Dr David Clarke

New Website

2011-03-13T04:01:00.000-07:00

Future postings will be found on my new website (from March 2011):

http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk

This blogger site will remain active for the time being as an archive for old posts only.

Largest ever release of UFO files

2011-02-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

The UK National Archives have released the single largest collection of UFO files so far as the three year disclosure programme nears its end.

Included in the 8,500 documents opened to the public today are policy and intelligence documents covering a 60 year span from the 1950s almost to the present day. The 35 files include papers produced by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and United Nations.

And for the first time complete files covering my own protracted correspondence with the MoD are included in this release – with more to follow later this year. They chart in great detail my campaign, using Code of Practice legislation (a precursor to the Freedom of Information Act), to persuade the MoD to end the unnecessary secrecy that surrounded official interest in ‘UFOs’.

Two files released today document how I became one of MoD’s most “persistent correspondents” from 1999 (see DEFE 24/2030/1 and DEFE 24/2032/1).

They also underline how it was largely through my efforts, and those of my colleagues, that some of the key UFO documents held by the UK Government, including the file on the Rendlesham Forest incident and the report by the Flying Saucer Working Party, were released to the public.

In my current role as official consultant to The National Archives UFO project, I have again produced a detailed highlights guide to the 7^th tranche of files, which cover the years 1997-2006. The transfer programme, now in its fourth year, is expected to reach completion during 2012.

The new files can be downloaded free of charge from the TNA website here.

The TNA UFO page also includes a podcast and background briefing to the entire collection of UFO files held at the UK archives in Kew, Surrey (for more details read my book The UFO Files published by The National Archives in 2009).

One of the highlights from the UFO reports released today are two striking colour photographs of a strange “atmospheric occurrence” (pictured above right) taken by a member of the RAF in 2004. The photographer was on holiday in Sri Lanka when he heard a clap of thunder. Then he saw a doughnut-shaped cloud in the sky that “did not rise but headed from the high atmosphere towards the earth” (see DEFE 24/2036/1).

To supplement the official highlights guide available at the TNA UFO page I have added my own detailed interpretation of the files on my new website, http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/

New visitors should also check out my Secret Files pages for detailed discussions of key themes including Defence Intelligence UFO research and the Rendlesham incident.

2010 ROUND-UP

2010-12-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

THE CRYING GAME

The best urban legends never fizzle out and the Curse of the Crying Boy keeps returning to my inbox year in year out.

Stories about a cheap print of a crying toddler that eerily survived fires unscathed first spread through the UK in 1985. In my definitive article, originally published by Fortean Times, I traced the genesis of the legend to a news story published by The Sun (right) in September that year. This told how firemen in Rotherham, Yorkshire, could not explain how the print had escaped from a fire that gutted a terraced house.

During the ‘80s it emerged that more than 50,000 versions of the print were sold in the UK alone and news of the curse led hundreds of people to report house fires where a crying boy painting survived. Since then stories about the “cursed” painting by Spanish artist Bruno Amadio – actually one of a series by different artists – has become an internet phenomenon. Elaborate legends have appeared online, seeking to explain who the boy was and why the paintings are cursed.

The story was resurrected in October 2010 by comedian Steve Punt for an episode of his BBC Radio 4 series Punt PI, for which I’ve become a regular source of weird and amusing legendary. In his mission to pour cold water on the flames, producer Laurence Grissell managed to bag an interview with legendary former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie. It was McKenzie who set the crying boy hare running. He was also the editor who presided over tabloid inventions such as the ludicrous 1986 page one splash, “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”.

In suitably playful mood, McKenzie admitted that the Crying Boy legend was born on a slow news day when a filler sent by a regional news agency caught his eye. The fact that firemen – rather than credulous members of the public – appeared to confirm this unlikely tale was enough for him. It was, he said, “as if a light went on”.

Not only did he and the tabloid create the Crying Boy phenomenon, but McKenzie personally fanned the flames, encouraging worried readers to send their prints to The Sun HQ for destruction on a Hallowe’en bonfire. When quizzed by Punt PI, McKenzie admitted he was a superstitious man who personally refused to allow a copy of the print to be installed on his office wall. But when asked whether there was any truth to the story, he said:

“Who knows…[but] there comes a point when you research a story too deeply – as you keep on asking more and more questions about it - the story actually disappears and before you know where you are we are all sitting there, its ten to five, we haven’t got a front page lead and the story’s just collapsed. So some stories are just too good to check.”

Too good to check or too good to kill?

Remember that the next time you read a headline proclaiming Atlantis has been discovered or the alien invasion fleet has been spotted hovering above your neighbourhood!

WIKI-TEASE

Back in July in a blog post titled “Where are the UFO Whistleblowers?” I asked why, despite the massive leak of secret war logs to Wikileaks, not a single hint of US government contact with UFOs or ETs had emerged - despite decades of claims by conspiracy believers.

An answer to this question became all the more pressing when, in November this year, a further 250,000 US state department cables emerged dating back to the 1960s. Shortly afterwards the mercurial Julian Assange revealed during a Guardian Q&A session that Wikileaks is plagued by what he described as 'weirdos' looking for the smoking gun that will confirm their beliefs. In a statement that will not endear him to the UFO disclosure brigade, Assange said they had not satisfied a Wikileaks rule that documents must be bona fide and not self-authored (which eliminates MJ-12 and other obvious fakes). But he hinted that “in yet to be published parts of the Cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.”

Now bear in mind the fact that in 1993 the US general accounting office identified some 3,067,000 people who had clearance to information classified secret and above (Guardian, 29 November 2010). We should not therefore be surprised to find at least some passing tongue-in-cheek reference within diplomatic traffic to the more bizarre UFO legends that regularly circulate in the media and on the net.

The anticipation was short-lived. On 17 December the Guardian revealed, in a follow-up, that Assange was merely poking fun at UFO buffs. “Despite what [he] said…there are no references to aliens in the cables,” they said. “We searched for aliens and UFOs (“visitors” and “non-terrestrial officers” too, thanks, UFO-minded readers).”

Which returns me to my original question: where are the UFO whistleblowers?

THE KIWI-FILES

2010 may have been the year of Wikileaks but it was also a great one for the disclosure of genuine government UFO archives. Just before Christmas the Royal New Zealand Air Force published electronic versions of nine files containing details of UFO sighting reports dating way back to the great phantom airship flap of 1909. You can download these files in PDF format.

This was not a “new” release, as claimed by some news outlets, as paper versions of these files have been available from The National Archives in Wellington, New Zealand, for a number of years. But few researchers have the time or resources to travel halfway across the planet to consult them, or can afford to order paper copies.

The RNZAF release is just the latest move by governments across the world to provide free and unrestricted access to historical UFO papers that have been hidden by unnecessary secrecy for too long. During the summer the Brazilian Air Force joined the fray by releasing a mass of UFO records to their country’s archives, following the example set by France, Britain, Denmark and Ireland in the past three years.

In Britain the on-going programme to transfer all surviving Ministry of Defence UFO files to The National Archives - for which I'm acting as consultant - saw the release of a further 42 files during 2010. The next 12 months promises to be another bumper year as the British disclosure project reaches its finale with just over one hundred remaining files being prepared for release.

The factors that led to the release of official UFO files release in Brazil, New Zealand and the UK are identical. And it is not to prepare the population for news that we are being visited by extraterrestrials, as some continue to falsely claim. The reality is that the military and intelligence services of all three countries have no interest in UFOs or the people who believe in them. They want to wash their hands of the whole messy business by literally making UFOs history, following the recommendation of fellow sceptic John Rimmer.

The most effective way of doing this is to place all their surviving records in a historical archive, where the subject clearly belongs. This allows them to direct all future inquiries to the archives and avoid wasting further public money responding to inquiries about a subject that has no defence value, in their view. This was clearly the reason behind the British MoD's decision to close their UFO Hotline in November 2009 and transfer all remaining papers to The National Archives.

The release of all these files comes in direct response to public interest stoked by the media and the UFO industry itself. It reflects open government, nothing more, nothing less. It does not indicate any international secret knowledge of ET presence or contact as claimed by some of the more credulous UFOlogists. As anyone who troubles themselves to actually read the files will realise, the opposite is actually the truth. Governments know no more about UFOs and ETs than the average person in the street.

RETURN OF THE SPOOK BOMBS?

In November the media got excited about a “mystery missile” filmed off the California coast near Los Angeles. The scare drew comparisons with the ghost-rocket flap that gripped Scandinavia in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The images, captured by a CBS news helicopter crew, appeared to show the vapour trail of a missile rising from the ocean 35 miles offshore. Conspiracy theorists were delighted when the Pentagon said it knew nothing about a missile launch and further fuel was added when former Deputy Secretary of Defence, Robert Ellsworth, hinted that it might have been deliberately fired from a US Navy submarine “to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.”

As the mystery grew, further footage of mystery missiles emerged from elsewhere in North America. But ContrailScience.com revealed the “missile” was simply the contrail of an aircraft flying directly towards the camera crew, with the image distorted by a trick of perspective. Although the contrail is actually five miles high, it appears to touch the ground because of the curvature of the Earth. Many other examples of “contrail scares” are known across the world.

US sceptic Bob Sheaffer believes this might explain the famous Swedish “spook bomb” wave of 1946 that immediately preceded the modern flying saucer era. Writing on his splendid new blog Bad UFOs, Sheaffer notes that despite the facts about the Californian footage being on plain view, the story has now morphed into a mystery that refuses to be debunked.

THEY WANT TO BELIEVE

As the first decade of the 21^st century ends, so UFOs retain their place as the most important modern myth. Myth is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary not as a false belief but as “a traditional narrative sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated”, much like Bible stories and traditional beliefs common to all human history.

The continuing strength and popularity of the UFO myth was underlined by the results of a survey conducted by the Royal Society and published in December. The poll of 2,000 adults found that 44 percent “believe that extra-terrestrial life exists” and men, perhaps unsurprisingly, have the most faith (46% say they believe). By contrast, 28% said they did not believe in ET and the remaining 28% simply couldn’t be sure. In my view the latter position is the only most honest position to take.

Of course there is a huge difference between the possibility, or in my view probability, that (a) life of some kind exists elsewhere in the universe and (b) the existence of intelligence life that has the level of technological sophistication and motivation to visit Earth. (a) and (b) are completely different concepts, with the latter involving a chain of unlikeliness so strained that even the most optimistic cosmologists find it hard to credit. But it is not impossible. Time will tell. But history shows that simply because lots of people believe in something, that does not make that something true.

FLAT EARTH NUKES

2010-11-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

“…An industry whose task should be to filter out falsehood has become a conduit for propaganda…” Nick Davies, Flat Earth News

The media tends to regard UFO stories as light entertainment rather than hard news. Proof of this was provided by the widely reported Flat Earth story that aliens had interfered with US and Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War (published uncritically by the Mail, Express and Telegraph in September). If that claim wasn’t remarkable enough, we were then asked to believe both governments had – despite their massive Cold War differences - collectively and successfully concealed the extraterrestrial threat from the public ever since.

Extraordinary, if true. And anyone who suspected this was either April 1^st or a poor re-working of the script from Independence Day should think again, because “upstanding, dry former military chiefs who were trusted with our nuclear security” said so (Daily Mail, 27 September).

But cut through the spin and it becomes clear there was and is no senior credible military source. The story originates from a publicity-hungry American UFOlogist, Robert Hastings. Hastings worked as a lab technician before retirement and now devotes himself full-time to pushing the UFO Disclosure agenda via books and lectures. He appears to have no particular expertise other than an obsession with proving a link between UFOs and nuclear weapons.

Hastings feels it is his “patriotic duty as an American citizen” to break the international cover-up and bring The Truth to the attention of the public. Let’s be clear what Hastings believes: according to the Daily Mail, he claims “Earth is being visited by beings from another world who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race”.

Fair enough. Hastings is entitled to believe what he likes. But it’s equally fair for me to compare his beliefs with those of other ‘independent thinkers’, as Patrick Moore calls them, who have – at various points in the past 60 years - tried to persuade us that aliens are coming here to follow ley lines, to collect water from our reservoirs or drill holes in livestock.

The idea that flying saucers have been coming here in increasing numbers since we first tested nuclear weapons is nothing new. It was a common theme in the writings of contactees such as George Adamski and George King at the opening of the ‘flying saucer’ age. They were equally obsessed with drawing links between UFO sightings and the Cold War arms race. During the 1950s warnings were channelled by these individuals and the quasi-religious sects which they founded, warning that Martians and Venusians were concerned by our nuclear experiments.

In my view, Robert Hastings is simply following in the footsteps of Adamski and King but dressing up his beliefs in a way that appeals to “scientific UFOlogists” of the 21^st century who would not want to be associated with contactee cults.

THE UFO-NUKE BANDWAGON BEGINS ROLLING….

In September Hastings hired the Washington Press Club as a platform to reveal his “evidence”. It consisted of testimony from a tiny group of ex-military “credible witnesses” who have joined the ET/disclosure bandwagon.

One of Hastings’s key witnesses is Captain Robert Salas who claims that on one occasion in 1967 a UFO hovered directly over a nuclear weapons store at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. Salas maintains that as a direct result of this incident ten Minuteman nuclear missiles malfunctioned. Taken at face value, Salas’s story sounds impressive. But virtually every evidential detail has been questioned by James Carlson, whose father Eric, also a Captain in the USAF, was present during the incident. Carlson senior insists that UFOs had absolutely nothing to do with the failure of the missile system and his son has published factual evidence that points to a complex equipment malfunction. There is also clear evidence that Salas has changed his story on several occasions.

Hastings and Carlson jnr are now locked in an online flame war over Salas’s claims and the interpretation of statements made by a third USAF officer, Walt Figel. Carlson says Figel’s testimony is consistent with his father’s evidence that no UFOs were involved. Hastings has published tape transcripts that suggest Figel was told about a UFO sighting by technicians working on the missiles. But reading the transcript one cannot escape the impression that Figel didn’t take the story seriously and regarded it as a leg pull of ‘the dog ate my homework’ type.

The whole story is so riddled with contradiction and ambiguity that it is impossible to say anything more than "not proven". But you can read Carlsons’s dissection of the claims made by Salas here while Hasting’s detailed rebuttal can be followed here.

BUT THE WHEEL COMES OFF MID-ATLANTIC

Another of Hastings’s “credible witnesses" is Col Charles Halt, of Rendlesham forest fame. Halt’s story has grown over the years from a straightforward sighting of “unexplained lights” (his words) in the forest near RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, into something that resembles a script for a science fiction film.

In the space of three decades “unexplained lights” have been transformed into intelligently controlled craft of ET origin whose occupants “directed laser-like beams of light down into or near” the nuclear weapons store at nearby RAF Bentwaters. Like Hastings, since retirement Halt has become convinced the US and UK governments – including his own former colleagues - are conspiring to hide The Truth from the public.

Again, this type of claim can sound convincing to those who are impressed by military ranks and titles. For those unfamiliar with the minutiae of the Rendlesham legend, or too lazy to critically examine the evidence it can be easier just to follow the herd and churn out another Flat Earth story. But anyone who puts the Rendlesham legend under the a critical microscope will realise that Halt’s claims simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Like Salas, Halt’s testimony has grown and become more elaborate in the constant re-telling, encouraged by his UFOlogical minders. Like Hastings and the others, he is now part of the UFO Disclosure movement and appears to see every new development through the lens of his belief in a conspiracy to hide evidence of ET visits. For that reason, he cannot be described as a “credible witness".

Furthermore, as I have revealed in New Light on Rendlesham, Halt’s former boss, the RAF Bentwaters base commander Col Ted Conrad, has gone on record to say he was in direct radio contact with his deputy as Halt’s experience in the forest unfolded. Conrad says he had trained Security Police on patrol looking out for anything unusual. But despite “a sparkling, clear, fogless night with a good field of view in all directions” they saw nothing. Neither was anything unusual reported by RAF Air Defence radars. That led him to conclude there was no hard evidence that required further action.

