MULTIPLE ARGENTINA REPORTS SUGGEST STRANGE INVESTIGATIONS
Sue Gerberding, Director International Case Review Team, MUFON | 24 February 2019
Sue Gerberding, Director International Case Review Team, MUFON | 24 February 2019
This is a report about some unusual cases the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) received from witnesses in Argentina. During the summer and early fall months of 2017, there were more than 20 sighting reports filed with MUFON, mostly from the southern parts of Argentina. These reports came from the province of Santa Cruz, and more specifically, from Patagonia. The first few reports I reviewed did not seem to make sense. They were not UFO sightings, for the most part. The reports were primarily about sightings of white helicopters and white 4x4s, SUVs. Whether or not a UFO was reported, the narrative in these submissions talked constantly of something about which everyone seemed upset. If there was a UFO sighting, witnesses also observed a white helicopter or white vehicles. And the sign in the photo above was on the sides of all the vehicles. Reading the narratives of the Argentinian witnesses, it did not take long to realize that they were not afraid or upset by UFOs. They were upset about the men in white, the men and women in the white helicopters and vehicles.
But what was the problem? It was not immediately clear. The first narrative I read was from a woman named Maria (88798). Her case was listed as a CE3.3 entity case, so it caught my attention. Turns out she had submitted an old family story about her grandfather seeing an entity in 1904. I closed the case as “Info Only,” and wrote her a thank you email for submitting her report. Maria’s response is not what I expected:
I sent data at the time to [the national director] of MUFON, but he did not answer me. Over the months they contacted me in Argentina Patagonia researchers with whom we conduct field visits and tests we subjected us to a different kind. We reviewed with them old documents and family photographs, and we attended its recovery and digitization; we signed with them a management contract and confidentiality. They ran with all costs and they now have documents and original photographs… we were told they are going to compare them with other research in the area, and includes everything in your database. They are holders of Quantum Labs, South Integrated Technologies Labs, Global JWRed Systems, IRIS Global Initiative, LINE Earth Global Observation Network, Patagonia Exa3 Global and other organizations…its owner is Dr. Sc Javier Walter Sofia ….
Well, this raised a hundred questions. What is the name of the group this Dr. Sofia is in charge of? Who is paying costs to get all the UFO information from the witnesses in Patagonia, even if they have submitted reports to MUFON? I started to research some of the companies in the narrative above. I could not find out ownership information about several of them. One of the companies, Global JWRed Systems, I initially thought was Johnny Walker Red Scotch, whose parent company is Diageo. Turned out later that this was incorrect. I really wasn’t finding much about these company names. Another question that kept coming up for MUFON: where was its National Director for Argentina? CMS shows he stopped completing cases about the same time as these cases.
For the moment I put this case aside, knowing too many pieces to the puzzle were still missing. The search began for any other case that reported these white helicopters and vehicles. The oldest case I found mentioning such was from April of 2017, submitted by a woman named Stella, a CE5.3 case with a sighting of a circular object (83053). Turns out Stella hadn’t had her own UFO sighting either, but felt obligated to report a story from Rio Gallegos to us. The story is about a family that apparently observed a white orb. Here is her narrative translated from Spanish:
Family films an object on Route 3, strange things happen about Río Gallegos in 7 days. By information received from official officials of Santa Cruz … who say that the government does not have the resources or the capacity to investigate this kind of mysteries, it was learned this week that several complaints had been made. The most prominent one involves a family from the city of C.L. Piedra Buena that traveled by Route 3 to the North on March 25 when about 20 Km from Río Gallegos … in front with a bright object that at low altitude was crossing the route from South to North around 7 o'clock in the morning, his vehicle experienced failures and stopped him on the shoulder, the object flew over the car for 20 minutes during which his occupants were able to film him, time in which one of them suffered burns in the skin nd descending more the object occurred electrical faults and cell phones. When they arrived in their city, a video was posted on a social website but the next day both the video and the web profile were closed; it was learned that the family had been visited by investigators who took charge of the study of what happened, and those who let them know that the area was traveled by helicopter without finding traces of the object. Already in the first week of April, several inhabitants of the western area of Río Gallegos reported several events that occurred between the night of the 1st day and the early morning of day 2, related to the firing of vehicle alarms … of house alarms, strange behavior of domestic Pets … and a couple of cases in which a shadow was denounced in the sky and in another a light moving at low altitude at the time of these events. On the same day a couple who were in their vehicle on the outskirts of the city reported the possible fall of a small meteorite south of Río Gallegos. Several government employees denied knowing these facts, although others claim to have heard about these cases, confirming them from anonymity.
Again, I closed this case “Info Only,” and sent the customary thank you email to Stella. I received yet another puzzling response. Stella wrote back,
Thanks for your concern, that happened in 2017 … In the Winter of 2017, he contacted me, Dr. Javier Walter Sofia, he lives in Rio Gallegos, and has together with other people an organization which studies these things in Patagonia and other faraway places … In December 2017, my husband, my eldest son and I traveled to the South to do a reconstruction of the event. We did several studies, and tests, and signed some papers that now I have not at hand, some very serious people. They did not ask a for money, nor commitments of any kind, but asked us to reserve the case. He spoke well of MUFON, although when I asked him he replied, that it was possible that MUFON’s headquarters in Argentina would not investigate the case.
