John Greenewald - 1976 Tehran UFO Documents.

"Yet, heading back to what the government says, and this statement does come straight from the Pentagon, "no government agency has taken an interest in investigating [UFOs] since the closure of Blue Book in 1969." Something does not line up, because here we are, faced with hundreds of documents slamming right through that 1969 cut off date..'

link

Despite the statement above concerning the U.S. Gov's official (yet contradictory) stance on UFO investigation John Greenwald Junior describes below how specific internal government documentation on the (extremely strange) 1976 Tehran UFO case became the motivation for compiling the BlackVault archive.. now at over 2 million declassified pages.

It happened more than 44 years ago. A UFO event seen over Tehran, Iran, defied logic, or explanation to highly trained pilots, tower operators and military officials. The government intelligence report that documents the story is only four pages in length – but back in 1996 – this one document became the motivation to create The Black Vault, and it continues to serve as the inspiration to keep it running now for nearly two and a half decades.

For folks unfamiliar with the case then there's a good breakdown in the vid below in which the unidentified flying object is described by witnesses as changing shape; splitting into two parts; jumping positions in the sky and ejecting a smaller object which moved rapidly towards pursuing fighter jets - another ejected object was also reported to have 'dropped quickly down to earth and landed gently on the ground casting a brilliant glow'.

As the narrator mentions, the incident does involve 'multiple trained independent witnesses with vastly different perspectives on the UFO; visual observations that were corroborated by radar data and several sightings which corresponded with equipment failures and physiological reactions on the witnesses' so no wonder the DIA, NSA, CIA and Joint Chiefs Of Staff were sent information on it (even though they have no interest in UFOs).

For several hours, multiple experienced pilots, air traffic controllers, and ground observers watched a UFO drift over the city of Tehran, and exhibit a wide range of baffling behaviours that they are still unable to explain.

A pretty awesome (and pretty rare) 1994 'Sightings' episode is also mentioned and linked below - it contains both civilian and military eyewitness interviews and also testimony concerning a top secret meeting between the Imperial Iranian Air Force and the USAF (see 8:40) - also reports of a 'calculated disinformation programme' designed to discredit and downplay the incident by manipulation of the Iranian news media.

The 1976 Tehran UFO Incident was a radar and visual sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Tehran, the capital of Iran, during the early morning hours of September 19th 1976. During the incident, two F-4 Phantom II jet interceptors supposedly lost instrumentation and communications as they approached, only to have them restored upon withdrawal; one of the aircraft also supposedly suffered temporary weapons systems failure, while preparing to open fire.

The incident, recorded in a four-page U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report distributed to at least the White House, Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), remains one of the most well-documented military encounters with anomalous phenomena in history, and various senior Iranian military officers directly involved with the events have gone on public record stating their belief that the object was not of terrestrial origin.

• Documents:

THE TEHRAN 1976 CASE:

A declassified document related to the famous Teheran UFO and jet fighter encounter in 1976.

This is a capital case, acknowleged by a US intelligence agency, where a UFO encountered an aircraft, and reacted in a superior ant intelligent manner to the aircraft's interception attempt by shutting down temporarily the aircraft's weapons system.

The DIA evaluation termed this "An outstanding report. This case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon." The analysis called the UFO performance "awesome," noting that the objects displayed "an inordinate amount of maneuverability."


REFERENCES:

Title: DIA Defense Information Evaluation Report IR No. 6846013976
To: Censored
Author: Major Roland B. Evans, USAF, Military Capability Analyst.
Date: September 22, 1976
Length: 5 pages.
Classification: Top secret, Declassified
CC: None.

Document One

Document Two

Document Three

Document Four

PDF File - Tehran UFO Documents

• Routing Slip:

Another great find within the NSA files, was the routing slip for the original intelligence document. On it, it outlines the extreme importance of the case as it “met the criteria for a valid UFO study.” The reasons outlined were the credibility of the witnesses, which included an Air Force General; radar confirmation; electromagnetic effects on THREE seperate aircraft; physiological effect on some crew members; and a UFO which displayed in “inordinate amount of maneuver-ability.”