Even worse, Halt’s own laconic official account of the events, set out in his famous memo to the British Ministry of Defence makes no mention any threat to base security or the nuclear weapons store. By his own account, after several hours spent pursuing UFOs through the forest he simply turned around and went home to bed, leaving lights still visible in the sky as dawn broke (which strongly suggests they were bright stars as identified by astronomer Ian Ridpath).

Having failed to persuade his own superior officers in the USAF chain of command to take his story seriously Halt waited a further two weeks, until the British base commander Don Moreland returned from Christmas holidays, before he informed the Ministry of Defence.

Halt’s memo was dated 13 January 1981 and described events that took place on 27/28 December the previous year. The memo contains no mention of UFO interest in the weapons store at Bentwaters, nor does it highlight any perceived threat to British sovereignty. For that very reason the British authorities chose to ignore it. Yet incredibly Halt is on record as expressing puzzlement as to why no higher authority, British or American, took the story seriously or instigated a full investigation.

Hastings makes a big deal of the fact that Halt waited until retirement from the USAF in 1991 before he revealed, on a US TV show, that he saw UFOs shining beams upon the weapons store at RAF Bentwaters. Apparently he was concerned about the impact this might have on his career.

So we are asked to believe that Halt, “an upstanding dry former military chief” neglected to mention a possible direct threat to a frontline NATO base either to his own superiors or the MoD, because he was concerned he would not be taken seriously.

But he then expects us to take him seriously when he reveals this same information on a TV programme 11 years after the event?

If the evidence for aliens interfering with nuclear weapons is so good – then why does Robert Hastings pick such poor examples to prove his case?

The bottom line is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In both the Malmstrom and RAF Woodbridge cases there is absolutely no evidence.

What we actually have is a mass of deeply conflicting and contradictory testimony concerning ambiguous events that happened decades ago. Testimony that is being filtered through the subjective and selective agenda of those who want us to believe in ETs and government cover-ups. None of these stories would stand up to the vigorous standards required of evidence presented in a courtroom.

NO EVIDENCE OF ET INTEREST IN NUKES

So is there really any credible evidence to support Hastings’s claims about alien interest in our nuclear weapons?

If the security and intelligence agencies really were concerned about UFO sightings in the vicinity of nuclear facilities, as Hastings claims, one would expect there to be some official, corroborating documentary evidence, either from the paper trail the events produced or through leaks from senior, credible sources within the military/intelligence community.

In pursuit of such evidence I found that one British intelligence agency has indeed examined the assertion “that UFOs are ‘spying’ on strategic installations such as power stations, airfields and nuclear facilities”.

But they concluded “there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this claim.”

This document, once classified “Secret – UK Eyes Only” was released under the UK Freedom of Information Act in 2006, yet there was no mention of this at the UFO-Nukes press conference.

The nuclear issue was just one of a number of questions scrutinised by the anonymous author of the Defence Intelligence Staff study. The author was a senior intelligence officer with expertise in air defence and radar systems who was contracted to work for the Ministry of Defence’s during the late 1990s.

During the project, he studied a sample of 850 UFO reports collected by the MoD during a 4-year period towards the end of the Cold War. These were entered into a computer database and scrutinised for patterns. He specifically looked for evidence of reports concentrated around strategic military assets in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, he found most UFO reports clustered around areas of population density (like central London) and in the air corridors and Air Traffic Control Zones linking airports. His analysis is worth quoting in detail:

“UAP events reported from RAF stations were examined…for a four year period for a repeated UAP presence. Only six widely-dispersed RAF stations reported one event each. These locations were found to operate in a variety of roles, rather than together representing a group with specific strategic (for example, nuclear) importance, which some have suggested attract higher than expected UAP activity…It is probably the case, because of the radar and visual look out maintained as part of the normal role of the station, that in most cases if any UAP is present near a RAF station it is quite likely to be seen and reported.

“From the information examined: contrary to certain media suggestions that there is some sinister UAP agenda or that there are repeated UAP visits to locations of national importance, no evidence has been found that RAF strategic sites are some sort of target at which UAP appear more often than over certain other areas (eg over highly populated areas or along air corridors). [On the contrary] there is no evidence that regular or irregular repeat visits occur at any RAF site, strategic in nature or otherwise.”

The study concludes:

“There is, therefore, no firm evidence which points to the repeated presence of UAP at, for example, US or RAF strategic or tactical bases (airfields), Army assets or RAF or Naval HQ or special asserts (in particular, at nuclear assets such as Faslane, Aldermaston, Capenhurst, etc)…

"The fact that [UFOs] are seen at all, at some service locations, is undoubtedly because they are manned 24 hours a day with staff who are likely to be observant by virtue of their normal tasks....” [my emphasis]

(Source: UAPs in the UK Air Defence Region, DI55 Report, vol 1, pg 13).

From the point of view of the tabloids, a story that reads “MoD study debunks claims that UFOs are messing with our nukes” isn’t half as news-worthy one that reads “Aliens tampered with our nukes.”

But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

New Light on Rendlesham

2010-09-03T03:45:00.000-07:00

I have added a new page to my blog that summarises the results of my ongoing research into the famous "Rendlesham Forest UFO incident", that has become one of UFOlogy's cause celebres. The main highlight is my exclusive interview with the RAF Bentwaters Base Commander, Col Ted Conrad, who has gone on record in detail for the first time since the immediate aftermath of the incident in 1980-81.

The paper also summarises the results of my research into the paper trail at The National Archives, along with exclusive interviews with key MoD and RAF personnel. These include the DS8 UFO desk officer who dealt with the incident, Simon Weeden, and the British liaison officer, Wing Commander Don Moreland, among others.

The 30th anniversary of the case often referred to as "Britain's Roswell" takes place in December this year. Despite a decade of research I still don't know what happened at RAF Woodbridge in December 1980. But one thing I am certain about is this: neither does anyone else!

The Rendlesham Files are subject to copyright. However, visitors are free to quote from these pages provided the source of this information is clearly acknowledged and a link is provided to this website.

Ian Ridpath has a new blog page covering his research into the Rendlesham incident - which began in 1983 - here.

Britain's first X-File?

2010-08-14T05:14:00.000-07:00

The September issue of Fortean Times reveals my discovery of what may be the very first British Government inquiry into 'UFO' sightings - in 1865.

'The False Lights' were mysterious revolving lights seen above a rocky headland at Whitburn, county Durham, by mariners negotiating a hazardous stretch of the northeast coast.

During a ten year period from 1860 more than 150 ships were wrecked on the rocks near Whitburn after following a light or lights in the sky which they wrongly believed were from a lighthouse at the mouth of the Tyne.

Accusations were made against local fishermen who, some believed, were deliberately luring ships onto the rocks to steal their cargoes.

The Government stepped in after Durham MP Sir Hedworth Williamson tabled questions in the House of Commons.

And in December 1865, a commission of inquiry led by Rear Admiral Sir Richard Collinson travelled to Sunderland to investigate. Although the mystery was mentioned by Charles Fort in The Book of the Damned (1919), as far as I am aware this is the first time anyone has obtained access to government files compiled at the time.

By a stroke of luck, I discovered the complete proceedings of the inquiry have survived in a file at The National Archives. This contains summaries of the evidence taken at Sunderland, transcribed in longhand, alongside original copies of witness statements and petitions handed in by the fishermen.

The inquiry chaired by Admiral Collinson was followed by further investigations by the Tyne Pilotage Board and South Shields Police Court in 1866.

The files suggest the Board of Trade was unable to explain the cause of the 'false lights', which one official described as 'very mysterious'.

But the most amazing discovery I made was this:

A direct result of the inquiry was the government decision to pay for the construction of a lighthouse at Souter Point, in response to demands from local people to provide a fixed beacon for shipping.

The lighthouse was opened in January 1871 and was the first in Britain powered by electrical alternators (today the building and grounds are in the care of The National Trust and contain a small museum).

As far as I am aware the Souter Point light (above right) is the only lighthouse in the world originally constructed to warn seafarers of a hazard caused by 'unexplained aerial phenomena.'

A full account of my investigation and extracts from the files can be found in my Fortean Times article, now available online here.

The 'Real X-Files' Pt 6

2010-08-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

The facts about some of Britain’s best-known UFO mysteries are revealed in the sixth collection of ‘X-files’ released by Britain’s National Archives.

At the TNA's UFO website you can download all the files - free of charge for the first month - along with a highlights guide and updated background briefing. As the TNA's consultant for the release programme, I have recorded a special podcast with journalist Clare Jenkins, available as a download, where I discuss some of the more quirky stories included in this tranche.

The release includes 18 files containing 5000 pages of correspondence and Parliamentary briefings created by the Ministry of Defence between 1995 and 2000. The documents provide a unique historical snapshot of the extraordinary beliefs, legends and rumours that were held and spread by UFOlogists around the time of the 50^th anniversary of the birth of the subject in 1997.These files contain hundreds of letters addressed to the MoD and politicians that cover every conceivable rumour circulating just before the millennium: UFO crashes, alien abductions, animal mutilations, demonic entities, crop circles, remote viewing, mind-control and government conspiracies.

By contrast, alongside this feast of weirdness are the MoD’s increasingly exasperated attempts to pour cold water on topics they regarded as irrelevant at best and a nuisance at worst. But they could not stem the flood of correspondence that led to a doubling of the UFO desk’s workload. During 1996 – the year before the Roswell anniversary – the MoD received 609 UFO reports, 343 letters from the public and 22 inquiries from MPs.

The files demonstrate how far official policy towards UFOs changed after the end of the Cold War. Back in 1950s the Government really was concerned by a spate of incidents involving unidentified objects tracked by radars and on occasion aircraft were scrambled to investigate them. Possibly the best known example is the famous RAF Bentwaters-Lakenheath incident of 1956.

As a direct result the subject of “aerial phenomena” appeared on the agenda of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), at Whitehall. One set of the JIC papers from 1957 are included in this release and they reveal the Air Ministry could not explain four incidents involving UFOs on radar (see DEFE 24/2013, pgs 257-60).

But in 1996 Don Valley MP Martin Redmond tabled a Parliamentary Question that asked how many times RAF aircraft had been scrambled to investigate UFOs. The background briefing given by the RAF is in my view one of the most interesting documents in this release (you can see the original papers in DEFE 24/1983, pages 53 and 40-48).

This document reveals that before 1991 – which saw the collapse of the Soviet Union – RAF aircraft were scrambled on average 200 times every year to investigate unidentified objects seen by UK air defence radars. The vast majority of these were identified as Soviet reconnaissance aircraft probing NATO defences in the North Atlantic. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall the frequency of these scrambles reduced to zero. There were none recorded between September 1991 and the summer of 1996 when Redmond tabled his question in the Commons.

Contrast that zero figure with the number of UFO reports made by members of the public and logged by the MoD during exactly the same period. Between 1991 and 1996 there were almost 1200 sightings recorded. Few, if any were corroborated by a radar contact and just a handful were investigated in any depth – mainly as a result of pressure from MPs or the media.

Since 1959 the subject of UFOs has never reappeared on the agenda of the Joint Intelligence Committee. This is a sure sign that the subject is now regarded as of no consequence to the military and intelligence services in Britain at least.

What all this indicates to me is that by the 50^th anniversary of the UFO industry in 1997, the British Government was no longer interested in UFOs as a defence problem. By then they saw it purely as a public relations issue. Each year they received hundreds of reports from the public but none that contained any evidence of a threat to the defence of the UK. The inevitable consequence of that change in policy was the closure of the MoD’s UFO hotline at the end of last year.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE FILES

RAF Rudloe Manor features heavily in the files as the obsessive focus of UFO conspiracy rumours during the 1990s (see for example DEFE 24/1978, 1982, 1993 and 2004). Some UFOlogists became so convinced the government was hiding wreckage of crashed flying saucers that attempts were made to break into the facility. Other stories spread that a secret MoD ‘Men In Black’ unit was based at Rudloe that investigated close encounters and conducted secret research. But as the MoD’s Kerry Philpott pointed out to letter-writers, Rudloe was at that time the HQ for the RAF’s Flying Complaints Flight who are responsible for investigating reports of ‘low flying aircraft.’ Inevitably some UFO reports ended up in the RAF’s low-flying inbox at Rudloe Manor. But these were simply collected, put in an envelope and sent to the MoD’s UFO desk in London for follow-up. Quite how this plain fact became transformed into stories about spacecraft and aliens hidden in secret tunnels remains the real mystery.

Berwyn Mountains incident. DEFE 24/2045 contains copies of official papers from 1974 that discuss the Berwyn Mountains UFO ‘crash’ in North Wales. This story was resurrected by UFOlogists at the time of the 50^th anniversary and quickly became transformed into Britain’s answer to the Roswell incident. But the contemporary records reveal a far less sensational story. MoD received just five reports describing bright fireballs falling to earth, but none of these came from Wales. On the same night, villagers living near the mountains called emergency services to report “a brilliant ball of light apparently coming down over the hills, accompanied by a flash and an immense bang.” A search of the hills by a RAF rescue team found no sign of any impact and astronomers quickly identified the fireballs as part of a meteor shower. Shortly afterwards the British Geological Survey identified the “immense bang” as an earth tremor originating on the Bala faultline. The complex Berwyn case is the subject of a book, UFO Down, by FT writer Andy Roberts, published this month by the CFZ.

Winston Churchill 'foo-fighter' incident. DEFE 24/2013 contains a letter sent to the MoD in 1999 that claims Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of a wartime UFO sighting by the crew of a RAF reconnaissance aircraft over the English coastline. The letter-writer says he heard the story second-hand via his grandfather, who claimed to have been present at a secret meeting between Churchill and Eisenhower when the incident was discussed, in the later stages of the war. Although merely an anecdote, there may be a grain of truth in the story. Winston Churchill's interest in unexplained aerial phenomena dates back to 1912. As First Lord of the Admiralty, he answered questions in the Commons following sightings of a "phantom airship" over the naval base at Sheerness in Essex. Again in 1952 he wrote his famous memo to the Air Ministry demanding to know the truth about flying saucers following a flap of sightings over Washington DC. In 1999 the MoD were sufficiently interested by the contents of the letter they received to check wartime cabinet minutes. Although no written record of the wartime meeting appears to survive, Air Ministry files from 1942-45 do contain accounts of mysterious sightings reported by aircrew - including RAF Bomber Command. Air Ministry classified these reports as "night phenomena" and "balls of fire" and believed some were caused by German secret weapons such as the Me262 jet fighter. United States Army Air Force aircrew called them "foo fighters". See my review of Keith Chester's book for more details of WW2 UFO sightings.

Mystery object caught on film during launch of Blue Streak rocket, Australia, 1964. DEFE 24/1983 contains the MoD’s reaction to claims made by UFO writer Jenny Randles in a 1996 documentary shown on BBC2, summarized here. When MP John Fraser asked about a “missing” can of film that was said to show a mysterious “spaceman” during a Blue Streak rocket launch at Woomera, desk officers were forced to reopen archived files from 1964. Inquiries discovered copies of the "missing" Woomera film were held by the Imperial War Museum and had been widely circulated by the media at the time. The contemporary papers show that British Pathe, who distributed the film, identified the 'object' (not a spaceman) as "an internal camera reflection."

Persistent Correspondents. While some UFO legends do have a factual basis, the files expose others as based entirely on rumour and gossip or, like the ‘alien autopsy’, as hoaxes. Nevertheless, some persistent letter writers who believed these legends targeted Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair with demands for confirmation the Government had proof aliens really had landed in the UK. One asked Blair if he could confirm that films and TV shows like The X-Files and Independence Day were part of “a strategy by Western governments to prepare the population for the admission that there has indeed been contact from aliens, extraterrestrials, trans-dimensionals and/or time travellers.” Another made a 100-1 bet with bookmakers Ladbrokes that “aliens would be found on earth dead or alive before the end of the century”. After reading about the Roswell incident and the ‘alien autopsy’ he approached the government during 1999 for evidence to support his claim when Ladbrokes refused to pay out. Unfortunately for him, the MoD said they were open-minded about extraterrestrial life but had no evidence of its existence (DEFE 24/2012).

