Sorry, internos, you got a couple of things wrong:
The photo was first made public on the November 22, 1991 Larry King Live, when UFO research director Don Ecker appeared in the show with author Keith
Thompson.
Zecharia Sitchin wrote "GENESIS REVISITED - Is Modern Science Catching Up with Ancient Knowledge" in 1990 with pictures transmitted from Phobos.
It includes Russia's take on what happened. In another place you say:
Conclusion:
the cigar shaped object allegedly spotted by Phobos II was a DELIBERATE HOAX based on image 2550033 from Phobos 2 VSK Image Data Set
So you think Russia hoaxed this, tried to bury it & :
This photograph was revealed in December 1991 by Marina Popovich, a famous Soviet test pilot sometimes called the "Russian Chuck Yeager" due to the
17 aviation world records she holds. She claimed that the photograph was given to her by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who was the first man to walk in
space and also a high official in the Soviet space program, and that she had "smuggled it out" of the former USSR.
Why go thru the "smuggling" if you're hoaxing the world?
I suggest you read "GENESIS REVISITED" Zecharia Sitchin







