SUBJECT: REAGAN: " I SAW UFO !"                              FILE: UFO1174


REAGAN: I SAW UFO...and ordered pilot to follow

Ronald Reagan once spotted a UFO during an airplane flight and ordered his personal pilot to chase the mysterious object as it streaked across the sky!
     Reagan's close encounter with space aliens took place in 1974 when he was governor of California.
     His former pilot, Bull Paynter, reveals details of the shocking incident:
     "I was the pilot of the plane when we saw the UFO.  Also on board were Governor Reagan and a couple of his security people.
     "We were flying a Cessna Citation.  It was maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night.
     "We were near Bakersfield, California when Governor Reagan and the others called my attention to a big light flying a bit behind my plane.
       
             SPEED
             
     "It appeared to be several hundred yards away.  It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate, then it appeared to elongate.
     "Then the light took off.  It went up at a 45-degree angle-at a high rate of speed.
     "Everyone on the plane was surprised.
     "Governor Reagan expressed amazement.  I told the others I didn't know what it was."
     Paynter, who's logged thousands of hours in the sky, says the object definitely wasn't another airplane.
     "The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly," he says.
     "If you give an airplane power it will accelerate-but not like a hot rod, and that's what this was like," he adds.
     Reagan described the UFO sighting one week later to veteran newsman Norman C. Miller, then Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
     According to author Doyle McManus, Reagan told Miller:
     "I was ina a plane last week when I looked out the window and saw this white light.  It was zigzagging around.

                FOLLOWED IT

     "I went up to the pilot and said, "Have you ever seen anything like that?"  He was shocked and he said, "Nope."  And I said to him:  "Let's follow it!"
     "We followed it for several minutes.  It was a bright white light.
     "We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens.
     "When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it."
     After the eerie UFO encounter, the Reagans reportedly read as much as they could about UFOs.
     But later when Reagan was asked if he believed in UFOs, the astute politician with plans for the White House sheepishly said he was neither a believer nor a non-believer.

               REPORT

     Pilot Paynter, who now owns a freight airplane in Sacramento, California, says he and Reagan discussed their UFO sighting "from time to time" after it happened.
     "But we didn't file a report on the object because for a long time they considered you a nut if you saw a UFO," he says.
 
KEN O'HARA
    

              
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