The following article appeared in the Wednesday,
 October 2, 1991 edition of the LEWISTON MORNING
 TRIBUNE, which serves the Lewiston Idaho, Clarkston
 Washington area. Also Washington State University and
 the University of Idaho both 40 miles to the north.
 Clarkston and Lewiston are in the Snake River Canyon
 area of southeastern Washington and Northern Idaho,
 20 miles north of Oregon. Elevation is aproximately
 600 feet in their dessert canyon, which has a mild
 snow-free climate. The Snake river and Clearwater
 river converge there, the gateway to Hell's Canyon.
 Industries there include the wood and paper products
 of International Potlatch Corporation, and bullets,
 ammunition and weaponery of Blount Corporation, a
 division of Omark, which has recently opened a super
 secret, government linked, well guarded, installation
 near the regional airport in south Lewiston...



Lewiston Morning Tribune - Lewiston Idaho - October 2, 1991


        IT'S NOT A BIRD; IT'S NOT A PLANE; BY GOLLY WHAT IS IT?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By general assignment reporter SANDRA L. LEE


The 9-year-old saw it first in the northwest sky above Lewiston. Then
his 8-year-old friend, and the babysitter, the babysitter's parents, and
a friend and her two children, and the people who brought the telescope.

Saturday night it was a bright, multi-colored light that moved up and
down and had a "black pointy thing on it."

And there was a ball of clear light, like a silent wave much closer than
the blinking light, that lit the sky for several seconds.

Sunday night, there were two of the pulsing lights, one a little closer
than the other, but still far away, although they seemed to respond to
light directed at them from a flashlight and then from a camera's flash,
said Sarah G. Krueger, a Lewiston High School senior.

And Monday night they were back again, and much more active, said
Krueger, who set up a watching post on the hill north of Regency Plaza
Retirement Center.

Were they UFOs? "I dont't have a clue," Krueger said. They weren't
airplanes, and she doesn't think they were stars. But flying saucers? "I
never even believed in them before, really," she said.

She called Fairchild Air Force Base on the advice of a Lewiston Tribune
editor, and someone there told her there was nothing in the air to
account for the sitings, she said.

Then she was given the number of the National UFO Reporting Center in
Seattle, a private, non-profit organization that documents reports from
all of North America.

The volunteer taking calls that night told her it might be a
double-star, one star so close to another as to appear as one. But NOT
if it was actually changing position.

Margaret Gahner saw it too. It was different than what she and two
family members saw 13 years ago in southern Idaho, she said.

That time, they were fishing from a boat at night when three white
lights zig-zagged overhead. They were higher than a jet, but not far
away like the stars, she said.

It went on for about an hour, Gahner said. "We wanted to get home
because we were SCARED."

Robert J.. Gribble, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, was
non-committal about his opinion of the moving sighting over Lewiston.

Stationary objects usually are easy to identify, Gribble said. Most of
them are scintillating stars whose multiple colors are caused by
particles in our atmosphere. Smog. Air pollution.

And bright stars in the northeast and northwest skies draw frequent
reports, he added.

"The problem is something at such a distance, of that description, it's
almost impossible to make a positive identification."

Every report is kept on file for at least 30 days so information can be
pooled. If there are independent reports from the same location, an
attempt may be made to put together an onsite investigation, Gribble
said.

Investigations are rare nowadays, however. Sightings, once frequent,
started tapering off about 10 years ago, he said.

The center was created in 1974 when the U.S. Air Force quit accepting
data on UFO phenomena. People had no place to go to make reports where
they could expect follow-up, Gribble said.

All the work at the center is done by volunteers.

So was there -- is there -- a UFO over the Lewiston - Clarkston Valley?

Certainly, in the sense that no one has yet identified that multicolored
blinking object as being anything specific. Or identified the source of
the light.

But could they have been that thing of dreams, a spaceship possibly
carrying alien beings?

Sarah Krueger plans to keep watch evenings from about 8:30 to 9:30. Just
in case. From her vantage point on the edge of Lewiston Orchards, one
was sighted a little over Potlatch Corp. and the other more to the west,
over downtown Lewiston or Clarkston.

Take a look. What do you think?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

(see also LC_UFO2.TXT for newspaper account of the next night)