Brian
Vike's Favorite Cases.
By Brian Vike – Director of Kamloops British
Columbia Canada UFO Research.
This UFO incident took place in 1976 over and around
the Cannon Airforce Base which is located a few miles outside of Clovis New
Mexico and was witnessed by a student of Journalism.
Bruce, who works for a major media outlet, witnessed
the objects, and the jet aircraft that perused them, and who was fortunate to
capture one of these objects on film.
A little background on Bruce around the time the
incident took place: Bruce was working in the news department at Channel 3, the
PBS station in Portales, New Mexico. In addition to working at the PBS station
he held a couple of part time jobs with two of the local radio stations as
well. At that time money was an issue due to Bruce being a college student.
Working at the different media outlets it was giving him the experience he
needed for his upcoming career in Journalism. One of the overnight jobs Bruce
had was in Clovis, New Mexico at KMTY FM 99.1 which was at that time one of the
100 thousand watt radio stations in the country.
First Night's Encounter With Unknown Objects.
On January 21, 1976 Bruce received a call from the
radio station manager to see if he would mind working as the station was going
to do some performance checks on the transmitter. Bruce would stay out at a
remote location where some of the station's equipment was located. This is how
Bruce ended up at the right time, and the right place, to see the events that
were about to unfold in front of him in the skies above.
A side note to this story is that Bruce was also a
storm spotter for West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Bruce was given a small
kit which held a pair of binoculars, a note pad and a bunch of telephone
numbers that he could call if a storm was spotted coming through the area.
Bruce had spent a lot of time at Cannon Airforce Base as
he was in the civil air patrol. At that time his senior flight instructor had
given him his primary flight lessons. Being on the base, and not in the
military, Bruce had become friends with a lot of the base personnel. Since he
worked at one of the local radio stations he would play requests that were
called in from the base security and night maintenance. He got to know them all
very well.
Bruce mentioned that Cannon was located between the
University of Portales and Clovis and it was common to see the F-111's and
Aardvarks taking off from the base with full afterburners carrying out
nighttime flight operations.
Bruce arrived and was sitting in his truck at the
location of the transmitter. While waiting for the phone to ring in the
transmitter shack he noticed a number of pin-point lights popping up in the sky
which appeared to look like light-bulbs on a string. Two of them dropped
downward until they reached a lower altitude, stopped and hovered.
The lights
were seen between his location and the Airforce Base at this time. While
watching these strange objects Bruce grabbed the pair of binoculars he had with
him. He describes the two lower lights as the classic saucer shaped craft and
they had a bluish glow to them with a red radiant glow on the bottom side of
the craft.
A small dome shape could easily be seen at the top of each of the
two objects. In his estimation he believes the objects may have been at least
30 to 50 in diameter. The two objects were hovering parallel to one another and
then started to move off at a slow rate of speed in perfect formation heading
towards the Airforce base. Bruce said he followed them with his binoculars for
approximately 15 minutes.
The objects flew past a number of buildings which were
at the edge of the base and they proceeded to climb in altitude as to where
they again looked like a small light in the clear night sky. Bruce said it
looked as if the lights on, and in, the buildings were dimming due to the
objects being in close proximity. Later after talking to base personnel, this
proved to be true, the lights had dimmed, and the objects were noticed by the
base personnel.
Bruce usually carried a small camera with him but on
this day he had not brought it with him.
Bruce called the station as he was excited to talk
about what he had just witnessed. Some of the other people at the station had
also been watching the events unfold that night. Through Channel 3's
connections they heard that the objects were widely seen by many that night and
by the state police. An article was written on the objects seen that January.
Second Night's Encounter With Unknown Objects.
The next evening Bruce had gathered together a few
people from the newsroom. Since Bruce was staying in a dorm on campus he knew a
good number of folks on campus. He was able to get the keys for the door to the
roof so Bruce and his friends could sit up on top of the building's roof to
watch the skies just in case something should return. Although a cool night the
group stood watching. This time Bruce did bring the camera.
Below Photo: Bruce was able to capture a photo of one of the UFO's.
At approximately 12:45 a.m. four objects dropped down
from the night sky and started darting around. (This is where Bruce was finally
able to capture an image of one of the crafts on black and white film.) As the
people observed the objects, the Airforce Base had scrambled the F-111's jet
fighters out of Cannon. The jet aircraft began trying to intercept the objects.
As the aircraft got close to the vicinity of the unknown objects, the objects,
at an incredible rate of speed, would shoot across the sky making 90 degree
turns leaving the fighter aircraft trailing way behind as they just weren't
able to keep up with the strange craft. As the objects made unusual turns a
plasma type glow could clearly be witnessed by the group of people watching the
event.
The cat and mouse chase between the objects and jets
went on for approximately 45 minutes. Because the witnesses were on one of the
tallest buildings in Portales, New Mexico, they could clearly see the
flight-line at the Base. One of the men had brought a 150 power telescope which
enabled the fellows to see the objects fly at a low altitude over the
flight-line. As the objects passed over the lights running down the flight
line, all the lights went out.
