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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.
If you have Internet access, 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. Another large site managed by CISU, including a complete English version, is also available at another site.
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" acceptancome 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 The CISU keeps a busy 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 , 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
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
If you plan to come anywhere in Italy, let us know your whereabouts in advance: there are CISU members in every
city.
ITALIAN UFO REPORTER Back Issues (directly viewable by your browser):
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The correct answer is: neither. On January 29, a Robert