Beyond Belief"When we arrived at CSC [Bentwaters Center for Security Control], we ran into Sgt. Chandler and two or three other security people. They had had negative contact with us for almost three hours, and they had been concerned. I remember saying to Sgt. Chandler, `You're not going to believe tonight.' He said, `Yeah? If it has anything to do with what I saw a little while ago, I would believe you.'"Airman Burroughs and I were then instructed to report to the shift commander's office. The assistant operations officer was there to debrief us. As we stood at attention in his office, he spoke to us in a very steady, calm voice. He said, `Can you gentlemen explain to me what happened out there tonight?' So we explained, very briefly. We didn't tell him any specifics about the symbols or the design of the craft. "After a very long pause, and very calmly, while he was tapping his pencil on the table, he said, `Gentlemen, what you say you experienced tonight is no longer able to be reported through Air Force channels.' He then gave us something of a history lesson on Project Blue Book and that it was terminated in 1969. Basically, he told us that there was no official way to report this up. Then he said, `Some things are best left unsaid.' He asked us to keep quiet about it, to forget it happened. "That mentality, that mindset and thought process, also caused the security controller to delete it from the blotter and retype the blotter entry with a minimal description, something to the effect of `Investigated aircraft crash off base' and three or four brief sentences following. Also, an Air Force Form 1569, an accident and complaint report, was filled out. Later, I learned that that was what stimulated Lt. Col. Halt, when he reviewed the blotter the next morning and after hearing about what really had happened, to insist something about it be put into the blotter." Through the woods"After the debriefing, Airman Burroughs and I were put on authorized break for six days, so we drove home to Ipswich. I dropped Airman Burroughs off, then went home, changed clothes, and drove back to Woodbridge. But first I stopped by a friend's place in Ipswich, who was a contractor and painter, who gave me some plaster. Then, I went back out to the forest and the clearing where the three indentations left by the craft we had seen were."I poured plaster into the impressions left in the ground by the craft and waited about 40 minutes. Then I pulled them up and put them in the back of my car, just as Maj. Ed Drurry, the Deputy Security Police Commander, and the assistant operations officer showed up. They asked me what I was doing. I told them I was just looking around. They told me they wanted to do the same. "I didn't tell them about making the casts, because I didn't think it would be prudent. Later I found out that the deputy base commander, then-Lieutenant Colonel Halt, had also visited the site later that same day and noticed that there were traces of plaster around the impressions, the indentations, and later, much later, I finally admitted to him what I had done. I needed something for myself, something to prove to me that this had really happened, really physically happened. "The interesting thing about the impressions, or something worthy of note, anyway, is that the ground temperature at the time was such that our vehicles didn't even make impressions on the ground because it was so cold or frozen, so whatever the craft was, it had to be heavy. "I had dropped my film off at the base lab for developing, but I never got them back. I never saw them. I was just told that they didn't turn out. I didn't understand that but was not in a position to push the issue. The cameras we carried in our vehicles were good ones, used to photograph people on the perimeter. We were under a high terrorist threat at the time with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), another terrorist group known as Black September, and some others, so we used them frequently as part of our patrol." Contained"Two days later, there was another, second encounter. I did not go out on that night. Lt. Col. Halt was sent out to investigate."In the days following all this, I spoke off and on with Airman Burroughs. He was really agitated about this whole thing, really upset about it. I was still more perplexed than anything at this point. "After that incident, however, I was directed to report to OSI [Office of Special Investigations] at 0900 in the morning. I met with a couple of agents, whom I had known because they had an office on the base. They debriefed me for about an hour and a half about the incident. It was an oral debriefing where I basically just told them what had happened, and they seemed quite content with the information that I provided them at the time. They seemed to have no problem with the fact that I had seen a craft. And, of course, there was no evidence, hard evidence, or so they thought. I did not tell them at this point that I had approached the craft, touched the craft, but I did tell them about the photos I had taken. But all this was, in their minds, I think, another unconfirmed UFO sighting, though the term `UFO' was not used -- by them or me. I think they felt assured at this point that containment was going to be maintained and that there was not going to be a problem. Damage control was at a minimum, and I think they felt that at that point they had met their objective. "During the first week in January, about a week or so later, we had a pass-on that was given at guard mount to brief our people to ignore any type of activity that was going to be happening on the perimeter of Woodbridge. Apparently, or at least as we were told, there was a special team that was going to be out there doing some electronics work. They weren't wearing uniforms but civilian clothes. Now it was perfectly normal to receive pass-ons, but this situation was different because these guys weren't wearing military uniforms. It was later rumored that it was a U.S. team sent in as a containment study team. But I do not know that for a fact. "In the meantime, Lt. Col. Halt issued his memorandum to the British Ministry of Defense. I do not find it odd that he didn't get any response, for the simple reason that there was no official way of reporting this kind of thing and so there was no official way for anyone to react to the upchanneling of information. And quite frankly, I don't think anyone suspected or expected the