Again, it must be stressed that the CIA’s secret collection of UFO reports mirrored the activity of America’s many intelligence agencies in all facets of society. In March 1965, for example, FBI offices were asked to compile lists of reliable reporters who could be called on for Cointelpro work. Hoover was meanwhile busy gathering data on antiwar groups as well as members of Congress. That summer, U.S. Army intelligence agents began to infiltrate and spy on a wide range of political groups involving about one thousand investigators and three hundred officers collecting questionable political utterances.44
UFO developments of 1965 were substantial enough to become a major public interest. On the night of January 29, the mayor of Monterey, California, and his family saw a bright light performing acrobatics in the sky. The light hovered, shot straight up, then faded and dropped down to hover some more. Finally, it dropped toward the water and disappeared. A local pilot also saw the event, and the Coast Guard investigated but offered no explanation. 45
On the other side of Monterey Bay that night, radio technician Sid Padrick claimed to have encountered UFO occupants. At about 2 A.M., while taking a late stroll before going to bed, Padrick claimed he heard a loud humming noise and saw a machine shaped like “two thick saucers inverted.” An entity told him not to be afraid and welcomed him aboard. “You may call me Zeeno,” the being said to him. For what it’s worth, Xeno is the Greek word for stranger, something Padrick did not know. The being asked Padrick if he wanted to pay his respects to the supreme deity, and Padrick reported having a deep spiritual experience. Perhaps surprisingly, officers from nearby Hamilton AFB interviewed Padrick for three hours. According to Padrick, “they wanted my account of it, word for word.” He said there were certain details which they asked him not to talk about publicly, but he talked anyway. Reporters found that Padrick was backed up by everyone who knew him; he was not a nut, nor a religious fanatic, nor interested in UFOs.46
The UFO wave of 1965 was not merely nationwide, but a global affair. On the night of February 3, 1965, in South Brighton, New Zealand, flattened grass was found after a man saw a UFO, about twenty-five feet in diameter, rise to an altitude of about sixty feet, then depart. On February 11, an air force officer and flight crew, en route from Anchorage to Japan, obtained a radar-visual sighting of three huge objects that paced their F-169 freighter aircraft over the Pacific Ocean. The objects were red and glowing and, after thirty minutes, ascended swiftly at over 1,500 mph. The pilot later remarked that he had often seen UFOs on the Alaskan run. A sighting of three short humanoids emerging from a craft was reported in Chalac, Argentina, by about fifty people on February 21.47
On the night of March 14-15, 1965, James W Flynn, a forty-five-year-old rancher and dog trainer who was hunting in the Florida Everglades, claimed to have gotten a close-up view of a UFO. The object descended after midnight, and Flynn investigated. He saw an enormous cone-shaped machine silently hovering a few feet over the ground and watched it for about forty minutes. Flynn estimated it was about seventy-five feet in diameter and twenty-five to thirty feet high and had four rows of ports or windows. He could see yellow light coming through the windows, and heard an engine-like sound. Evidently feeling lucky, he approached the craft with a raised hand. He got to within about six feet when a narrow beam of light struck him in the forehead and knocked him unconscious for close to twenty-four hours. The story was incredible, but Flynn spent five days in a Fort Myers hospital with a large bruise on his head, burns, and damage to deep muscle tissue. He had lost vision in the right eye and saw poorly with the left. Everyone, it seemed, vouched for his character. Evidence also existed at the landing site, where the ground showed definite scorch marks in a large circular area, and the tops of trees were burned by something.48
A major UFO sighting occurred on May 24 at Eton Range in Australia, forty-two miles from the city of Mackay. A round glowing object either landed or hovered just above the ground for about thirty minutes, where it was seen by three guests of the Retreat Hotel: Jim Tilse, Eric Judin, and John Burgess. One had been a WWII pilot, one was a veteran airline pilot, and the other was an engineer. According to Tilse, the commercial pilot:
It was about three hundred yards from the hotel where we were staying. It had a bank of spotlights, twenty or thirty of them, along a circular platform. It was solid, metallic-looking, thirty feet or more in diameter.
