Alaska's 1986 UFO sighting still rouses curiosity

Washington, D.C., Nov. 8 - Although man has walked on the moon and orbited the earth, there is still no proof that intelligent beings exist on other planets. Yet scientists believe there could be.
There is even one account to suggest aliens have flown over Alaska.

For generations, man has fictionalized what it would be like to meet aliens or unidentified flying objects. But again, that's just fiction. This may be fact.

"Either there's something there or there isn't it," says former FAA division chief John Callahan. "Is it a spaceship or not? Why would they say it's a spaceship if it's not? The radar ain't lying."

Radar reports were part of what Callahan investigated while working for the Federal Aviation Administration in 1986. The investigation stemmed from a report by a Japan Airlines 747, as it flew about 50 miles from Anchorage. An inexplicable image appeared on air traffic control and military computers, and the three pilots flying the plane claimed they saw a UFO.

"The pilot has it on his radar, and then the pilot and the other two guys in the cockpit look out the window, and they see him over here, and they see him over there, and they see him over here, and for 31 minutes," Callahan says.

The FAA said the incident was due to a radar malfunction. The CIA believed the pilots, Callahan says, but it buried the story. "The CIA said it was a UFO. The CIA said we're not going to tell the public, because it would scare the public. They told me that."

Stories like Callahan's were the subject of a symposium Friday in Washington, D.C. Reputable scientists and even a former NASA official concluded such stories may be more than just the visions of those with active imaginations. "Within our own backyard, the Milky Way Galaxy, there could be literally 50 billion planets, of which 10 percent may be earthlike in nature," says Dr. Michio Kaku of City University of New York. "So it's hard to believe that God would create a universe and waste it, making all these barren planets." Scientists say more funding needs to be devoted to determining if there is life on other planets -- and they acknowledge there is also the challenge of getting people to accept the idea of alien life. 

That's an idea Callahan accepted two decades ago. "What I'm hoping is, before I die, to be able to say I told you so," he says. Callahan continued to work for the FAA after the Japan Airlines incident. He is now retired and does some aviation consulting.