Early reports were confusing, vague and fragmentary. They came from scattered sites in a remote and sparsely populated part of the country. All accounts agreed that there were strange lights in the sky, and some reported sounds from above.
The initial response was to discount the reports as yet another UFO frenzy, which seemed sensible because people in that part of the world were always confusing the bright planet Venus with an alien space ship. But the timing was wrong; this incident occurred right around midnight, when Venus was below the horizon.
And such reports could no longer be discounted, covered up, or ignored. The nation was at war, and was on high alert for terrorist intrusions. Since an Air Force base was the closest major government installation, it drew the responsibility.
The base commander called the North American Air Defense Command at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. If there was anything to these alleged accounts of supernal activity, surely its sophisticated radar system would have noticed.
NORAD did have an “electro-magnetic field anomaly” at the right time near his base, but had not done anything because the incident lasted for less than a minute before everything went back to normal. It was in all likelihood nothing more than a computer glitch, the watch officer told the base commander. It had merely been listed in the daily operations report, just to make sure everyone’s posteriors were covered.
That provided some confirmation that something had happened, but the base commander already knew that. He was supposed to find out what happened. He had just learned, thanks to some media accounts, that the National Security Agency had for several years been monitoring communications inside the United States.
Contacting the NSA was something of a problem, though, since it didn’t officially exist, and his communications officer had no idea how to reach the NSA via telephone, fax or e-mail. But one of the enlisted men had a cousin who worked there, and after a few calls, the base commander reached the assistant deputy monitor for the interior Western United States.
“I can confirm that there were communications at that time and place,” the monitor said. “But since we only gather information and do not act on it ourselves, the information was transferred to another agency.” The monitor would not say which agency, but the base commander had been through similar drills before, and presumed that if he could guess the destination, the monitor would confirm it without actually saying so.
“The CIA?” the base commander asked, hoping that this was the case, since he had some connections there. He heard a negative grunt. “Defense Intelligence Agency?” Another negative grunt. “Homeland Security?” He heard a positive sigh, hung up, and tried to figure out the appropriate Homeland Security subcomponent to call. Customs? Immigration? Transportation?
The base commander started at the departmental inspector general office, and got lucky when he reached an assistant who was willing to talk. “Media reports in the nearest town, Breadhouse Springs, said that the closest observers of the anomaly where some sheepherders camped up in the hills.”
“Most herders out here are Basque or Mexican,” the base commander observed.
“Indeed they are,” the assistant confirmed. “So we sent a crew from Immigration up to investigate. Turned out there were four of them, all from somewhere else, and they didn’t have their papers with them.”
“So you took them into custody?” the base commander asked. He was hoping that the sheepherders would be deported. They had, after all, caused something of a stir with their demented ranting about a UFO that spoke to them, and the sooner they were put away, the better.
“Not on that account. There was a security problem. The sheepherders said they were camped by their flocks, and were awakened by loud sounds from the sky. They looked up and saw glowing humanoid creatures that spoke to them.”
“And what did the creatures say?”
“Something about ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men.’ Definitely a communication that could impede the war effort, don’t you agree?”
The base commander muttered assent and hung up the phone, glad that his investigation was concluded and that the national security had been preserved.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
