Gersten and his organization hope that their latest lawsuit will force the authorities to reveal what they know about a large number of well-documented sightings of large triangular craft seen over Arizona and New Mexico in recent years. The objects, some many times larger than a jumbo jet, have been seen by the tens of thousands of people. One was filmed over Phoenix two years ago but later interpreted by the air force as a series of flares dropped in a training mission - an explanation few accepted. I believe that the authorities have evidence and that I can prove it in a court of law. While such extreme opinions are only shared by a tiny minority, most Americans believe that their government knows more than they will say.
Opinion polls show that more than half believe in UFOs.
And after years of denial, almost all branches of the American military now admit that they carried out their own secret investigations into flying saucers, particularly in the 1950s when UFO fever peaked. The CIA report, by its official historian Gerald Haynes, says that the agency eventually concluded that most reports could be explained and that there were no little green men. While some CIA agents believed there was evidence of genuine UFO activity, the official version attributes at least half the sightings to secret U.S. air force reconnaissance aircraft such as the U-2 and Blackbird. The air force also maintained Project Blue Book in which it documented nearly 13,000 sightings between 1951 to 1969, all but 700 of which it was able to explain as conventional aircraft or natural phenomenon.