Although difficult to read in its entirety, here is the relevant portion of the routing slip

The “1976 Iran Incident” – UFO Encounter over Tehran, Iran

• NSA:


Professor Michael Swords also mentions how the DIA documents were sent to the National Security Agency and includes an excerpt from the NSA's classified 'secret' intelligence magazine MIJI Quarterly - Senior DIA Analyst Major Henry S. Shields also makes a rather curious admission:

The Air Force Admits Again That UFOs Are Real and Nobody's Listening.

This report leaked through Iranian Air Force sources, or we'd probably never have gotten it. Once "out" however, the retrieval of documents by FOIA or other requests [for instance through Congressmen] gets a little more likely. Ultimately the DIA/NSA decided to release the documents which confirmed everything. In those documents were phrases like "outstanding report", "case is a classic", "meets all the criteria for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon"...I kid you not.

The document on the right was an added surprise. The NSA had given the case reports to one of their operatives [also an Air Force officer] to include in the classified "Secret" intelligence magazine, MIJI Quarterly. They apparently had decided that cases like this needed to be known by operatives in the field who were charged with dealing with problems of "electronic countermeasures" such as jamming, signal confusion, instrument interference, etc. Captain Shields tells the whole tale. But what is of greater interest is the casual admission written just below the title: "Sometime in his career, each pilot can expect to encounter strange, unusual happenings which will never be adequately or entirely explained by logic or subsequent investigation.

link

• CUFOS PDF File

Sourced by Guest101

Post:

This link contains an interesting interview with Lt. Gen. Azarbarzin, at that time the deputy commander in chief of operations of the Imperial Iranian Air Force"

a reply to: karl 12

Its sooo weird watching a video where a News reporter is actually working for the People and digging for the truth instead of spewing privately directed Propoganda and suppressing and misdirecting us away from the truths like they all do today.

Beautifully presented, Karl.

I expect Jim Oberg will be along at any moment to explain why the main light (the 'mothership'), which initially caused four civilians to call the Mehrabad airport, was in fact Jupiter.

Philip J. Klass came to the same conclusion. Compared to our own lovely Jim, Klass was often an arrogant and obnoxious individual when challenged, but it's undeniable that Klass's actual research into each UFO case he studied was usually thorough and exhausting to the point of obsession on occasion (have a look at his Travis Walton documents, for example).

However, there are many other elements of this case that remain unexplained - whether they are "ALIEN" (much as we would like that to be the case - who wouldn't?) is another matter altogether of course. Perhaps this is a perfect example of a case where a number of disassociated occurrences seem to add up to something far grander and stranger as a whole. For example, one element of the 1980 Rendlesham saga that still intrigues people is the display of 'star-like objects' that seemed to hang over the base until the early hours of the morning, when the clue to their identity may BE the very fact that they only began to fade away from sight once the sun began to rise.

In this case, for how long did the initial Tehran 'mother ship' remain in the sky? As I said, Jim will probably pop in to explain all this far more precisely and eloquently than a schmuck like me ever could.


Meanwhile...

Addressing Greenewald's other point (and I'm sure he knows this), despite the 'alien agenda' of Project Blue Book shutting down in 1969, it would be highly unusual - and arguably highly irrational - for the USAF to NOT be interested in reports of 'unidentified flying objects'. Especially so these days during the ubiquitous Drone Age where "UAVs" are of course a more diplomatic way of officially classifying sightings, free from the age-old 'alien' connotations of "UFOs" - and even "UAPs" which have swiftly become the new "UFOs" via the publicity generated by TTSA and Co who celebrated the release of three videos found in the Pentagon's unclassified "UAV" bucket.


PS: Can you blame authorities for their interest (and eternal frustration!) in UAVs/UAPs after spectacular drone displays such as this...?

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

Beautifully presented

Well thanks mate, don't know if you viewed the videos (or PDF file) but a truly interesting case and there's a relevant presentation here.




Apparently the unidentified object was 'intensely brilliant' and the flashing strobe lights were arranged in a rectangular pattern - the lights were alternating blue, green, red and orange in color and the flashing was 'so rapid that all colors could be seen at the same time'.