deputy base commander to shoot off a memo to MoD. I think OSI thought the information was contained, because no written report had been taken up through U.S. channels and the debriefings were all taken care of." Mysterious Origins"It was a difficult time after the incident. For years afterward, I would hear the stories within military circles and I never commented on it in any way at all. Nor did I ever speak to any UFO researchers or members of the media. Still, I noted with some disconcertment all of the untruths being discussed, especially in the media starting in the mid-eighties after the Halt memo was released through the Freedom of Information Act. I read accounts quoting people who claimed to be primary witnesses -- and they weren't -- saying certain events happened, which they didn't."I think the fact that that memo was discovered and released was a complete oversight. In fact, when the word got out, I think it suprised the federal government and a lot of people within the U.S. Air Force. That has got to be the last thing they expected. Especially on this case. They thought damage control was complete. They had effectively contained the situation, they thought. Then comes this memo on official USAF stationery and signed by the deputy base commander, and it reads like something out of a science-fiction novel. It caught the Air Force with its pants down, and they didn't know how to react. It was definitely an embarrassment for the U.S. government because, in effect, it showed that they had basically been lying about never investigating anything having to do with the UFO phenomenon. Which is, of course, ridiculous. UFOs are not all that uncommon; it's just that we called them bogies and always came up with a prosaic answer as to their identities before. But this caught them in a lie. That and the fact that it happened outside of a NATO installation just did not make the Air Force look very good. "I was extremely upset by the memo's release, because the story being leaked as a result included my name and I was being tied into it. I had been assured by my senior officers at Bentwaters that at no time would my name or whatever be used or released outside official U.S. channels. Of course, they hadn't released it, but the next thing I know, it's being covered on CNN and Unsolved Mysteries and in books and magazines. Fortunately, I was still in the service and managed to duck them all. But I was confused. I thought -- and I had been told -- that this was a top secret incident. And now all this. "I had no interest in anything like this before 1980. I always thought that anybody who had seen strange lights or claimed to have seen UFOs in the sky was crazy. I am a logical person. Even to this day, I am still trying to rationalize from previous experience what that craft was, what happened. But there it is: I mean, I am standing out in the clearing in the middle of the forest and there is this craft, clearly triangular in shape, looking like nothing I have ever seen or ever heard about, and it doesn't make any sound, and it's got lights, and I walk around it and take pictures of it and I even touch it, and nobody, no country, is claiming it. I am 99 percent certain of one thing and that is, this craft was definitely not of USAF origin or at least not that I know of, and nobody I know has ever heard anything about a craft like this then or now. And what other country might have such a craft that has those capabilities of maneuvering in tight conditions in the middle of a forest and all with no sound? That disturbed me then, and it disturbs me now." Damage Control"Following my assignment/tour of duty at Bentwaters, in 1984, I was reassigned to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana. My family and I acquired housing on the base, and there I found, quite by accident, a listening device -- a bug, if you will -- inside our base house, inside the living room wall, near the phone jack. I took it out and had someone I trusted look at it. That person told me that it had a range of 3,000 feet. That really disturbed me. And I did have some harassing phone calls. But that was alleviated by changing our phone number. I really don't know what to think about that device. And I cannot even be positive it hadn't been there from before, long before our arrival for another purpose, another person having nothing to do with me. But that seems, somehow, unlikely. Considering that Burroughs has been continually harassed and that his place has been broken into and the only things missing were a video documentation of the incident and his files on Bentwaters. Each of us, including Halt, have had our mail tampered with -- things opened, resealed obviously, and communiques delayed for weeks. Sure, it could be the post office, but the number of times it has happened and that it's happened to each of us with some consistency makes me question if it's all just a coincidence. We now take certain precautions when we communicate."My own feeling is that this is all just a part of damage control. We were all in a position at the time of being trained observers, credible witnesses, who were backed by physical documentation and evidence -- all of which you just cannot discount. In most of these so-called UFO encounters, there is absolutely no evidence and the witnesses are or can be made to be not credible. The fact that we could be believed has the Air Force worried. At least that's all I can think. What else could it be?" Sensational"In a conversation with Colonel Halt in 1990 [he was now a full Colonel], I asked him about the top secret status of all this in light of what had happened. He told me then that there was nothing classified about any of this. The Air Force, you see, has always had this sort of policy that, `Yeah, you can talk about this incident or that incident because technically it isn't classified, not officially classified, but -- it's not a good idea.' That was always the way it had been given to me. So I never talked to anybody about this. However, others have, including some who don't know what they're talking about because they weren't out there. There's a lot of truth to be told here, and that's all anybody wants to hear is the facts. To sensationalize it, well . . . that's pointless. It's pretty sensational in and of itself what happened."For starters, this is one of the most witnessed and best documented UFO encounters ever, observed from a distance by some 80 people on the first night and an additional 30 on the second night -- all of whom were trained observers. This was our profession -- to be observing situations that might occur. We were on the alert. Our senses were ready. Out there, we were trained to be sponges, absorbing everything we saw or heard and documenting it with notes and mentally. Then there was my camera and the photographs I took, which have to be somewhere. There were radio transmissions that were heard and a tape of the deputy base commander's investigation, which is circulating out there. Then again, this was an unknown, and there's a lot of fear about the unknown. "At this point, I don't think I have broken any confidentiality oaths with the Department of Defense or the federal government. I would not do that or anything that would jeopardize the security of our country." A Jump in TimeOne of the most interesting aspects of the Bentwaters case is the physical evidence gathered by Penniston, including:
