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Encore Presentation - Are UFOs Real?

Aired September 2, 2007 - 21:00   ET


LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, was a UFO buzzing around the historic Apollo 11 moon mission?
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin tells us what he thinks he saw.

Arizona's former governor once dismissed the Phoenix lights that stunned hundreds of eyewitnesses 10 years ago. He'll explain why he now says they could not have been military flares.

Plus, the stories behind the close encounters former Presidents Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter allegedly had.

And a return to Roswell, New Mexico, where the UFO controversy began 60 years ago with the man who says his father showed him debris from an alien spacecraft.

It's all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Good evening.

It's a topic that won't go away -- 60 years ago, July 1947, the small town of Roswell, New Mexico went from obscurity to global renown after reports that UFO had crashed there.

Today, people who suggest the possibility that life exists in other galaxies look to Roswell as a modern event that seems to back up the theories.

We welcome Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr. here in Los Angeles. He was shown UFO debris by his father, Major Jesse Marcel. He's author of "The Roswell Legacy."

Stanton Friedman, one of the foremost experts on Roswell and UFOs.

And in Roswell, New Mexico is Julie Shuster, executive director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center at Roswell. Julie's father, Walter Haut, was the public information officer at Roswell Air Base. He put out the press release about the UFO.

Dr. Marcel, tell us about your dad.

DR. JESSE MARCEL, JR. WAS SHOWN UFO DEBRIS BY HIS FATHER, MAJOR JESSE MARCEL; AUTHOR OF "THE ROSWELL LEGACY": Well, he was the base intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, which is the bomb group that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan that won the war for us.

KING: They were based at Roswell?

MARCEL: They were based at Roswell, at Roswell Army Air Field.

And as the intelligence officer, his job was to investigate unusual events. And a rancher found some strange debris on his ranch land some miles northwest of Roswell. He called the sheriff and brought some to the sheriff. The sheriff didn't know what this was. So the sheriff then called the base commander, Colonel Blanchard, to look into this. And since my dad was the intelligence officer, he sent he and a CIC agent out to the ranch -- CIC was a forerunner of the CIA at that time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Counter Intelligence Corps.

MARCEL: Counter Intelligence Corps.

And when my dad got out there, he found a large area of strange looking debris. This was not remains of a weather balloon or a radar tordid (ph), because the rancher found those before. So this is totally different from that.

So in order to determine what this was, he picked up a certain representative portion of the debris, brought it in to Roswell. Now, it just so happens our house was on the way to Roswell, to the base there. So even though it's late at night, maybe 1:00 in the morning, he came in, woke my mother and myself up.

KING: You were a kid?

MARCEL: I was a kid. Eleven years old at that time. And he will already spread some debris out on the kitchen floor.

And he says, "Look at this. I think this is parts of a flying saucer," or words to that effect. And being a child, I was not quite sure what a flying saucer was, but he was so excited I thought, well, you know, I'd better look at this.

So, he says look for --

KING: He was a major?

MARCEL: He was a major at that time.

And he said, "Look at this. There's (INAUDIBLE) electronic components like vacuum tubes and resistors. It wasn't anything like that at all. But it was strange. There was foil. There was --

KING: So what eventually happened?

Did he --


What he did, he -- we looked at this for a period of time, then he gathered it had back up and then brought it back to the air base that night. And constituently he flew us to General Ramey's office in Fort Worth. And when he came home later, he told my mother and myself never talk about this again, that it was a non-event, don't talk about it, period.

STANTON FRIEDMAN, LEADING EXPERT ON UFOS AND ROSWELL INCIDENT: General Ramey was head of the 8th Air Force and Jesse reported to his boss, Colonel Blanchard. He reported to General Ramey.

KING: And this proceeded to lead to a cover-up, in your opinion?

FREIDMAN: There's no question because General Ramey's --

KING: A cover-up of what?

FREIDMAN: Well, OK. Interesting question. I think alien spacecraft. And they put phony wreckage out. This is General Ramey. And here's his chief of staff --

KING: I want to show this.

FREIDMAN: -- Thomas Jefferson Dubose -- and I managed to locate General Dubose, by this time a retired general, mind you, many years later. And he told me that he took a call from Ramey's boss in Washington telling him, "Get the press off our back. I don't care how you do it. Send some of that wreckage up here today."

There's a great headline, Larry.

KING: That's a great headline.

FREIDMAN: He said, "Send some of that wreckage up here today with one of your colonel couriers and I don't want you to ever talk about it again, not even with your buddy, Roger Ramey. That's an order. Do I need to put it in writing?"

No, sir.

KING: I've done so many shows on this --


KING: -- over the years, as you know. We went out in UFO territory in Nevada.

Where was that?

Fifty-one, Area 51.

FREIDMAN: Yes, near Rachel, Nevada.

KING: And what has never been answered is why cover it up?

FREIDMAN: On my Web site --

KING: OK, let's say there's life in outer space.

FREIDMAN: That isn't the question -- KING: And let's say they came here. OK.

FREIDMAN: That isn't the question --

KING: Did they -- were they out to destroy us, what?

