In the first hour and a half, George Knapp welcomed the Director of Research at MUFON, Robert Powell, who shared the results of his analysis into the Stephenville, Texas UFO sightings on January 8, 2008. Powell said he and report co-author Glen Schulze obtained radar info from the FAA under the Freedom of Information Act and scrutinized the two and a half million data points, noting where aircraft were located between the hours of 4 and 8pm. According to Powell, they found three cases of unidentified objects (that did not return a transponder signal on radar) that correlated with witness accounts.
Two of the objects appeared to be traveling around 2,000 miles per hour, Powell reported. Another unexplained object was on radar for more than an hour. Radar data shows this object heading directly toward President Bush's Ranch in Crawford, Texas, he said. While military aircraft were in the skies that night, Powell said based on witness accounts he does not believe the Stephenville UFO sightings are military related. Angelia Joiner, former reporter for the Empire Tribune who broke the story on the Stephenville UFOs, also phoned into the program. A PDF of Powell's full Stephenville UFO Report can be found here.
During Open Lines, several callers phoned in with UFO stories. Bob in Queens said he saw small, silver-colored, sphere-shaped UFOs flying around outside of a diner. Burt in Toronto said he and his wife heard a shaking like an earthquake, followed by a metallic object that hovered 300 feet over their house. Burt said the object stayed for ten seconds then took off into the distance. Mike in Arkansas shared an odd experience two friends relayed to him. According to Mike, his friends where driving home from work on some back roads (about 30 miles west of Little Rock) when they saw a box car slowly rising up into the sky. Mike said the couple's story was ridiculed and they eventually moved out of the area.
Maida in Austin, TX told George her son's missing passport that was found in Georgia by Russian defense officials. The passport, belonging to Texas resident Michael Lee White, is being used by Vladimir Putin to implicate the United States in the Georgia conflict (see New York Times). According to Maida, her son's passport was stolen in Kazakhstan in 2005. He was traveling with a new passport and has gone missing in China, she said. Maida believes her son may be under arrest and fears he may be forced to confess to something he did not do.