Obs,
I put this info forward when I first joined the forum. With Close Encounters there definitely are an amazing amount of similarities between the RFI and many of the scenes in the film. Also in Hangar 18, which was playing in Ipswich in December, a craft is captured and held in a top secret facility. The craft, which is triangular in shape, contained walls of symbols not unlike the ones drawn by Jim Penniston.
Here is the films IMDB page if you want to look it up.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080836/Does this mean that they've all been having us on for the last 30 years? I don't know, but I do think that these films and the huge coverage that UFOs had in the media at the time, probably influenced either the way that strange events were perceived or the way in which they were reported/investigated. It could also point to a hoax, if the seeds for this were planted pre christmas with these films showing, then there were plenty of ideas to follow. The thing is with a hoax, as we gone over before, there is still no real evidence to back it up.
If you want to see the similarities between the RFI and CE3 in bite size chunk, then you really should watch the original Watch The Skies featurette from 1977, which played in cinemas then. Pay close attention from 2:28 onwards!