Nick Pope. The former MoD 'UFO' desk officer proclaimed his belief in UFOs in 1995 and published a book, Open Skies Closed Minds, that was cleared for publication in the following year. Pope's book and his media interviews generated a number of questions both from MPs and members of the public. In response MoD said his views were his own opinions and did not reflect or represent that of MoD. But the media publicity surrounding its publication added to the workload of his successor Kerry Philpott who told inquirers Sec(AS) was "not a strange phenomena section" of MoD. She said Pope worked in a junior management grade "but neither he nor indeed am I the head of any 'UFO' section" (see DEFE 24/1983). The MoD have redacted a number of references to Pope’s activities in these files but in 1996 David Alton MP was told that media coverage "tended to exaggerate the MoD interest in UFO matters and the role of the post" (DEFE 24/1983).

In 1999 Scottish UFOlogist James Easton in his "An Open Letter" addressed to Pope, posed a series of questions to the MoD. These included: "What were his main duties? Approximately how much time was spent on 'UFO'-related investigations? and 'have the MoD ever, as Pope states, investigated to any significant extent a single case where a 'crop circle', 'alien abduction' or 'animal mutilation' has been reported and if so, what was the outcome?'

UFO desk officer, Gaynor South, responded on 29 September 1999:

“The main duties of the post concern non-operational RAF activities overseas and diplomatic clearance policy for military flights abroad. A small percentage of time is spent dealing with reports from the public about alleged ‘UFO’ sightings and associated public correspondence. The MoD has not investigated a claim of alien abduction, crop circle formations or animal mutilation.” (DEFE 24/1978)

Where are the UFO Whistleblowers?

2010-07-31T01:50:00.000-07:00

Wikileaks has once again shaken the foundations of the government and military establishment with its mass leaking of documents chronicling the war in Afghanistan.

The leaking of more than 92,000 secret documents to the media last week revealed how difficult it now is for any government - however powerful - to conceal information from the public.

With near impregnable security for its servers and twin commitment to holding authority to account and protecting its sources, Wikileaks has become a haven for whistleblowers to expose lies, corruption and human rights abuses wherever they occur.

But here is the conundrum. Many thousands, if not millions of people across the world, believe the US Government is with-holding evidence that we are not alone in the universe. A central item of this belief is that a flying saucer and its occupants crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and the authorities have concealed that fact for over 60 years.

If there is any truth in these stories hundreds, if not thousands, of people must have been involved in the perpetuation of the cover-up. Foreign governments, such as the Soviet Union during the Cold War, would have learned about the incident and would, therefore, have to be party to the secret. Again, many many people across the world must have been involved in perpetuating the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind.

So - where are the UFO whistleblowers?

As Greg Boone, who believes in the existence of a global UFO cover-up, asked plaintively on a newsgroup recently: "Why has not one major UFO secret been revealed via Wikileaks?"

He went on to add: "Surely the truth regarding UFOs would so shake the foundations of global criminal evil that just one brave soul would come forward and forever change the history of humanity."

Well Greg, we're waiting...and waiting...and waiting.

Of course there have been plenty of hoaxes and forgeries that have been proclaimed as proof positive of the alien presence in the past. But the amateurish MJ-12 papers that were supposed to have been created by a super-secret US committee that concealed the Roswell incident would not pass the first test of authenticity when placed under the Wikileaks microscope.

While we wait, my colleague and fellow Fortean Times writer Mark Pilkington has published his own in-depth excoriation of the murky world of military intelligence involvement in the UFO phenomenon.

Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs is published by Constable this month and comes highly recommended. Mark's central thesis - that intelligence agencies have been promoting the idea of UFOs as a useful cover for their own covert testing of military technology - is not entirely original. But Mark is no armchair theorist and he and sidekick John Lundberg developed their new take on 'the federal hypothesis' during a long journey through the badlands and backwaters of America, meeting some of the key players in the UFO industry along the way.

Unlike many books with 'UFO' on their cover, Mirage Men is a gripping read.Whether you agree with Mark's conclusions or not, you will enjoy the journey and come to realise that the closer you get to the source of UFO stories the more the whole phenomenon takes on a mythic dimension.

While Mirage Men chronicles the phenomenon in North America, Andy Robert's new book takes a withering look at one of the UK's central UFO legends.

UFO Down (published by the CFZ early in August) is subtitled The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash and investigates the facts and folklore surrounding a mysterious incident that occurred in North Wales one night in January 1974. The Berwyn incident has been described by the some as 'Britain's Roswell' and Andy has spent the past two decades tracing every possible permutation of the legend to its source. As an exercise in investigative journalism, his journey takes some beating and the conclusions may surprise those who expect a thorough debunking of this particular story.

Both Mirage Men and UFO Down are fine pieces of writing and I urge everyone remotely interested in Fortean phenomena to add them to their reading list.

Alive and Kicking!

2010-07-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

It is often claimed that investigative journalism is dead, or at least on its last legs – the victim of cutbacks in resources and investment by the news industry.

But from what I saw and heard at the July summer school organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), truth-seeking and holding authority to account is not only alive and well, but safe in the hands of a new breed of “information activists”.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (right) believes the future depends upon networks of hackers and whistleblowers working to expose corruption and human rights abuses wherever they are found. Assange’s presentation was added to the schedule at the eleventh hour, possibly because he is constantly on the move to avoid spooks who would like to shut his network down.

Assange describes Wikileaks as an “uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. This aim has been achieved with remarkable success given its skeleton staff and total reliance for its funding upon individual donations. Launched in 2007, during its short life it has exposed more scandals than some newspapers in their entire lifetime.

It came of age this year with the release of an incriminating video that shows the crew of US helicopter gloating after an attack on civilians in Baghdad in July 2007 that left, amongst the carnage, two Reuters personnel dead and many others – including children – injured.

Also this year Wikileaks stepped in to publish the leaked “Minton Report” that exposed the danger posed by toxic waste dumped by oil firm Trafigura on unsuspecting residents of the Ivory Coast – leading 10,000 people to fall ill. Despite the clear public interest in this story, Britain’s media was gagged by a super injunction, granted by a judge, which not only banned reporting of the story but also banned reporting of the injunction itself!

It took the intervention of a friendly MP (and former Observer journalist) Paul Farrelly, who tabled a question in the Commons using Parliamentary privilege, before the British public were allowed to read the facts. Farrelly and David Leigh, investigations editor for The Guardian, pointed out in their presentation that whilst the gagging order was in place in the UK, people in other European countries had free access to the facts.

Leigh said the Trafigura debacle demonstrated how new methods such as cross-border co-operation between journalists and new media such as Wikileaks and Twitter, combined with older methods such as Parliamentary privilege, were creating new opportunities for breaking stories that overcame legal censorship.

For his part, Assange was skeptical about the ability of the journalistic establishment to force disclosure in the public interest. In an interview with The Guardian’s Stephen Moss, he says journalists have been letting big business and vested interests off the hook for far too long.

This was a theme that emerged from other presentations during the three-day event, organised by City University in central London, which is a key unmissable event in my annual calendar.

In his Bad Science talk, Dr Ben Goldacre exposed the reliance of lazy journalists on the opinions of maverick “experts” in science and health scare stories such as that surrounding MMR vaccine. “One person’s word is not enough as you can always find an ‘expert’ who will back up claims that have no scientific validity,” he said. The key message was rely on what the scientific consensus says and not the views of individual “experts”.

This rule applies equally to the global warming controversy, the subject of a talk by Spinwatch blogger Andy Rowell. He pointed that 97-98% of qualified scientific researchers support the view that climate change is man-made. Yet the coverage given to the marginal views of so-called sceptics and climate change deniers is out of all proportion to their numbers and credibility. This falls into trap laid by the denial campaign whose key tenet is identical to that used by the tobacco industry in its attempts to persuade us that smoking is good for us – “Doubt is our product.”

On the final day Andrew Jennings, who runs the transparency in sport website, lambasted hacks in the national press for their failure to expose greed and corruption that is endemic in the football gravy-train.Holding authority to account, he said, is the only justification for being a journalist. But many establishment sports writers are only interested in sucking up to managers who feed them safe stories and access to players. This is in effect sports churnalism, not journalism as he recognises it.

The final word must go to Paris-based investigative reporter Mark Hunter – one of the most popular speakers. He told delegates their whole purpose in being journalists in the first place was not just to report news “but it is to change the world – don’t deny yourself that.”

Open Skies - Closed Files

2010-07-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Within the next 18 months the Ministry of Defence will complete their disclosure programme of UFO-related documents.

But some UFOlogists continue to demand they “come clean on all levels”. They believe there are more secret documents being held back that contain evidence of alien visitations.

I can reveal the only documents MoD intends to permanently conceal from the public concern their secret dealings not with aliens, but with a former member of their own staff – Nick Pope.

Nick was responsible for UFO reports and associated public correspondence for three years (1991-94) during his career at the Ministry. According to the MoD this was actually a small part of his responsibilities.

Yet Nick describes himself as the man “who used to run the British Government’s UFO Project”, a claim that I will return to later. In 1996, after leaving Sec(AS)2, the branch responsible for UFOs, but whilst still employed by the MoD, he wrote a book that flatly rejected his department’s official line that UFOs were of “no defence significance”.

The cover blurb for Open Skies Closed Minds says he became “a firm believer in the reality of UFOs” during his posting and, based upon the cases he investigated, “warns that extraterrestrial spacecraft are visiting Earth and that something should be done about it urgently.” Pope resigned from the MoD in November 2006 to pursue a career as “author, journalist and TV personality.”

Early in 2007 I made a Freedom of Information Act request to see the internal paperwork covering the period when Nick first publicly emerged as “a UFO believer”.

The request asked for:

“copies of MoD papers, records or other information relating to internal discussion, policy and/or briefings in response to public statements made to the media and via the release of Open Skies, Closed Minds by Nick Pope during the period 1995-96.”

Taking the MoD’s new policy of openness at face value I argued that here was an opportunity to reveal how they handled Nick’s conversion to “UFO believer”. After all, they have stated that by opening their files “we may also help to counter the maze of rumour and frequently ill informed speculation that surrounds the role of the MoD in the UFO phenomena.”

But it seems openness only goes so far. It took two years to obtain a sensible answer from the MoD and even then they refused to release seven documents that contain information relevant to my FOIA request.

After two appeals and a further year waiting for a judgement from the Information Commissioner he has now ruled “the MoD was correct to refuse the information requested.” Click here to read the full decision notice, posted on the Commissioner's website.

In his judgement the Commissioner, Christopher Graham, admits “this is a finely balanced case and [Dr Clarke has] provided well reasoned arguments to support [his] case” for disclosure in the public interest.

But the fine balance appears to have been tipped by Nick Pope who, the notice reveals, personally intervened to block the release of these documents.

Early in 2009 I asked Nick for his consent for the disclosure of these papers in the public interest. In an email dated 27 March 2009 I pointed out that “from your own point of view, surely the perception will be, if this paperwork is [removed] from the public record it will continue to imply that someone is trying to hide something.” I added that “if you don’t want this to emerge…this will imply you have something to hide.”

I pointed out my request was specifically for “internal comment on your Press interviews in 1996 and MoD’s discussion of what line to take” and not for access to his private correspondence with his employers over the clearance of his manuscript (with one exception that concerns a specific letter which he had quoted from in the public domain).

Some of the documents I requested form part of the Sec(AS) UFO files that are being prepared for release to The National Archives. So on 30 July I asked Nick, via email:

“Do you have any objections to the release of internal discussions within MoD surrounding the release of your book that are included in the UFO files that are part of the ongoing TNA releases?”

His response took me by surprise, given his public support for the Disclosure campaign. Nick is on record as saying:

"I believe that governments and the military, and indeed private researchers, politicians - whoever - should place everything in the public domain on this issue. Governments can't, I think, have it both ways...I, in support of that aim, believe that there should be a full disclosure of all information on UFOs held by governments all around the world."

Despite this very public commitment to openness, not only did he refuse to give consent for the release of these documents, he went on to recite a list of legislation that he claimed prevented their disclosure. He invoked a number of FOIA exemptions, the Data Protection Act, the MoD’s common law duty of confidentiality and for good measure Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – ‘the right to privacy’.

All of these exemptions could have been overturned if Nick had given consent for the release. How ironic that here was someone who has spent the last 15 years talking about his role as 'head of the British Government's UFO Project' to any and every media organisation that would listen. Now suddenly he was desperate to protect his 'privacy'.

And it is now apparent that my decision to approach Nick openly led him to contact his former employers to register his objection to the release of the documents.

In his judgement the Information Commissioner reveals that MoD informed him on 6 January 2010 that Nick Pope “has written to the MoD and asked for the information not to be released into the public domain.”

Given the “fine balance” on disclosure, Nick’s direct intervention had provided “a contributing factor to support the withholding of the information.”

As Col Arnold Moulder has noted in SUNlite (September 2009), Article 8 of the HRA is a favourite resort of celebrities who delight in self-publicity, but then invoke ‘the right to privacy’ when the press start to probe too deeply into their ‘private affairs.’

In this case, I asked the Commissioner to consider: “whether Mr Pope has any reasonable expectation of privacy in regard to his statements to the media, given his career as a media pundit and self-declared ‘former head of the MoD’s UFO Project.’”

For the record, the MoD have made it clear: "there is and never has been any such thing as a UFO Project". What's more, spokesperson Linda Unwin, in an article published by the MoD's own in-house magazine Focus (2006), said: 'There is no UFO project.' As Linda was the MoD's UFO desk officer from 2003-2007 she would have known if such a 'project' existed!

In his judgement the Commissioner says the more senior a civil servant is the more likely that information – even that covered by exemptions – will be released. I argued that Pope’s claim that he was the man “who used to run the British Government’s UFO Project” implied seniority, real or imagined.

Taking all this into account, the Commissioner concludes that Nick Pope “was not at any time a senior civil servant” and says his actual role [Executive Officer during 1991-94] and substantive junior management grade during his time at MoD was already public knowledge. Therefore there was nothing further that would be added to that knowledge by the release of the documents.

The Commissioner admits that “although interviews given and articles written by [Nick Pope] are very obviously in the public domain this does not itself mean that the individual will have an expectation that all correspondence and comments made about these statements will be made public…the information withheld appears to be of a private nature and this is not altered by the fact that its creation came about because of a number of public acts.”

Under the heading “Consequences of Disclosure” he notes my suggestion that because Nick has courted media interest and has placed himself in the public eye his expectation of privacy should be reduced. I argued that the purpose of the Data Protection Act was to protect private lives of individuals and cited the Information Commissioner’s own guidance that “where information requested is about people acting in a work or official capacity then it should be released.” But he concludes:

“Although [Nick Pope] has spoken publicly about his time at the MoD [he] has not spoken publicly about the contents of the information the MoD is seeking to withhold. The Commissioner believes that if the information were to be released it has the potential to cause some element of harm or distress to the individual concerned.”

This raises an obvious question: what information do these documents contain that Nick Pope is so keen to conceal?

An indication of their tone and content is given in section 17 of the disclosure notice which says "several of the documents...contain expressions of opinion about the individual". Expressions of opinion are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOIA as they constitute personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act.

If for example, Nick's boss - the head of the MoD's Air Staff Secretariat - had written that he believed Nick was exaggerating when he described his role in press interviews, as an expression of opinion about a named individual this would be exempt from release.

Later the Commissioner says the with-held information “relates to aspects of how [Nick Pope] was undertaking his public role”.

Responding to my suggestion that the documents could be edited to remove sensitive material, the Commissioner says if this was done “the documents would either make no sense to the reader or the subject matter and tone of the documents would be so obvious that the redactions would serve little purpose.”

