The following interview took place on Wednesday, 4 November, in Wytheville, VA. Dan Gordon is the news director of radio station WYVE in Wyethville. Since October 1st, his station has been besieged with calls from residents who have witnessed something strange in the night skies. When the calls wouldn't stop, he decided to take a look for himself. Gordon was interviewed by ParaNet member Ronald Jennings of Newport News.

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Gordon: ...I call it an aircraft because that's the only term I can
think of for it. But on October the 13th, on a Wednesday, I was
with a friend of mine who's a former pilot. And we had spent
about two and a half hours in the cold with our heads out the
window looking for the UFO that people had seen. Because I had
been reporting UFO sightings [as a newsman] up to my neck, and I
decided that the only way I could actually solve the puzzle was
go out and see the UFO for myself...

My friend and I rode through all the areas where the sightings
had occurred, especially multiple sightings. As we were coming
home, we had about given up the search, I looked to the left on
Route 21 South, which is about four and a half miles due south
of Wytheville, between Wytheville and [Speedwell?], I noticed a
very unusual aircraft coming to my left. So I stopped the car
and got out. As it approached, it looked like it had...the front
shape was kinda like a funny-looking, round front to a craft,
with a long, split cockpit, and I say "split" because as it
approached, one side of the cockpit went dark. It had a strobe
that was putting out five different colors of lights on the
right side of the craft. I told my friend to get out, because he
was on the other side of the car, and he got out, and we both
were pretty astounded just from what we saw as it was coming
toward us.

I had a 35 mm camera on the dash, he had an [?] in the trunk of
the car. From there on in, we were so astounded and appalled we
were froze to our spot. We did not use either camera. I've been
in the news business nine years, I've never missed a shot, to my
knowledge. In sports...I've covered murders, fires, guy hung
himself from a tree...everything. So nothing appalls me. This
appalled me. I probably was standing with my mouth agape.

As it came by me, a side view...it seemed like it went on
forever. We're talking a couple thousand feet [altitude]. The
altitude was estimated by my partner, who's a former pilot and a
former airplane mechanic in Florida...we estimated 2000 feet
based on the treetop level. As it came past, like I say, it was
a very large craft, some 8-900 feet in length, probably bigger
than any 747 I've ever seen at an airport. As it came by, it
continued very slowly, just like it would skim through the
air...no sound, no jetstream [contrails], no smell, no nothing.
Totally quiet, and now we're on a road where there's radio
going, there's no noise whatsoever. No other cars coming. As the
craft gets past me, the rear of it - and I say the rear, that's
the area that we are looking at as it was going away from us -
had three panels of what appeared to be windows. The top one was
parallel with the ground, and appeared to be like in a circular,
dome shape at the top...looked like a window pane you would see
in a house. To each side of this window was two, they were going
vertically, same size windows, looked like three windows on the
end of a house. It was emitting no light, yet it shone a very
soft white light from the inside like a 75-watt bulb would show
in a house with very thin shades.

We were both, like I say, appalled. We watched it continue...it
went behind a cloud. At the same time it went behind a cloud, I
noticed a spherical dull-red object come from the left, parallel
with the ground, not from up or down, at a high rate of speed.
It was not a hologram or a laser or anything because it blotted
out the stars as it traversed across the sky. It went behind the
cloud directly with the aircraft. The aircraft momentarily
(maybe a minute elapsed) came out of the cloud, the spherical
object didn't, at least not by itself. The craft continued on
south and we lost sight of it. Because it was the first sighting
I had ever had, being a skeptic I automatically asked my friend,
"what did you see? Describe it back to me," to make sure I had
seen the same thing he did. Because during this whole time we
were almost quiet. He described virtually the same craft, and
told me it was unlike any conventional aircraft he had ever
seen, in magazines or in his dealings with aircraft. And
naturally we couldn't explain the spherical object. So, because
we didn't get a picture, we cursed ourselves all around.

So the next night, with a photographer, John Stember, a fashion
photographer, and his girlfriend and the pilot and myself went
back in the general area, stopped in the same area, didn't see
anything. About two miles up the road, the same route, on
Thursday night of this week, the day after I'd seen the first
sighting, we saw a craft hovering over a dirt road, to the left.
I pulled over, slammed on the brakes, we jumped out. The craft,
like it sensed us, turned and proceeded along the mountain top.
We grabbed cameras and started shooting with videotape and two
35 mm, at a pretty good distance. I had a 135mm lens, 1000 speed
film, shot [1/50th?]. He was shooting with, I believe, a Nikon,
500mm lens, and a multiplier, which made it 1500mm. My camera
quit after three shots. Don't know why. Got back in the car, it
worked fine. Next day the camera was checked by a local camera
shop. Wasn't anything wrong with the battery. I put a new one
in, just in case, but for some reason it stopped after three
frames.

What I got was a light shape of a spherical object, a dome
shape, and another craft coming down, preparing to dock in
behind. We witnessed this craft docking behind us, large domed
craft, and proceed with it some 15 miles before it went out of
sight. The videotape showed nothing but just some very dim
lights. The 500mm lens with the multiplier came out blank. Mine
just had a few dots, it was blank. Not enough light let in,
undoubtedly.

So we decided from there to go public with it that Friday in a
press conference here at the radio station. And we had a
gentleman who's a computer analyst, Andrew Convery, in from
Virginia Beach. He had seen it at a motel, the same night, in
[?], some 15 miles away. We went public, we did not have the
film developed yet. We tried to see if we could get any response
from the military, or if we could get any input from anybody
else, before we actually told people, and showed them what we
saw. We had no response. We got no response from anybody except
the public, they had seen the same thing. We had fifty reports
of the same object, same description, before they had ever heard
our description. We had never gone public in the media in any
form in this county, in this area, with this type of sighting,
even though we had other sightings, we had not described this
large, "mother craft", I'll call it. We had 50 sightings. We
even had a lady come in and participate in the press conference,
Emma Burchette, who had seen it the night before, had not told
me what she had seen, we put her on the panel and she told the
press. It was the first time I'd heard it. It was identical to
my sighting.