Below is a drawing based on a sketch from one of the main military witnesses:

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

Klass was often an arrogant and obnoxious individual when challenged, but it's undeniable that Klass's actual research into each UFO case he studied was usually thorough and exhausting to the point of obsession on occasion

To be honest mate I certainly wouldn't describe his research that way and do struggle to take the guy (and his explanations) seriously - don't know what his agenda actually was but certainly wouldn't describe the man as a genuine sceptic (or sincere or objective either).

Also, considering he was just an electrical engineer there does appear to be some rather dodgy connections to U.S. Intelligence agencies and let's not forget his mentor (and UFO debunker) Donald Menzel was recently exposed as being covertly employed by the NSA and CIA (link).

Here's Kevin Randle's take on Klass and his 'Jupiter' theory:

Jerome Clark, in his UFO Encyclopedia, probably put it best. He wrote of Klass’ attempted explanations:


No satisfactory explanation for the incident has ever been proposed, though Philip J. Klass, author of several debunking books on UFOs, would attempt one. In Klass’s view, the witnesses initially saw an astronomical body, probably Jupiter, and pilot incompetence and equipment malfunction accounted for the rest…. Klass’s theory presumes, without clear or compelling evidence, a remarkable lack of even rudimentary observing and technical skills on the parts of the Iranian participants. In some ways it would be easier to credit the notion, for which no evidence exists either, that the witnesses consciously fabricated the sighting.


Or, in other words, the skeptical argument against the reality of the sighting fails because of the assumptions made about evidence that does not exist. Klass is forced to invent explanations rather than look at the evidence that is gathered. And this does not address his dismissal of the aircrews as incompetent, based it seems, on their nationality rather than their actual abilities.

link

Don't know about Oberg either but for what it's worth here's his opinion on the Tehran object as posted on this forum.

I think the Tehran case has a plausible prosaic explanation of inexperienced rich kids in scary situations (night flying) with one notoriously malfunctioning avionics kit, under pressure from the head of the Iranian secret police (SAVAK) who demanded satisfaction regarding a fairly pedestrian 'UFO report' he phoned in.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

despite the 'alien agenda' of Project Blue Book shutting down in 1969, it would be highly unusual - and arguably highly irrational - for the USAF to NOT be interested in reports of 'unidentified flying objects'.

Can you explain what you mean by the 'alien agenda of Project Bluebook' mate?

The claims made by the USAF (and therefore the U.S. Government) described Project Bluebook as 'a systematic study of unidentified flying objects' with a view to 'scientifically analyze UFO-related data' - sounds pretty promising until you realize it was all complete bollocks.

Regarding the concept of USAF not investigating unidentified flying objects being highly unusual and irrational then I couldn't agree more but that is exactly what they expect you to believe (same goes for NORAD).


• Scrib doc - Secretary Of The Air Force, July, 1996

• USAF Fact Sheet (PDF)


If a person buys that one then they'll probably swallow this one as well.

'No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security'

Cheers.

a reply to: karl 12

there does appear to be some rather dodgy connections to U.S. Intelligence agencies and let's not forget his mentor (and UFO debunker) Donald Menzel was recently exposed as being covertly employed by the NSA and CIA

I am sure you are aware you are discrediting Mr. Klass on the basis of his alleged links to NSA/CIA, while at the same time your post is based on the documents disclosed precisely by CIA/NSA. What make you think the documents disclosed are legit? I don't see any high strangeness in this event, other than an aircraft being countered through ECM by just another aircraft.

originally posted by: Direne

I am sure you are aware you are discrediting Mr. Klass on the basis of his alleged links to NSA/CIA

Hey Direne I was discrediting Mr Menzel on his confirmed (not alleged) links to CIA and NSA.

Another typical Government UFO LIE was uttered by Dr. Donald Menzel, a professor of Astronomy at Harvard. However, I had discovered in his papers at the Harvard Archives after receiving the required permission from three different people to view them, that he had a TOP SECRET Ultra clearance with the CIA and a very long history of work for the National Security Agency, the CIA, and many other companies. He said in Physics Today “All the non-explained sightings are from poor observers.”

link

As for Mr Menzel's extremely close connections with Mr Klass (and Mr Condon) then there are some relevant nuggets of information in this presentation taken from the archives of the American Philosophical Society - also relevant is Mr Klass citing both Bobby Ray Inman and Daniel O. Graham as references and his founding of the ideological cult CSICOP (or is that PsyOp?).