Fortunately, we know a little about the contents of the seven documents with-held because in 2008 MoD helpfully supplied me an itemised list of the contents. This reveals:

Document 1 is a file copy of a letter sent to Nick Pope by the MoD after he submitted his manuscript for clearance. Although he now invokes his “right to privacy” to protect the contents, in 1996 he was happy to quote from this document in an interview for UFO Magazine (UK) and the International UFO Reporter (Vol 21/3). In this interview he claims there was a faction at MoD that “certainly didn’t want the book to appear” and he received a letter that said it was “completely unacceptable to MoD and quite beyond any suitable amendment”. We will never know how accurate this claim actually is, as we are only allowed to hear Nick's version of the sequence of events leading to the clearance of his book.

Document 2 is a file note dated February 1995 which contains “staff management discussion in response to a letter received from Mr Pope notifying MoD of his private activities.”

Document 3 is a loose minute dated 10 February 1996 “addressed to Mr Pope following his notification of his private activities.”

Document 4 is “a record of the line management steps taken following Mr Pope’s notification of his private activities" that “contains personal information about Mr Pope’s staff management.”

Document 5 is an internal memo written on 2 July 1995 following publication of an interview with Nick Pope published by the Mail on Sunday (‘ET lives, says man from the Ministry’). This document “contains free and frank advice” about Mr Pope’s “private media activities” and the steps taken to ensure that MoD regulations were not breached – including direction to line managers.

Document 6 is a file note dated 21 August 1995 on a BBC Newsnight item that mentioned Nick Pope’s book. This covers “media handling following mention of Mr Pope by name as both an MoD employee and ‘a believer’ in UFOs.” This document contains “free and frank advice” by MoD managers which the public are not allowed to read.

Document 7 is a file note dated October 1995 “following a Yorkshire TV enquiry”. It records “how the enquiry was handled given that Mr Pope was acting in a private capacity when supportive of the Operation Right To Know campaign”, which ironically demanded the release of secret UFO documents held by the MoD! Again, this contains “free and frank advice” from his bosses that we – the taxpayer who foots the bill for all this – are not allowed to read.

An indication of the “subject matter and tone” of the documents being withheld can be judged from an example that slipped past the official censor and was sent to me in response to a separate FOIA request during 2007 (see copy inset right).

Written by a RAF officer working for the Defence Intelligence Staff, it is titled “[Nick Pope]: recent media appearances and interviews” and was sent to his successor as UFO desk officer, Kerry Philpott, on 24 April 1996, shortly before Nick's book was published. In the minute the officer raises concerns about the media’s description of Nick as a “senior MoD official” and notes “he seems to have accepted the title willingly”. He adds that MoD needs to “approach the matter VERY delicately” and says: “I am not attempting to ban a book I have not read [but] I believe it will be based on supposition and technical ignorance.”

He adds: “The truth seldom sells books!”

Given Nick Pope's claim that he used "to run the British Government's UFO Project", a project the MoD claims did not exist, I continue to believe there is a clear public interest in the release of these documents.

The Press Complaints Commission Code of Practice for journalists defines the public interest as including "preventing the public from being misled by the action or statement of an individual or organisation."

This decision by the Information Commissioner effectively means the public will never get to read what Nick Pope’s bosses at the MoD really thought about his effectiveness as ‘head of' the MoD’s [non-existent] 'UFO Project.’

As one commentator has noted, this leaves us with “the rather delicious spectacle of a former MoD clerk, once well inside the military-UFO loop and with a habit of accusing the Ministry of neglecting the alien threat, assiduously orchestrating a cover-up of information.”

Given Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge while in opposition “to release all UFO documents” if he was elected, this would appear to be a prime example where disclosure really would benefit open government and public knowledge.

Father Paul Eric Inglesby (1915-2010)

2010-06-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

One of Britain's longest serving Christian UFO theorists, Fr Paul Eric Inglesby has died, age 94, at Glastonbury, Somerset.

Inglesby's interest in UFOs began at the dawn of the modern UFO era in 1947. He was one of the first subscribers to the magazine Flying Saucer Review in 1955.

At the opening of WW2 he served in the Royal Navy and later in the war as Assistant Secretary to Lord Mountbatten working in Combined Operations at Whitehall.

According to his 1978 book UFOs and the Christian his lifelong fascination with the subject actually began in 1938 when he underwent a "devastating spiritual experience" triggered by a life-threatening illness contracted during his naval service. This included an out-of-body journey to Mars and visions of a future atomic war against demonic forces who controlled spacecraft. During this experience "not only did I witness future events, in a mental telepathic sort of way, but throughout the whole of this time a battle was raging for possession of my soul."

In 1964 he joined the clergy as a Church of England priest and during this time corresponded with some of the key figures in UFOlogy. During the occult revival of the 1960s he rejected the popular idea that flying saucers were extra-terrestrial and came to believe UFOs and their occupants were of demonic origin. Although not fully reflected in the UFO literature, this was a view shared by a number of leading British UFOlogists, including three former chairmen of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA).

In 1980 Inglesby converted to the orthodox faith (taking Paul as his Christian name) following a meeting with Fr Seraphim Rose at a monastery in California. Fr Rose had written a treatise that identified UFOs as demonic signs of the approaching End Times and this document proved to be highly influential for Ingleby's unpopular but uncompromising viewpoint on the subject.

Inglesby's Christian UFO archive contains not only his dealings with UFOlogists covering a 60-year period, but also his correspondence on the subject with a range of famous figures from the military, literary and religious establishment. These include Professor C.S. Lewis, Lord Mountbatten, Lord Dowding, Lord Hill-Norton and Sir Victor Goddard. During the 1960s Inglesby asked Mountbatten, who had publicly expressed his belief in UFOs during the 1950s, for his considered views. Writing in 1964, as Chief of Defence Staff, he responded to say he no longer believed after discussing the subject with the British government's Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Solly Zuckerman. Zuckerman told him there was no more evidence for UFOs than for ghosts or the Loch Ness Monster.

In 1977 Inglesby founded the Christian UFO Research Association via an advert placed in The Church Times.This was a loose association of clergymen from a number of denominations plus UFOlogists whose aims were to warn the public about the dangers of an obsessive interest in UFOlogy which Inglesby believed was "fraught with danger for the unwary and riddled with heresy and false belief."

In the same year he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Mountbatten warning that Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip should not attend the Royal Premiere of Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as the film had a Satanic sub-plot involving demonic possession and alien landings at the "Devil's Tower" in Wyoming.
His attempt to dissuade them failed, but the group had more success in its campaign to influence peers of the realm who attended the UFO Debate in the House of Lords during January 1979. It was through Inglesby's intervention that Maurice Wood, Bishop of Norwich, contributed his view that obsessive belief in UFOs "obscured basic Christian truth."

After the Lords debate he founded a second pressure group, Christian UFO Concern, and became friends with Admiral Lord Hill-Norton who shared Inglesby's naval background and his conviction that UFOs were a clear and present danger to humanity. During 1996, with public fascination with UFOs rising again, Inglesby produced a booklet, The UFO Concern Report, on behalf of Hill-Norton. This was privately published and circulated to a number of "top people" who had expressed an interest in UFOs. It was intended to warn them of what the authors believed were the occult origins of the subject. In the foreword Inglesby said UFOs were "essentially a religious matter" rather than a military threat and added: "There is certainly a degree of psychical involvement in almost every [UFO] case. Quite often, such experiences are definitely antithetical to orthodox Christian belief."

Hill-Norton died in 2003 and Inglesby retired from UFOlogy shortly afterwards.

I spent a full day with Inglesby at his home in Glastonbury during the summer of 2005 and was able, with his permission, to examine the archive of material he had collected which stretched back to the 1950s. More details of the Inglesby's life and the demonic theory for UFOs can be found in my Fortean Times article 'Flying Saucers from Hell', published in the summer of 2006.

His last words at the end of my interview were: "UFOlogy is a vast, huge subject, shot full of religious danger. To be immersed in its study, without spiritual protection, is fatal. Further curiosity, even scientific curiosity, equally. Remember the cat."

For more biographical details see the obituary by Peter Hore published in The Daily Telegraph on 28 June 2010.

Dave Cameron comes clean on ET

2010-06-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Judging by the content of the MoD's UFO files it has become a tradition that each new Prime Minister receives a full postbag of letters from pressure groups who demand the release of ‘the truth’ about flying saucers and aliens.

David Cameron is no exception and last year he promised to be “entirely open and frank” about the subject if elected. At one of his 'Cameron Direct' public meetings Cameron fielded a question from UFO buff Richard Hall (who believes, among other bizarre things, that I work for MI5). In response, the Tory leader laughed and said he was “convinced we have been visited by alien life forms - and one of them is the trade secretary Lord Mandelson."

Hall was not pleased and said Cameron “will not be making jokes when the truth comes out” - but at least an alien invasion might provide him with a distraction from cutting the deficit. Anyway, a year passes and a new version of this exchange reappears on the internet not as a joke but as a unequivocal declaration from the coalition leader that “aliens in UFOs have visited earth.” According to George Filer’s ‘Filers Files’ Cameron actually said: ‘I am convinced the Earth has been visited by aliens and vow to publish any secret files that may exist on UFOs if I become Prime Minister.”

Of course this isn’t nearly as exciting as Cameron’s honest admission that he has no idea “whether any of the sightings which have taken place have any basis in truth” and that most UFO claims, when subjected to critical scrutiny, turn out to have rational explanations. While Dave checks his postbag you can revisit the amusing exchange between Cameron and Hall on YouTube.

The Sea Monster Files

2010-05-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

The Royal Navy is not hiding any secret files on sea monsters - but crews who make unusual sightings may have recorded their experiences in ship logbooks. This revelation emerged as a result of a Freedom of Information request made by marine biologist Sebastian Darby. Darby’s request asked the MoD if there were “any abnormally large, or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea that haven’t been revealed to the public.” If such creatures did exist, he argued, it would be in the public interest to publish the facts as the lives of marine biologists could be at risk. The original request and response from the Navy FOI officer can seen on the helpful What Do They Know website here.

The response says MoD does not keep “any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters”. But the navy did encourage personnel to record sightings of marine mammals “and its possible this could include unusual sightings.” All such reports were sent to the UK Hydrographic Office in Somerset, but individual ship’s logs are retained until they are deposited at The National Archives after 30 years. But a search of thousands of ship’s logs for entries on sea monster sightings would exceed the cost limits allowed for a FOI request.

Nautical folklore is replete with such stories and first-hand accounts of sightings have been recorded in Atlantic waters since the Middle Ages. In more recent centuries, one of the most celebrated sea serpent reports was made by the captain and officers of the frigate HMS Daedalus off the Cape of Good Hope in the South Atlantic on 6 August 1848 (see image, right). On arrival in England the captain, Peter M’Quhae sent details to the Admiralty and to The Times newspaper. Later, he personally supervised a detailed drawing of the 60 ft long creature. But his story was rejected by palaeontologist Professor Richard Owen, who insisted the crew had seen a giant seal.

A number of other 19^th century accounts have emerged in British Admiralty files deposited at The National Archives in Kew. One contains an account of a sea serpent written by Captain James Stockdale in May 1830. Stockdale and the crew of the barque Rob Roy were near the island of St Helena when they heard a scuffling noise in the water. As they turned to the port bow they were amazed to see the head of “a great thundering sea snake” whose head rose six feet out of the water “as square with our topsail [and] his tail was square with the foremast.” Stockdale said his ship was 171 feet long with the foremast 42 feet from the stern, which would make the monster 129 feet long. He reported to his masters in London:

“If I had not seen it I could not have believed it but there was no mistake or doubt of its length – for the brute was so close I could even smell his nasty fishy smell.”

Unusual reports like these appear to have been filed away without comment by the Admiralty, in much the same way that the Air Ministry dealt with reports of flying saucers and UFOs from RAF crews during the 20^th century. Unless a clear threat was identified, either from sea monsters or aliens, sightings like these were classified as interesting but of “no defence significance.”

Ewe couldn't make it up!

2010-05-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

The idea that aliens are mutilating farm animals and other creatures began in the USA during the 1960s. Opinion is divided between those who believe the wave of mysterious deaths of cattle that followed can be attributed to predators, nefarious military experiments, cult activity or- whisper it!- real aliens. But it was inevitable that “mutes”, like most other UFOlogical legends, would be exported from the USA to the rest of the world. The phenomenon in the UK is sporadic and has tended to preoccupy the energies of the type of UFO buff that Patrick Moore used to describe as ‘independent thinkers’. We didn’t have to wait long for The Sun to set this hare running and in April, under the frivolous headline “Baas Attacks” we were told that farmers near Shrewsbury in Shropshire had found bodies of sheep which had been “lasered” by mysterious orange lights in the sky, leaving the poor creatures without brains or eyes. Others have been found with neatly drilled holes via which brains and internal organs have been extracted, and so on.

The source for The Sun’s story was ‘UFOlogist’ Phil Hoyle who claims that such mutilations are regularly taking place in a 50-mile "corridor" between Shrewsbury and Powys in Wales. Hoyle’s grandly-named ‘Animal Pathology Field Unit’ was featured briefly on BBC3’s I believe in UFOs programme earlier this year, but his wild claims left even the clueless presenter Danny Dyer lost for words. One of the unit’s investigative activities was to organise a skywatch at one of the farms plagued by extraterrestrial mutilators. Afterwards Hoyle was quoted as saying: “The technology involved in these attacks is frightening. For a short while it looked more like a Star Wars battle. These lights and spheres are clearly not ours. They are built by technology and intelligence that's not from here.” The following day he quizzed farmers (none of whom were named or quoted) in the vicinity and found that "all but one had some type of unusual disappearance of animals or deaths with strange injuries".

Now I can understand why The Sun runs this type of 'flat earth' story but when it is picked up by the Press Association and repeated by the Daily Telegraph (5 April 2010) you begin to realize how far fact-checking has declined in British journalism.

For his 2008 book Flat Earth News Nick Davies commissioned Cardiff University to survey the contents of four ‘quality’ newspapers (Times, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph) during two random weeks to assess the source of their editorial content. He found that a massive 80% of the content was drawn from either agency and/or PR sources. That left just 12% of the content that appeared to be generated through the efforts of the paper’s own reporters. This is what Davies calls churnalism - but essentially it is lazy journalism and it is endemic in newsrooms everywhere. Stories like this one are copied without the most basic checks and endlessly recycled on the internet.

Perhaps I’m taking this too seriously – after all newspapers run daft stories every day, as their role is to entertain as well as to inform. But any journalist worthy of the name should have asked why farmers – not usually known for their lack of initiative when it comes to pursuing claims for loss of livestock - had not reported these mutilations to the police or the authorities, or made any claims for compensation. At an even more basic level, who are these farmers and why isn't a single source - apart from Hoyle - named in the story?

It took me less than half an hour to make some basic inquiries with the Animal Health team that is responsible for the Welsh Border region (part of the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs). This established the team had not received a single complaint from farms in this region or even any report of an unexplained animal mutilation during the past five years. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Mama, they're making CGI's at me!

2010-05-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

Also in April The Sun claimed fighter jets had been captured on film in daylight pursuing a UFO over the M5 motorway. We were told “a mystery cameraman” obtained the footage from a West Midlands service station car park and posted the footage on YouTube. Ex MoD saucer-botherer Nick Pope was quoted as saying this was “one of the best videos” he had seen and suggested the object was either a military drone or “the real thing” – “a UFO in our airspace and military aircraft scrambled to intercept.”

But was it? Had the balloon gone up? Or was it just another cynical exercise to attract readers? If so readers were not taken in.

Immediately, commentators dismissed the footage as fake. Questions asked included: why was there just one witness and why was he anonymous? why do both the UFO and the jets appear to be motionless and why do the trucks appear so clean and spotless? Another identified the jets as Russian Sukhoi Su-27s, not normally part of the RAF’s interceptor force!

