As the UFO encounters and sightings by military aircrews have increased tremendously, US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence rebrands UFOs as “unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena.” Expanding the definition to include objects in space and under the oceans significantly broadens the scope of investigating UFOs. Interestingly, few remember the UFO/Alien controversy surrounding Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, when one of three UFOs allegedly landed on the base early in May 1971.
However, as it is so often in such cases, instead of the government releasing a film of the entire incident to author/filmmaker Robert Emenegger as promised, it only released 8 seconds of this special footage that ultimately made it into the film. Holloman Air Force Base is the United States Air Force base established in 1942 and located six miles southwest of the central business district of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
It all began in 1971 when Emenegger and producer/director Allan Sandler were invited by the US intelligence (either the United States Air Force or Department of Defence) to Norton Air Force Base in California to discuss the major UFO phenomenon that had happened before and create a documentary film on it.
There is no official record of the reason why the US government allowed to give secret UFO footage for a documentary film. It is believed that the administration of President Nixon did it to look strong in the science field for the upcoming 1972 re-election campaign.
Emenegger said that he was promised by the USAF officials to get the authentic UFO landing footage that happened at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1971. It showed the alien visitors emerging out of the craft that met with the US military. Even though Emenegger was skeptical about it, the Air Force assured him that the footage was authentic.
One of the military’s officials named Paul Shartle, who was in charge of the audio-video department, said in a 1988 national television broadcast with Mike Farrell that he had watched the 16mm film of three disc-shaped craft. One of them landed and the others flew away.
“I saw footage of three disc-shaped crafts one of the crafts landed and two of them went away. It appeared to be in trouble because it oscillated all the way down to the ground. However, it did land on three pods, a sliding door open a ramp was extended, and out came three aliens. They were human-sized. They had an odd gray complexion and a pronounced nose. They wore tight-fitting jumpsuits, thin headdresses that appeared to be communication devices, and their hands in their hands they held a translator I was told.”
According to Emenegger, he even visited the landing site and checked the place where the alien vehicle was kept. The alien visitors and the US army personnel had meetings for several days.
Emenegger and his production team were provided access to top-secret files into DoD facilities and were even allowed to take help from the military officials who had been into the UFO matters, including Col. William Coleman from Project Blue Book and Col. George Weinbrenner, who was the head of Foreign Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Emenegger said that the landing took place at 6 a.m. The alien visitors had eyes with a vertical slit, and their mouths were thin and slitlike, with no chins. He was promised by the USAF to get 3200 feet film of UFO landing but at the last moment, they refused to use it due to the “Watergate Scandal.” Despite it, Emenegger and Sandler were asked to describe the Holloman episode as something hypothetical, which might happen in the future.
After months of research and film production, Emenegger felt cheated as the permission of using real footage was withdrawn. Anyway, he released his Golden Globe-nominated documentary, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future” in 1974. It turned out to be groundbreaking due to the information provided by the DoD. The USAF forced Emenegger to add the animated footage of the alleged Holloman UFO landing.
As per Emenegger, the alleged real landing footage was not fully missing from the frames. He said some frames from the original footage were used in the reconstruction during the editing stage, which was authorized by the USAF. The viewers spotted a genuine bright disc coming down slowly in the distance against the backdrop of Holloman’s surrounding landscape.
At the Alien Cosmic Expo in Toronto in 2017, UFO researcher and author Grant Cameron held an interview in his hotel room to discuss (among many subjects) a film from 1974 at Holloman Air Force Base, which contained footage of a UFO landing.
Here is the transcript of key points Mr. Cameron said in an interview:
“I was involved in one of the key stories that confirms that they’re not covering up and that was the story of the holloman air force base film this is one of the stories I put on the book.
In 1973, they [Pentagon] go to Emenegger and Alan Sandler, two producers in Los Angeles. They ask them to do a UFO documentary. Emenegger who was a total ufo skeptic said what do you mean this is for real and at that point, the security manager Paul Shartle at Norton Air Force base said what would you say if I told you that we had an alien ship landed at air force base six o’clock in the morning in May of 1971 and we filmed it from three different vantage points two on the ground one in a helicopter and we will allow you to use the film for your documentary.”
“Then they put the documentary out and then I find out that there was eight seconds of the Holloman air force base UFO film in the documentary.” Mr. Cameron then called Emenegger, telling him about the 8-second of the film.
He [Emenegger] said: “But it didn’t show anything. You don’t see when the alien gets out that’s the classified part.” Mr. Cameron further said that the government allowed Emenegger to use the small clip to hint that the Holloman UFO incident happened, but the classified part was removed.
In his recent Ask me Anything session on Reddit, UK-based journalist Christopher Sharp from Liberation Times was asked by the user if there is any standing data or rumor for the number of different alien species visiting earth. To which Mr. Sharp replied,” This is the stuff I really want to find more info about. The only thing I have been told by multiple sources is that the Holloman Air Force Base visitation was real. Were they ET, interdimensional or ultra-terrestrial? If true, then there are many questions we need to ask ourselves.” He further added the video link to Grant Cameron’s interview as mentioned above.
The film was re-released in 1979 after adding more UFO sightings and new information that included cattle mutilations. Jacques Vallée added 30 minutes of new narration into the film, talking about ancient astronaut theory.