FREIDMAN: I have a paper on my Web site called "The UFO Why Questions," and that's the biggest one -- why the cover-up?

I give six reasons. You want to figure out how to work, they make wonderful delivery and defense systems. You've got wreckage. Rule number one for security -- I worked under security for 14 years, Larry -- is you can't tell your friends without telling your enemies. They listen to you, too, after all.

KING: So you're still working on this 40 years later?

You're still working on?

FREIDMAN: yes, believe it or not.

KING: All right, Julie --


KING: Hold on.

Julie Shuster is the executive director of the International UFO.

Your father was -- and a famous name, Walter Haut -- he was public information officer.

Was he asked to cover it up, too?

JULIE SHUSTER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL UFO MUSEUM AT ROSWELL: My father all along said that he issued the press release. And when he asked to see the debris, he said no.

He -- as far as the cover-up, part of -- being part of the cover- up, no, to my knowledge he was not.

KING: What did the press release say?

SHUSTER: The press release basically said -- and using his words, because I've heard it many, many times -- was we have in our possession a flying saucer. It's being flown to higher headquarters in Fort Worth. And his biggest regret on that press release was using the words "it's being flown to higher headquarters," because the media called from around the world saying how did they know how to fly it?

And he had to explain it was being put on aircraft.

and then he would, you know, that was his biggest thing. And he said -- but he would also add, but it was not of this Earth.

So that was basically his story. KING: That was the release

What did your father believe?

SHUSTER: My father believed it was not of this Earth. It was not a craft of ours. It was something unknown. And he used the words "not of this Earth." He was very emphatic about that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He told me that, too.

KING: Do you know why we have not heard of it -- or what's your guess, Jesse in, a long time?

MARCEL: Well, I'm not sure why we haven't heard about it because I think the American public is well enough informed about space to know about this, that they deserve to know that there's another life out there, that we're not the only ones. Because if we are, there's an awful lot of wasted space out there.

KING: We'll take a break and be back with more.

Our full show tonight devoted to UFOs.

We have a skeptic, as well. He'll be with us.

Don't go away.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The strange wreckage that Brasile discovered spanned an area 300 yards wide by a mile long. That parcel of land, known to investigators as the debris field, is where some believe an extraterrestrial craft blew apart and fell to Earth.




COL. JOHN HAYNES, U.S. AIR FORCE: Over a period of time, dummies were dropped all around there. And I think it's logical to assume that the people there saw Air Force ambulances come out. They saw gurneys come out. They saw body bags come out because the dummies were put into the body bags to protect them. They saw people in pith helmets. They saw people in shorts out there brushing the bushes, looking for the remnants of the balloons.

And when you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.


KING: Remaining with us, Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr. Stanton Friedman and Julie Shuster. By the way, Dr. Marcel wrote "The Roswell Legacy."

The forward was written by Stanton Friedman.

Joining us now, Michael Shermer, the publisher of "Skeptic" magazine. "Skeptic" did a whole issue, or a major part of an issue, on Roswell a couple of years back.

And James Fox, filmmaker, executive producer of the feature length documentary, "Out of the Blue: The Definitive Investigation of the UFO Phenomenon." That documentary is narrated by our good friend, Peter Coyote and was just released on DVD.

Is that the one where -- in which Presidents Carter and Ford discuss their sightings?


KING: What do they say?

FOX: Jimmy Carter said he actually saw a UFO and he describes -- he was with, I think, 10 witnesses and --

KING: He was on a plane, right?

FOX: No, he was actually standing outside in Georgia, I believe. And that was when he was a Congressman. And he said it just shot off --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was governor.

FOX: Governor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was governor.

FOX: Governor. I'm so sorry. Excuse me. He was governor. And it shot off at a high rate of speed and disappeared.

KING: And Ford?

FOX: Ford was involved -- it was a very major sighting. It was the equivalent sighting that happened over at the State of Arizona that has actually happened over in Chicago, what was it, 1966, Stanton Friedman?

FREIDMAN: I'm not sure.

FOX: I think it was 1966. But the Air Force came forward with some swamp gas explanation and Ford --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was Michigan.

FOX: -- pushed for -- Michigan, yes. Ford pushed for Congressional hearings and he admitted that on (INAUDIBLE) -- KING: And that's out in DVD now, right?

FOX: yes.

KING: Michael, what do you make of all of this?

MICHAEL SHERMER, PUBLISHER, "SKEPTIC" MAGAZINE: Well, I think it's good to start with separating two separate questions -- are there extraterrestrial intelligences somewhere in the cosmos and have they come here?

So, we have no evidence for either one. The probabilities are probably we're not alone, so -- but it's a vast, empty universe, it's hard to get here and so forth.

The set of evidences used to prove that they've come here are sub what we would expect in a scientific debate. For example, if you're a biologist and you want to name a new species, you have to actually have a type specimen, an actual body. So I always say to the Loch Ness monster people or Big Foot or aliens, show me the body.

I mean once we have that, then we have what scientists consider to be empirical data, where we can dissect it, photograph it, discuss it, look at it and so forth.

