Astronaut Gordon Cooper & UFOs

With the NASA Files episode of UFO Hunters about to come on, I came upon more intriguing information from former NASA astronuat Gordon Cooper, an outspoken UFO advocate.

His blurb on the back of an alin toy licensed from the Speilberg movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was surprising to find out about:

"The commercialization of astronauts has certainly been
extensive, but one bizarre attempt reached astronomical heights.
During the publicity blitz for Columbia Pictures' "Close Encounters
of the Third Kind", toy UFO aliens appeared in stores around the
world. A plastic model called "Authentic Bendable Extra Terrestrial
Figure" even today sits on my desk, his (its?) right hand altered
with glue to present the middle finger defiantly in my direction. On
the back of the cardboard wrapper originally containing the
"authentic" (whatever that meant!) alien was a sensational quotation
from two-time space veteran Gordon Cooper.

The passage read: "Intelligent beings from other planets
regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into contact with us.
NASA and the American government know this and possess a great deal
of evidence. Nevertheless, they remain silent in order not to alarm
people. I am dedicated to forcing the authorities to end their
silence." -James Oberg

Some of Cooper's witness accounts:

Persistent accounts in some leading UFO books describe a UFO
encounter with Cooper's Mercury-9 space capsule in May 1963. In
addition, Cooper himself has talked about the disappearance of
photographic evidence for a UFO landing at an Air Force Base in
California where he had served prior to being picked for spaceflight.
And most spectacular of all is his account of "fleets of UFOs"
soaring over his Air Force base in Germany, where he began his pilot
career in the early 1950s.

Hunting for Gordon Cooper's UFOs / Oberg

The most famous UFO associated with Cooper's name reportedly
occurred on the Mercury-9 space flight in 1963.

By 1967, Frank Edwards gave these details of the event (in
Flying Saucers -- Here and Now!, Lyle Stuart, New York). To the
question, "Who was the first astronaut to see a UFO in orbit?",
Edwards responded: "On the record it was Major Gordon Cooper, over
Muchea Tracking Station near Perth Australia, on his final orbit of
Earth

on a night in May of 1963. The object which approached him was also
seen by the two hundred persons at the tracking station. It was
reported twice on the NBC radio network before Cooper had been picked
up by the rescue craft. He was not permitted to comment on it."

Other details appeared in Is Something Up There (Dale White,
Scholastic Book Services, Doubleday, 1968): "The astronaut radioed
the tracking station that he had sighted a greenish object moving
east to west. This is contrary to the orbits taken by man-made
satellites. Nearly one hundred persons, some of them technicians, saw
the UFO appear on the Australian radar."

The story spread as years passed. In 1973, ufologist George D.
Fawcett was writing: "The UFO... was seen, recorded and tracked by
the Muchea, Australia, tracking station, where hundreds of
technicians and newsmen saw and heard the reports. This was good
enough for the experts Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. Jacques Vallee, who
(as mentioned earlier) used Fawcett's data (unverified) in their book
Edge of Reality as follows: "Gordon Cooper reported a greenish UFO
with a red tail during his fifteenth orbit. He also reported other
mysterious sightings over South America and Australia. The object he
sighted over Perth, Australia, was caught on screens by ground
tracking stations."