All the clues pointed towards a clever hoax. Investigative UFOlogist Isaac Koi - who has a fantastic new website here - spent an afternoon scrutinising the mystery footage and consulted CGI experts who have posted similar films on YouTube. One said: “…everything that appears in the video is digital. The textures are very clean. The trucks, the tree, the UFO, the jets. Not mine, but it is very good, and is CGI.”

Not conclusive proof, but it shows what an enquiring kind and a small investment of time can come up with. Koi pointed out there is a P&O container in the foreground of the video on which some serial numbers are visible. Suspiciously, the camera appears to focus on the serial number before shifting to the UFO. He then traced an online 3D image of a P&O container with a serial number visible, which appears to be the same serial number as the container image online.

Conclusive evidence the video is a hoax?

Yes. The creator of the video confessed on 21 April and posted the full video on YouTube, along with a stage-by-stage account of how it was produced using a simple computer programme. It appears the whole story was a clever exercise in viral marketing - with the tabloids and UFO 'experts' all taken in by their will to believe.

Bear in mind that none of the international news outlets - including The Sun and Daily Mail - who ran the original story have told their readers it was a hoax.

As a YouTube viewer commented, the hoax revelation has received just 65 hits in five days. That compares to the original footage, which received hundreds of thousands of views, net comment and international media coverage.

Won't get fooled again?

Only 'till next time.

Victory for Free Speech

2010-04-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

The British Chiropractic Association have dropped their wrong-headed libel action against Simon Singh. The move follows the decision by the Court of Appeal that Simon's comments, published by the Guardian, were honest comment not a statement of fact.

A delighted Simon says:

"It still staggers me that the British Chiropractic Association and half the chiropractors in the UK were making unsubstantiated claims. It still baffles me that the BCA then dared to sue me for libel and put me through two years of hell before I was vindicated. And it still makes me angry that our libel laws not only tolerate but also encourage such ludicrous libel suits. My victory does not mean that our libel laws are okay, because I won despite the libel laws. We still have the most notoriously anti-free speech libel laws in the free world."

50,000 people have now signed the online campaign for libel reform and with a General Election just weeks away, there is a real chance of significant changes to this repressive piece of legislation.

The Chilling Effect of Libel Laws

2010-04-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Simon Singh on his resounding victory in the appeal court for his right to express an opinion on alternative medicine. Simon is being sued by the British Chiropractic Assocation (BCA) for an article he published in The Guardian two years ago, which described some of its treatments as "bogus" and based on insufficient evidence.

Last week's ruling does not bring an end to this farcical action, it simply allows Simon to use the defence of fair comment when the action finally reaches court. Simply to reach this preliminary stage the proceedings have cost both parties a total of £200,000 - proof, if such were needed, that libel remains a rich man's game with the only beneficiaries being m'learned friends. Without the fair comment defence, under Britain's archaic libel laws, Simon would have had to prove his comments were factually true as opposed to an opinion, an experience that England's law lords compared to "an Orwellian Ministry of Truth."

So the battle to reform Britain's libel laws and defend freedom of speech continues. It is shameful that despite promises from the Labour Government for reform the UN human rights committee's criticism of the current system, published in 2008, still stands: "The law law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work."

I urge you all to sign the petition at www.libel-reform.org.

Manchester solicitor Mark Lewis, who acted for Sheffield Wednesday fan Nigel Short and Owlstalk in another recent action, sent me his commentary which I'm pleased to publish here. You can read the background to the Nigel Short story on George Monbiot's blog here.

What has Sheffield Wednesday got in common with an American medical company?

If your mind is going towards “steel”, then that thought is wrong. What both have in common, is the use of libel laws by companies against individuals.

The dust has settled since Sheffield Wednesday decided to sue its fan, Nigel Short and seek an order against “Owlstalk” website to disclose the identities of anonymous bloggers. You might remember the uproar among football fans when Sheffield Wednesday and their then board decided to sue the fans. Even Blades fans united in their support of Wednesday fans who were threatened with being sued for making fairly trivial comments and posting blogs.

The fans stood up to the challenge, Nigel defended the case against him and eventually Sheffield Wednesday, saw sense, and dropped the claim . Nigel never had the chance to have his day in court and so even though there is satisfaction that the claim was dropped and his costs paid (he was represented “No Win No Fee”) the matter was not resolved in a way that allows other football fans to post on websites with the certainty that they will not be sued.

So what you say. If there is a good defence it can be run. Apart from the hell that Nigel had to endure and the lost time, libel cases cost a fortune to defend. Even if you can get the backing of a lawyer who will not charge you, the risk of financial loss if the case goes against you is huge. Lose and you can end up paying costs and damages sometimes over a million pounds. Free speech has never been so dear. That is what is known as the “chilling effect”. Football fans who cannot post on fan websites for fear of being sued, are “chilled” because of the financial risk. The financial loss is only one part. The stress of being a defendant to a claim and the disruption to life is huge.

Libel law is simple. If a claimant has got money then he is likely to win against a defendant who can’t afford to lose. No law, no merits, just the power of money.

The chilling effect became the “killing effect” when doctors and scientists started to get sued. Simon Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractors Association, for an article he wrote in the Guardian.

Dr Peter Wilmshurst is being sued because of an interview he gave to a journalist. Oh yes, I forgot to say, that interview was given to a Canadian journalist in the USA at a scientific conference about cardiology. The website that the article was on is open to subscription viewers only. Oh and the website wasn’t sued, nor was the journalist. No proceedings were issued in America. But Dr Wilmshurst a Consultant at a hospital in Shrewsbury is being sued in an action that NMT estimated would cost £1.5 million. Patients lose out because he has to devote time to defending a court case rather than treat them.

Dr Wilmshurst is defending the claim. He sees it as a principle issue because he needs to speak out. That is how science works. Scientists challenge theories and as a result knowledge develops. If a scientist is scared off from speaking out then we all suffer. The killing effect is not to Peter Wilmshurst or Simon Singh, but those scientists who modify articles and worse those who don’t write articles at all in order to prevent being sued. Put it this way, just think about your own favourite theory – say, which football team is better. Then ask yourself would you say that aloud if you risked being sued for £1 million.

It is for that reason that people are now fighting back and calling for a change in the libel laws to get recognition of a “public interest defence” – it doesn’t matter whether a theory is correct or not, if it is in the interest of the public and has been said honestly then you need to be able to say it.

Defending a claim has to be made affordable. Otherwise the cost of a libel claim and the Claimant friendly laws, leads only to silence. People have to speak out!

Mark Lewis from Manchester is the solicitor who acted for Nigel Short and Owlstalk against the previous board of Sheffield Wednesday, and currently acts for Dr Wilmshurst.

Alone Again: Naturally?

2010-03-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

Professor Paul Davies' new book The Eerie Silence: Are we alone in the universe? was published on 5 March and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and 'UFOs'. I blogged about Davies's views on UFOs earlier this year and the book has now been reviewed by Jon Ronson in The Guardian and by Lord Martin Rees in The Times.

Particularly worth reading are Davies's comments on UFOs and government cover-ups (discussed in Chapter 1). As a student at Royal Holloway during the 1970s Davies was a believer in UFOs as craft visiting Earth from other worlds, and was convinced by the catalogues of ground traces and radar trackings used by UFOlogists as proof that structured craft from elsewhere are regularly visiting Earth.

But his mature views after 40 years as a SETI scientist are worth contrasting with the beliefs of Stan Friedman, Tim Good and the 'disclosure movement'. As chair of the SETI Post-Detection Task Group, it would be Davies who would be the first to announce to the world that contact has been made with an extraterrestrial civilisation, as they would be first to receive it. And he would do that via the scientific community, making any notion that governments would or could successfully conceal such amazing news redundant.

In his review of the book Jon Ronson mentions that at the recent Royal Society conference to mark the 50th anniversay of SETI, a man in dark glasses stood up during the Q&A session with Davies to announce: "Why does SETI ignore what's right in front of us? The 6,000 abductions! The 10,000 cattle mutilations!" His succinct answer was: "To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously." To Davies, unpicking the mysteries of the universe utilising fundamental physics and astrobiology leads to a far more satisfying explanation of the wonders of nature, compared to which the UFO abduction industry is merely a updated medieval demonology.

On the subject of UFOs, Davies appears to have reached the same conclusion as others such as Jenny Randles, Paul Devereux and myself namely that, despite scepticism borne of past experience in investigating UFO incidents:

"it would not surprise me if a small fraction of cases involve new or little-understood atmospheric or psychological phenomena. But whatever lies behind that stubborn residue of hard-to-explain cases, I see no reason to attribute them to the activities of alien beings visiting our planet in flying saucers. UFOs, like ghost stories, are fun to read, but cannot be taken seriously as evidence for extraterrestrial beings. They do serve a useful purpose, however, by providing a window on how the human mind imagines aliens and alien technology. What is striking about the accounts is not their weird and otherworldly character, but their distinctly mundane and human-like quality. We would surely expect of extraterrestrials something more extraordinary than humanoid beings piloting the equivalent of souped-up Stealth bombers" (pg 22 of The Eerie Silence).

This is a viewpoint which is entirely sympathetic to my own position after 20 years on the flying saucer beat. As I was quoted by The Times: on 18 February "I think either aliens are watching our TV and adapting their aircraft accordingly, or people are seeing these things in popular culture and adapting them in their own imagination."

MoD Endgame: new UFO reports destroyed

2010-02-27T06:42:00.000-08:00

Britain's Ministry of Defence is destroying all UFO reports it receives so it can avoid answering Freedom of Information requests.

This decision means that any future sightings - even those made by reliable sources such as aircrew, radar and police - will in future be shredded after 30 days, according to a formerly secret document released to me in response to a request under the FOIA.

I released copies of the original documents to the Press Association and Channel 4 News who have exclusively made them available to the public as a simple download from their website.

According to a November 2009 MoD briefing, the new policy took effect immediately after the decision to close the UFO desk and the public 'UFO hotline'. Officials said these "serve no Defence purpose and merely encourage the generation of correspondence of no Defence value." A defence minister, Kevan Jones MP, approved the decision:

"...that reported sightings...should be answered by a standard letter and, on the advice of Corporate Memory and The National Archives, should be retained for 30 days and then destroyed, largely removing any future FOI liability and negating the need to release future files post 30 November 2009."

The justification given for the decision is a tripling in the numbers of UFO sightings reported to the MoD, from an average of 150 reports per year during the past decade to a whopping 634 in 2009. "The increased workload caused by this upsurge...is now exceeding the level of staff resource allocated to the task and impacting on other tasks," according to the briefing. No doubt many of these additional reports were made as a result of the campaign by The Sun newspaper to persuade its readership that orange lights floating the skies were alien spaceships rather than Chinese lanterns.

The MoD has for some years been looking for an excuse to close down the UFO desk and this tripling of reports has provided the opportunity they needed. Anticipating the decision would attract outrage from UFOlogists, the MoD predicted they "may individually, or as a group, mount a vociferous, but short-lived campaign to reinstate the 'UFO Hotline' suggesting that, by not investigating UFOs, MoD is failing its Defence commitments." It adds: "It is possible that there will be a resulting short term increase in public and Parliamentary correspondence [but] the press interest is...likely to be more frivolous in tone than critical."

Clearly rattled by claims they were hiding information on UFOs, MoD reveal they had "deliberately avoided formal approaches to other Governments on this issue [as these] would be viewed by 'ufologists' as evidence of international collaboration and conspiracy." As a result MoD officials searched the US Department of Defence website where they found a press release that stated "the issue of UFOs is no longer being investigated by the US Government". This policy was implemented following the closure of Project Blue Book in 1969 and the subsequent transfer of records to the US National Archives (NARA).

As I suspected all along, the closure of the UFO desk and the decision to transfer all remaining MoD files to The National Archives are linked. Referring to the US example the British MoD briefing adds: "This is broadly in line with our proposed way forward. Public sources suggest that other Governments are taking a similar approach to ours, with the Canadian, French and Danish Governments publishing their historic UFO files in recent years."

The five page briefing released simultaneously to me and colleague Joe McGonagle was originally circulated to Secretary of State Bob Ainsworth, senior civil servants and military officials including the Chief of Air Staff, and intelligence branches of RAF Air Command on 11 November last year.

It included a "defence newsbrief" that said the decision to end all further UFO investigations was taken because the task "diverts resources away from core defence business...MoD has no interest in receiving reports of UFO sightings and will not be actioning the reports that we receive post November 2009."

A Defence Instruction and Notice spelling out the new policy was circulated to all military establishments in the UK on 1 December (see copy, above right). It contained an order that "stations...contacted by members of the public are advised not to encourage them to report a UFO sighting or expect an investigation to take place."

The new policy means that any UFO reports received in future will be answered by a standard letter, with the correspondence destroyed within 30 days: "This would mean that there would be no FOI liability and no requirement to release any further files to the National Archives, since the only filing generated would be copies of the standard response."

It also allows MoD to extend its ongoing transfer of files to The National Archives to include all the most recent Air Command UFO files opened before 30 November 2009 when the decision was implemented. This means that by the end of the disclosure programme MoD will retain no further paperwork on UFOs.

The document concludes: "There is no merit in maintaining a dedicated UFO desk in Air Command, nor in adding to the staff resource allocated to the UFO task. The current UFO staff resource should be redeployed to other public and Parliamentary tasks as soon as possible."

Intriguingly, this decision does not apply to, or signify any change in "the standing arrangements for control and defence of UK airspace." Under the question: "are our skies being left undefended?" the press briefing answers that: "There will be no change to current arrangements and air space integrity will be maintained through the existing mixture of civil and military radar and aircraft on quick reaction alert."

Concluding the policy, a defence official writes that MoD's public response to inquiries on UFOs in future will stress that:

MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra terrestrials
In more than fifty years, no UFO sighting reported to the [MoD] has indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK
[MoD] have a responsibility to use defence resources only for activities which contribute to the defence and security of the UK
No defence benefit arises from the receipt of UFO reports from the public and responding to [them] diverts MoD resources from tasks of relevance to defence.

The disclosure of this document makes it evident this is the endgame as far as the MoD are concerned. Clearly, in a time of economic crisis savings have to be made and public spending cuts provided the opportunity they needed to finally rid themselves of a subject they regard as a nuisance. Indeed, the similarity between the concluding statement and the recommendations of the University of Colorado report that led to the closure of the USAF's Project Blue Book in 1969 bear close scrutiny.

But if MoD have learned anything from 50 years experience it should be that UFOs will simply not go away. I suspect that the next time a near-miss incident involving civil or military aircraft occurs, they will be forced to rethink this somewhat short-sighted policy. Only time will tell.

Take us to your leader?

2010-02-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

The release of the fifth tranche of UFO files by The National Archives has been widely covered by the UK and international media.

It didn't surprise me that many led with the ludicrous story about UFO sightings in the vicinity of former Tory leader Michael Howard's home in Kent shortly before the 1997 General Election.

The basis for the claim was that assorted people saw lights in the sky and "a large triangular object" hovering above a field near Folkestone one night in March that year. Examining the details closely, the link between the "UFO" and Howard was, to be generous, a little tenuous. A UFO enthusiast was quoted by the BBC as saying that the craft didn't appear to be interested in the girl who saw it "[which] left me wondering if its purpose had something to do with Mr Howard."

Quite what that means I've no idea, but that is what this entire story amounts to. According to the MoD file on the incident (a whitewash, of course) Howard wasn't at home at the time, there was no security alert and nothing unusual was seen on radar - which suggests the UFO was most likely a perfectly ordinary helicopter or low-flying aircraft.

So if aliens were involved, they hadn't done their homework as Howard was out on the campaign trail. Perhaps they were actually looking for his colleague, John Redwood, who is frequently caricatured as "Mr Spock".

Coupled with Ann Widdecombe's declaration that there was "something of the night" about Howard, this story was a gift for the press: "Was Michael Howard buzzed by aliens?" asked BBC News Online), whilst The Guardian ran the story on its front page with the headline: "Earthlings, take us to your leader...of the opposition."