So far, this is still at the level of grainy videos, blurry photographs and anecdotes about things that go bump in the night.

KING: But what about strange metals being taken away --

SHERMER: Well --

KING: -- and told not to say anything about it?


So, first of all, do governments lie?

Do they have security cover-ups?

Do they have military secrets?

Yes, of course. So --

KING: But while --

SHERMER: This is in the middle of the cold war. These -- this debris that was shown in the photograph was described as -- and it looks like -- balsa wood, tape, balloons. And, in fact, this is Project --

FREIDMAN: Not true, Larry.

SHERMER: -- this is Project Mogul.

So, in the middle of the cold war we're launching these high altitude balloons to monitor Soviet upper atmosphere nuclear explosions.

FREIDMAN: Larry, we're simply ignoring the evidence. Dr. Shermer isn't a skeptic, he's a debunker. He starts with the presumption there's nothing to this. The explanation is away from the reality.

There's no question that that stuff isn't part of what Jesse Marcel brought in.

SHERMER: Wait. This looks like balsa wood and tape --

FREIDMAN: Of course, it does.


FREIDMAN: But that's not what was found --

SHERMER: And that's what they said it is.

FREIDMAN: That's not what was found --

SHERMER: Yes, it is.

FREIDMAN: -- out in the desert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This stuff was switched.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They switched it. This is not what --

FREIDMAN: The original descriptions on July 8th are very different. The rancher was grabbed, brought back into town, fed a whole new story with information that simply doesn't fit reality.

SHERMER: But, of course, because --

FREIDMAN: The mogul balloon explanation doesn't fit.


FREIDMAN: The materials are wrong, the location is wrong, the timing is wrong.

SHERMER: Would it -- would it surprise anybody to learn that our government told people don't say this, do say that, because we're in the middle of a cold war?

FREIDMAN: That isn't the question.

SHERMER: Of course. That is what happened.

FREIDMAN: The question is to look at the evidence and what he saw --

MARCEL: I saw something totally different from that --

KING: Now, he saw --


KING: Now, wait a minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not what was recovered.

KING: He's the only one in the room that saw something.


KING: Eleven years old, but remembers it.

MARCEL: I remember that very well, in spite of being 11, because it was such a very intriguing experience. Now, the most important thing I saw was the bean-like material that had some strange -- some symbols along the inner surface. They were purple, violet, semi- reflective of light but small, about three eights of an inch in diameter or in length.

KING: They didn't look like anything you'd ever seen?

MARCEL: I thought at first it was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it wasn't. It was more like mathematical or geometric symbols. And that's -- they're all --

KING: Did you have another guess for it?

MARCEL: Not at that time, no.

FREIDMAN: His father told me, when I first talked to him back in the '70s, that there was nothing conventional out on that field. We've got an area three quarters of a mile long, hundreds of feet wide -- nothing conventional.

KING: Julie, did your father see it?

SHUSTER: My father came out with a statement after his death, we released that, said he did see the craft, yes.

KING: He did see it?

SHUSTER: Yes, sir.

Find anything in the craft?

Did he find anything in the craft?

SHUSTER: I don't know. He doesn't go into that in the statement and he didn't -- he was not privy. He was not out at the site.

What he saw, I believe, was at the Air Force base.

KING: Weaponry aside, Michael, if there are extraterrestrials, why hide it?

SHERMER: Yes, right?

That's what I say, why hide it?

But, look, this would be the greatest discovery in the history of science. NASA would be elated, of course. They'd could go to Congress and get more funding.

Why would anybody cover this up?


SHERMER: And look what happens when they make even the smallest discoveries. Of course, we hear all about it.

KING: James?

FOX: I have a question to ask you.


FOX: If UFOs -- and I'm speaking hypothetically for a moment here -- if UFOs are real, it would be one of the greatest discoveries of our time. Do you agree with that?

SHERMER: Of course.

FOX: Now, if UFOs were -- and I use the word if -- were buzzing around in our airspace, who would be best equipped to know about it?

SHERMER: Well, our government, perhaps.

FOX: The military?

SHERMER: Maybe. But maybe not.

KING: Yes, all right --


FOX: So we've got the highest ranking military officials in the world telling us right now that these things are real. We've got generals --


FOX: We've got admirals, we've got colonels, we've got presidents, governors.

What do --


FOX: If we can't believe them, who can we believe?


A lack of evidence --

FOX: I'm sorry, if we can't believe them, who can we believe?

SHERMER: Well, I --

FREIDMAN: There's physical traces --


SHERMER: Well, I -- I wouldn't necessarily --


SHERMER: Listen, guys, guys, wait.

FREIDMAN: Evidence. You don't talk about evidence.

SHERMER: This is simply a lack of evidence. So when I say --


SHERMER: Where is the spacecraft, you say they hid it.

Where is the documentation?

They covered it up.

This is like the weapons of mass destruction thing.

Where is the evidence?

The fact that we can't find any means that they're there because it's not (INAUDIBLE).

KING: Let me get a break and we'll be right back with more on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is our relationship to the larger reality?