Eventually the objects shot up and were gone in a
second, or so, and the F-111's were recalled back to the Base and landed
safely.
Bruce told me that a couple days after the second
night sighting of the objects a couple of the Base security personnel had
called and explained how the lights went out over the entire base. Of course,
Bruce was asking a lot of questions at this point. The security officer from
the Base told Bruce that everyone at the Cannon AFB were freaking out as they
did not know what these objects were.
Also the security officer said that the
Cannon base was bringing in new light towers from a SAC base in North Dakota to
place on the flight line. The security officer told Bruce to keep an eye on the
base as it would be really lit up after the new lighting was installed. A few
days later the AFB was lit up brightly. Bruce talked to another military man
from the base who said that the base had radar tape of the objects from both
nights but certainly did not want Bruce to mention where the information came
from.
Because there were others who were there who witnessed
the events that took place over the Cannon Airforce Base I will be attempting
to contact these witnesses to gather their reports on the event. One other
important bit of information to this case is that there is a Freedom Of
Information Act do*****ent to say that jet aircraft were scrambled out of the
Cannon Airforce Base that evening in 1976. Although there has been no
explanation as to why, this still gives us a valuable clue that something very
unusual took place that night.
Below Photo: Aerial picture of the Cannon AFB.
Update: After Bruce went public with his story on the
Jeff Rense national radio program, he and his family were threatened. Bruce
called me on July 20, 2004, after he appeared on the Jeff Rense radio program
with me on Friday - July 16, 2004, when he told what he saw over the Cannon
Airforce Base back in January 21, 1976.
Bruce told me on the air that he had
taken a black and white photograph of one of the objects that had been observed
out-maneuvering the jet aircraft which were scrambled from the Cannon AFB. On
July 20, 2004 at approximately 1:30 a.m. Bruce had a disturbing telephone call
from an unknown person and the report on this is below.
Bruce wanted to point out to me that he does carry two
cell phones with him at all times. One is for business, etc.. and the other is
for personal business to keep in contact with family and close friends. He
stated that no one had his private cell number as it was not listed and the
only people that had this number were his wife, children, and some close
friends. His children are grown up and now living on their own.
Bruce kept his cell phones on the night table. His
work phone turned off, but the private phone turned on, just in case one of his
children might need to contact him in case of an emergency.
As I mentioned above, it was around 1:30 a.m., Bruce
and his wife had turned in for the night and were sound asleep when his cell
phone started ringing. Knowing that he had his work cell phone turned off he
knew it was a call from one of his children, and of course being a parent, he
worried as he grabbed for the phone.
Bruce answered with a hello and a voice
spoke back saying, "Mr. Bruce (last name). Bruce said there was a very
professional sounding gentleman on the other end. The man said he needed to
talk to him about a matter of utmost urgency! Bruce still half asleep asked the
man who he was, what was this call was all about, especially at this hour of
the morning. The fellow said this is about your recent radio appearance and
discussion about some photographs that you took back in New Mexico.
At this point in the conversation Bruce said to the
man, "you have to be kidding me," thinking this had to be some kind
of hoax, asked who was this. The man said there is no need for you to know who
I am. He went on to say, "it would be in your best interest to discontinue
this line of discussion and do away with those photographs. Destroy them!"
Bruce at this point is in shock about this man. He
looks on the cell phone to see what phone number is displayed and it shows
"number not available". The man told Bruce that "this is no joke
and 'we' feel that this would be in your best interest, and for the sake of
your family, that all of this go away."
Bruce told the man that if he wasn't willing to reveal
himself then the conversation would be terminated. The man then went on to tell
Bruce what his children were involved in, meaning their daily activities, where
they lived, etc.., what Bruce's wife was doing, such as personal activities
within the family, etc.. and said that he could fax Bruce his life's history
within a few seconds. That was it, Bruce hung up and that ended the call with
the stranger.
After this incident took place and some weeks had gone
by, a neighbor of Bruce's caught up with him outside one day and told him that
they had been seeing a lot of traffic in and out of Bruce's property. Cars would
pull up and stay for a while and then drive off.
Other times the cars would
pull into the driveway, stop, and men would get out and walk around the home.
Then they got back into their cars and drove off. These cars that were coming
and going had government license plates on them.
One other interesting fact to this story is that Bruce
put together a package for me, Jeff Rense, George Filer and Peter Davenport. In
this package there was a copy of the photo he had taken over the AFB. Bruce
mailed out the packages to us all and not one of us have received the
information. Bruce says he is going to try again and send it through a
different means. I hope once I receive the material I can update this story.
So that is where this story stands right now.
I would like to extend my many thanks to Bruce for
coming forward with his story.
Brian
Vike, Director Kamloops British Columbia Canada UFO Research. Email: brian_vike@telus.net
The Vike Factor Blog.
Kamloops British Columbia Canada UFO Research.
