Report from Daniel Munoz as translated by Scott Corrales, 12/4/00

Part I

The "Las Lomas" UFO

The video known as the "Las Lomas UFO", in which it is possible to see a strange, "saucer-shaped" object flying over the western skies of Mexico City on August 6, 1997, could become one of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting an extraterrestrial presence in our world.

Following an initial transmission during the "Tercer Milenio" program, this extraordinary 25-second sequence gave rise to all manner of commentary in such countries as Italy, Spain, Germany, the U.S., New Zealand, Belgium and the U.K. It is possible to see in this video a metallic-looking object featuring a dome in its upper section as it moves irregularly between the buildings of the "Royal Reforma" residential complex: a circular motion clearly distinguishable from the UFO's first camera close-up by the video's authors…a behavior that coincides perfectly with the descriptions given by witnesses to UFO sightings, who state that UFOs move with a swinging motion, as if skimming the ocean's waves.

The following is a brief chronicle of the event:

Friday, September 26, 1997 - A VHS videotape and a letter left by an unidentified party are received at Gate #3 of Televisa San Angel in southern Mexico City. The person requests that the video be directly delivered to Jaime Maussan's Tercer Milenio program. This video reached our office and unleashed an unusual excitement from the outset, given the images it contained. That very same day, the decision is made to transfer it to a professional format and make certain enhancements and changes to the images' negative in order to more clearly observe the alleged UFO. The letter accompanying the video narrated the reasons that led its author to deliver it to our facilities-a letter lacking a return address, in which the author states his/her skepticism about the UFO phenomenon and even mocks those who discuss the subject until he himself becomes a witness to this sighting. According to the letter, the author was eating in his office when, in the company of a co-worker, he sees a strange object flying between the buildings through one of the mess room's windows. Both employees got up immediately and ran for a camcorder kept in their boss's office. From the patio outside the mess room, they were able to record the object's progress for 25 seconds until they lost it from sight. According to the author, his sister convinced him to send the video to our television show, and the letter requests anonymity, fearing reprisals both at work and in his personal life. He likewise states that his friend was also somewhat nervous and requests that the voices heard on the original audio track be omitted, as was indeed done on television.

Saturday, September 27 - With a copy of the video, we traveled to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua on the U.S. border to make two live broadcasts from that city. Upon reaching the facilities of that network's Channel 56, the video created a sensation among the station's coworkers upon being screened. That very same day further enhancements were made to the video, and along with the producers and staff of the Channel 56 program, a search is made for new details which will allow a determination of the veracity of the sequence presented. The sequence was aired for the first time on TV that very same day at the end of the live broadcast that Saturday, creating expectations for the following day's program, which would be completely devoted to UFO phenomena in Ciudad Juarez, a veritable contact point.

Monday, September 29: During the work session held every Monday by the Tercer Milenio team in Mexico City, a call is received from a person claiming to know the place appearing in the UFO sequence shown on TV the previous day. We immediately took down the viewer's information and went to meet him. Once initial personal contact was made, we were taken to the site from where the video was recorded, realizing that this was, in fact, the site in question. Using the information on the letter received, we went up to the penthouse of the building known as "Corporativo Reforma Laureles", making sure that this was indeed the location from which the August 6th UFO was seen. In the offices at said location, there was no one by the name of the video's alleged author, as given on the letter delivered to Televisa. However, the panoramic shot taken by our cameraman coincides perfectly with the one appearing on the video. Thanks to our viewers, we had found the precise location of the sighting. That very same day, after coming down from the building's penthouse terrace, one of our coworkers called us excitedly, saying that "a girl had seen the object shown on the video." In fact, Casandra Lopez Mendoza, 14, would tell us with great excitement how she had seen "a spinning object flying close to the building between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. on a cloudy Wednesday with light rain." Casandra had been considered crazy by her relatives on August 6th after she had told them what happened. But our presence would lend weight to her belief that what she had seen was not only real, but highly important. Casandra's description dovetailed perfectly with the behavior exhibited by the object on the video, which she had not seen and whose existence was unknown to her. Casandra stated that this wasn't the first time she'd seen UFOs in the area: on two prior occasions she had witnessed similar objects over the canyon. Once the interview was over, we headed to a local restaurant to show Casandra the images we had received in order to record her impressions on this matter. However, before this could be done, we learned from the waiters that the restaurant's manager, Mr. Luis Arturo Garcia Flores, had also been an eyewitness to the August 6 sighting. We approached him immediately, confirming the events with another eyewitness who had also seen the object's maneuvers and whose statements would confirm Casandra's testimony and the images on the video. Once interviewed, we invited both eyewitnesses to view the video carefully, creating in Casandra a vivid excitement reflected in her eyes-the excitement of someone who was confirming that what she had seen months earlier had not been a product of her imagination.