Regarding CSICOP [now CSI], Hansen examines the possibility that the skeptical organization was infiltrated early on by a small but determined group of U.S. government-affiliated operatives, whose true motives have far more to do with disinformation than skepticism..

Hansen continues, “CSICOP can accurately be described as a propaganda organization because it does not take anything approaching an objective position regarding UFOs. The organization’s stance is militantly anti-UFO research and it works hard to see that the news media broadcast its views whenever possible. When the subject of UFOs surfaces, either in the news media or any other public forum, CSICOP members turn out rapidly to add their own spin to whatever is being said.

Hansen further notes, “CSICOP’s public stance on UFOs is best personified by [the late] Philip J. Klass, head of the organization’s UFO Subcommittee. Klass isn’t a scientist. In fact, his education is in electrical engineering. After graduation from Iowa State University in 1941, he went to work for the avionics division of General Electric, one of the nation’s largest weapons and nuclear energy contractors. In 1952, Klass joined the aerospace trade publication Aviation Week & Space Technology, where he has often written about ‘black budget’ military projects such as those covertly funded by the CIA...Over the decades, Klass has made a name for himself publicly sparring with UFO researchers and injecting his particular spin on UFOs into the mass media at every opportunity, not always accurately or with much scientific merit...Despite his lack of scientific credentials, Klass has enjoyed remarkable popularity with the news media.” 

Hansen might have added that Klass’ long-time employer, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, has a remarkable track-record of scooping its competition by publishing articles based, in part, on information provided by government insiders. Indeed, Aviation Week may be considered as a conduit to the public for information originating from many of the key players in the aptly-named military/industrial complex. 

To illustrate the rather cozy relationship between the magazine and the intelligence community, in particular, I earlier noted that Klass once boasted in a private letter that he could cite as character references both Admiral Bobby R. Inman (USN Ret.)—the former Director of the National Security Agency, who also held Deputy Director positions at both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency—and Lt. General Daniel O. Graham (USA Ret.), the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the letter, Klass stated that “Both men have worked with me and gotten to know me [through] my efforts for Aviation Week.”

Hansen, whose diligent journalistic investigation of CSICOP goes well beyond that conducted by any UFO researcher, observes, “If the [CIA’s] Robertson Panel had wanted to set up a front organization to debunk the UFO phenomenon, it could have hardly done a better job than to infiltrate CSICOP and encourage its media management activities. Perhaps its not surprising, then, that Philip Klass has occasionally been charged with being a covert government agent, a charge he has vigorously denied...” 

“On the other hand,” Hanson continued, “Klass also has many of the qualifications one would expect in a deep-cover propagandist. He has a history of working for the secretive military-industrial complex, a demonstrated aptitude for duplicity, a District of Columbia address, remarkable mass-media savvy and success, an evident belief in the necessity of government secrecy and, of course, cover as a journalist with Aviation Week.” 

Full Article

The Debunkers vs. the UFO Menace - Part one

The Debunkers vs. the UFO Menace - Part two

Also more relevant commentary below from Major Donald Keyhoe involving Mr Klass boasting (yet again) about insider intel connections and receiving unreleased, unredacted government documents on the Tehran case.

KEYHOE: Well, do you know Klass? 

PRATT: I’ve talked to him on the phone. I’ve never met him in person. 

KEYHOE: Well, I know him and I can tell you this. When I was director of NICAP, he came up there one day and said, “Well, you can close up shop pretty soon because I’ve got all the answers.” And I said, “WHAT?” And he said, “I took three weeks off and I worked it out and I’ve got all of them.” And I thought, “This is a lunatic.” Then he came along with several statements on cases and there wasn’t a damned thing in there that would stand up. And I said, “Look, I’m busy. If you want to write this down and put it in a letter to me or the board of governors, OK, but I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.” Well, he’s a very nasty b•stard


DID KLASS GET SECRET HELP FROM PENTAGON? 

