Two former Air Force officers who were part of the infamous Project Blue Book -- the military's official UFO investigation in the 1950s and '60s -- and a former investigator with Britain's Ministry of Defense were among the panel of speakers for a program entitled "Military UFOs: Secrets Revealed."

"I've heard many people say that it's time for the government to appoint an agency to investigate," Halt said. "Folks, there is an agency, a very close-held, compartmentalized agency that's been investigating this for years, and there's a very active role played by many of our intelligence agencies that probably don't even know the details of what happens once they collect the data and forward it. It's kind of scary, isn't it?

"In the last couple of years, the British have released a ton of information, but has anybody ever seen what their conclusions were or heard anything about Bentwaters officially? When the documents were released, the timeframe when I was involved in the incident is missing -- it's gone missing. Nothing else is missing," he said.

Making a rare public appearance was retired Air Force Col. Bill Coleman, the former chief spokesman for Project Blue Book between 1961 and 1963.

"We were moving at maximum continuous power for the B-25, about 300 miles an hour, and we got right down to the treetops and I closed in on it very rapidly. I said I was going to overtake it -- 'Hang on and put your seat belts on' -- and I made a hard 90-degree bank to try and pull up alongside of [the UFO] and it wasn't there. "I zoomed up about 1,500 feet, and then I could see the object right on the deck over a freshly plowed field moving at a pretty good speed, and it [was trailing] two vortexes." When Coleman dove behind the trees to try and "head him off at the pass," the UFO was gone. He said it was a typically reported flying saucer.

During the time that Coleman was the Project Blue Book spokesman, the director of the Air Force study was Col. Bob Friend. He disagreed with the Air Force's negative conclusions about UFOs in 1969.

"My primary explanation for these things is that, yes, they're real, and I think it would be much better if the government or some other agency was to take on these things and to pursue the scientific aspects of it," Friend said.

"UFO sightings are real, and you will not be ridiculed by any honest organization that investigates it. Just come forward, quote your case and allow people to investigate what they can to make some determination about what it is that you've seen. In the future, just remember that we're on your side."

Another UFO lecture panelist, retired Army Col. John Alexander, was a former military insider who convened a special group in the 1980s called the Advanced Theoretical Physics Group, whose members were culled from the military services and the aerospace and intelligence communities. They concluded that while there had been numerous cases of credible UFO encounters, the group couldn't find any evidence of any actual government cover-up. Alexander cited a variety of intriguing UFO cases involving pilots and told the audience that UFOs are "real and is a global phenomenon -- not something that just happens in the U.S.