Mystery Missile Update

The Pentagon insists it was not responsible for the supposed missile launch off the coast of California Monday evening and further reports that neither NORAD nor the U. S. Northern Command picked up anything unusual in that area at that time. Some experts, incluiding John Pike of the American Federation of Scientists, say the object picked up by a KCBS camera was simply an ordinary airliner. The FAA also reports nothing moving at high speed was picked up on radar, and no pilots flying in the area at the time reported anything unusual.

The matter may not be quite as closed as the above paragraph suggests. Pilots hesitate to report unusual things in the sky, for instance-- they don't want to be labeled as crackpots because they want to keep their jobs. Whether pilots would put a mystery missile in the same category as a UFO is open to question. So far, we seem to have only the FAA's assurance about the lack of radar images, and only the Pentagon's assurance that it was not involved. All that against a professional photojournalist using a professional level television camera recording what looks like a rocket launch featuring the classic thick pillar of exhaust as opposed to an airliner trailed by a thin, white contrail.

It sure looked like a rocket launch.