An object landed near the tiny town of Kecksburg, PA on December 9, 1965. It was observed as a fireball in the sky across several U.S. states and Canada. Four witnesses have provided independent, corroborated descriptions of the object and its location in the Kecksburg woods. Dozens of others - including fire fighters, newspaper reporters, and a news director at radio station WHJB - describe the military presence at the crash site. Some observed the cordoning off of the area and the retrieval of an object transported by an army truck. Many witnesses have provided signed statements for investigator Stan Gordon, who has been working on the case for over three decades.

At the scene, officials told some residents that a meteorite had crashed. The next day, the U.S. Government declared that nothing fell that night and nothing was found. This is the official U.S. Government position. However, eyewitness reports indicate that something fell and that the object appeared to move slowly and make several turns before landing. In all likelihood, the object was either a highly advanced space probe or an unknown object from outer space.

The files of Project Blue Book, the official Air Force investigation into UFOs terminated in 1969, state that no space debris entered our atmosphere that day. "Aluminum type" fragments were retrieved in Michigan and sent to Project Blue Book. (Where are they now?) A Blue Book memo says that no object was found in Pennsylvania. (Blue Book only had a "Secret" clearance and had the role of reporting information to the public; it is likely that the retrieval of this object was classified higher than Secret and thus Blue Book may not have been informed.) We have no idea if the fragments had anything to do with the object in question.

A Russian space probe, Cosmos 96, malfunctioned on the same day as the Kecksburg object, and this has been suggested by some as a plausible explanation. However, data provided by the US Space Command shows that Cosmos 96 re-entered the earth's atmosphere over Canada at 3:18 am; the crash in Kecksburg occurred at approximately 4:45 pm. The Russian Space Agency (equivalent of our NASA) stated that it could make no correlation between Cosmos 96 and the incident at Kecksburg. The Soviet Embassy also stated that there is no proof that any Soviet spacecraft landed in Kecksburg. In addition, witness descriptions of the object do not fit the size or other characteristics of Cosmos 96 or possible debris from it, as far as we know.

Last fall, SCI FI Channel President Bonnie Hammer joined President Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta to support a new Freedom of Information Act initiative by me and the Washington law firm of Lobel, Novins and Lamont. I have since written to over a dozen federal agencies requesting information about the Kecksburg incident. We intend to appeal some of the denials and take the issue to court if the government refuses to cooperate.

"I think it's time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark, on the question of government investigations of UFOs," Podesta said at the October news conference in Washington, D.C. announcing the FOIA effort. "We ought to do it because it's right. We ought to do it because the American people can handle the truth, and we ought to do it because it's the law."

No matter what the explanation is for the event in Kecksburg, the issue here is the public's right to information, especially 37 years after the incident.

Leslie Kean
Research Director
Lkean@ix.netcom.com
www.freedomofinfo.org