Inevitably, extraterrestrial interest in Mr Howard was top of the agenda when I was interviewed by John Humphries on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning. The BBC had spoken to Howard, who had said he had never taken the story seriously.

Far more interesting, I told Humphries, was the account in the files describing RAF gun camera film of UFOs seen by MoD official Ralph Noyes at a secret screening in 1970.

Some newspapers did cover this intriguing anecdote, along with my comments linking changes in UFO shapes with depictions of advanced aircraft in film and media, from the "flying saucers" in 1950s B-movies to the black triangular UFOs reported from the late 1980s when photographs of the USAF Stealth fighter and B-2 flying wing were first declassified.

This line was used to full effect by the BBC on their World Briefing and by Channel 4 news, which quoted me saying that either the aliens were watching our TV shows and adapting the shape of their craft in response, or there was a link between popular culture and what people reported as UFOs.:

"It's impossible to prove a direct link between what people are reading and watching and what they report as UFOs," I said, "but one interpretation could be that the latest advances in technology may be influencing what people see in the sky."

And finally...the podcast I recorded for The National Archives' launch of the latest set of UFO files is now available on YouTube and has had 150,000 views so far.

Some of the comments are hilarious, but my favourite says: "Dr David Clarke explains away every incedent [sic] as something not related with extraterrestrials. I don't know how or why that makes him an 'expert on UFOs'." MoD is just purging files of nonsense and are fully aware of what's going on." Another corker, from 'AristotleP', adds: "Dr David Clarke is a government sponsored UFO debunker."

Kevin Randle once said that you haven't made it in the wacky world of UFOlogy until you are accused of working for the CIA or MI5. That's a sure sign that when your detractors are unable to sustain any form of logical argument based upon facts, their last desperate option is to say you are a government agent paid to debunk their cherished beliefs.

UFOs Galore: 24 files released by The National Archives

2010-02-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

The National Archives have released the fifth collection of UFO files from the Ministry of Defence. The files can be downloaded free of charge for one month from the TNA UFO website which also contains a 10-minute audio/visual summary of the contents and a guide to the highlights.

As TNA’s consultant for the project I have been helping to prepare for what is the largest release of files to date. There are 24 files in this tranche containing more than 6,000 pages of documents spanning 1994-2000. The correspondence files span the period 1994-99 and the UFO report files begin in August 1996 and end in September 2000.

1996 was one of the busiest years for UFO reporting, with 609 incidents logged by the MoD. The popularity of the subject, encouraged by TV, films and media hype, continued into 1997 when 425 reports were received. But from that point there was a steady decline in reporting, with 193 incidents in 1998, 228 in 1999 and 210 in 2000.

It is important to note that most of these reports should not be regarded as “UFOs”, as few if any were investigated or followed up to the stage at which it was possible to eliminate even the most basic explanations. An Air Ministry study in 1955 found that 90% of sightings they received at that time could be explained if inquiries were made before the scent went cold. In the 1950s sightings were investigated by air intelligence officers, who found many could be accounted for as balloons, aircraft, fireballs and celestial objects.

By 1996 when these MoD files were compiled, few of the incidents were investigated thoroughly and even the most interesting were simply filed away. This was due to lack of time and resources, as desk officers were distracted dealing with correspondence with UFOlogists and members of the public who believed they were hiding facts about alien visitors.

This does not mean the files contain nothing of interest. This tranche contains a fascinating example of a “Close Encounter of the Second Kind”, the account of a man who suffered an unexplained illness after he was struck by a beam of light from the sky. The identity of the witness – who worked in a funeral parlour at Newport, Gwent – has been redacted from the file. But a two-page report on the case completed by an officer at a RAF base in Wales the morning after the encounter, on 27 January 1997, describes the incident in bare detail.

Whilst driving near Ebbw Vale at 10.40 the witness saw “a massive star” approaching his car from the east. Then a “tube of light” came down from the sky at a 45 degree angle, surrounding him. He stopped and switched his headlights off as “the light encircled the car, remaining for perhaps five minutes.” During this time he got out of the car and walked through the brilliant light. He noticed there was no sound as would have been expected if the light was a searchlight from a helicopter or aircraft. Very frightened, he began to feel ill and vomited later that night. As he returned to the car he noticed it was covered in dirt or dust and found his radio and mobile phone would not work. When he called the RAF the following morning he was still feeling ill and had developed a skin condition that needed medical treatment. But that is all the brief report tells us. There is no evidence in the file to suggest the MoD followed up this startling incident or collected evidence from the scene (DEFE 24/1988)

Highlights from the UFO Files/1

2010-02-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

UFOs on Radar

DEFE 24/1977 – contains papers on the Boston Stump radar incident (see my 2006 Fortean Times article for full background). Unusual phenomena seen on radar are oft-cited by UFOlogists as examples of hard evidence for the existence of “structured craft of unknown origin.” The key radar case in these papers occurred during a UFO flap over East Anglia on 5 October 1996. Police reported seeing flashing coloured lights over The Wash and alerted the coastguard, who contacted the RAF. This call led radar operators to link the UFO scare with an unidentified “blip” they could see hovering above Boston in Lincolnshire. But as this "UFO" did not move for nine hours – until dawn broke - cool observation confirmed it was a "permanent echo" caused by the 273ft (83m) spire of St Botolph’s Church, known locally as Boston Stump. The lights seen and captured on video by the police (still taken from police video - above right) were easily explained as bright stars which faded in the dawn sky. This illustrates how easy it is, even for experienced operators, to misinterpret natural phenomena seen on radar as something extraordinary, particularly when a UFO flap is underway.

DEFE 24/2008 – UFO on radar, Prestwick Airport, Glasgow. Air traffic controllers at Prestwick in Scotland tracked a huge UFO on the morning of 15 February 1999. The blip appeared to be ten miles wide and two miles long and travelled at a speed estimated at 1000 knots across the Irish Sea. This report triggered an investigation by RAF Air Defence experts. They examined the video tape from Prestwick control tower and compared its contents with recordings from RAF air defence radars. This revealed there were no aircraft in the area at the time and nothing unusual was detected by RAF radars. The conclusion was: “recorded radar data replays do not support the sighting”.

DEFE 24/1989 – Radar/visual UFO. Even more intriguing is a brief report of a sighting made by the crew of a fishing trawler in the North Sea, 19 miles northeast of Fraserburgh. At lunchtime on 15 August 1997 one spotted a “round, flat bodied, shiny object” at a distance of less than a mile from the ship at low altitude. The object was visible for 30 minutes during which it was picked on the ship’s surface search radar and was observed by the other three crew members. The UFO approached the trawler, then moved out to sea before it “vanished almost instantaneously.”

Physical Evidence?

DEFE 24/1988 – In March 1997 mysterious "angel hair" was dumped by a UFO on a suburban garden in Birmingham. Angel hair is a cobweb or jelly-like substance that drops from UFOs and has also been reported during experiences with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like fairy food and ectoplasm it quickly evaporates before it can be examined. In this case the observer was alerted by barking dogs to the presence of a large blue triangular-shaped object hovering silently over his garden at 4 AM one morning. As he went outside the UFO suddenly shot off into sky and disappeared, leaving behind “a silky-white substance on the tree-tops”, some of which he collected inside a jam jar. There is nothing in the file to suggest MoD were interested in obtaining this sample for further analysis. This became just another routine call logged by the UFO desk and forgotten about

Alien Abduction and Cattle Mutilations

DEFE 24/1979 contains a policy statement on reports of "alien abductions" prepared by UFO desk officer Kerry Philpott in 1996 in response to a letter from Welsh UFOlogist Chris Fowler. As the existence of intelligent ET life is not proven, the subject is “a non-issue” as far as MoD were concerned. The letter adds that “any form of abduction is a civil police matter but can only be investigated if there is any evidence to support the claim.” Similarly, in response to a letter asking if MoD had investigated links between UFOs, BSE and unexplained cattle mutilations, Philpott responded: “criminal aspects of animal mutilations are matters for the civil police, who would investigate any claims based upon the evidence available.”

UFO crash at US listening post?

DEFE 24/1981 – contains a bizarre claim linking RAF Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, the controversial joint US/UK base for electronic eavesdropping with UFOs. In 1997 a UFOlogist wrote to the base claiming that two farmers nearby had seen a disc-shaped object inside the base perimeter escorted by guards. The farmers were ordered to move away from the perimeter fence. In a joint statement, the base and MoD said "no UFO/flying saucer has landed in the vicinity of Menwith Hill and the base had no connection with UFO research.”

Rendlesham Forest Incident

DEFE 24/2011 - The ‘Rendlesham Forest’ UFOs reported by USAF security policemen at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk had become a cause celebre by 1999. In this year Scottish UFOlogist James Easton published copies of the original witness statements made by the USAF security police in January 1981 that he had obtained from an American UFO group. Copies of these statements were sent to the MoD and placed on a departmental file.

Highlights from the UFO files/part 2

2010-02-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

Gun Camera Film

DEFE 24/1966 – contains a letter to the MoD from Ralph Noyes (pictured right), a retired senior MoD official who had responsibility for UFO incidents. In his 1994 letter Noyes describes seeing gun camera film of unidentified aerial phenomena captured by RAF fighter pilots during the 1950s. He claims this was shown at a secret sub ground film-show arranged for Air Defence staff at the MoD Main Building in 1970 when Noyes was head of DS8 (one of the branches responsible for UFOs). Noyes’ letter says a representative from the Meteorological Office was also present.

“…we were shown some slides, purportedly from aerial photographs taken by air crew. The highlight was a couple of brief clips of what I understood to be gun-camera material obtained as far back as 1956…the material was, on the whole, unimpressive: fuzzy greyish blobs in the daylight shots; small glowing globular objects in the night films. We were invited to comment. A civilian – the Met Office man, I think – suggested that we were witnessing unusual meteorological events. One of the Ops people said that ground-radar and air-radar responses had been reported on occasion. Somebody reminded us of the tendency of radar to produce spurious images on occasion. No conclusions were reached….Reflecting on this episode, I now rather feel that somebody in [Air Defence] had become uneasy about the occasional reports from air crew of unusual aerial objects but did not wish to expose himself to ridicule. The small informal gathering in the cinema was an opportunity to test the reactions of a few of us to the unusual objects caught on film. The lack of much response from any of us probably persuaded [him] to drop the subject.”

Despite a search of the archives by MoD staff in 1993-94 no trace of these films could be found and Noyes adds: “Quite possibly, the photographic material was simply scrapped, or ‘pinched’ for somebody’s private collection of curiosa, or conceivably passed to the Met Office.”

Politicians and UFOs

Some UFOlogists are obsessive letter-writers and this release contains a number of files dealing with “persistent correspondents” who have plagued the MoD and politicians with demands for information about UFOs. DEFE 24/2016, for instance, runs to 318 pages of correspondence between a Welsh UFOlogist, Dr Colin Ridyard, and the MoD. His campaign began in 1996 and ended in 2000 when Ridyard made an official complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman after his requests for disclosure of UFO documents were refused. During these four years Ridyard wrote 35 letters to the MoD, encouraged his MP to submit three Parliamentary Enquiries and organised a petition that was submitted to the House of Commons.

Other files feature a series of letters from UFO believers addressed first to the Tory Prime Minister John Major and then, from 1997, the newly-elected Tony Blair. These ask for the Prime Minister’s views on UFOs and alien life and appeal for the release of secret documents they believe the MoD are with-holding. On this evidence, David Cameron should expect a full postbag from UFO believers when he enters Downing Street in May! (for examples see DEFE 24/1967, DEFE 24/1968, DEFE 24/2011, DEFE 24/1969).

DEFE 24/1994 – contains details of one of the most hyped, and least substantial, UFO stories of 1997. This concerns a supposed UFO sighting in the vicinity of the Kent home of the former Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard. The basis of the story was that a journalist and others had seen a triangular shaped object hovering near Howard’s home one night in March. The connection with Howard was tenuous, to say the least, and inquiries by the RAF found there was no unusual air activity or any security alert in the area at the time.

DEFE 24/2017 - Councillor Billy Buchanan, of Falkirk District Council, wrote to PM John Major in 1994 asking for an inquiry into a series of unexplained UFO sightings around Bonnybridge, a small town between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Press reports had described this region as "the Bonnybridge Triangle”. In his letter Cllr Buchanan claimed more than 600 separate incidents had been reported over a two year period. In response MoD said there was no need for them to investigate anything as they had received only a handful of reports from the Falkirk area. They felt most could be explained by aircraft overflying the area. In 1997 Cllr Buchanan wrote to Tony Blair again requesting an investigation but received a standard response from the MoD.

Nick Pope

DEFE 24/2000 –In 1995 former MoD desk officer Nick Pope announced he had become a believer in UFOs and alien abductions. Whilst still a MoD employee, he published a book and interviews appeared in a number of national newspapers including the Daily Mail. As a result, in 1996 a member of the public quizzed the MoD on how they could justify their dismissive policy towards UFOs when one of their own officials was openly claiming there was evidence that UK airspace had been penetrated by ET craft. MoD stonewalled this perfectly reasonable question and told the inquirer that Pope’s statements were his own personal views and did not reflect MoD policy. This response led to an official complaint against the MoD by the writer, who said his “enquiries have been deliberately ignored and my correspondence has been met with bland and patronizing replies.”

DEFE 24/1967 – This file contains correspondence between the Spanish UFOlogist Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and the MoD’s UFO desk officer Nick Pope concerning a flap of UFO reports over the UK in the early hours of 31 March 1993. This has subsequently become known as “the Cosford Incident” and is cited by Pope as the one unexplained case that helped to transform him from a skeptic to a believer in the existence of UFOs piloted by extraterrestrials. However, this file shows that Ballester Olmos supplied Pope with a comprehensive explanation for the sightings on 21 March 1994. He enclosed copies of a NORAD statement and computer simulation which shows the UFO was in fact the rocket that launched the Russian ELINT satellite Cosmos 2238. This was confirmed by other sightings made in Ireland and France on the same night, which resulted in a press release by the French CNES Space Agency confirming the Cosmos rocket as the source. In his response to Ballester Olmos dated 6 April 1994, Nick Pope makes the following statement: “I think it is clear that most of the UFO sightings that occurred on the night in question can be attributed to this event.”

All these files can be downloaded free of charge for the first month from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos

Libel Reform Campaign and Simon Singh

2010-02-04T04:31:00.000-08:00

This article under my byline was published by the Sheffield Telegraph, 4 February 2010

A science writer who is being sued for expressing his views on alternative medicine brings his campaign for a change in the libel laws to Sheffield next week.

Dr Simon Singh, who has a MBE for services to science, says if he loses his battle - which reaches the Court of Appeal on 22 February - it will be a massive blow against freedom of speech.

The writer’s Libel Reform campaign is supported by a galaxy of celebrities from the world of science, the arts and comedy, including Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins and former government chief scientist Sir David King.

Sheffield Hallam MP and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has added his voice to the campaign, saying he is “deeply concerned” about the chilling effect libel laws are having on scientific debate and investigative journalism.

“Our libel law has turned a country once famed for its traditions of freedom and liberty into a legal farce where people and corporations with money can impose silence on others at will,” he said. “I believe in raucous freedom of speech, not gagging orders in our courts.”

A pledge to reform the libel laws was adopted by the Lib Dems at last year’s party conference and an early day motion – signed by 159 MPs from all political parties – is adding to the pressure on Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who is reviewing the libel laws, to make a radical change.

Dr Singh has a PhD in particle physics and has worked as a director and producer on TV programmes including Tomorrow’s World and Horizon. He was sued by the British Chiropractic Association two years ago after he claimed the organisation “happily promotes bogus treatments” in an article published by a national newspaper. They demanded an apology and retraction and won a preliminary court ruling against the writer last June.