SEAN THACKERY, CIVILIAN SIGHTING, MARIN, CALIFORNIA: I looked up and all of a sudden there was this, you know -- I've got to say it, flying saucer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It didn't even make a sound, not even a sound.

RENATO NICOLAI, CIVILIAN SIGHTING, FRANCE: I saw one, but I don't whether it just disappeared.



(VIDEO OF AN ALIEN DOLL) KING: The skeptic here is the only one that brings these.


SHERMER: He drinks beer, too.

FREIDMAN: We worry about evidence. We don't worry about --

KING: The truth is, James, we want it to be true.

Don't you think 90 percent of the public wants it to be true?

FOX: I challenge anyone out there who is watching this show tonight -- and I bring this to your attention, as well -- to watch "Out of the Blue" and conclude there's nothing to this phenomenon. It's impossible.

SHERMER: Well, when you say nothing to it, of course, there's something to explain.

FOX: It's inexplicable.

SHERMER: Before we say something is out of this world, let's first make sure that it's not in this world. And there's nothing out of this world --


SHERMER: -- and there's so much we don't know about the natural --

FOX: Process of elimination.

SHERMER: -- world. There's so much we --


SHERMER: It could be military aircraft.

FOX: No, hang on a second.


KING: There's a 1997 event in your film, right?

FOX: yes.

KING: What happened?

FOX: A very massive craft flew over the State of Arizona. It was witnessed --


FOX: No. It's a fact.




FOX: No, a craft.


FOX: These kids said you could have hit it with a rock --

SHERMER: Don't say massive. Just --

FOX: -- it was so low.

SHERMER: -- something.

FOX: It was a massive craft that flew -- this -- this kid said he could have hit it with a rock.

SHERMER: Well, so what?


KING: We're watching this now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, you're not.

Larry, you're not watching that --

KING: Oh, That's not it?

Wrong information.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, that's right.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the B roll from the footage, but it's --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But that is the Phoenix lights. That's right.

FREIDMAN: No. Those are the flares seen at 10:00, not the massive thing --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Think of that as eye candy over --

FREIDMAN: -- seen earlier in the evening by --


FOX: Larry, think of any of this trying to --

KING: One at a time.

FOX: Let me finish. Let me finish.



FOX: So, there were a lot of people out under the night sky looking up to get a glimpse of the Hale-Bopp Comet. And at about 8:30 this very large boomerang shaped craft flew over and was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people.

About two months later, an article brought it -- it got a lot of local media and an article broke in "USA Today" which pretty much put it into the forefront of -- in the U.S. The story broke.

And Fife Symington came forward and had a press conference and said he was going to get to the bottom of it. He was the governor of Arizona at the time. And later that afternoon, he had a press conference -- an unscheduled press conference where he had one of his aides dressed up in an alien suit and made a joke out of the whole thing.

Well, I was always puzzled because I spoke to many of the witnesses that saw this craft and I was wondering that like why he did, why he did what he did.

So I contacted him 10 years later and he recanted -- not only did he recant the statement, he said he investigated --


FOX: -- he investigated the whole -- the thing, and then he himself, who was a captain in the Air Force, saw it.

KING: All right, let me ask some fair questions.


KING: Are you open to the possibility, Michael?

SHERMER: Of course. I mean all science is open to that. But -- but -- but just being open to it and what we would like to be true, does not make it true.

KING: Are you open to the possibility, Jesse, you're wrong?

MARCEL: I am. But not really.


MARCEL: Not really.

SHERMER: Well, look, Larry, this has all the earmarks of a myth. It started, really, in the late 1980s. If you look in the UFO literature of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, there's almost no mention of Roswell. Other incidences are the big meccas of the UFO-ology (ph). This becomes --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That shows you how successful they were.

SHERMER: This becomes -- 40 years after the fact eyewitnesses start remembering things. We know about the psychology of misremembering, confabulation of different memories.

KING: Well, all right --

SHERMER: We know that -- and think about just one thing.

Why would the aliens look like this?

KING: Well, that's --

SHERMER: These are bipedal --

KING: Who drew that?

Who drew that?


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, where did you get that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't need to pay you money to draw an alien.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- only one that believes in an alien.

SHERMER: This is -- this comes from television (INAUDIBLE) --

KING: Yes, but that's not drawn (INAUDIBLE) --

SHERMER: -- (INAUDIBLE) from eyewitness accounts. And once it got started, once this image began --

KING: You mean from like from the national trade whacko magazine?

SHERMER: Yes, that's right. But once that became the image of what aliens would look like, that's what people began to see in their dreams and their abduction experiences.


SHERMER: That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now wait a minute.



UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He can't go unchallenged. (CROSSTALK)

KING: Hold it.


FREIDMAN: The Betty and Barney Hill case goes back to 1961. It's a new book by myself and Betty's niece. There was a book in 1966 by John Fuller, "The Interrupted Journey," a best-seller all over the world, a television movie, James Earl Jones in it, 1975.

This updates it by 40 years or so because Kathleen has all her great stuff.

KING: And?

FREIDMAN: They were strange little guys and the work was done to illicit these memories by a psychiatrist who had no interest in UFOs, didn't believe in flying saucers, kept trying to make them think oh, it was Betty's dream.

