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Italian UFO Reporter
International Newsletter of the
Italian Center for UFO Studies
Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU)
Vol. 2 No. 1
31 January 1996
10TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
This issue of ITUFOR marks the first decade of activity of Centro
Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU), which was founded on December 15, 1985,
by a handful of former members of Centro Ufologico Nazionale (CUN), and it
was registered at the Public Record Office on January 2, 1986.
FIRST ITALIAN SIGHTINGS OF 1996
The very first UFO sighting of the current year in Italy took place on
January 2nd, at 18:30: a couple on the road between Tindari and Castroreale
(province of Messina) watched a hovering white light in front of the clouds.
It seemed to blink off every half a minute, then blink on again after 10
seconds, for about 15 minutes.
On the evening of January 4, several people in Rimini watched a white
bright spot high in the sky and called journals and the police. But it was
only the planet Venus, very prominent. Venus was probably cause also of the
repeated sightings of a bright light regularly appearing over Taranto every
evening at 17:30 and visible each time for 45 minutes, in early January.
On the night of January 5, at 22:20, four motorists at Romito Magra
(La Spezia) stopped and looked at an oval-shaped body with ten bright spots
in the middle. It looked like vibrating and rotating, until it suddenly
disappeared.
On the evening of January 7, two round, white lights in the sky were
seen at Erba and Como, but disappeared after a few seconds. The local
newspaper "La Provincia" published the phone numbers of CISU members Corrado
Guarisco and Maurizio Verga calling for witnesses, which resulted in more
reports for the Como province: on January 10, two taxi drivers in Camerlata
noticed an antenna-shaped object among the clouds for a few seconds; on
January 11, a woman in Asso saw three parallel rows of white rectangular
lights hovering high and slowly fading away after 3-4 minutes; on that same
evening, a family in Canzo saw a large disc-shaped white light seemingly
descending behind the woods.
At 21:30 on January 8, a few people saw a bright globe suddenly
appearing 200 meters above the ground at Torrile (Parma). After hovering a
few minutes, it disappeared.
On January 14, at 20:10, a young woman in Cimpello (Pordenone) saw twice
in a minute the high and fast passage of a white triangle in the sky.
INTERROGATION AT THE SENATE?
Pordenone ufologist Antonio Chiumiento claimed in a recent interview
(in "Il Gazzettino", Jan. 17) that he got a negative reply from the Defense
Staff about releasing more info on the famed airplane-radar-photo case
happened over Treviso in 1979, a new picture of which was unexpectedly found
and released by the pilot witness and published in the Italian press in
August, 1995. According to Chiumiento, a senator of Forza Italia Party would
be interested in asking a formal interrogation to the Minister of Defense
about that case.
AN "AREA 51" IN ITALY?
An article and a photo by Robert Irving published in the
December-January issue of UK journal of strange phenomena, "Fortean Times",
has caused quite a sensation and controversy in Italy, too, after the
Internet UFO community had been talking about it for about a month.
While Irving's article is factual about the mystery sky booms over
Pordenone in May, 1995, the accompanying photo is unbelievable: it shows an
hangar at Aviano NATO AFB, and an apparently saucer-shaped object (identical
to Bob Lazar's S-4 "sporty model", indeed) protruding out of it.
The local daily Il Gazzettino gave it front-page treatment on January
27, and national newspaper Il Giornale (Jan. 28) even suggested it might
have been an Aurora.
A secret US spy-plane? A fruit of reverse-technology on alien
spacecrafts? Or more probably an ordinary F-15 fighter shown under an
unusual angle, as suggested by CISU aeronautical consultants?
The correct answer is: neither. On January 29, a Robert Irving's fax
to Edoardo Russo revealed that the image had been created with a PC using
Adobe Photoshop photo-retouching software, by superimposing the (toy-)saucer
image to the hangar. According to Irving and FT editor Bob Rickard, it was
never meant as a hoax, since it was all plainly absurd and the caption read
that "the picture has been enhanced by computer" (what Irving agrees to be
"something of an understatement"). A note about the truth is to be published
in the February-March issue of "Fortean Times".
THE C.I.S.U. ON THE INTERNET
Since December 1, 1995 the Italian Center for UFO Studies has been
freely given 5 Megabytes of space on the World Wide Web server of the City
of Turin Public Telematic Service.
You may visit CISU homepage at URL: http://www.arpnet.it/~ufo
More than 50 Web-pages are already available, mostly designed by
Maurizio Verga, and more are regularly being added or updated. The larger
part of it is - of course - in Italian, but a section in English also exists
and will gradually grow.
ITALIAN C.U.N. AND THE AUTOPSY FILM
The January-February issue of "Notiziario UFO" arrived in the newsstands
all over Italy with a special bargain: the Italian edition of the
controversial Ray Santilli's so-called Roswell alien alleged autopsy film,
edited by Santilli's Italian representative Maurizio Baiata on behalf of
CUN (Centro Ufologico Nazionale).
As you may know, since May 1995 the CUN has been the only UFO
organization in the world to openly promote the film authenticity.
In the fourth issue of this new edition of CUN journal, "Notiziario UFO",
which is sold in the newsstands in 30,000 copies, Santilli's affair once
again features prominently as the cover story, with no less than five
articles and 18 pages, notably M. Baiata claiming there were two distinct
crashes in New Mexico in 1947 (so to fit the Roswell case with the unnamed
cameraman' story) and presenting the very first stills from the so-called
"first autopsy film" (still unpublished).
