William E. Smith Interview, 25 August 2001(b)
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| TT: | Define what you were seeing—white light? | |
| WS: | Seeing a white light, and on clear nights you could see it almost change colors it was dark. When I say "colors," let's see, we're talking about a reddish-dark, light almost like a light bulb in the distance that would have almost somewhat of a reddish hue to it and you could even see it change a little bit, almost like an aircraft that might be a long distance away, that would have red lights and green lights with it and it would revolve and—not bright white, dull reddish white. More of a dim light as I recall it. But the lights themselves were doing different things, and there was more than one. I mean, in many cases we talk about one light, but we saw several on occasion, and they were just not doing things we thought aircraft should be doing this time of the night, [chuckles] or this time of the morning. | |
| TT: | At what elevations were you seeing them? | |
| WS: | Just above the horizon. | |
| TT: | 15 degrees? | |
| WS: | 10 to 15 degrees yes, there was enough space between them and the horizon that would be significant [gestures indicating distance above horizon], we knew that they were flying. | |
| TT: | And they wouldn't go up overhead? | |
| WS: | Most of what we saw was just back and forth patterns. They weren't going very high. | |
| TT: | And in a general direction to the south? | |
| WS: | Well, since we were north [of the base] it would be east-west. | |
| TT: | OK. | |
| WS: | They were moving back and forth in that regard. So we couldn't from that distance see any movement like this [gestures indicating motions north-south] we were seeing [gestures back and forth] from where we were. We were looking south seeing this, so they were moving east-west, west-east, they would stop, and they might go up a little bit and go slower, and we're saying "a helicopter might do that but—" | |
| TT: | Now wouldn't you report that and wouldn't base investigate? | |
| WS: | Well we did. We reported it not only to our crew since we had Oscar-1 and 4 that were somewhat south of us. And then of course, the other missiles circle around us from behind, so we were not knowing exactly precisely where they were, where these lights were, but this was in our area. So we did call and make the reports as we were supposed to of anything that you can't explain, but nothing was done, so I talked to the Capsule Crew again, and I said, "sir, we're just not happy with what we're seeing" and as I recall, we had reported this before. And they said "well, just keep them under observation." | |
| TT: | In the documents the control tower is saying, 'those damn missile guys are seeing things again.' | |
| WS: | Again! Yes, that's true. And we'd report them over a period of time, and 'well OK, and just keep it under advisement if we get any sites going off.' |
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