And one of the things we do in the book is go over how he was pushing them in the direction of not alien, despite all the evidence that it was alien.

SHERMER: But, Stan, you know that on Earth, primates have only evolved once.

What are the chances of that happening on some other planet --

FREIDMAN: we don't know.

SHERMER: -- and then, and they're looking pretty much like us. And -- and --

FREIDMAN: We don't know.

SHERMER: And then they come here and find us.

What are the chances of that?

FREIDMAN: The chances are very good because

SHERMER: It's more likely --

FREIDMAN: -- because that's what --

SHERMER: -- more likely that we are hallucinating --

FREIDMAN: -- the evidence shows.

SHERMER: -- these sorts of --

FOX: So you're saying the governor of Arizona was hallucinating --

SHERMER: No, no.

FOX: -- and thousands of other witnesses --

SHERMER: No. No, no, no, no, no, no.

FOX: -- didn't see that?

SHERMER: No, that's a different story. UFOs are literally just unidentified flying objects.

KING: Julie --

SHERMER: In science, it's OK to just say we don't know.

KING: Julie, did your father go to his grave believing?

SHUSTER: yes, he did. He really did. He was very firm in the fact that he said it was not of this Earth. You know, one of the things that seems to be being forgotten, to me, is the fact that that July 8th, 1947 newspaper is a fact. You know, we may not have a lot of the scientific evidence that is being discussed, but that newspaper and the July 9th are facts.

I mean those are evidence in themselves. And that says it happened, you know?

So my father said it did. Numerous people -- you know, I was born and raised here. I know these people. They're real people and they had better things to do with their lives than make up a hoax.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She brings up a really good point, too.

SHERMER: But not hoax.

Why not just honestly misperceiving something?

What's -- we know that people --

FREIDMAN: The only atomic bombing group in the world --

SHERMER: -- honestly misunderstand --

FREIDMAN: -- with a lead group, a military group and hand picked officers and hand picked men, and they're making up stories?

Walter wasn't just a PIO --

SHERMER: Stan, Stan, your whole case is still based on anecdotes. We've got to have --

FREIDMAN: Because that's --

SHERMER: We need something more than that.

FREIDMAN: -- absolutely nonsense. We have 3,000 physical --

SHERMER: What else have you got?

FREIDMAN: -- trace cases.


FREIDMAN: We have multiple witnesses.


FREIDMAN: Well, go look.

SHERMER: I brought something.

What did you bring? Where's -- f

KING: Oh, we have a headline that you wanted to show.

SHERMER: Where's one of those probes from the dashboard?

FREIDMAN: I didn't say probes.

SHERMER: Where's one of the gadgets from the --

FREIDMAN: I said physical trace cases --

SHERMER: -- spacecraft?

Where --

FREIDMAN: -- multiple visual cases.

SHERMER: Give us something, you know, like an on --

FREIDMAN: I'm saying photographs examined by scientists.

SHERMER: Yes, but (INAUDIBLE) photographs.

FREIDMAN: -- by scientists who say --


FREIDMAN: you're making proclamations, you're not doing investigation.


KING: All right, I've got to get a break.

But I want to show this headline first.

This is from the "Roswell Daily Record": "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roswell Army Airfield is the initials.

KING: We thank you, Dr. Marcel and Julie for being with us. They will be gone.

Others will be coming in.

Later in our next half hour, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and what he has to say about a certain UFO sighting. It's very important.

Stick around.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do these lights belong to visitors from outer space?

Hundreds of people across the valley think it's a distinct possibility. Good evening.

I'm Mark Bailey.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm Robin Sewell (ph).

Thanks for joining us. We start tonight with the strange dots of light that were the talk of the town.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, everybody was excited about the comet but in the middle of that, these very mysterious lights appeared over Phoenix, over Maricopa County.



LARRY KING, HOST: Welcome back.

Just a quick heads up for all your computer savvy viewers, our later podcast is now available online. You can you download it at any time you want. It's my interview with some of professional wrestling's biggest names past and present, people like Chris Jericho and John Ceno, and Brett Hart. They talk about the life and death of former wrestling star Chris Benoit. To download it, just go to CNN.com/LarryKing or subscribe to iTunes.

Stanton Friedman remains with us, so does Michael Shermer, so does James Fox whose film "Out of The Blue: The Definitive Investigation of The UFO Phenomena" is available on DVD. And we're now joined by George Noory, the host of "Coast to Coast," a radio show that counts a large number of UFO enthusiasts among its listeners.

How did that develop, George?

GEORGE NOORY, HOST, "COAST TO COAST": Larry, we followed in your footsteps. Of course, you made the fort for us. And then Art Bell came along and then I replaced Art.

KING: Oh, so you do the all-night show.

NOORY: I do the "Coast to Coast" A.M. all night show.

KING: And I never got UFO callers.

NOORY: Never?

KING: No. Occasionally but Bell got...

NOORY: Art got all of them. He got them all.

KING: And now you get them.

NOORY: And now I get what used...

KING: All right, what percentage are Kookyville?

