The 13 March 1997 Phoenix incident doesn’t get a mention in Mirage Men, but this article by a journalist who spent months investigating the case for Readers’ Digest raises some valid questions.
The lights certainly belonged to something/s, though I lean towards a misguided, Independence Day-inspired hoax rather than a psyops job. Either option remains a possibility however, while the media storm and trail of blown minds that followed would be an A+ result for whoever was responsible.
People either thought they saw a gigantic vehicle visiting from another world, or else a formation of planes that was behaving oddly. Were there observers in the ‘extraterrestrial craft’ category of witnesses who trained binoculars on the lights that night? If so, I never found them. Everyone I know of who studied the lights through binoculars came away insisting that the lights were five separate objects that appeared to be planes.
Read the full article Part one / Part Two