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By Leslie Kean (page 1)

Ten years after the Arizona UFO incident known as the “Phoenix Lights,” former Arizona
Republican Governor Fife Symington, III, now says that he himself was a witness to one of
the strange unidentified flying objects, even though he originally did not say so publicly.

“It was enormous and inexplicable,” he said in an exclusive interview from his home in
Phoenix. “Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too.”

On March 13, 1997, during Symington’s second term as Governor, thousands saw multiple
triangular and V-shaped craft, gliding slowly and silently across the sky for half an hour
beginning at approximately 8:15 pm. Awestruck witnesses, throughout the state, estimated
that the eerie, lighted vehicles were bigger than many football fields, up to a mile long.

Arizona Senator John McCain, a friend of Symington’s who the former Governor describes as
“open-minded,” acknowledged at a 2000 press conference that lights were seen over
Arizona. “That has never been fully explained. But I have to tell you that I do not have any
evidence whatsoever of aliens or UFOs,” he said.

The evidence for a possible UFO, which simply means something in the sky that can’t be
identified, lies in the fact that countless witnesses reported seeing low, gigantic, technological
flying machines that blocked out the stars - not merely lights. Now the former Governor
attests to that.

Symington says he saw a large triangular “craft of unknown origin” with lights, moving slowly.
“It was dramatic. And it couldn’t have been flares because it was too symmetrical,” he says.
“It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.”

The sightings of the objects that evening are sometimes confused with the row of lights that
appeared at about 10 pm, near Phoenix, and have been shown repeatedly on television
news. These later lights were probably flares. People witnessed the objects at around 8:30
because they were outside on that pleasant, cloudless night watching the Hale-Bopp Comet.

Symington was known for ridiculing the incident at a spoof press conference, so his
statement marks a dramatic turnaround. He wants to make amends to his constituents and
set the record straight.

On the morning of June 19, 1997, when pressure was building from frustrated citizens who
wanted answers, the Governor announced on television that he was ordering a full
investigation and would make “all the necessary inquiries. We’re going to get to the bottom of
this. We’re going to find out if it was a UFO,” he said in a serious tone.