Astronaut Gordon Cooper Talks About UFO Sightings

Gordon Cooper was one of the original Mercury Astronauts, and the last American to fly in space alone. On May 15, 1963 he shot into space in a Mercury capsule for a 22 orbit journey around the world. During that journey, a glowing green object would approach his capsule.

During the final orbit of the flight Cooper told the tracking station at Muchea that he saw a glowing, greenish object ahead of him quickly approaching his capsule. The UFO was picked up by Muchea's tracking radar. When Cooper landed, reporters were told that they would not be allowed to question him about the UFO sighting. Why would that be? Could it be a cover up? 

Cooper was a firm believer in UFOs. Over ten years before his spaceflight in 1951 he sighted a UFO while piloting an F-86 Sabrejet over Western Germany. 

They were metallic, saucer-shaped discs at considerable altitude and could out-maneuver all American fighter planes. Major Cooper also testified before the United Nations: "I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets... Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs." "I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe."

Why would the world be so afraid to address these encounters? Cooper explains his reasoning; 

"For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means."

Do you think the public is avoiding panic by not acknowledging these UFO’s or creating more?

[via syti]