NOORY: Kookyville, I'd say about 10 percent. That's honestly.

KING: Have you become a believer?

NOORY: I have believed that this planet has been visited since I was a little boy. My mother brought me home a book once by Walter Sullivan the late "New York Times" science writer called "We Are Not Alone." I was convinced that there was something going on.

Ironically when I was 21, my very first radio interview was with Stanton Friedman in Detroit, first one. And he hasn't changed since.

KING: Do you book people like Michael Shermer on?

NOORY: Michael has been on the program. He is what I call my skeptic. He debates people.


NOORY: He goes in the cage. Two go in, one comes out.

KING: What do you think the answer is to the unanswerable? If it happened why is it covered up?

NOORY: I don't necessarily know, Larry, why it's covered up. But a couple of things have happened just in the last several weeks. You just had Julie on, Walter Haut's daughter. Walter signed an affidavit in 2002. He died in 2005. That affidavit was just released several weeks ago that testifies that he saw the crash. He saw some of the occupants.

And then another person, his name is Clark McLellan, who is not very happy with NASA anymore, but he worked on the ground shuttle fleet. He says that he walked with Werner von Braun, the father of modern day rocketry. And he said von Braun told him that he saw the debris as Roswell and aliens that had snake skin.

It's an amazing story. And you know Stanton is aware of this.

KING: Werner von Braun said he saw aliens?

NOORY: According to Clark McLellan.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was based at Fort Bliss, which is right down the street from all of this. So it wouldn't be surprising if -- I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying it wouldn't be surprising if von Braun would have been called in to look at wreckage of an alien spacecraft. I mean he was the foremost expert. So...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Given how much we know about the unreliability of human eyewitness testimony, especially when you're observing something at night and...

SHERMER: How about daytime?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...and you can't tell distance, size. Somebody says it was the size of a ship or whatever. How do you know? What's the comparison factor there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't they use eyewitness testimony in a court of law all the time?


SHERMER: May I say something about the way science works, Larry, is that the default assumption is that whatever the claim is, it's not true until it's proved. So the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

KING: Right.

SHERMER: And as I said at the beginning, we have to have some physical evidence, anecdotes and eyewitness testimony and so on is a good place to start a research program. But at some point, if you want to name a new species, you've got to have an actual type specimen. You got to have a piece of the spacecraft, as I've always said to Stan and others.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Radar operators, doesn't mean anything.


KING: One at a time.

FRIEDMAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is that people are good observers and poor interpreters. You can't have it both ways.


FRIEDMAN: Throw out all the courts of law. Scientists have to observe, too.

SHERMER: They're not -- courts of law, eyewitness testimony is not all that reliable. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) question just quickly we can all agree on, if UFOs are real and they were buzzing our airspace, who would be the best equipped to know about it?

KING: Well, the Air Force.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. And they're us these things are real. Why aren't we believing them?

SHERMER: No, but who is saying this? Who is saying this?


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got FAA officials. We've got colonels and generals and admirals and pilots and just the list goes on.

SHERMER: But why would they be any better than you or I...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because they're trained to know.

SHERMER: No, no, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are trained observers.

SHERMER: No, no, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't say...

SHERMER: Trained observers are no better than just regular observers.

FRIEDMAN: And at what point do you not believe the people? I mean Michael has been on the program. Walter Haut writes signs and affidavits that says I saw these things.

SHERMER: I saw something. Yes, of course.

KING: The pilot is flying the plane, a commercial airline, and he spots something.


KING: Who does he report it to?


FRIEDMAN: They're different. Pilots are very reluctant to report. There's a new report coming out within a couple of weeks, I'm told, by the guy who wrote about, about the O'Hare sightings on November 7, reported in "The Chicago Tribune" on January 1. It got a million hits, that article did, on their website, which is utterly incredible. The report is coming out.

Here we have guys working for United Airlines spotting something over O'Hare Airport. What are we supposed to do with those guys? Dr. Richard Haynes, retired NASA scientist, has written a report that will be out very shortly. There's an organization called NARCAP, National Aviation Reporting Center for Anomalist Phenomena. You don't hear the word UFO in it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, but Stanton, you don't have to do anything. If you say, why do we do with it? You don't have to do anything with it. In science, anomalies always exist.

FRIEDMAN: UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a physicist. You're looking at this from...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To go from something we don't know to say that I don't know what this is to I believe it's an extraterrestrial craft...

KING: All right, let me get a -- I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to get a back, come back and then we're going to spend a segment with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, and then Fife Symington, the former governor of Arizona, and then our panel will come back to close the show.

We'll be right back with my friend Buzz Aldrin right after this.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 1947, Americans found their skies filled with all sorts of strange flying objects.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The UFO phenomenon really took off actually in June of 1947 in the state of Washington when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold saw many objects going in formation at a very, very high speed by Mount Rainier in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arnold said that the nine silvery objects he'd seen looked like saucers skipping over a pond. The next day his story was front-page news and a new term entered the American lexicon, flying saucer.



