USAF meetings with filmmakers on UFO footage offer
In May 1973, USAF officers met Hollywood producers Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler, offering military cooperation and access to alleged 1971 Holloman AFB UFO landing footage showing alien-government contact, later withdrawn.
Background
Background
In May 1973, US Air Force representatives including Col. William T. Coleman and Col. George Weinbrenner held discussions with the influential Hollywood figures Robert Emenegger (documentary filmmaker) and Allan Sandler (producer). They encouraged the pair to produce a film about the UFO phenomenon and possible extraterrestrial life, with full military support and access to Department of Defense files.
Meeting at Norton AFB
At Norton Air Force Base (today San Bernardino International Airport, California) the men were taken into a secure CIA clean room. There the offer was made concrete: access to 3,200 feet of film of a UFO landing in May 1971 at Holloman AFB in New Mexico, said to show extraterrestrials meeting US representatives. Paul Shartle, head of the audiovisual programme at Norton, promised to make it available. It was also said that the military was monitoring signals from an unknown extraterrestrial group.
Withdrawal and Consequences
The release of the film was withdrawn at short notice; instead, Emenegger and Sandler were to present the event as a hypothetical scenario. Emenegger later visited Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, where Weinbrenner handed him a signed copy of J. Allen Hynek's "The UFO Experience" while talking about the Soviet MiG-25. In 1974 Emenegger produced the documentary "UFOs: Past, Present, and Future", which reconstructed the Holloman event without any genuine footage.
Significance
The episode points to official expressions of interest in UFOs and has fed speculation about secret contacts, but remains disputed for want of the films.