PRATT: I don’t know except that they went to him first, you know, and figured that was the truth. I do know that he apparently is a good friend of Dave Williamson over at NASA, who had something to do with that decision over there, and on the Tehran case, what really annoys me about – do you remember the Tehran case, September 1976, the two jets over Tehran? 

KEYHOE: Yeah. 

PRATT: OK, a fellow over in Berlin named Charles Huffer, who’s an American teaching school over there, he went after that through the Freedom of Information Act. We had heard there was a government report on that incident. Well, he went after this from last April until August, when they finally released a two and a half page, it’s like a telegram, from Tehran describing the incident. And the Pentagon finally declassified that and released it with several deletions. And later on Klass was bragging to Stan Friedman in a letter that he had a copy of that several weeks BEFORE the thing was declassified and released but he got an UNEXPURGATED version of it. That’s a little annoying that he has access to classified documents that the rest of us don’t have. 

KEYHOE: Right. I don’t know whether that’s true or not because– 

PRATT: He claims this anyway. 

KEYHOE: – I wouldn’t believe a damned word he says . . . 

Conversations with Major Donald Keyhoe

Who knows maybe he was just full of it but there are some truly curious connections (with plenty more info out there).

originally posted by: Direne

while at the same time your post is based on the documents disclosed precisely by CIA/NSA.

Dont know if you examined any of the info before you posted but the documents were disclosed by the Pentagon's DIA (not the CIA/NSA) and authored by the Defense Attache Office (see routing and transmittal codes).

They were then distributed out to various government agencies despite the contradictory claim that 'no government agency has taken an interest in investigating UFOs since the closure of Blue Book in 1969'.

originally posted by: Direne

What make you think the documents disclosed are legit?

Research.

Plenty of other examples in this book.

originally posted by: Direne

I don't see any high strangeness in this event, other than an aircraft being countered through ECM by just another aircraft.

Seriously?

Good for you - just ignore everything and stick with that then.

a reply to: karl 12


Karl, I understand this is one of the most interesting cases for both the UFO believers and non-believers. For the believers, because given all the documents you have presented it seems obvious that something of high strangeness happened during the encounter with the unidentified object given the reports and evidences you present. For the non-believers, because this is probably the paradigm of how covert operations were (and are) handled.

Fortunately for the non-believers, and unfortunately for believers, there is also a bunch of documents available that explains the unexplained in this case.

Iran those days was used as an advanced post by US in order to gather data from USSR missile sites as Iran shared borders with USSR. To this effect, US was running the so-called Project Ibex, comprising 3 ELINT and 2 EW facilities. They were named Tacksman. Tacksman 3 were the main ground station running, in turn, so-called Project Melody, devoted to intercept Soviet missile tracking radars and, more specifically, ICBM beacon signals. Tacksman 4 was responsible for intercepting downlinks with high resolution photographs coming from Soviet spy satellites. You can find declassified information about those projects. The listening posts were also deployed in Turkey.

Project Melody was able to pick up Soviet radars return signals from their own ICBM’s during test flights and used existing CIA Tacksman intercept sites in Iran. The idea was to use the missiles’ telemetry beacon to steer the antennas, and it produced intercepts of all ground-based Soviet missile tracking radars, including all ABM radars and supporting facilities.

The information you give omits the main evidence in each sighting: the context. Your information focuses on September, 19th 1976, disregarding the key previous days (16th, 17th, and 18th September). Basically, on Sept. 17th, 1976, the personnel responsible for the listening posts in Iran were calibrating one of the systems after data intercepted on the 16th Sept. related to Soyuz 22. On Sept. 18th, Tacksman 1 was monitoring two bats flying along the Soviet border. From Mehrabad an RF-4E took off to support that mission (basically, jamming ground radars and recording Soviet ICBM beacons signals). It is not clear whether the Soviets were running one of their usual ICBM tests on that very day (18th September).

