From: mcgrew@dropout.rutgers.edu (Charles Mcgrew)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: SA UFO incident ?
Date: 10 Jan 93 23:20:19 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Hi,

	etxsral@hal.ericsson.se (Lars Nilsson) writes:
	I've heard that South Africa shoot down a UFO some years ago.
	Two SA hunter airplanes was chasing a saucer-type UFO and one
	of them fired with a prototype laser?? on the UFO and it
	crashed on the ground. The UFO and the crew was later
	transported to the US.  The incident was reported by a SA
	military intelligence officer.  Have someone else heard about
	this story ?

... yep, it made the rounds here in November, here's part of a message
I posted about it then:

... here's some detail, from "UFOs, MJ-12, and the Government", by
Grant Cameron and T. Scott Crain, and "UFO Crash/Retrievals VI: The
Inner Sanctum", by Leonard Stringfield (both available from MUFON.) Is
this the case you're talking about?

   On May 7, 1989, so the story goes (first published in "Quest
International" V9 #2, 1989, by Tony Dodd), a UFO flew over SA
airspace, and was brought down in the Kalahari Desert by two Mirage
interceptors, one armed with some sort of experimental "Thor 2 laser
canon" weapon.  Recovery followed (though only after a special paint
was brought in to cover the object -- its EM effects were stalling
recovery vehicles, including a helicopter, which crashed.) The object
was later opened, and two live (non-human) occupants discovered.  The
object and occupants were flown in USAF C-5's on June 23, 1989 to
Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio (i.e. the object and occupants were
transferred from SA to US control.)

  Accompanying the story (when told to some English UFOologists) was a
five page SAAF document that tells this story, along with additional
detail (20 yards wide, 9.5 yards high disk; 4-4.5 foot tall
greyish-blue occupants, etc.)

    The source for all this was one James Van Greunen, who claimed to
be a captain in SAAF Counterintelligence, and who claimed to be on the
run (in South Africa) from his own government for releasing this
information, and to have over 300 more pages of secret documents in a
bank-safe in Zurich, and needed money to escape with his family to the
US, (enough money to get him out of SA was donated by various people.)

   He did, after a number of adventures (once getting as far as Canada
before being deported back to England), provide another 3 pages of 
stuff, which proved to be faked (xeroxing his passport and birth
certificate for seals, and pasting up the rest).  Further documents
provided proved to be retyped from various sources (Bill Cooper's
"Operation Majority", Bennewitz and Lear stuff, some home-grown stuff
published by Van Greuen's local UFO group, and a photograph from 
a US UFO magazine ("California UFO").

   When confronted with all this, Van Greunen claimed that he got the
original (the 5-page document) information from a Captain Greer (or
Greef), who really is a Captain in the SAAF.  While the original
5-page document has *not* been shown to be inauthentic; it appears
that Van Greunen concocted the rest to try and get more money, and
lend weight to his case.

   Stringfield reports that Van Greunen was not the original informant
(i.e. the source of the 5-page document), JVG appears to have tried to
use the information he had (from whatever source), along with more
stuff he came up with himself, to obtain money.  But the story doesn't
end there.

   Henry Victorian, Stringfield reports, contacted Captain Greef in
South Africa, who rather than denying the report, instead pressed
Victorian for *his* source of the report.  He (Victorian) was later
had contact with SA military people, who confirmed to Victorian that
the crash and recovery had taken place (though that some details were
incorrect -- the EM-field paint part, for instance.)  Victorian also
made requests for information from NASA, US Space Command (part of
DoD), and the Naval Space Surveillance Center (part of USN) for known
objects that had reentered the atmosphere and landed in South Africa.

  NASA said: The only one they had close to that date was Satellite
19942, on May 8, 1989 -- "reentered 26 April 1990 at 0115 Zulu" [this
appears to be a misprint, and they mean 1989, and launched that date,
rather than reentered -- see below], impacting 18 deg. South, 41 deg.
East, "off SE tip of South Africa".

   USSC said: the only one close to that date (that USSC believed to
have actually have impacted on earth, 6 other reentering objects were
said to have had a less than 5% chance of reaching the earth) was
Satellite number 19942, International Designator 19890-032B (USSR),
common-named "FOTON 2 (rocket body)", launched 26 April, 1989,
impacted May 8, 1989, 0119 Zulu, 18 deg. South, 41.1 deg. East,
Inclination 62.8 deg.

     NSSC was asked about FOTON 2, and said it was Int. Des.
1989-032-B, number 19942, launched April 26, 1989, impacted on May 8,
1989 at 1101 Zulu, and impacted at 46.6 deg. North, 15.4 deg. East.
[Note very different location and time from above.]

The recommendation of Cameron and Crain is to ignore Van Greunen's
"extra" documentation entirely, but that the 5-pager is worth study.
Timothy Good is of the opinion that the whole thing (including the
5-pager) is a fabrication, and that some of the other actors in the
case (notably Henry Victorian (aka "Henry Azadehdel")) are not to be
taken at face value either.  The authors also contacted Bill Moore,
who agreed that the whole thing is pretty shaky (notably that
SDI-laser-on-a-Mirage sounds pretty odd.)


... so, the case is a mess.  On the one hand, we have a 'public'
source that is clearly discredited.  On the other, we have a murky set
of other things that cannot be completely dismissed, and a document
that may or may not be real.  (Both Stringfield's and Cameron and
Crain's books reproduce the document -- Cameron and Crain's exactly as
received, in Stringfield's its retyped.)

Charles