After the press conference, I was hit by a media blitz. So I was
having a hard time finding [time] to go look for the object. I
went with a lot of TV crews in the area, and we never saw
anything. So, finally the media blitz died down a little bit
last Friday. My wife, my child and I went back to 21 South, the
same area, finally spotted the craft up on the mountain - Sand
Mountain - and watched it hover for 20 minutes. Same craft. It
would not come off the mountain, just hovered up there. And I
drove all around trying to find a road to get up to that area,
so I could photograph it. I wanted something close. I came to
town to get gas, I was about to run out of gas, I came back and
it was gone.

I've seen it on three occasions, in a nocturnal sighting. On
October 16th, after about two weeks of UFO sightings, I'm still
not sure if my mind was playing tricks on me, but I seen, in a
bright blue sky, 6:00, at Exit 19 off Interstate 81, looked up
and saw what appeared to be a pie-pan turned upside down, just
sitting there, and all of a sudden, zoom! it was gone. Silver,
kinda gold-silver object. No wings, no sign of jetstream,
nothing, it was a day where you could see jetstreams everywhere.
I assumed at that time that maybe my eyes were playing tricks on
me. To this day I'm still not sure but it appears, we have had
three daytime sightings by people who will not come forward to
the public but they've told me. And we've had over a thousand
sightings total.

Jennings: In what period of time?

Gordon: Since October 1. Last Monday night, October 26th, I was in the
Speedwell area with five people, including four members of a TV
crew from channel 9 in Washington, DC, we saw 25 jets in one
area chasing red and white spherical objects. Chasing, but
couldn't catch. The objects would hover, they'd chase, and
they'd hover and stop and chase again. Never caught 'em. Finally
the objects went off over the horizon. When I called Langley
about it, the lady said they were conducting some kind of
starflight exercise, its something they scramble their crews
without notice, and they were done by 6:00. I said, "Lady, they
were here at 8:30." She said, "no we weren't." That's the end of
the conversation.

Jennings: Was this Langley, VA or Langley Air Force Base, Hampton?

Gordon: Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

Jennings: OK, could you tell me approximately the times that these
sightings occurred at, that you've seen?

Gordon: Between 8 and 10 o'clock. All the sightings that I have
documented that people have called me, with the exception of
three or four, have occurred between 8 and 10 o'clock, Monday
through Friday.

Jennings: What about the one in the daylight, do you know what time that
was?

Gordon: 6:00. One gentlemen saw them at 5 and one saw them at 4:45.

Jennings: In the evening?

Gordon: Yes. We had one sighting at 6AM in the morning, another at
12:45AM, but primarily everything from 8 to 10.

Jennings: Did the object emit any sort of a noise?

Gordon: People that have gotten closer than I have, say 6-700 feet, one
gentleman had it 400 feet above his house, based on [the size
of] his house and three more houses, he said that it had a real
solid "hum," when you quit talking you could hear a real faint
hum. Most anybody's told me, its either a drone or a hum. No
roar, no hiss, no whoosh, or nothing. Course mine was at 2000
feet, I couldn't hear it.

Jennings: Could you describe the shape of the object, again, please?

Gordon: Well, the front, is like a very, like a flat, round shape, its
almost like somebody took a "U", I mean a circle, and cut off
the side and made it flat on one side. You've got a long,
elongated cockpit area, it appears to be a cockpit area, with a
slope on the front. And the rest of the aircraft takes many
forms. Even though the back has windows in it, it almost looks
identical to the Star Wars vehicle, that was in the movie "Star
Wars" that flew between the asteroids, and it had all the
different shapes and sizes on it. It [the Star Wars ship] was
real dirty charcoal-gray, whatever, if you remember the Star
Wars vehicle. That's what people keep describing it as, is a
Star Wars vehicle.

Jennings: Well, which vehicle in "Star Wars," it wasn't an X-wing fighter,
was it?

Gordon: No, we're talking about the battleship, whatever,...

Jennings: Well, are you talking about the ship that Han Solo used, by any
chance? That big thing...

Gordon: Whatever the big ship was that....

Jennings: Not the Death Star, not the big round sphere, it wasn't
something like that?

Gordon: No, we're talking a ship that had a lot of different shapes on
it, it was not smooth.

Jennings: All right, that was the ship, I think, that Han Solo flew in the
movie.

Gordon: That's what people describe it as, and that's the only I know
that closely fits it. Its not a smooth object that people are
seeing, now, that's hovering over their houses.

Jennings: OK, one more question, are the sightings still going on?

Gordon: Oh, yeah, we had five today reported to me on the telephone,
another five walked in the door and told me.

Jennings: Also, there's some reference to the Sheriff having seen
something?

Gordon: We talked to three members of, deputies of the Sheriff's
department, in the town of [?], the town of Wytheville, and the
chief of police in [?] saw it, saw it in [?] on the first night.
That's what initiated the sightings, but since then, primarily I
think maybe because of the media blitz, they decided all the
sightings were refueling of aircraft.

Jennings: And as far as you know, no photographs of the object came out,
as yet?

Gordon: Well, mine has come out, its just not definitive enough to
produce, it doesn't show the mountain range because its too
dark. It can't show anything in comparison to the object,
because of the distance and the light.
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