Article Launched: 01/05/2007 09:58:05 AM EST-By Michael C. Juliano It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a UFO?-Smoking Gun Research Agency (SGRA), a Westport-based paranormal research and investigation organization, is looking into a reported November sighting of a UFO over Chicago's O'Hare Airport after seeing it in the news recently.

"I heard about it on Monday on MSNBC," Jon Nowinski, SGRA's director, said Wednesday.

Nowinski, who founded SGRA in 1997, said he and his associates have been working with Mutual UFO Network Inc. (MUFON) of Bellvue, Colo., in an effort to obtain transmissions records from the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We should be able to get the information through FOI (Freedom of Information)," he said. "We're also going to try to contact the air-traffic control at O'Hare directly. There's going to be a number of channels we're going to try."

Nowinski said MUFON will conduct the ground investigation and interview witnesses, while the SGRA will try to contact government agencies, which may have investigated the O'Hare incident.

"Updates will be provided on both of the organization's Web sites as the investigation continues," he said. James Carrion, a MUFON spokesman, said he was appalled how the FAA and United Airlines has dismissed this reported sighting.

"They subjected it to dismissal and ridicule," he said. "It's appalling in this post-9-11 era how someone can say 'bomb' in an airport line and get arrested, yet personnel at United Airlines see something like this and they (FAA and United Airlines) dismiss it."

According to a Jan. 1 story in the Chicago Tribune, United Airlines employees, including pilots, reported seeing a spherical object with no lights hover over the United terminal at about 4:30 p.m. and then rise up into the clouds. The FAA has dismissed the sighting as "weather phenomena," the Tribune reported. Elizabeth Cory, an FAA spokeswoman, said the FAA has no records of any UFO sightings.

"Our people never saw anything or reported anything," she said. "They (SGRA) can always file an FOI report."

Nowinksi, a 26-year-old political science major, said he became interested in the paranormal as a seven-year-old child living in Greenwich after seeing a triangular-shaped craft with bright lights during the Hudson Valley sightings of the 1980s.

"I was walking with my sister when I looked up and saw an object that didn't look like an airplane," he said. "My family said it must have been an airplane, but a couple days later there was a story in the paper about a triangular object being seen."

SGRA plans to hold a 10-year anniversary party on Saturday, Jan. 13.

Call Nowinski at 247-0310 or consult SGRA's Web site at www.sgra-media.org for information.

Source & References:

http://www.westport-news.com/ci_4956276