 
RobDel said:
Damn that Vulcan brain of yours! hehe I knew if anyone could find inconsistencies and holes it would be you. He sounds so convincing though.
Click to expand...

Hey great story ... thanks for making the post. As someone who believes UFOs ( alien craft ) are real, and part of a UFO interest group ( USI ), and a participant here on the Paracast ( where we separate the signal from the noise ) it is really important IMO to demonstrate that we're not the compulsive fantasy prone idiots that the skeptics sometime make us out to be. On the flip-side, maybe the caller was just getting old and has a few things a bit mixed up. We don't really know for sure how much truth there is in his story. All we can do is try to check out the facts based on what was said.
 
If the guy did what he said in NORAD he can certainly back that up with Knapp as Knapp invited him to do. Just one point about mistakes in historical accounts . . . . they happen and I've read enough oral histories where the folks being interviewed did make mistakes in recall regarding things they were directly involved in years before. I'm not talking UFO stuff here, but governmental stuff. The F-4 comment does raise a red flag but it's also an error to toss out the whole thing because of one honest error . . . . if that's all it was. ;)
 
Good work, ufology. Too often, the only listeners qualified to asses the authenticity of anonymous mystery callers are those few who have worked on the inside themselves. Your systematic deflation of this particular caller should serve as a cautionary flag for mass media consumers.
 
There was a discussion on my private list about this in January of 2012 where George Knapp and Ron Regehr participated (I don't have permission to paste their replies simply because I didn't ask for their permission).

However, I am reactivating download link of my audio compilation+articles-debates named "UFOs and NORAD" (audios compiled from audio archives) that was used for that thread at the time. You can download it on the link below:
ADrive | Online Storage, Online Backup, Cloud Storage

Short Addendum:
Speaking about "Phoenix Lights" incidents, after many years of search, I was finaly been able to get this summer copy of the March 13, 1997 Art Bell show from the hands of the colleague archivist in Australia. We exchanged some material and I received my baby.

There were some rumours that during that show, callers were calling live and reporting the incidents (Art also spoke about it on the Peter Jennings 2005 ABC special). However, finaly after listened this rare hard-to-get episode in question, I can confirm that there were no calls from callers on the air on that day. But, on the beginning of the show, Art is making summary of the incident which means that calls were received off the air and after that Peter Davenport is making special report. However, I am happy to finaly have that episode because of that small historic portion in the beginning.

Also, in my audio compilation (download link above with pdf transcript by NUFORC) in the clip number 1 titled "Clip01-NUFORC.Tape(partial).mp3", narrator of the documentary says: "Casting further doubt in the AF explanation is this never before heard recording of a call, made by an airman at Luke AFB to NUFORC, early in the morning on March 14."

That statement is wrong. Tape in question was aired on nationaly syndicated Art Bell's radio show in the March 14th 1997 episode (the same day when the call was recorded).
 
22 years in the military? Dying from exposure to Agent Orange? Let's just assume he retired right after the Phoenix Incident, that would have had him entering the military around 1975. Although yes, the Fall of Saigon happened in 1975, the dates still seem kind of unlikely to me. My stepdad served in Vietnam, he was career military, but due to cut-backs in the early nineties he was asked to retire early in the mid-nineties, and according to him a lot of guys around his age were being forced out around this time. I'm not claiming to be some sort of expert, but it just doesn't really sound to legit to me.

As an interesting side-note, I can actually see Cheyenne Mountain from my backyard...
 
I haven't listened to the audio yet. Sounds like it might be interesting. But I think ufology did a great job of blowing this one out of the water.

Also consider this: How many personnel would have been on duty at the mountain during this incident? Of those, how many would have been privy to the level of information in question? I don't know. But I'm betting this would make for a rather small suspect pool for Air Force investigators to scrutinize. Anyone working in a such a place expecting to remain anonymous would not be terribly bright. And the not-terribly-bright don't normally work in such places.
 
exo_doc said:
Dang Ufology.
I hope you never check out my past.
I'll turn out to really be an orphaned women, who never served in the Army, and was a pole dancer in Branson, Missouri during the 80's.
Jeez.......
Click to expand...


Do you have any photos of yourself poledancing ?

No ?

Would you like to buy some ?
 
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