Early in the morning of the 19th, Tacksman 2 reported civilian comms UHF activity at the Mehrabad airport, plus the scrambling of a Phantom jet by the Iranian Air Force. The UFO they saw was the RF-4E that took off from that same airport to support the intel gathering mission on the Iranian-Soviet border. The RF-4E was on RTB (return-to-base) profile. Obviously, the Iranian Government was unaware of the mission being carried out by US intelligence because, simply, that was not part of the treaty both governments signed. In other words: Iran's Airforce had no clue there was an RF-4E flying around the area. Actually, the RF-4E was 'oficially' not part of the USAF, and the one used by CIA in Iran was full of advanced EW hardware, jammers, and ECM equipment. It was not a standard aircraft, but a CIA-modified
version (some people have the opinion that in fact the plane was an NRO-NSA enhanced aircraft built around the ELINT-capable RF-4E).

You will certainly find information about CIA's TACKSMAN sites in Iran in 1976, and about projects Ibex and Melody.

The poor Iranian F-4's had nothing to do against the enhanced RF-4E. It was jammed, and electronically countered in ways the pilots couldn't even imagine by those days standards. That's what happened. No need to resort to Venus, Jupiter, or swamp gas, and no need to resort to UFOs either.

Contrary to you, I never ignore anything.

originally posted by: Direne
The poor Iranian F-4's had nothing to do against the enhanced RF-4E. It was jammed, and electronically countered in ways the pilots couldn't even imagine by those days standards. That's what happened. No need to resort to Venus, Jupiter, or swamp gas, and no need to resort to UFOs either.

One problem I had with the Jupiter explanation is I don't see how Jupiter could do this:

originally posted by: karl 12
jumping positions in the sky and ejecting a smaller object which moved rapidly towards pursuing fighter jets - another ejected object was also reported to have 'dropped quickly down to earth and landed gently on the ground casting a brilliant glow'.

So Direne, if it was an RF-4E, any idea what accounted for the reports of the ejected objects? The object which lit up the ground sounds like it could be an illumination flare. I know some have parachutes to slow their fall like the type that made the "Phoenix Lights" famous, but I don't know why they would draw attention to a covert operation. In fact why wouldn't they just turn the lights off on the RF-4E if they didn't want to draw any attention?

If it had been an alien space ship, it didn't seem wise of the Iranians to be opening fire on a craft that didn't seem to be making any aggressive moves against Iran, at least not until the first object was ejected, though the description of that is a little unclear. If some aliens came here across the stars to visit, they probably have technology way more advanced than ours so it would seem an unwise choice to potentially make an enemy of beings so much more advanced than us, by starting an interstellar war with a craft that was doing nothing to harm Iran that I can see.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

why wouldn't they just turn the lights off on the RF-4E if they didn't want to draw any attention?

Sorry, my bad, I didn't make it clear. It was a covert operation in the sense that it was a violation of the treaty between USG and Iran by virtue of which US was allowed to have military personnel, and to have aircrafts stationed on Iranian soil, and to deploy listening posts provided no violation of the Iran-USSR border occurs. That night (and many others, by the way) the RF-4E crossed several times the border, flying over Soviet soil. This was also the case for Soviet aircrafts, that sometimes violated Iranian airspace.

Most of US military actions were obviously done in coordination with Iranian authorities, or at least after previous notification. This wasn't the case for this specific mission because Soviet airspace was to be violated. On the other hand, the Americans were using elint and sigint hardware that was secret by that time, and I guess they would walk extra miles to protect it.

In my mind, the Iranian pilot is faithful in his narrative, and the Imperial Iranian Air Force acted as expected when an unidentified object is detected. They also reported the event to the Americans, who obviously stated they had no clue what the object was. The UFO narrative was more than convenient to them.

I said this case is really interesting because it is a paradigm on how the UFO narrative is used to divert attention from real military ops. It is also paradigmatic on how a trained pilot reacts when exposed to unknown technologies or capabilities, and it is also paradigmatic in how UFO believers tend to dismiss the context. Concerning the objects being ejected I cannot answer because, as far as I know, the pilot narrative didn't included any description of objects being ejected. Maybe I'm wrong, will have to review the original report. As far as I remember he only stated his onboard instrumentation got dead while approaching the object. Perhaps the mention to objects being ejected or micky-mouse flashing lights was added years after the event when he came forward.

