Inside the Black Vault
Inside / Black Vault
In the summer of 1996, John Greenewald, fifteen years old and fascinated by UFOs, was living at his parents’ house, in the San Fernando Valley. Like his dad, an ex-Marine who worked as a welder on the space shuttle and Mars landers, Greenewald liked looking up at the stars. One day he decided to feed his curiosity by surfing the Web, which at the time meant dialing into America Online and waiting patiently. When he had a connection, he went to the Computer UFO Network, or cufon, a site that had been around since, believe it or not, 1983, disseminating “reliable, verifiable information” on UFO phenomena. cufon had just posted what it claimed to be a document from the United States government describing the sighting of a mother ship—that is, a large aircraft that could release smaller “parasite” aircraft—flying over Iran.