KING: Only 12 men have ever walked on the moon. And the man who did it a second time anyone walked on the moon was Buzz Aldrin. He was part of the first mission that got there, a NASA astronaut on Apollo 11. He's here with a model of Apollo 11. He was with the first pair with Neil Armstrong, of course. And Buzz the panel remains so that they might want to pop something at them.

But Buzz, what's your connection to this program? What did you see?

BUZZ ALDRIN, FORMER ASTRONAUT/APOLLO 11: What did I see? Well, we -- the first day out, maybe six hours after launch, we were scheduled to make a mid-course correction. And I'd like to show you a few things in this rocket just to point out the condition that we were in. During launch, this boost protective cover comes off, hopefully not with the command module attached. And then the first stage drops off, the second stage drops off. Unfortunately, I can't take this apart, but there's the third stage and inside is the lunar module. And this is the command and service module.

Once after going in orbit and a half around the earth we fire for five minutes, this engine here, and we head toward the moon. Now shortly after that, we separate the command and service module. And it turns around like this. And it docks with the lunar module. I'm going to have to be pretty ambidextrous.

KING: Are we getting to a UFO?

ALDRIN: We're getting to that, yes.

KING: I only ask in view of time.

ALDRIN: I know.

KING: This is fascinating.

ALDRIN: You don't want me to be the jury of all these people now, do you?

KING: No, I don't.

ALDRIN: Right. Now notice these three and four panels. Whenever the command module separates and turns around, those panels go off in four different directions. The rocket -- now we're separated from the rocket, and the rocket and the spacecraft, the lunar module and command module, are heading towards the moon.

Now we orient perpendicular to the plane of the sun, the earth and the moon, and rotate slowly like this. And we can look out these windows and see the earth drift by and see the moon drift by.

KING: And what did you see?

ALDRIN: And I saw a light out there, OK. This is after we had witnessed the upper stage rocket next to us make an evasive maneuver to miss the moon. Later missions, it crashed into the moon so that we could determine the seismic effect of crashing into the moon.

KING: So you saw a light?

ALDRIN: So we saw a light and we thought, I wonder what that is. You know there are a lot of lights out there when you're not looking in the direction of the sun. There are a lot of stars. And they're all fixed relative to each other.

KING: What was unusual...

ALDRIN: Now when one of them starts moving or it's moving, and we know that that's another object. It's not a star.

KING: Stars don't move?

ALDRIN: Well, they move but they're so damn far away that...


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How long did it follow you for?

ALDRIN: Exactly. That's why I started to do this.

Now, we know that if we were to say, Houston, we've a light out the window. It going along with us, heading for the moon. A lot of these guys are going to go ape, you know. And it's really going to endanger the mission and occupy a lot of our time trying to explain what's going on.

KING: All right.

ALDRIN: So we very shrewdly, Neil did, said, "Houston, where is the upper stage?" They didn't know right away. But they said we'll check with the guys in the back room. The guys in the back room in 10 minutes came back and said, "It's 6,000 miles away." Well, we figured that's not what we're looking at. So we started thinking a little bit more about these four panels. And I'd seen a graph where it showed the separation distance that was calculated before liftoff, before the whole mission went of where these panels would be in case the spacecraft made some maneuver. And they guaranteed there would be no contact.

KING: Hold it right there. You've got me (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

I'm going to hold Buzz. We're going to add the governor. We'll figure it all out how to do it, and close with all of them because I'm suddenly involved in this. What the hell was that?

Back with more, don't go away.


NEIL ARMSTRONG, FORMER ASTRONAUT: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.




UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Remember when you called me and you thought the alien was in your room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, but I don't want to talk about that.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's always sightings of UFOs and all that. So I mean people want to see aliens. I want to see an alien.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just interesting. They're not human. They're not animals. We don't know what they are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To think that humans are the only living organisms to populate this universe is stupidity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think a lot of people want to know that there's something out there that's beyond our earth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're coming and we'll be ready.


KING: All right, our panel remains. Buzz Aldrin, the NASA astronaut, second man on the moon, remains. We're going to have him pick up in a moment his description of that thing flying across the sky as he heads towards the moon.

Fife Symington now joins us, the former governor of Arizona, who in 1997 ridiculed an infamous UFO sighting by thousands of people in this state and recently admitted he was wrong. By the way, Fife runs the Arizona Culinary Institute.

Well, you were wrong because?

FIFE SYMINGTON, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ARIZONA: Well, I saw the Phoenix Lights along with hundreds if not thousands of people. And when I saw them on that day in March, I didn't say anything about it. And then the whole issue came back up again in the following June with a big "USA Today," I think, article. And there was sort of a frenzy about it. And so, I felt a little levity wouldn't hurt. So we did a spoof over the alien invasion, if you will. And I think a lot of people misunderstood what I was doing. I was just -- we were just having fun trying to lighten people up over the issue.

KING: So you acknowledge what?

SYMINGTON: Well, I acknowledge that I saw a craft. I was up in the sunny slope area around 8:00 at night. And I went out to look to the west where the -- all the news channels were filming the Phoenix Lights. And to my astonishment this large sort of delta-shaped, wedge-shaped, craft moved silently over the valley, over Squall Peak, dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights. And it just went on down to the Southeast Valley. And I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights and all of a sudden this apparition appears.