I think the RF-4E crew simply did its best to avoid being identified, and I also think the situation was unpleasant and unnerving for them, in particular because the RF-4E was unarmed (it carried no weapons), so they had to resort to the only thing at which they excelled: ECM.

originally posted by: Direne
Concerning the objects being ejected I cannot answer because, as far as I know, the pilot narrative didn't included any description of objects being ejected. Maybe I'm wrong, will have to review the original report. As far as I remember he only stated his onboard instrumentation got dead while approaching the object. Perhaps the mention to objects being ejected or micky-mouse flashing lights was added years after the event when he came forward.

In 1996, about 20 years after the 1976 incident, John Greenewald Jr got the original report with Department of Defense header that's dated about a week after the incident. It's in one of the links Karl posted but I'll re-post it here, it's an interesting read which does mention the ejected objects in some detail, which always seemed like a strange part of the case to me and made it hard to think of prosaic explanations that would fit those descriptions. The flashing lights are also in the original report here:

www.theblackvault.com...

There could be some distortion in that account since it sounds like the information is from a source that talked to a subsource that talked to the pilot or something like that, so there's a bit of the telephone game going on there which could distort things a bit but the ejected objects seems like they would be hard to just invent in passing along the story, unless it was intentional distortion.

This was an excellent segment, thanks for sharing!

I've always enjoyed JGJ's material; I went ahead and sub'd to his YT channel after watching this video.

I was very intrigued for the reason that seemingly this report (the actual 4 page document of the Tehran incident) was never classified, yet for some reason the precis filed by an AF captain describing the incident, only about a few paragraphs in length, *was* classified. Maybe the precis was just classified to protect the identity of the AF captain?

I really thought long and hard about why the 4 page document itself wasn't classified, and the only possible explanations I could reach are it was accidentally/mistakenly left unclassified, *or* it was deliberately left unclassified, to convey something or to inform someone within the government (or the public?) about this subject matter. Perhaps the intentional lack of classification was meant to use this report as a warning, in the sense that this incident is a very compelling case where modern (at that time) military hardware (F4 Phantoms) were utterly useless against the object they were intercepting.

a reply to: Direne

Completely nonsensical.

So a US modified Iranian Air Force Phantom flown by US aircrew takes off from the same strip as the later Iranian Air Force Phantoms were scrambled from but managed to do this in secret - was invisibility one of the enhancements ?

Then, whilst hovering over Tehran (another enhancement ?) and after being misidentified as a multi coloured UFO by numerous observers, the crew used the enhanced ECM to escape the attention of the scrambled Iranian Phantoms. Was this before or after it's actual mission violating Soviet airspace ? Then it landed invisibly again and taxied to the CIA tent round the back of the Iranian hangar.

But most of these missions were carried out in coordination with the Iranian authorities - except this one as it was to violate Russian airspace. I get that the invisibility cloak they used allowed the plane to take off and land without being seen (I guess the cloak wasn't used when it was a coordinated mission) but didn't realise it also worked for radar, as the Iranian's obviously weren't capable of tracking it into Russian airspace.

Maybe I have misunderstood (please set me straight) but that story is so full of holes it's easier to believe it was Jupiter.

It's the proverbial heart vs. mind. Your heart wants to believe in UFOs. But your mind is receptive to convincing explanations such as Direne's.

Back in the 1960s, Dr. Leon Davidson proposed his infamous (to believers) equation: CIA + ECM = UFO .
(see www.stealthskater.com... ).

originally posted by: stealthskater
It's the proverbial heart vs. mind. Your heart wants to believe in UFOs. But your mind is receptive to convincing explanations such as Direne's.

Back in the 1960s, Dr. Leon Davidson proposed his infamous (to believers) equation: CIA + ECM = UFO .
(see www.stealthskater.com... ).

The suggestion of US ECM still doesn't address the sighting of the large secondary object that detached from the primary object, followed an intercept course of the Iranian jet as it turned to disengage, and then apparently landed on the ground.

