SUBJECT: COVER-UP OF ALASKA SIGHTING ALLEGED                 FILE: UFO2933




SPECIAL RELEASE:
COVER-UP OF ALASKA SIGHTING ALLEGED

PARANET ALPHA 08/22 -- The information contained in radar tapes relating 
to last November's sighting of a giant UFO by a Japan Airlines crew may 
have been altered, says a respected researcher for MUFON.
      Writing in the latest issue of California UFO Magazine, T. Scott 
Crain of the Mutual UFO Network also claims to have been told by an 
informant that "the Air Force did indeed have more than a passing interest 
in the event," and that "a number of F-15 jets were scrambled" to search 
for a giant walnut-shaped UFO reported by Capt. Kenju Terauchi on Nov. 17, 
1986. The informant, an anonymous officer at Elmendorf Air Force Base in 
Anchorage, AK, told Crain that, to his knowledge, the jets found nothing 
unusual.
      The informant said he was "puzzled the tapes didn't reveal another 
object, since the radar operators were certain they observed another 
target on their screens."
      "I don't know how to explain it," Crain quotes the informant, who 
told him that "radar tapes record images similar to VCR tapes. If 
controllers saw it live, it should be on the tape."
      Crain then proceeded to follow the route of the tapes when they were 
shipped from Elmendorf and the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center 
(ARTCC) to Washington for evaluation by the FAA. Crain was informed by 
another UFO investigator that the tapes may have made a detour to the FAA 
Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ. The purpose of the detour may have 
been to alter the images, Crain muses.
      According to the article, a preliminary investigation found that the 
tapes did indeed go to Atlantic City. The March 12, 1987, edition of the 
Wall Street Journal reported that "Technical experts in Atlantic City said 
blips on a radar screen that appeared to confirm an object in the vicinity 
of the JAL jet were actually 'split radar returns' -- shadows of the 
plane's primary echo."
      Crain followed up with a Freedom of Information Act request to the 
FAA in Atlantic City, which was answered by a form letter referring him to 
the Public Affairs Office in Anchorage.

END SPECIAL RELEASE
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COMMENT FOLLOWS

      It should be noted that the FAA never claimed that there was 
"nothing" on the tapes, merely nothing that would corroborate Terauchi's 
claim. The image did not simply "disappear" from the tape; the FAA is 
merely claiming that it was misinterpreted. While I'm not familiar with 
the taping of radar images, it occurs to me that to "alter" such an image 
to make it appear as a secondary return would require a painstaking pixel-
by-pixel reconstruction of the image in a computer graphics laboratory. 
Such technology does, indeed, exist, but we find it highly unlikely. We 
will, however, follow up with one of the country's leading computer 
graphics labs, which is right here in Phoenix.
      We also find it interesting that the Air Force may have scrambled 
jets, but we are leery of anonymous sources.

JS


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