Skeptic misses point behind UFO book

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

The sighting the crew did see was 10-15 minutes before the mothership. That's noted by the FAA interview after the incident by both the flight engineer and co-pilot.

Yes, but be careful. If I remember, the captain was the only one that saw all those interesting details and the other guys(both?) only admitted to seeing lights. I have to review that part because I think its important.

a reply to: ZetaRediculian
At the risk of sidetracking and turning this into a JAL 1628 thread-
The captain Terauchi described the square exhaust ports and afterburner type of exhaust. The co-pilot Tamefuji saw the flashing red, white, and green "navigation" style lights. Along with the lights in "very good formation flight." The flight engineer Tsukuba saw "white or amber colored lights"... "in a cluster like windows of a passenger aircraft." So both the pilot and flight engineer describe square ports. Which I attribute to a number of aircraft I cited.
The flight engineer also described- "The one in front of us was like an aircraft viewed from another aircraft." In other words, seeing the rear of the exhaust from their position.

Both the flight engineer and co-pilot specifically describe these as two separate incidents in their transcripts. Although the interviewer confuses both sightings together with the co-pilot and questioning. Both say the second craft was difficult to see and vague. Tsukuba said- "The second one, it was so hard to see. In my mind, I am not certain whether it was lights of a distant town or a strange object."
Many people assume this was all one "mothership" sighting, which it was not. Many tv shows that recreate this incident, use the mothership as the sighting. If they bothered to read the entire FAA transcript and interviews, you see it was actually two sightings 10-15 minutes apart.

I have the 400+ page PDF report downloaded, but I can't find the link I got it from. It includes the short story "Meeting The Future" by the captain, too. Exciting!

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

At the risk of sidetracking and turning this into a JAL 1628 thread-

Well, it was part of the Kean book, so its fair game...sort of. Maybe Jim could comment and miss the point

Thanks for that. Very interesting. Where I was going was that perhaps the Captain was "leading" the sighting and influencing the others perceptions, perhaps not. I remember reading and even downloading the pdf myself but that was at least 2 computers ago.

a reply to: ZetaRediculian

Bruce does a good rundown of theevent

My understanding is only the pilot saw the giant UFO, Bruce thought the cloud explanation was plausible given that only the pilot saw it.

Supposedly John Callahan has radar evidence that shows the JAL being chased by the large UFO, not sure he has ever released it or still has the radar info in his possession.

It is odd though, a plane traveling 600mph or so had so much trouble shaking a stationary cloud.

a reply to: 111DPKING111

Maccabee had the entire radar package. I think they might have given it to him since he was helping to investigate the incident, but he said anybody with $100 to cover the cost of making copies could also get the same package from the FAA.

In fact it was Maccabee and his radar data who helped the researcher on physicsforums determine that the position of the cloud seen on satellite was in the exact position of the radar reflection that the JAL flight requested a course change to fly around (aka the "giant mothership", most likely).

In another interesting twist, we found out from Maccabee that he may have unintentionally been the source of Callahan's claim of a "cover-up". Maccabee suggested to Callahan something like they probably weren't ready yet to release any information to the public, and Callahan apparently thought Maccabee was some kind of "spook" and interpreted that to mean he wanted to to cover things up, but what he was really trying to convey to Callahan is that the investigation was far from complete and they needed to do a lot more work before trying to go public with anything.

Obviously from the link you posted, Maccabee eventually released quite a bit in an excellent summary of the case, so I think it was just a miscommunication that got blown out of proportion, sort of like a miniature game of "telephone" where the receiver didn't receive exactly what the sender tried to communicate, and this became part of the folklore surrounding the case.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Maccabee suggested to Callahan something like they probably weren't ready yet to release any information to the public, and Callahan apparently thought Maccabee was some kind of "spook" and interpreted that to mean he wanted to to cover things up, but what he was really trying to convey to Callahan is that the investigation was far from complete and they needed to do a lot more work before trying to go public with anything.

It is one of those things I would love to see cleared up, if you watch Callahan's interviews, he loves to imagine himself as some govt investigator - "This never happened, we were never here !" .

Ive seen Bruce interviewed a few times, doesnt quite seem like his style. And Im sure he didnt tell anyone they were sworn to secrecy.

Supposedly Kean had an opportunity to clear this up and either couldnt or chose not too.

See the following for details

originally posted by: 111DPKING111
See the following for details

Yes that is strange the way they ended up talking to Leslie Kean when they tried to reach Callahan, isn't it? From your source:

We contacted Maccabee and he also confirmed that he was at such a meeting and received all of the data for his analysis and report, but he also did not recall anyone at the meeting trying to cover it up.

We reported this contradiction to Leslie Kean of the Coalition for Freedom of Information – the only listed contact for Callahan – and she initially did not believe us. Therefore, I put her in direct contact with Pandolfi and Maccabee, who both told her exactly what they told us. Kean refused to let us speak directly with Callahan to resolve the discrepancy, and eventually refused to cooperate regarding getting any clarification from Callahan.

It makes you wonder why the refusal to cooperate, but without any clarification we can only speculate, that perhaps Callahan was a little confused and if he cleared it up he'd have to admit that. By refusing to talk he doesn't have to correct any of his prior claims, so I'm guessing it might be a way to save face.