Travelers from the futureDuring the second hypnotic regression, the psychologist takes Penniston back to the debriefing by two Office of Special Investigation (OSI) agents, and he recounts the scene and events just as he recalled them consciously. But then, according to Penniston's memory under hypnosis, those two agents leave the room and two other officials, one American and one with a British accent, come into the room and ask Penniston to again recount the story. They ask him, he says, if he would mind being given a shot of something and then telling his story again while they tape-record it. Penniston agrees, "if that's what it takes." But he also tells his interrogators that he doesn't like shots.In a dramatic and striking scene on the videotape, Penniston lifts his arm for a shot of sodium penthathol and the agents question him repeatedly about the trajectory of the craft, its speed and approach. Penniston calmly repeats over and over that he did not see any of that, that the craft was already on the ground when he saw it. The interrogation continues, and Penniston answers the officials' questions about the craft itself and the symbols he found on one side. He recalls the two agents talking to themselves, saying there was "no point in going further," that they knew what had happened and now the question was how to contain the situation. "They know about what I've seen. They knew it already," Penniston says under hypnosis. As the regression continues, the psychologist begins questioning Penniston about possible "beings" in the craft and he begins to answer. On the tape, it seems that Penniston knows the answer to just about every question the psychologist asks. "I look at this and find it hard to believe it's me," said Penniston during one viewing of the tape. Under hypnosis, Penniston describes the alien visitors, saying that they are "travelers from our future." They have been coming here in teams, each team assigned a different "tasking," a different mission. Each team targets certain people when it comes back to our time, rather than just encountering people randomly. When the psychologist asks him why, Penniston -- still under hypnosis -- says, "They've got a serious problem. The world isn't like it is now. It's darker, in bad shape. It's very polluted and much colder." He goes on to recount that the visitors from the future also have serious social problems and difficulties with reproduction. Accordingly, one of the travelers' main tasks is to obtain sperm and eggs and chromosomes in order to keep the species alive. The species in question, he says in response to the psychologist's question, is "us. They're humans." "The problem here," says Penniston to Rayl after the videotape ends, "is I don't know if this information is real in any sense, if it's been planted in my mind or if any of it is actually rooted in truth as we know it." Questions still unansweredOMNI asked David Jacobs, one of the country's leading abduction researchers, to view and comment on the videotape of Penniston's second hypnosis session. Jacobs, history professor at Temple University, has conducted more than 600 hypnotic regressions and has written two books on the phenomenon, Secret Life and a new book, tentatively entitled The Threat, due in June 1997 from Simon & Schuster. Based on his research, Jacobs believes that the alien abduction phenomenon is real, that people really are being taken aboard spacecraft and subjected to often cruel medical and genetic examinations."The hypnosis started out fine," Jacobs says of the Penniston session. "The psychologist didn't ask a lot of probing questions. She did ask a few leading questions, but he didn't bite. It was okay. I feel quite certain that they, the military agents, did get him up into the office for an interrogation and that they did inject him with sodium pentathol, put him on a table, and ask him all those questions. It was quite a striking scene, and it all had the ring of truth to me. In other words, it appeared that this is exactly what happened. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end and each part led logically to the next up until the sodium pentathol. Once that was administered, it was chaos as far as I was concerned. "He zoomed off into a channeling mode, and the psychologist didn't recognize it," contends Jacobs. "He simply dissociated, which is what happens when people begin to channel. The information is coming from one part of his brain, and the other part hears it and think it's coming from the outside. And suddenly he knows the answer to everything, as the psychologist begins to ask him one question after another about the beings. He knew the answer to absolutely everything, and only one question was he unable to answer. This is a certainty of channeling. It's a psychological phenomenon, and all the information that comes from this is internally generated. If the hypnotist isn't real experienced and doesn't recognize this, they can easily fall into this trap, and this I believe was a classic situation of just that." Whether the information recounted under hypnosis is genuine or not, Penniston's account of what he consciously remembers fills in most of the remaining blanks as to what actually occurred at Bentwaters on that first mysterious night in late 1980. Still, two questions remain: Where did the craft come from? Who did it belong to? The Air Force refuses comment on all aspects of the Bentwaters case. 
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