CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Photograph-(ANNIE O'NEILL/McClatchy-Tribune)

Bill Bulebush, left, and UFO expert Stan Gordon stand near where Bulebush and others say a UFO landed in 1965 in Kecksburg, Pa. A UFO mockup is behind them.

December 18, 2007-KECKSBURG, Pa. -- The U.S. government says nothing of note happened in this small town in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, 1965. A meteor may have passed by, but no alien ship or Russian space probe fell to Earth.

Still, Bill Bulebush, 82, says he knows what he saw, heard and smelled, despite the doubts of the government and others in Kecksburg.

"I looked up and saw it flying overhead and it was sizzling," said Bulebush, a retired truck driver.

"I got to it 15 to 20 minutes after it landed. I saw it 10 to 15 feet away from behind a big tree -- because I was worried it might blow up -- and it smelled like sulfur or rotten eggs and was shaped like a huge acorn, about the size of a VW."

Other people said that dozens of Army soldiers and three members of the Air Force showed up, and later that night a flatbed military truck took the object away.

Despite such accounts, the government has been "trying to make it out like we're a bunch of liars," Bulebush said.

But now he and his fellow believers may have their best chance to prove their case. A recent settlement in a 4-year-long Freedom of Information Act court battle requires NASA to comb for documents about the incident and report back periodically to the judge overseeing the case.

The lawsuit was filed in December 2003 in the District of Columbia by Leslie Kean, a freelance journalist, with financial support from the SciFi Channel.

SciFi had asked Kean in 2002 to find a solid UFO report, one with credible witnesses and possible physical evidence, to serve as a test case.

Kean pressed the case after she filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2003 and NASA said it couldn't find any documents related to Kecksburg.

But Kean knew the space agency had documents. Stan Gordon, a UFO and Bigfoot researcher with whom Kean was working, had information he got in response to a request he sent NASA in the 1990s.

The case boiled over on March 20 for federal Judge Emmet Sullivan, who had tried to move NASA along for more than 3 years.

According to a transcript of the hearing that day, Sullivan angrily referred to NASA's search efforts as a "ball of yarn" that never fully answers the request, adding: "I can sense the plaintiff's frustration because I'm frustrated."

A settlement, reached Oct. 17, specifies how NASA will make a new search for records. Both sides will be required to report back to Sullivan periodically, starting this week.