Last Updated: December 5, 2005 1:47

Bob Pratt, a great UFO researcher and a good friend to The WHY? Files, died on Saturday, November 19th. His death is a great loss for Ufology worldwide.
There will be a memorial service on Friday afternoon at his town, Lake Worth, Florida.
Bob was a distinguished American writer, UFO researcher, journalist and co-author of Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, with J. Allen Hynekl.
Bob's interest in UFO Phenomena began when working for the National Enquirer, and was sent to many countries to investigate UFO sightings and ET contacts, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico. Since 1975, he interviewed over two-thousand witnesses.
Bob wrote articles for several UFO and non-UFO magazines. He was, for several years, the editor of the renowned MUFON UFO Journal.
Bob provided unique material and support to The WHY? Files, at just the right time.

The following report was provided to The WHY? Files by Bob Pratt

Bob Pratt is a retired journalist and an acknowledged UFO researcher, a brief bio is best told in his own words.

~~~

             I was once actually paid to chase down UFO reports but found the subject so fascinating that for more than twenty years I have dug into my own pocket to do it.

Since May 1975 I have interviewed about two thousand people who have seen UFOs. I've also talked to countless others who have come to me with their stories because they want to tell me what happened to them without being ridiculed. Some even think I'm an expert on UFOs, but I'm not. I don't think anyone is.

I investigate UFO sightings but don’t consider myself a UFO investigator. That would require carrying out a far more formal and prolonged scientific study and analysis of cases than I usually have had time or inclination to do. Nor am I an investigative reporter, which implies lengthy undercover probing to dig out information that someone wants to keep hidden.

I am, simply, a reporter who became fascinated by this phenomenon and have been fortunate enough to be able to spend some time and money trying to find out what it’s all about. After more than twenty-seven years, I’m still at it… still trying to find out what it’s all about.

At best, I think, I can call myself a UFO researcher, a term that's vague enough to cover anything and anyone, from the most qualified to the least. I fit somewhere in between. 

http://www.bobpratt.org/

This is the report, received via Email on 14^th October, 2004 

Hello Geoff:  

This is what I learned in late July (and a bit more later on; see bottom). My source is well known in the UFO field but for some reason did not want to be identified with this information at this time. Maybe later he will come forward. 

I cannot verify the following information about the March 5 infrared videotaping of 16 objects by the crew of a Mexican Air Force plane, but it came from a source that I consider unimpeachable. 

He said Drug Enforcement Agency authorities in the United States knew about the event as it was happening. They thought that a large number of drug planes were coming out of South America and heading for the U.S., aimed at hitting the border at a number of locations. 

Radar and FLIR are used on a number of helicopters, airplanes, satellites, ships and border patrol vehicles. It is standard equipment. Everything that flies toward the U.S. is spotted. 

My source was told that that is what happened in March. So, the Mexican Air Force was alerted. The Mexican plane was not on a "routine" mission. As the targets progressed, the U.S. figured out that they were not drug smuggling planes, but could not call off the Mexican plane. 

This information came through police channels with a firsthand report by a DEA agent. When the news broke in May, the agent believed for a short time that it was now all right to talk about it. Now he knows that was not correct. 

The day after the story broke, the U.S. State Department sent an envoy to talk to Mexican officials about relations between the U.S. and Mexico. Within hours Mexico had a several so-called scientists proclaiming the objects that were photographed were everything from ball lightning, to meteor dust, to trucks on the highway, and everything but swamp gas. 

No one in the U.S. media went after the U.S. tracking information. They played it as if only the Mexican government was able to do the tracking.  

Then the UFO experts in this country started coming up with every explanation they could find, none of it based on data. 

My source said that the real lesson in this is not to listen to these experts. Rather look at the clues. The fact that these objects moved in a rational manner in the proximity of a plane for 24 minutes is really significant. Furthermore, he asked, doesn’t anyone realize how far a 200 mph plane travels in 24 minutes? Don't they realize ball lightning doesn't fly that fast and in a rational manner? Don't they realize that meteor dust is not hot against a cold background and would not give the FLIR return? 

On June 16 a deputy sheriff in Ohio watched a big triangle about 8 miles south of a nuclear power plant. He said it flew overhead and was clear as it could be to the naked eye. Suddenly, it disappeared. It didn't fly away, land, etc. It just blinked out in broad daylight. 

To my source, this sounds like the same mechanism that was at work in the Mexican case. The infrared spectrum is right next to the visible light spectrum. Infrared would probably have continued to track the Ohio object. My source speculated that U.S. satellites, in the infrared range, probably did continue to track it.

 And at the end of August, my source said:

 I just met for lunch with one of my unnamed contacts and he reassured me that the DEA had originally asked the Mexican government to send the surveillance plane up and that it was not a routine flight.  He says that the U.S. was fully aware of the whole event and our surveillance tracks everything over the Gulf and Mexico.

 Bob

14^th October, 2004