Article by Petula Dvorak May 24, 2021 (washingtonpost.com)
• Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich of Annapolis, Maryland is a retired US Navy fighter pilot, a mother of three, and a popular guest at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill being questioned about the day in 2004 that she saw the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO from the seat of her Super Hornet fighter jet in the skies near San Diego. “My life right now is very surreal,” said Dietrich, 41. Her testimony has been in high demand since the President signed into law a bill requesting the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to provide a declassified report on everything the government knows about UFOs/UAPs. It is due to be released in June.
• On November 14, 2004, Dietrich was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group over the ocean off of San Diego when something moving fast and erratically came into view. Her boss, Commander Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared. A video recording from that day captured a white object shaped like a Tic Tac, along with the howls and exclamations of the pilots who were tracking it. The video was released by ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’ in 2017, and the video gained a lot of traction after the Pentagon verified its authenticity.
• As soon as the pilots returned to their aircraft carrier that day, they reported everything they saw and how it happened. “We all collectively lost our minds,” said Dietrich. “There was no denying it, everybody had heard us on the radio.” Even the technicians back at the ship saw the object on their radar. In the days after the UFO sighting, Fravor and Dietrich’s colleagues were merciless. They looped alien-invader movies “Men in Black” and “Independence Day” to show on the ship’s channels. They left tinfoil hats all over the place. The daily newsletters had little green men cartoons. They had to laugh it off, saying that if she and her fellow pilots had been flying solo, “… we wouldn’t have said anything”.
• Dietrich has kept a low profile over the past 17 years, flying more than 200 combat missions and 57 mounted combat patrols and ground assault convoy missions over two deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, Dietrich has been teaching at George Washington University and at the U.S. Naval Academy. “People have found me throughout the years,” she said. “I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.” She is a hero to the believers and she listens patiently to debunkers who found her private number and screamed at her over the phone.
• When asked why she has agreed to talk to reporters including her recent appearance in a UFO segment on CBS’ 60 Minutes, says, “I do feel a duty and obligation. I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer. Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’” Dietrich has decided to be open about it now because she knows other pilots have seen similar UFOs but have kept quiet – afraid of the conspiracy realm stigma.
• Dietrich is also keeping busy with her three kids, ages 2, 4 and 6. One of them was the hit of that day’s pre-K show-and-tell when he brought in the red-and-white helmet Dietrich was wearing that November day in 2004. Another was commanding her from the back seat during the telephone interview: “Window open!” followed by a chorus of squeals and shrieks from the back seat. “No, I [don’t] have time to think about it too much,” she sighed. “But I will pay someone to abduct me right now.”
She picked up the kids after finishing her last call at work — there was some whining
in the back seat — and raced to her home near Annapolis for family dinnertime. In between, she answered questions about the UFO.
“My life right now is very surreal,” said Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who is a 41-year-old mother of three, a retired fighter pilot and one of the few people who gets regularly hauled into the Pentagon or before Congress for further questioning about the day in 2004 she saw a UFO — the Pentagon prefers to call them unidentified aerial phenomena — from the seat of her Super Hornet in the skies near San Diego.
Dietrich is pragmatic, forthright and has a swaggery, pilot’s sense of humor about this thing she’s been living with for nearly 17 years.
Thanks to a bizarro little line in last year’s coronavirus relief bill, the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense are ordered to generate a report on everything the government knows about UAPs — including Dietrich’s sighting. It’s coming next month, and it’s going to be D.C.’s hottest summer read.
And now that UFOs join the pandemic and insurrection on the congressional agenda (when it comes to the weird year contest, 2021 is telling 2020 to “hold my beer”), Dietrich’s callers have moved from mostly the fringe, stalkery UFO fanatics who just want to be near her, to mainstream media freaks like me. She patiently plays along.
“I do feel a duty and obligation,” Dietrich said, when I asked her why she took my call and why she agreed to talk to “60 Minutes,” her national media debut. “I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,” she said. “Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’ ”
So, on to the events of Nov. 14, 2004.
She was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that day when something moving fast and erratically came into view.
Dietrich’s boss, Cmdr. Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared.
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