Tuesday, September 30: We began our investigation with Mexico City's International Airport as well as with the P.R. agencies in Southwestern Mexico City to ascertain if what appears on the video could be a promotional balloon. The Mexican Association of Public Relations Agencies informed us by phone that nothing resembling a balloon had been employed at that time as far as they knew.

That day we had an appointment with Mr. Enrique Kolbeck, an air traffic controller at Mexico City Airport, with whom we would visit the sighting area once more. We then conducted an interview after he made a few appraisals regarding cloudiness, location, the distance between said point and the airport and ground characteristics. Kolbeck initially expressed doubts as to the object's movements in the video, but was later convinced as to its veracity by also interviewing the eyewitnesses. According to his statement, it isn't feasible for a balloon to fly freely at such an altitude between the buildings, and much less one that size. In any event, he agreed to research among airport authorities to see if any balloon-flying permits had been issued for flights over that part of the city on August 6, 1997.

That very same day we made an effort to conduct interviews with the residents of the "Royal Reforma" complex to see if anyone had witnessed the strange object on August 6th. Due to the fact that it is a highly exclusive residential complex occupied by certain politicians and public figures of Mexican society, we were denied all manner of information, and of course, access.

Wednesday, October 1: We traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. to reach Jim Dilettoso, one of the best computerized image analysts in the United States. Dilettoso has devoted himself, on a part-time basis, to analyze UFO images from different part soft the world, reaching conclusions which have made an impression on the scientific establishment. From the first moment that he saw the August 6th images, Dilettoso evinced an interest in the possibility that the object could be a balloon suspended from a helicopter. However, after feeding the images into a computer to conduct the initial analysis of the Las Lomas UFO, Dilettoso was surprised---as were others present in the laboratory---when the monitor displayed all of the images elements except for the UFO itself. After a few minutes of concern, arising from the belief that the equipment had been damaged, Jim Dilettoso discovered that within the same image in which the UFO could not be seen on the screen, it would appear in its proper place after passing infrared and ultraviolet filters. This led Dilettoso to adjust all of his analytical equipment to another frequency in order to analyze the object's characteristics, a situation which had practically never happened to him earlier in any other circumstance, and which on the other hand, confirmed the veracity of the video presented.

Before taking our leave, Dilettoso asked us for a little more time to conduct further studies on the Las Lomas video, given its unusual characteristics. Dilettoso would look for centers of gravity and would try to reconstruct the UFO's movement in order to achieve a better analysis.

Thursday, October 2: We returned to Mexico City early in order to pursue the search for eyewitnesses to the August 6th UFO. However, activity in this regard was practically nil.

Friday, October 3: Fortunately, positive results were obtained in our search for witnesses. Behind the "Royal Reforma" complex's buildings, we found Mr. Alfredo Rodriguez Hernandez, a local blacksmith, who had also seen the UFO pass almost directly overhead. His description of the object and its movements coincides almost perfectly with what can be seen on the video, and even new information was provided to substantiate the story: uninterrupted gyration by the vehicle, possible portholes…We later headed for Casandra Lopez's house, where we found her once more, willing to lend her aid in locating other witnesses to the sighting. Some neighbors stated that they had not seen any objects whatsoever that August 6th, however, three of them claimed having seen "a luminous sphere among the clouds which appeared to be an airplane, but of large size and making no sound or motion whatsoever" around 8:00 p.m. on Monday, September 29. With these new eyewitness accounts, and remembering Casandra's words, we reached the conclusion that it was feasible that a UFO sighting had occurred in that location.

That very same day we inquired from the local police if anything unusual had been reported to their headquarters on the first week of August. Even though they did not accept the interview, the stated that nothing strange had been reported for a very long time in that area of the city.

Saturday, October 4: On this day, Pedro Ramirez, Carlos Clemente, Salvador Guerrero and Ruben Villatoro, members of the LOS VIGILANTES group, which specializes in scanning the skies in search of UFO evidence, were heading to the place where the events occurred in an effort to locate more witnesses to the August 6th sighting. The group would find three children whose ages ranged between 6 and 12 and who stated that a "large object had been flying over the buildings, apparently in an effort to land…" LOS VIGILANTES also conducted field research to reconnoiter the site and try to secure any evidence of the unidentified flying object's flyover. While this search proved fruitless, the fact that three new eyewitnesses to the August 6th UFO would confirm that an object similar to the one appearing in the video had flown over the area that day.

