[CNI News thanks Rebecca Schatte for forwarding this story from the online newspaper American Reporter. Elements of this story were previously reported in CNI News of August 21, 1995.]
BUENOS AIRES -- A huge saucer-shaped UFO, variously colored violet, red and green, has been filmed by a professional television cameraman at La Puerta in the central state of Cordova, according to reports by the Argentine state news agency Telam.
Filming minutes before midnight Thursday, October 5, local cable TV station cameraman Gerardo Ferrero shot 15 minutes of high-quality video footage before the UFO flew away. Ferrero had been alerted to the phenomenon by a neighbor who first observed the "saucer-like object" hovering in the sky.
The Argentine air force has spent the last week examining the footage after also finding "jelly-like substances" and scorched earth marks at the San Carlos de Bariloche airport, 1,260 miles southeast of Buenos Aires. Their verdict on the video is that it cannot be explained, but it's being included in the investigation into another UFO sighting in the area last July.
The Argentine government has tried to discourage news reporting of the sighting because of a routine Latin American summit conference to be held in Bariloche October 16-17, with Latin America's heads of state, King Juan Carlos of Spain and the president of Portugal expected to be in attendance.
The video photographer told Telam news agency he lost five minutes setting up his camera before he could start shooting the UFO at a distance of 2-3 miles in a southeasterly direction from where he lives.
"The UFO pulses violet, green and red as it turned on an axis," Ferrero told the Telam state news agency. "Through my telephoto lens, I could see small windows in its circumference as it spun and moved up and down. I had difficulty keeping it in focus until I ran out of tape about 15 minutes into recording."
"When I digitally enhanced the image in the technical studio, it was easy to see that it had the form of a plate or saucer and how it changed from place to place as though it was spinning."
Nestor Etcharte, who saw a similar UFO touch down in Bariloche in July, said he'd found three-foot-deep circular "footprints" on the flight path into Bariloche airport, and Air Force investigators who were called immediately to the scene by helicopter had found samples of "gelatine-like substances."
Etcharte said the samples solidified to rock within hours and have since defied all attempts to cut or analyse them.
That July UFO experience was also witnessed by the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner, and a ground-crew had watched the UFO fly parallel to the aircraft as it aborted a landing to avoid a collision.
In parallel with Argentina's "close encounter," neighboring Chile has been put on a UFO alert after a spate of sightings close to the capital, Santiago. Chile's armed forces (FACH), which issued the security alert, is apparently taking the UFO "invasion" seriously.
"The most recent sightings were last Saturday in the vicinity of Rancagua, 70 miles south of Santiago. Thousands of people witnessed the unidentified flying objects in the night sky," otherwise unnamed military investigation sources told the local daily newspaper, La Cuarta.
The newspaper received an official notice of security alert from the FACH's 2nd Brigade Aerial Operations headquarters, and then interviewed witnesses who described the UFOs as "large shining objects, mostly red on top and perhaps 10 feet in diameter, with an elongated oval shape and tail from which multi-colored sparks flew as the objects moved away."
[The American Reporter, Copyright 1995 Joe Shea, All Rights Reserved. The American Reporter is published daily at 1812 Ivar Ave., No. 5, Hollywood, CA 90028 Tel. (213)467-0616, by members of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Internet discussion list. It has no affiliation with the SPJ. New articles may be submitted by email to joeshea@netcom.com. Reader Subscriptions: $10.00 per month ($100 per year). We are reporter-owned.
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Original file name: CNI - Argentine UFO.Oct 19
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