KING: It was not an airplane?

SYMINGTON: No. It was definitely not an airplane and not a tens. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he's a pilot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And a captain in the Air Force.

KING: A captain in the Air Force.

Buzz, what did you see?

ALDRIN: What did I see during the flight?

KING: Yes, you saw...

ALDRIN: We saw one of the four panels, the 99.999. And these are three guys who have flown in space twice and have looked out at the stars and all sorts of things, so believe...

KING: You saw something there?

ALDRIN: Yes, we certainly saw something. We could see...


JAMES FOX, FILMMAKER: I have a quick question. When you were a test pilot, I think it was at Edwards Air Force Base?

ALDRIN: I commanded the test pilot school afterwards. I was not a test pilot.

FOX: OK. I was told by a very close source of yours that you actually saw something other than that.

ALDRIN: A lot of people have said things that I saw, but that doesn't mean that I saw it.


FOX: Someone very close to you told me that you had another sighting that you actually chased.

KING: In your years of flying, have you seen strange things?

ALDRIN: I was flying a T-33 I guess and I looked out and I saw a star out there. But it wasn't a star, it was Venus. But it kept following me all along. And you would swear that it's another object out there. And you can turn -- and I want to congratulate you on your magic show last night, with all the illusions, because now we're getting a lot more illusions tonight. And can you explain everything that happened with Criss Angel last night? No, you can't explain it.


KING: All, right, here's what I'm going to do, folks. I'm going to take a break, come back, and get the thoughts in a wind-up session of what all these people think, and especially what the governor and Buzz think about what the four others have been talking about when we come back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Public interest in the last few years has increased very greatly in a phenomenon which has been identified as flying saucers. These stories have led to much fiction and much fancy.


KING: OK, let's do a round robin here. Buzz, what do you think, after all you've heard tonight, think there are?

ALDRIN: I wish I could solve your dilemma. I think it's fascinating to hear both sides of this. I really do believe that you need to have very firm evidence. And cover-up is something that just doesn't exist for very long. Sooner or later somebody is going to squeal on it or -- and I just can't believe that we would be covering up such a major, significant event as true evidence of being from somewhere else.

KING: Governor, from what you saw, was that from outer space?

SYMINGTON: I think it was from another world. I've never seen anything like it, Larry. It was enormous. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. And, you know, it was all over the news. Hundreds, if not thousands of people saw it.

KING: It was huge, right?

SYMINGTON: Yes. And so...

KING: And traveling fast?

SYMINGTON: ...I don't -- I know of no other explanation unless a phantom stunk works have something cooking that we don't know about.

KING: Two distinguished gentlemen, an astronaut, a governor, different views from what you've seen.

ALDRIN: Well, I didn't see what he saw.


FOX: When you say waiting for people to come forward, people have come forward. High-ranking military officials have come forward and talked about the validity.

KING: Stanton, do you think we're ever going to know?

FRIEDMAN: I hope so. I'm an optimist. Before I leave this planet, I think. And I think this year will be a good year because the media are finally beginning to recognize that. There's an awful lot of interest in this subject. You know that, but not everybody does.

KING: We'll never know your side, will we, because they'll always say, you can never prove it? SHERMER: As soon as we find an actual alien, a body, an actual space craft, one of those probes that we hear all about, if somebody brings one of those, OK, that's all we need. That's all science needs is some kind of empirical evidence.

KING: Do you think we'll ever know, James?

FOX: I think that if you watch "Out of The Blue," you'll know that we are definitely and have been misled for 60 years or more. I mean there's no question. I haven't had one person watch this movie with the evidence that we've collected from all around the world -- and by the way, I'd like to mention my co-producers, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Tim Goldman.

But I challenge anyone to watch "Out of The Blue" and then conclude there's nothing to it. It's impossible.

KING: George, do you think we'll know?

NOORY: Vast universe, Larry. To think that we haven't been visited before, I think is foolish. One of Buzz's colleagues, Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, has told me that he believes we've been visited by extraterrestrials. I think it's real.

KING: Think we will know, governor?

SYMINGTON: I hope so. I mean I'd be really disappointed if we don't. But, of course, the skeptics, the professional skeptics, won't be happy unless there's a body. But, you know, we have a lot of evidence, a lot of photographs, a lot of news media, coverage of it. And the lights over Phoenix was a very compelling, dramatic event seen by so many people that it's -- you can't just kind of blow that off and say oh well, that -- everybody in Phoenix was hallucinating.

KING: We're almost out of time.

Buzz, when you wrap around...

ALDRIN: You know I think we're within several hundred years of being able to visit somewhere else, all right. Now the odds of our being visited in the last 60 years when we are so close and you look at the billions of years that we've been in existence here, what an odd coincidence it is that two societies just happen to interact with each other at this time...

KING: Thank you all very much.

ALDRIN: ...when you consider that we want to see things.

KING: We're out of time. We'll go look at the book.


Thanks very much for joining us. Anderson Cooper, "AC 360" is next.