In the ruling, Mr Justice Eady ruled that Dr Singh’s use of the word “bogus” meant he was accusing the association of being dishonest in promoting treatments that it knew did not work. Dr Singh refutes Eady’s interpretation, claiming that he simply meant that “alternative therapists who offer treatments unsupported by reasonable evidence are deluded rather than deliberately dishonest.”

Law lords will decide on the outcome of the case at the Court of Appeal in two weeks, but Dr Singh already faces a crippling £100,000 bill for the costs of defending himself to this point.

"Whatever decision they reach will have a great impact," said Dr Singh, who will comment on the legal battle at Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub on 8 February. "It will either reinforce the current situation or overturn the current libel laws."

In the UK the all the weight of proof in a libel action rests on the defendant. Unlike the USA, whose constitution defends the right to freedom of speech, libel in this country depends upon people’s ability to pay. This had led to libel tourism, which Nick Clegg has said is “making a mockery of British justice, with foreign plaintiffs able to bring cases against foreign defendants when the publications in question may have sold just a handful of copies in England.”

People who are sued for libel are not entitled to legal aid and most ordinary people simply cannot afford the huge legal bill to defend themselves in court. The UK Index on Censorship has found the cost of defending a libel action in the UK is one hundred times greater than anywhere in mainland Europe. In a speech to the Royal Society last month Nick Clegg said:

“Of course people have the right to protect their reputations from damaging and false statements made recklessly, irresponsibly or with malice. But scientists must be allowed to question claims fearlessly, especially those that relate to medical care, environmental damage and public safety, if we are to protect ourselves against dubious research practices, phoney treatments and vested corporate interests. English libel law as it stands is obstructing that process and threatens the public good as a result. The prospect of a costly, protracted legal battle hangs over journalists, editors and academics seeking to ask basic questions about the evidence for practices they believe may put people at risk.”

Dr Singh added: " When people think about libel they tend to think about celebrities and tabloid exposures. But that is not what this is about. Celebrities have a reputation to defend and the media should not abuse that. However, right now people are being sued for writing about important scientific research. This is not salacious gossip, this is about matters of real public interest.

"Now is the time for the public to sit up and say we want to live in a society where free speech and responsible journalism is something that is valued. If they do then they need to sign up to the Libel Reform campaign petititon put pressure on their MPs to support a change in the law. Politicians are open to this change right now."

*“Trick or Treatment: alternative medicine on trial”, starts at 6.30 pm on Monday, 8 February 2010, at The Lescar on Sharrow Vale Road, Sheffield. Entry £2.

Ex-files Re-upholstered

2010-01-31T09:08:00.000-08:00

The UFO and conspiracy industry suffered a double-whammy this week. At the Royal Society conference on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence scientists dismissed the UFO “evidence” as unconvincing. Gordon Brown's government isn’t convinced either, as shown by the MoD's recent decision to close its UFO desk and the public hotline on the grounds they are an “inappropriate use of defence resources”. But all is not lost, thanks to the nation's best-selling tabloid.

This was an opportunity The Sun could not allow to pass by. The paper that likes to believe it has a direct link to the public mood stepped in to fill the void by establishing its own X-files bureau. The Sun has a long history of inventing its own content. Back in 1985 the tabloid, then edited by the legendary Kelvin Mackenzie, told its readers that a popular print of a tearful street urchin known as the Crying Boy was cursed after running a story about a series of house fires where it had survived unscathed. When hundreds of people threw out their prints Mackenzie knew he had hit the jackpot, telling the punters: "Send them to us and we'll burn them for you."

Like the crying boy legend, the UFO bureau has "got legs" as Mackenzie would say. And who best to act as The Sun's “UFO expert” than Nick Pope, who is happy to take Murdoch's cash in return for regular endorsement of every submitted fuzzy photo showing everything from seagulls to Chinese lanterns as proof that aliens are buzzing us.

Pope described his former employer’s decision to close the real X-files as “bizarre” because of “massive public interest in the issue.” If there's something unusual in our skies, he says, then "we need to know or we could be leaving ourselves open to terrorist attack" (Sun, 22 January). But he failed to appreciate the delicious irony hidden in his own words which leads me to suspect this is all part of what Baldrick would call "a cunning plan."

What created the massive public interest that Pope speaks of? The final set of UFO sighting statistics released by the MoD revealed they received 634 UFO reports in 2009, triple the numbers logged over the previous two years. The vast majority of these "UFOs" are reports of lights in the sky sent in by members of the public who have seen Chinese lanterns, aircraft, bright stars and other common IFOs. This is precisely the sort of tedious and uncorroborated reports the MoD know are of no interest to them. To spend scarce public funds following these up, as Nick Pope believes they should, is a mad way to squander resources at a time when soldiers are dying in Afghanistan.

Which leads me to ponder further on who or what is behind the tripling of UFO reports received by the MoD over the past two years. Who has been encouraging people to interpret what they are seeing not as lanterns sent up for fun but as alien spacecraft? Who is it that has been running a relentless UFO campaign aimed at keeping the subject firmly in the public domain and any contrary voice out of a paper that claims to tell its readers the truth? Why that must be The Sun!

Now, how about this for a conspiracy theory: Nick Pope finds himself out of a job and then the MoD pulls the plug on its own X-files, which until now have provided his bread and butter. So he then steps in to help a tabloid newspaper invent a phony UFO invasion to create a new job for himself. You couldn't make it up.

The Eerie Silence - UFOs and astronomers

2010-01-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

The search for extraterrestrial life was back in the news again this week. Learned astronomers told the Royal Society that evidence of life elsewhere in the universe is likely to be found during the 21st century – but the idea that aliens were already here flying around in UFOs was laughed out of court.

That was the signal put out to the media by the world’s leading space scientists who gathered in London for a two day conference to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, said the chances of discovering life during this century were better than ever. With powerful space telescopes such as that carried by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, now orbiting the sun, the chances of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting stars in other solar systems have increased. “Were we to find life, even the simplest life, elsewhere that would clearly be one of the great discoveries of the 21^st century,” Rees told the BBC. "I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive."

For decades the optimistic predictions of SETI scientists like Frank Drake and Paul Davies, who both spoke at the conference, have encouraged the rest of us to accept that intelligent civilisations must exist elsewhere in the vast universe. But the days when governments feared mass panic if such claims were confirmed appear to be a thing of the past. Bookies Ladbrokes slashed the odds on ET life being found by the end of the decade from 5000-1 to 1000-1 after Lord Rees made his comments, which suggests we no longer fear aliens but are desperate to meet them.

But the disconnect between the carefully considered views of astronomers and those of the UFO industry – which believes aliens are already here and the facts are being concealed from the public – are still a universe apart. Lord Rees summarily dismissed UFOs by saying: “I’m utterly unconvinced.” His views were shared by others who covered the proceedings including Michael Hanlon, science writer from the Daily Mail who wrote: “Despite all the X-Files claims and conspiracy theories, there has not been a credible account of a flying saucer visitation by extra-terrestrials to Earth.”

Professor Paul Davies, whose new book The Eerie Silence: Are we alone in the universe? is published in March, is better placed than any of his contemporaries to appreciate the “will to believe” in UFOs. Back in his student days Davies was a member of BUFORA and a believer in UFOs and intelligent alien life. In 1968 he sent a letter to an academic journal to protest about an article by the eminent physicist R.V.Jones that debunked flying saucers. Drawing upon the same arguments relied upon by present-day UFO proponents such as Stan Friedman, the young Davies urged Jones to re-examine the hard evidence for UFO visitations that included ground traces and images captured on film and radar.

But speaking forty years later on BBC Radio 4, Paul Davies’s views have radically changed. Unlike the 1960s, when few scientists entertained the idea of alien life he said “it is now fashionable to think the universe is teeming with life.” Although he believes it is likely life does exist in other solar systems, the bottom line is that despite the ET hype of the past five decades “the observational evidence for life beyond earth, never mind intelligent life, is totally lacking.”

Asked if he believed aliens had already visited us, his reply – based upon 40 years of reflection since his student days – could not be clearer. He does not take UFO stories seriously and has not seen any convincing evidence of alien visitation during human history. Of course the conspiracy nuts will account for this by dismissing Davies as just another pawn in the international cover-up.

But the four decade transition of Davies from young UFO buff to a cautious and open-minded scientist is a lesson many others dazzled by the UFO "evidence" can and should learn from.

On Sunday, 7 February, the Observer published a detailed examination of what SETI has achieved fifty years since Frank Drake first pointed the Green Bank radio telescope towards Tau Ceti.

The article, by Robin McKie, quoted astronomer Seth Shotak who said he was confident a signal from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilisation would be found by 2025:

"Then we will ask other observatories to check it out, and if they back us we will simply announce the existence of a message from ET. There will be no message to the President and no interference from Men In Black."

Northern Lights

2010-01-31T08:41:00.000-08:00

Missiles and rockets launched by the Russians have been source for a long list of UFO flaps in northern Europe during the past 50 years. During the Cold War UFOs provided a useful cover for military activities which the Soviets wished to conceal from the West. So it was no surprise when on 9 December last year thousands of Norwegians were treated to a spectacular spiral of light in the pre-dawn sky, the Russian defence ministry initially claimed it was nothing to do with them. The two minute light-show was visible for hundreds of miles across northern Norway and footage captured by witnesses was quickly posted across the world. Sky-watchers described seeing a bright blue tail tapering to earth which exploded into a giant white Catherine wheel of spinning light. From the images and the duration, it was clear this was not a fireball meteor or a display of the Northern Lights and inevitably speculation turned to UFOs and “portals to another world.” But 24 hours later Russian defence officials confirmed the plume of light was caused by a Bulava missile test-fired from a nuclear submarine in the White Sea. Defence analyst Pavel Flegenhauer said the images were consistent with an embarrassing failure, something the Russians were keen to conceal. He added: “At least this failed test made some nice fireworks for the Norwegians.”

MoD UFO Files Disclosure

2010-01-18T04:16:00.000-08:00

Using the Freedom of Information Act, I have obtained a copy of a document drawn up by the MoD in September 2007 when Defence Minister Des Browne approved the transfer of the UFO files to Britain’s National Archives.
In the 5-page document a senior MoD official says:

“Since the end of WW2, MoD have been tasked with recording and, from time to time, investigating UFO sightings. Contrary to what many members of the public believe, MoD has no interest in the subject of extraterrestrial life forms visiting the UK, only in ensuring the integrity and security of UK airspace."

The writer goes on to explain although the files contain nothing of relevance to the defence of the realm, the contents are of "keen interest to a large worldwide group of amateur and professional 'UFOlogists'" who had bombarded the Ministry with complex requests for information since the arrival of the Freedom of Information Act in 2005. The 'UFO desk' - closed in December 2009 - received 199 requests in 2005, 140 in 2006 and 120 in 2007.

Processing these requests had become “increasingly costly and time consuming” especially when MoD’s responses were challenged by UFO researchers. Furthermore, “the piecemeal release of information…fuels unhelpful speculation from those who believe there are issues that MoD are trying to hide.” Nevertheless, Des Browne was informed that

“…MoD is aware of no clear evidence to prove or disprove the existence of aliens and consequently the files are considerably less exciting than the ‘industry’ surrounding the UFO phenomena would like to believe.”

Pressure was building during 2007 for full disclosure of the files. During this time myself and colleagues Joe McGonagle and Gary Anthony led a campaign to persuade the MoD the only sensible option was to commit to a public release of the entire remaining archive of files.

This document shows how successful our campaign actually was. The Secretary of State was told the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) had already made a written commitment to review its own UFO files for release “in response to an FOI request from an academic researcher” (me).

Early in the year the French National Centre for Space Studies decided to release its files on the internet, which “increased the already significant press and internet speculation that we [MoD] are about to release our own.”

By the end of 2007 it had become obvious that MoD would soon be obliged to release “virtually all its UFO files” and for copyright reasons it was decided the best conduit for disclosure was via The National Archives at Kew.

MoD impressed upon the Secretary of State for Defence there were “clear presentational benefits in meeting public demand and expectation” for the release which “would also smooth the workload” on the desk officers who were being distracted from more important priorities.

Although MoD did not expect the volume of requests about UFOs to reduce when the decision was announced (in May 2008), it planned to invoke exemption 22 under the FOIA that allows public authorities to turn down requests for information that had been earmarked for release in the next 12 months: "This would assist in managing the release of the files in a structured manner."

A total of 160 UFO files dating back to the 1970s were included in the three year project, 48 of which have been released via The National Archives UFO page to date. Most of these files were created by the Air Staff secretariat with a further 27 defence intelligence files whose contents were largely duplicate copies of those held by the 'UFO desk.' The disclosure would also include a considerable number of files covering FOI requests and responses since 2005. A further 20 or more files have been added to this total since this decision was made.The total costs of the project include £13,000 to scan the file and £3,000 to purchase specialised redaction software.

Referring to the contents of the files, the MoD noted that it was unusual for files to be transferred to TNA so far in advance of the usual 30 year rule. However, "it is assessed that the high level of public interest and lack of sensitive material in the files means that no precedent is set by their early release." He continues:

“The majority of the files are of low security classification but include references to air defence matters, defence technology, relations with foreign powers and occasional uncomplimentary comments by staff or police officers about members of the public, which will need to be withheld in accordance with FOI principles. In particular, the PQ [Parliamentary Questions] will require considerable work before they can be transferred as they contain background notes for Ministers, but there is no reason, in principle, why they cannot be released.”

The document ends by suggesting that MoD should continue their policy of playing down their interest in UFOs after the press announcement was made, in May 2008.

Anticipating a great deal of interest from the press and the general public, the Secretary of State for Defence was told “there is a risk that media will overplay the MoD’s involvement in these cases, therefore we will need to manage our message and be prepared to deal with a high level of media interest. There is also likely to be frustration that people who want to view files at the TNA will be charged.”

In the event, visitors to the TNA website have been able to download the files for free for the first month.

Des Browne gave his approval to the project on 25 September 2007 and the rest is history.

As these documents "are deemed to be of public interest" MoD plan to upload a full copy of the disclosure document onto their FOI publication scheme in the near future.

UFO Files Reviewed by Mail on Sunday

2009-12-30T06:03:00.000-08:00

My new book The UFO Files, published by The National Archives, was reviewed by The Mail on Sunday on 27 December 2009.

Awarding the book 4 out of 5 stars, reviewer Harry Ritchie compared the results of my "expert rummagings" through the MoD archives with the revelations about MPs fiddling their expenses. Both breakthroughs were achieved as a result of investigative campaigns using the Freedom of Information Act.

Ritchie outlines the contents of the book and summarises my conclusions:

"UFOlogists believe aliens are among us and the military and political establishment are either blind to this dramatic fact or have covered it up. This book proves decisively that both beliefs are nonsense.
"The reality is both reassuring and unthrilling. First, there are no flying saucers and little green men, hence the lack of even the most microscopic piece of hard evidence. Second, the MoD has neither covered anything up nor been blindly dismissive. In fact, until finally closing its UFO investigations unit earlier this month, the MoD has often taken UFOs seriously, even commissioning secret reports. In 2000 its Condign report concluded: 'That UFOs exist is indisputable.'
"...Yes, UFOs are real, says the Condign report - they are not extraterrestrial spacecraft, though. They're natural phenomena which we don't really understand yet.
"The only remaining mystery is this: why would the MoD want to keep things top secret? It's not because there's any conspiracy but because it has held us, the public it is supposed to be serving, in a mixture of fear and contempt. All that the MoD's secrecy achieved was to encourage dark rumours and daft fantasies.
"So a big cheer for David Clarke's hard work and the benefits of the Freedom of Information Act."

The UFO Files was also reviewed by Neil Chandler in The Daily Star on Sunday, 18 October 2009. This article is available on the Daily Star website.

MoD closes UFO desk

2009-12-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

After 50 years of collecting reports of sightings the Ministry of Defence has quietly closed its “UFO desk”. With the MoD under huge pressure to cut costs, the small amount of money saved can be diverted to higher priorities such as the front line in Afghanistan.