Yet another query – who is this Dr. Sofia who keeps showing up and handling MUFON’s cases? An Internet search for him in the Santa Cruz area wasn’t very fruitful. I could not find him associated with any group, nor with the supposed “school” he runs in downtown Rio Gallegos. What I did find is that he has a passion for posting comments on many political or controversial articles appearing in the local online newspapers. He also has a passion for putting people down, and holding himself in the highest esteem above the locals. It was beginning to sound as if he were not a lowly professor, but more likely tied to big money. I read on in CMS, finding more and more cases that were not really cases, but parts of the saga of Patagonia.
On September 5, 2017, a new submission in CMS began with the short description in the report stating, “Two white helicopters and a white drone in Patagonia.” This case (86524) was submitted by Ema. She and her husband are professionals, and have worked in the oil and mining business, and for governments as well. Once again, I was waiting for her to talk about the UFO sighting she had. It never came. Rather, she told yet another story of hush and control out of Patagonia. This is part of her narrative, translated:
We live in Puerto San Julián, my husband works in mining and oil field operations; On 9/1/17 we left the house with a friend of the family at 3 AM on the RN 3 to the north, we made 107 km to the junction of RP 75 that goes northwest and we took this route, we did it for about 110 km until we reached the junction with RP 12 after going through the true Patagonian desert in one of the most arid and desolate areas of the province of Santa Cruz … We continue to the north for RP 12 about 60 km to a curve called "Laguna Redonda" in which there is a road that goes west and passes through an abandoned ranch, climbs a steep hill with the truck and reaches a lagoon about 500 meters in diameter up on the plateau, there we stayed for lunch … Always we take all our cameras and devices because we know that in the depths of Patagonia it is always a pleasure to take pictures of the landscape, the animals and the hidden places to which almost nobody comes because of their isolation … As at 10:38 AM we heard the north still on the plateau, the noise of a distant helicopter, after a few minutes stronger and then a little more and we saw in the height maybe 1 km away and at 45º in the sky a totally white helicopter that moved from east to west as if in a big circle, behind him another one that went a little lower and followed it at a good distance. The two helicopters were white, very stylized and something that caught our attention was that they did not have skates or wheels but all we could see was the fuselage below, we were looking and they looked a lot like the Bell 525 helicopters but they had domes, antennas and other things that do not coincide … None of the 2 helicopters had signs or marks, nor numbers, nothing, they were totally white even the windows looked that color… with the binoculars saw another aircraft a little higher and farther behind the helicopters, maybe as 60º in the sky and about 2 or 3 Km; this was a plane with very thin and very long wings, we were looking for what could be and we are sure that it was equal to the Global Hawk, it was also totally white, unmarked and had the fins on the back in V exactly, just like the bulging trunk for above and the motor as rectangular above and behind… We continued on RP 12 to the north and it took us 2 hours to do the 15 km until we reached the Sierra Blancas because we stopped a lot of times to see if we could see the aircraft again; in fact, we saw them again 2 times more … On 02/9/17 at night when we got home, we called a specialist in these strange topics from the city of Río Gallegos who recommended not downloading the images to the computer and keeping the memory cards separately from the equipment He told us that he would send a collaborator to look for the cards and that he would arrive at dawn ... This happened around 01:00 AM on 04/9/17 when several people arrived and we delivered the cards to analyze the images after signing an intellectual property document of the content. They asked us not to use the equipment and put it inside some bags like red cellophane with a valve that sealed them to the vacuum after removing the batteries and left them at home in a container like a photographer's bag. We asked him if we could publish what we saw here and they told us it was our choice and we are doing that because we knew that something happened with an oil worker who saw lights at night about 10 days ago in an oil well, and if this is related?
Ema’s narrative above does not report a UFO. She reports that she took photos of two unmarked white helicopters and a white drone. Perhaps the specialist she consults at home is Dr. Sofia? Who then confiscates the memory cards from the cameras? And she is telling MUFON this account because she is worried that an oil worker in the area had something unfortunate happen? I sent an email to Ema, but did not receive a response.
The pressing question soon became: Why are all these fearful stories, many of which are not apparently related to UFOs, being reported to MUFON? And the National Director, is he still in the picture? These people in Patagonia all seem very afraid, but of whom, or what?
Just nine days later after Ema’s report, a witness named Daniel submitted a sighting report (86677).
Having heard about recent local UFO stories, Daniel drove south through Santa Cruz (Puerto San Julian) in hopes of seeing something. Daniel observed two white helicopters coming from the sea on September 17, 2017. He described them as totally white helicopters, without marks or numbers, with antennas and turrets that went down. The windows were also white. As the two helicopters came closer to the witness, he and another person tried to take video, but the cameras failed and “went out.” When he turned on the camera again, it gave an error message. Daniel stated that as soon as the helicopters left the area, both cameras went back to normal operation. He submitted this photo as an example of the helicopters they observed, except all white as described above.
Daniel’s sighting submission was yet another report from Argentina without a UFO sighting but describing white helicopters or vehicles. What is on the minds of these people?
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Some really, really bizarre stuff here! It sounds just like an X-Files episode. Cue X-Files theme, please... - ilan
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