CRISIS AT THE SAN MARINO UFO SYMPOSIUM
The increasing polemics about the alien autopsy film seem to have caused
the divorce between the Italian UFO organization CUN and San Marino local
group CROVNI, joint organizers of the International Symposium on UFOs and
Related Phenomena for the last three years. According to San Marino
newspapers ("San Marino Italia", Jan. 5; "Corriere di informazione
sammarinese", Jan. 7), the CROVNI (Centro Ricerche Oggetti Volanti Non
Identificati) has come to a skeptical opinion about Santilli's footage, as
opposed to the more "naive" acceptance of it by the CUN. As a consequence,
the CROVNI was fired out and will no longer help hosting next edition of the
congress, planned for May, 1996.
ABOUT C.I.S.U.
Since 1986, the Italian Center for UFO Studies (Centro Italiano Studi
Ufologici, CISU) has been the largest and most active UFO organization in
Italy. Since 1988 it's been the only Italian member of the International
Committee on UFO Research (ICUR).
The CISU is a no-profit association whose aims are:
- to promote the scientific study of UFO phenomena in Italy;
- to help circulate information about UFO phenomena and studies;
- to coordinate national activities of data collecting and studying.
The CISU is composed of two categories of members: as of December 31,
1995, there were 46 active members and 336 associates, plus 6 honorary
members.
The serving Council of Directors is formed by: Roberto Farabone,
President; Gian Paolo Grassino, Secretary; Renzo Cabassi, Angelo Ferlicca,
Paolo Fiorino, Giuseppe Stilo and Paolo Toselli. They were all confirmed by
latest Annual General Meeting (Rome, November 19, 1995) as a signal of
solidarity since they all (plus Edoardo Russo and Maurizio Verga) were
promised a legal action by Ray Santilli's lawyers for breaking his alleged
copyright on the "alien autopsy footage" by freely distributing stills from
the film to the Italian press and making "libellous claims and comments"
in the CISU press conference on June 24, 1995.
The CISU keeps a busy publication schedule: its journal "UFO -
Rivista di informazione ufologica" is a 40-pages quality magazine published
twice per year, and in the last 10 years has been the only UFO publication
available in a national network of bookstores and newsstands in Italy;
members also receive "Notizie UFO", a quarterly 12-pages newsletter detailing
activities, information, news and communications; they can also subscribe to
"Notiziario Archivio Stampa", a monthly 20-pages selection of newspaper
clippings (since 1990 CISU has been subscribing to a newsclipping service).
Active members are also sent a monthly 100-plus-pages "CISU Notizie"
consisting of detailed activity reports from each of the 24 regional
branches, and an aperiodical 20-pages "UFO Forum" devoted to discussions
and debates. "Servizio Documentazione Estera", a 30-pages monthly selection
of articles from foreign UFO journals is also distributed.
You can reach us:
- by mail: CISU, P. O. Box 82, I-10100 Torino, Italia
- by visit: CISU, Corso Vittorio Emanuele 108, I-10121 Torino, Italia
- by phone: +39 (11) 329.02.79 (24 hours UFO Hotline)
- by fax: +39 (11) 54.50.33
- by Internet e-mail: edoardo.russo@torino.alpcom.it
- by Fido Netmail: Edoardo Russo at 2:334/501 (Biolus BBS)
- at the World Wide Web URL: http://www.arpnet.it/~ufo
ABOUT ITUFOR
Twenty issues of the "Italian UFO Reporter" (ITUFOR) have been
irregularly published by CISU from January 1986 to December 1995, an
average of two per year.
ITUFOR is issued in English to inform foreign colleagues about
what happens on the italian UFO scene, since only a few people can
understand or read Italian, out there. It has been and is available
mainly by exchange with other UFO publications, as a companion to our
main "UFO" journal, conforming to ICUR recommendation. The larger part
of the past issues has been made of English abstracts of articles in "UFO"
and the annual Italian UFO Update feature.
1996 is planned to give it a new style: a monthly schedule, more news
(largely taken from our weekly UFOTEL news service on the phone) and
telematic network diffusion. Beside the usual mail sending to
sister-organizations worldwide, beginning this first issue of Vol. 2,
ITUFOR will also be posted in Usenet newsgroups alt.paranet.ufo and
alt.alien.visitors, plus some Internet UFO mailing lists, FidoNet echomail
area Fido.Ufo and SearchNet's I_Ufo. It will also be available as a mailing
list of its own (just send a message to our e-mailbox with
"SUBSCRIBE ITUFOR " in the body), and you will also find it
on the WWW via our homepage (where you will soon find the complete back
issues, too).
ITUFOR (as a whole or in part) may be freely copied, photocopied,
reproduced, stored, distributed and retrieved, at the only condition that
ITUFOR and the Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici are reported as the source.
ITALY AND YOU
If you can understand or read Italian, you may be interested in the
latest week news, by either calling UFOTEL at +39 (11) 54.52.94 (long
distance call without extra charges) or subscribing to UFOTEL Internet
mailing list (just send a message to the above e-mailbox with
"SUBSCRIBE UFOTEL " in the body).
If you plan to come anywhere in Italy, let us know your whereabouts
in advance: there are CISU members in every city.
We are also eager to receive copy of any news about UFO sightings
or events in Italy, published or reported abroad, for our files.
All ITUFOR abstracts, translations, mistakes, faults and typos are to be
credited to Edoardo Russo, who is charged of CISU Foreign Relations.
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