Monday, October 6: Once more, during our weekly work session, we received news of eyewitnesses to the event. These persons had stepped forward due to the Tercer Milenio broadcast of the previous Sunday, recognizing the object they had seen in the afternoon of August 6th. We immediately reported to the Lask family residence, where we met Annie and David, as well as Victor Gonzalez, who had seen the UFO directly overhead. While Annie Lask was photographing a model on her house's rooftop for a school project on August 6th (a cloudy afternoon, according to the witnesses) both felt a powerful surge of static over the area-strong enough to make "their hair stand on end" and would keep them from continuing with their photo shoot. However, Annie became aware of a shadow that was darker than the surrounding environment, which was already dark given the lack of direct sunlight. This made her feel apprehensive, and when she turned around to look for the source of the shadow, both Annie and her model allegedly saw "an enormous round grey object, spinning dizzily" making a sound similar to a "a gas leak". The strange object was seen by Annie Lask and the model (whom we could not interview due to the fact that he had traveled to Cancun) for a few seconds, during which they would have been able to notice, aside from the circular shape, the noise and static produced: "a sort of energy encircled it". When the UFO moved toward the place where it was subsequently recorded on video, Annie and the model perceived an increase in the sound's intensity "as if the leak had intensified." Parallel to this extraordinary sighting, David Lask, Annie's younger brother, and Victor Gonzalez, her boyfriend, were inside the house near the family pets. While David played, he became aware that the dogs "began barking in a strange fashion", the kind of bark they issued only when bothered by a loud sound, according to David. While we interviewed him, David stated that in following his dogs, one of them barking at the window, he finally reached the back yard, from where he had been able to catch a glimpse of "a part of a circular, grey object flying over his house." He would also state that after seeing the video broadcast on our Tercer Milenio program, he recognized it as having seen it flying over the house two months earlier. On the other hand, Victor Gonzalez was watching TV when the Lask family's pets "became strangely agitated": the dogs barked as if frightened and the cats raised their hackles for no apparent reason. Two pet ferrets in the Lask household also exhibited the same unsettled feeling. Although he saw nothing strange, he told us that "the environment became rarefied". But the Lacks' extraordinary experience was far from over. Upon asking Annie Lask about some of the typical symptoms experienced by people who have close encounters with these objects, such as headaches, toothaches, muscular aches, etc., she told us that she had indeed been afflicted with a strange headache. But what startled her even more later on was "a strange tanning effect which had marked the skin that was not covered by the t-shirt she wore the day of the sighting. Annie stated that she had just returned from a trip to Acapulco where she had in fact suntanned, but that after her experience with the UFO, her skin was burned in three different shades: one was her natural skin color, the next was the intermediate one acquired during her beach holidays, and the third, more intense one, was the one received from the sighting and which would last over a month, as she would state before our cameras. It was thus, with this startling account, that we ended the day but not our investigation, which was becoming more interesting with each passing day.

Tuesday, October 7: The investigation took a break on this day to evaluate all of the material hitherto obtained as a result of the August 6th video. However, we decided that it was necessary to capture on video an account that would endorse not only that the UFO existed and was not a computer trick (which we had dismissed by this time), but that it wasn't a promotional device.

Wednesday, October 8: On this day we restarted our research to arrange an interview with some P.R. firm executives in southwestern Mexico City having greater financial means at their disposal. It was thus that we reached the Media Director of a large P.R. firm in the city's southern area, Lic. Jose Manuel Jimenez, who would state for our cameras that "no type of untethered balloon could be employed in the airspace over Mexico City, and that the capital city's authorities had long ago forbidden any promotional displays using balloons of this type." That same day in the afternoon we headed to the home of Lic. Victor Quezada, MIS Director of a university in the capital whose computer analysis tools would show us a halo of energy surrounding the UFO featured in the August 6th video. An energy which, according to Quezada "is not characteristic to airplanes, helicopters or balloons". Furthermore, Victor Quezada would explain that it was extremely hard to make a trick similar to the August 6th video, since it would require a large infrastructure and budget to carry it out. Quezada performed a series of analyses based on a combination of color filters and light intensities to reach the conclusion that the object was not something manufactured in a computer, but rather a tangible object which could have well been sent by an eyewitness…"

End of Munoz's Report, Part I