For the first time, General Parviz Jafari, one of the Iranian Air Force pilots who actually flew the chase mission, describes one of the most credible of all UFO encounters, the famed ??Tehran Dogfight.?? He give us his account of personally chasing this UFO across the skies over Tehran. This interview, conducted by Whitley Strieber and Dr. Roger Leir, is a worldwide first. No pilot who participated in the dogfight has come forward before. Then Linda Howe reports on gigantic Burmese Pythos that have been let go in the Everglades by Florida pet owners no longer able to keep them. These monsters grow to 15 feet in length and have been known to swallow alligators...and people? The 1976 Tehran UFO Incident was a radar and visual sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Tehran, the capital of Iran, during the early morning hours of 19 September 1976. During the incident, two F-4 Phantom II jet interceptors supposedly lost instrumentation and communications as they approached, only to have them restored upon withdrawal; one of the aircraft also supposedly suffered temporary weapons systems failure, while preparing to open fire. The incident, recorded in a four-page U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report distributed to at least the White House, Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), remains one of the most well-documented military encounters with anomalous phenomena in history, and various senior Iranian military officers directly involved with the events have gone on public record stating their belief that the object was not of terrestrial origin. A somewhat similar UFO incident over Tehran occurred in 1978, again involving electromagnetic interference and U.S. DIA interest. The report was sent by the U.S. Defense Attache's office to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, part of the normal routing for foreign intelligence reports. As in the 1976 case, the distribution list included the Secretary of State, the NSA, and the CIA. The report was quoted from the Iranian English-language newspaper Tehran Journal, dated 18 July 1978. The article said that a UFO had been seen by a number of people on the night of 16 July, again in the northern part of Tehran. One witness said he saw the object suddenly emerge in the sky and hover directly above him. Witnesses said it was a "strange glowing object" that seemed to be floating southwestward toward Saveh (about halfway between Tehran and Hamadan). Witnesses contacted the National Radio Network and the control tower at Mehrabad, which confirmed the existence of the object but provided no further details. The article added, "Officials from the control tower at Mehrabad Airport and a Lufthansa aircrew also reported unusual readings on their instruments." The article also briefly mentioned another recent UFO incident from April 1978. A local pilot said that he and his copilot had photographed a "glittering" object while flying between Ahvaz and Tehran. (Ahvaz is about 750 miles (1,210 km) southwest of Tehran.) He could not release the photographs until the security division of the civil aviation authorities gave permission. Apparently there was also ground radar corroboration. "A Mehrabad radar control official said that on that occasion they had detected an object some 20 times the size of a jumbo jet on their screens." Civil aviation authorities were said to be investigating, but the results had not been made public.

• published: 13 Nov 2013
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