If the US had some involvement in this, then why not just classify the report indefinitely to avoid bringing Iranian attention to potential treaty violations?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The most interesting part of the report is precisely the part talking about a beacon (beeper) transponder located by Jafari and the helicopter crew the following day. All we have is the DoD original report reproducing what Lt. Col. Olin Mooy of the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group was told by the pilots questioned about the incident, basically, that "they picked up a noticeable beeper signal".

A beeper signal can only be picked if it is intentionally meant to be picked by the radio receivers on the F-4. That's the role of a location beacon, the one aircrafts have in case of a crash. Was there a crash then? Sure. Of a military aircraft? Sure. What aircraft? Who fired? Some people posit that the beeping transponder recovered was one from an American C-141. Remember that the only aircrafts from the IIAF present in Mehrabad were F-4D, F-4E, RF-4E, RF-5A, B-214C, HH-43F, F-5B, C-130, KC-707, SF-747, KC-747, F-27. The only C-141's in the area were American ones, used for covert operations mainly having to do with the transportation of weapons to Israel from Shiraz AFB (Iran). Recall that C-141 is a huge, massive aircraft that was capable of carrying, for example, a complete LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in its container. That big it was.

The IIAF was scrambled from Shahrokhi AFB in Hamadan (home of the then 3rd Fighter Base), about 282 km west-southwest of Tehran, while the incident was managed from Mehrabad AFB in Tehran (home of the 1st Fighter Base). Why would you scramble an F-4 from Shahrokhi AFB instead of the closer Mehrabad AFB remains a mystery. On the other hand, scrambling an F-4 instead of an F-5 is also a mystery as F-4 is an offensive aircraft, while the F-5 is a defensive aircraft. This means the pilot of the F-4 scrambled had already the intention to shot down the 'unknown' object.
Actually, he fired his missile.

The document also states that "More information will be forwarded when it becomes available", though the result of this search and any other investigations were never published.

In my mind, a C-141 was fatally hit by an F-4 missile, despite the fact the RF-4E did it best to jam the F-4 weapon system. All the lights in the sky were just the lights of the C-141, the RF-4E, and of the choppers looking later on for whatever was left of the C-141. I guess the incident (a typical cop-shoot-cop event) was extremely embarrasing for both US and Iran as to decide to hide it. Mehrabad didn't know about the C-141 flight; neither did the guys at
Shahrokhi AFB. Neither did Lt. Col. Olin Mooy. CIA did, and most likely the government of Iran.

That was the information that surely was forwarded once it became available, and that was never declassified. It explains the events in a rational way, it explains the interference of the F-4 avionics, it explains the loud noise and the bright light that people living in that small house with a garden heard and saw (the crash of the C-141, and the lights of the search copters illuminating the area, plus flares and all the paraphernalia used in a desperate debris recovery mission). Sure the peaceful people of the house was persuaded not to talk too much by the recovery team... unless they wanted to be buried in their own garden...

As for the Iranian pilots, I'm sure they were instructed on what to say: UFOs, objects detaching from objecs, otherwordly visitors messing around, and so on. That's the Tehran 1976 incident, in my opinion.

What I really love about this case is that while the pilot of the UFO knew that the approaching human piloted aircraft intended to destroy him per orders, it only disabled the aircraft and didn't destroy it and the pilot, in fact it didn't even allow the human pilot to ditch his own aircraft by ejecting which he tried to do.

Pretty amazing display of superior intellect, and superior virtue. Not all UFO encounters have turned out this way however.

The 1988 Caba Rojo, Puerto Rico incident also involved a UFO splitting into multiple parts. F-14 Tomcat fighters were pursuing the object. After the split, the F-14 changed from hunter to hunted as one of new UFOs chased it. You can Google to find more information. I archived the video interview at www.stealthskater.com... .

(There may be some similar events at www.stealthskater.com... )

a reply to: Direne

Are you serious ?

First it was a CIA enhanced Phantom now it's a C-141 crash brought down by friendly fire !

I won't even bother pointing out the holes in this story but look forward to the next even more fantastical version (please can it include Oliver North and a wonder woman balloon).