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- The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) 24-hour
hot line (702-798-1700) received a report at 3:46 am Pacific time on 1/5/2000
from a police officer at Milstadt, Illinois. The officer reported an unidentified
flying object seen by a business owner and several police officers at Lebanon,
Millstadt, Shiloh and Dupo, Illinois. The report to NIDS came approximately
two hours after the sighting.
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- After multiple telephone calls to the locale, NIDS dispatched
two investigators to the location to conduct face-to-face interviews with
eyewitnesses. The following can be summarized from the interview transcripts:
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- The civilian, who had driven to his miniature golf course
in Highland at 4:01 AM, reported an object like "a floating house
with very bright internal lights flying at a low altitude from northeast
and moving southwest. The object was two to three stories high and was
the length of a football field. The eyewitness immediately drove to the
Highland PD and reported the sighting. The police dispatcher from Highland
contacted The Central Communications dispatcher from St. Clair County,
who in turn requested the Lebanon Police Department to look out for the
object.
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- At approximately 4:10 am the police officer from Lebanon,
responding to the dispatch from Highland, reported a low flying "massive
elongated triangle emitting intense white light. The object came to within
1000 feet of the witness and then appeared to rotate slowly and fly extremely
quickly and suddenly across the sky toward Shiloh, Illinois. The maneuver
was executed with no noise. The officer had turned off his vehicle engine,
his light bar and his main police radio so that he could listen for noise.
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- A police officer from Shiloh reported a large black
arrowhead shaped craft that was moving slowly. The object then gathered
speed and flew about four to five miles across the sky at a very high rate
of speed. According to the officer, who was watching from his vehicle with
the windows rolled down and the engine shut off, this maneuver was executed
silently. Since there was little, if any wind at the time, this maneuver
is judged to be inconsistent with the behavior of a blimp.
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- A Millstadt police officer described the object flying
very slowly between 500 and 1000 feet altitude. It was very large. It was
shaped like a fat arrowhead. The rear of the object was concave and looked
to contain dim, white, flashing strobes.
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- According to the testimony from the police officers,
the flight path of the object was in a southwesterly direction from Highland,
over Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt and then turning northwest to Dupo. The
flight path would have taken the object almost directly over Scott Air-Force
base. According to all inquiries by NIDS, including interviews with two
separate AFOSI officers on the base, nothing was in the air from Scott
Air Force base that night between 4:00 and 5:00 am. All individuals disavowed
knowledge of any flying objects in the region around Scott AFB.
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- Two separate inquiries from NIDS to the Boeing St. Louis
facility showed that Boeing does not conduct testing of military aircraft
at their facility. According to Boeing, the facility conducts acceptance
testing of newly manufactured (from the assembly line) aircraft during
the day at the local commercial airport. A Boeing spokesperson confirmed
that there were no Boeing St. Louis derived aircraft flying around St.
Louis and surrounding areas during the early morning (midnight to sunrise)
dark hours of Jan 5, 2000.
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- This report will contain short summaries of each eyewitness
testimony followed by transcripts. The appendix will contain original drawings
by three police officers as well as copies of the original reports and
transcripts from the dispatch communications.
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- Because of the intense media publicity surrounding the
case both locally and nationally, NIDS has received additional potential
eyewitness leads to investigate. The investigation of the case is ongoing
and will be updated on the NIDS web site http://www.accessnv.com/nids in
the next few days when more data is available.
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