The announcement was quietly added to an existing FOI document on the MoD website entitled “How to report a UFO sighting” on 1 December. This simply noted, almost in passing, that its UFO hotline answer-phone service and e-mail address were being withdrawn. Until now the service has allowed the public to report sightings directly to the ministry. But as none of the thousands of reports received have proved to have any defence interest, the decision to close the UFO desk was sadly inevitable. The statement said:

“The MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life. However, in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom. The MoD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings. There is no Defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources. Furthermore, responding to reported UFO sightings diverts MoD resources from tasks that are relevant to defence.”

The move follows the decision taken by Defence Intelligence branch DI55 in 2000 to draw a line under their own more secretive interest in UFOs following the completion of the Condign report. Following their lead, the civilian desk which continued to collect reports from members of the public “will no longer respond to reported UFO sightings or investigate them”. The ongoing programme to release historical UFO files to The National Archives, for which I am acting as consultant, will continue until the back catalogue is exhausted.

Inevitably, claims have been made that the closure of the UFO desk would “leave the UK wide open to attack” from terrorists and potentially hostile enemy aircraft. But as the MoD pointed out, RAF radars are constantly searching for any real tangible threats to the UK. “Any legitimate threat to the UK’s airspace will be spotted by our 24/7 radars checks and dealt with by RAF fighter aircraft.”

Presumably, UFO reports made by military personnel or received via official sources such as police, coastguard and Civil Aviation Authority will continue will be channelled to the RAF’s air defence staff for scrutiny. So the MoD have not abandoned their interest in UFO reports altogether. All they have said is they are no longer interested in receiving details of sightings directly from members of the public. These are generally of low quality and simply listing them and sending a polite reply ate up valuable time and resources.

In reality, for decades the “UFO desk” has been largely a public relations exercise to reassure members of the public who were concerned about odd things they had seen in the sky. It was starved of resources and had no power to investigate anything. Most of the desk officers who ran it spent their time filing tedious reports of lights in the sky and sending out standard replies to UFOlogists without any real sense of purpose. But its very existence has encouraged the more credulous UFOlogists to believe it was a front for more secret official investigations. By closing their “X-files” the MoD have finally removed a problem of their own making.

The UFO Files

2009-09-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

My new book The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real Life Sightings has been published by The National Archives.

Copies can be ordered directly from TNA bookshop or from Amazon. A sample section from Chapter 2 can be downloaded free of charge from the TNA website UFO page.

The book was the subject of leading news stories published by The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph on 20 September 2009.

These concentrated upon the contents of the Defence Intelligence Staff documents from the '90s that are featured in the final chapter of the book.

Peter Rogerson, in his review for The Magonia Blog, says "every UFOlogist should have this book."

Another review by Kevin Goodman of UFO Warminster, has been published on Nick Redfern's UFO Mystic website. He says: "If I had to recommend one book this year, then this would be the one."

My cover blurb summarises the content as follows:

'What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?' Winston Churchill, 28 July 1952.

THE UFO FILES tells the story of over 100 years of UFO sightings, drawing on formerly secret government records at the National Archives. Alongside extraordinary reports by ordinary people it reveals details of official interest and investigations stretching back to before the First World War for although the terms UFO and Flying Saucer were not coined until the middle of the twentieth century, people have long seen things in the sky that they could not explain.

In this remarkable book David Clarke reveals an array of startling stories from possible UFO reports hidden among Met Office investigations of aerial phenomena in the 1920s to the conclusions of Project Condign, the hush-hush British Intelligence UFO study completed in 2000. As well as covering Roswell and Britain's own Rendlesham Forest mystery, Clarke raids the records for dramatic stories of abductions and close encounters, ghost aircraft and crop circles, and UFO reports by civilian aircrew and military personnel.

Dramatic witness statements and interviews many undertaken by the author himself combine with rarely seen photographs, drawings and newly available documents to offer a unique guide to one of our most intriguing mysteries.

UFO files make headline news

2009-08-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

News of the latest UFO files released by The National Archives has travelled around the world.
I spent most of yesterday dealing with calls from the national and international media and shuttling between BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky News studios in London to comment on the significance of the new files.
Public interest in the contents has been unprecedented and once again, most of the UK media have treated the topic in a serious and mature way.
Yesterday morning I was able to explain the historical importance of the files to Evan Davies on BBC Radio 4's prestigious Today programme, which in itself is a measure of the impact the release has had.
The Rendlesham forest incident was discussed and a short interview with one of the key witnesses, John Burroughs, was used. This in itself was significant because Burroughs said he was unconvinced the incident was of an extraterrestrial nature - he suspects it was some kind of military experiment.
For once it was good to hear an alternative viewpoint expressed coherently and lucidly, rather than the usual tired debates about whether you "believe" or "don't believe" (who cares?).
Coverage was extensive in the national and regional press, with leading articles in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent and Scotsman.
BBC News Online ran a lead article and a more in-depth look at the connection between UFO sightings and science fiction in popular culture.
My comments on this link were picked up by most of the media, which in itself demonstrates how easy it is to plant an idea and watch it germinate.
As I had hoped, most of the commentators recognised that I was not suggesting UFO sightings were caused by "people watching too much sci-fi". What I'm saying is that the link with imagery in popular culture is more subtle than that: people see UFOs (whatever they are), but usually they tell only close friends and relatives. When UFOs are in the news - TV, film, whatever - they are more inclined to report them to outsiders (i.e. police, newspapers, MoD etc).
This effect, I believe, is reflected in the figures showing numbers of reports received by the MoD from 1959 to present. But it must be remembered these statistics are distorted by other factors, and most importantly this is raw data as virtually none of these reports were subject to a proper investigation.
Most TV news bulletins mentioned the link to UFOs in films and TV in the stories published yesterday and by the afternoon the key highlights had been picked up by leading agencies such as PA, AP and CNN.
Bear in mind, all this positive coverage was a direct outcome of the months of work and advance preparation that goes into each one of these releases.
Without the context provided by the highlights guide, video/podcasts and media briefings, the specifics of the content would be lost in the feeding frenzy that follows the opening of the files.
But the results that came in yesterday certainly made all the hard work worth its while.
In the first 24 hours since the release (at midnight on Sunday), some 240,000 people across the world logged onto http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos to download the files.
Almost half of these were in the UK, with Germany, the USA, Sweden, France and Italy making up the remainder.
And the latest figures from TNA show that since the UFO files release programme began in May last year, there have been almost 2 million downloads from the site.
It's hugely ironic that while the so-called "disclosure" campaign continue to call for the release of "evidence" they believe is being hidden about UFOs, here in Britain open government and freedom of information has already arrived.
Somewhere around 10,000 pages of information have already been "disclosed" and, like it or not, what "truth" there is lies in here, not hidden away in a some dusty hangar somewhere.
There will always be people who have decided in advance what they think is the "truth" and because they can't find it in these files, decide it must therefore be hidden away in more top secret files somewhere else.
But this is the type of conspiracy mongering that has got UFOlogy precisely nowhere over the past 60 years. It simply hands a weapon to those who dismiss the whole topic as the province of the deluded and the paranoid.
The opening of the UFO files has given the subject much needed credibility.
Let's make the most of it.

We want you - come with us!

2009-08-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

A close encounter with a “lemon-headed” alien and its scorching heat-ray forms the highlight of the 4th collection of MoD UFO files released today.

As the UFO consultant for The National Archives (pictured right) I’ve prepared a special videocast and a highlights guide to help visitors navigate their way through 4,000 pages of new material.

The guide and videocast, which is also available on YouTube, can be downloaded from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos

All 14 files can be downloaded, free of charge, for the first month from the dedicated UFO page set up by TNA.

The official website also includes a link to a flier for my new book The UFO Files – The Inside Story of Real Life Sightings. The book is published by TNA in September and covers the key sightings and official commentary drawn from the British Government archives from WW1 to the present day.

But what does this fourth tranche of MoD papers contain?

Well, the collection includes a hefty correspondence file (DEFE 24/1970) containing letters to MoD from MPs and a number of well-known UFOlogists between 1985 and 1995. There are complete dossiers on classic cases such as Rendlesham, the ‘Cosford incident’ and the Belgian UFO flap, along with six whole files packed with UFO sighting reports.

The UFO reports files (DEFE 24/1959-1961, 1974-76) contain details of more than 800 individual sightings reported between 1993 and 1996, a year in which 609 UFO reports were logged by the Ministry’s UFO desk - the second highest total on record. In fact, there were more sightings during 1996 than all three previous years added together.

As I have explained in the official press release, the most likely explanation for the unusual spike in numbers during 1996 and 1997 was that public awareness of UFOs and aliens was at an all-time high. Those years were the culmination of a period in which images of UFOs and aliens had saturated popular culture.

During 1994-95 The X-Files TV series, shown on BBC2, was regularly pulling in 6 million viewers. In 1996 the release of the movie Independence Day, with its themes of hostile aliens in flying saucers and links to Area 51 and Roswell, was massively anticipated by the media. At that time I was working as a journalist on an evening newspaper and was personally responsible for at least three major features on UFOs and aliens.

In addition to the film and TV coverage 1996-97 saw the release of a host of new books and media articles on UFOs and alien abductions. In the UK Graham Birdsall’s UFO Magazine became a news-stand publication and at least three other short-lived UFO titles were launched on the back of the X-files craze.

Aside from 1996, the busiest year on record for UFO sightings reported to the MoD over the past half century was 1978 – the year Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. (MoD received 750 UFO reports in 1978, but 110 of those were directly related to the re-entry of the Russian rocket body, Cosmos 1068, on New Year's Eve).

But let's get back to those lemon-headed creatures and their heat-ray.

What is easily the stangest report uncovered by this 4^th tranche of files came from Staffordshire Police who investigated a story told by two frightened youths who claimed they narrowly escaped abduction by a UFO occupant.

Late on the night of 4 May 1995 the two ran into Chasetown police station in a state of excitement, calling on officers to come outside “and view a UFO that was still visible.” A PC and sergeant duly went outside and saw red and white lights in the sky which they believed was an aircraft.

The police said both youths “appeared upset and shocked” so they asked them to go home and write a detailed account of what happened. They returned the next day with hand-written statements that were sent to the MoD’s UFO desk.

The youth’s names have been redacted from their accounts, but they describe how they were walking along Rugeley Road, Burntwood, shortly before 11 P.M. when they both felt what one described as an “intense burst of heat”.

Their skin glowed red and both were left gasping for air as sweat poured from their bodies. Then they saw the apparent source of the heat – a dark, silver disc-shaped object hovering about 40 ft away from them above a nearby field. The underside of this UFO appeared to be glowing red.

As they watched in amazement a lemon-shaped head appeared between them and the UFO and both heard a disembodied voice call: “We want you, come with us.” Not surprisingly, they both ran for their lives!

The aftermath is even stranger. On 6 May the two youths returned to the scene with police and pointed out the field where the UFO had hovered. Inquiries at the scene failed to discover any other witnesses, but one resident said a local farmer was spraying his crops at the time of the alleged UFO incident. The farmer confirmed this information and said "he did not see any persons in the field, speak to anyone or see anything unusual."

Full details of this weird incident, including the police report and the youth's hand-written accounts, can be found in DEFE 24/1961 (pgs 191-207).

A UFO armed with a heat-ray also figures in a second story, independently reported to MoD by police in Cheshire 14 months later (see DEFE 24/1976, p180).

In this case a young man saw a “very bright yellow light” hovering near a footbridge on his route home in Widnes at 2.30 A.M. one morning. As he walked away it appeared to follow him and he broke into a run. Looking back, he saw the light had moved over a nearby cemetery. Then he heard “a high pitched sound (like cats wailing) and saw beams of light come down from it striking the ground.”

On reaching home he persuaded his father to return with him to the scene. At the location where the light beams hit the ground they found “four railway sleepers smouldering with a large hole 4” [inches] diameter burnt through one of the sleepers.” A police officer called to the scene reported the hole in the sleeper “does look rather odd” and was “still smouldering” five hours later. He could find no evidence of accelerants at the scene.

In their brief report sent to the MoD, Cheshire police described the young man as “a sensible sort of lad and genuine”.

This appears to be one of the very few UFO incidents recorded in the MoD files where physical evidence was left at the scene of a "close encounter". But, as per normal, there is no evidence that anyone took samples from the scene or followed up this intriguing story.

In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest these two incidents were subject to a follow-up investigation of any kind. Like the other 800 sightings that form the basis of this release, these reports were simply filed away and forgotten.

And bear in mind these files would, pre-2005, have remained "secret" for 30 years under the old Public Records Act. The very fact they could not be opened to the public back then simply encouraged people to suspect the Government was trying to hide "the truth".

Now we can see what that "truth" actually is: they don't have a clue what UFOs are and are not hiding any big secrets about aliens.

Remember this is the British government, is that really surprising? But the truth, as John Keel once said, is the hardest thing to sell.

The files and website are open to the public from Monday, 17 August and look certain to generate another flurry of media interest in UFOs.

48 files from a total of 160 held by the MoD have now been released in digital form by The National Archives. The transfer of files from MoD to TNA is due to end in 2011.

Why Can't You Tell The People?

2009-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

The famous file on the Rendlesham Forest incident has been re-released to the public today as part of the fourth tranche of MoD UFO papers opened by The National Archives.

A historical note (DEFE 24/1948 p4) explains how it emerged into the public domain as one of the first UFO files released under Britain's open government initiative.

Back in February 2001 it was my application using the 'Code of Practice' - a precursor to the UK's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) - that first persuaded the MoD, after years of stonewalling, to release the 190-page case file.

Even then, after months of negotiating, the MoD continued to with-hold five documents for spurious reasons and in September that year, after I appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, 2 more were released.

UFOlogist Eric Morris, who died last year, continued to fight for the release of the remaining 3 documents, which included a background briefing and correspondence from former MoD official Ralph Noyes. These were finally released on appeal in November 2002.

During August 2001 I passed a copy of the Rendlesham file to Richard Norton-Taylor, defence correspondent for The Guardian, who was the first to break the story.

At the same time, scans of the most important papers were uploaded onto flyingsaucery.com, a website I set up with Andy Roberts earlier that year (these can still be seen on the UK-UFO website, run by Joe McGonagle).

But in September 2001 the UK UFO Magazine (now defunct) published an article by Georgina Bruni, 'The Rendlesham Files', that was billed as a "World Exclusive". This claimed that a different sequence of events had actually led to the release of the file.

In her article Bruni maintained the breakthrough had actually come about as a direct result of pressure on the MoD from Lord Hill-Norton, who had tabled a number of Parliamentary questions about UFOs in the House of Lords during 2001.

She claimed the Rendlesham file was first sent to Lord Hill-Norton by Baroness Symons, Minister of State for Defence Procurement, in May 2001 and added: "After a written request to the MoD I received my own copies of the file nine days later."

Although I was not mentioned in the article, and there was no reference to the Guardian, the implication seemed to be that I was simply jumping on the bandwagon and trying to take credit for something I had no real involvement in.

How ironic then, as a result of our Freedom of Information Act, I can now prove this version is completely untrue.

As the cover note attached to the file released today confirms, the documents were - as I already knew - first released to me under the cover of a MoD letter from UFO desk officer Janet Turner, dated 11 May 2001 (see the copy of the actual letter which I have uploaded to this blog). This release came after seven months of negotiations with the 'UFO desk.'

Before the FOIA arrived it was difficult to obtain precise details of what actually went on behind the scenes and at the time I did not dispute Bruni's claims. But in 2005 I asked Janet Turner’s successor as MoD UFO desk officer, Linda Unwin, if she could check the accuracy of the claims about Lord Hill-Norton's alleged role in the release of the file.

Unwin later confirmed in writing that Hill-Norton actually "played no role" in the release and, added: "You were the first person to request a copy of the Rendlesham file and this is what led to the release of the file."

She added that, in fact, Lord Hill-Norton was unaware the papers had been released until Turner suggested that MoD should now send them to the noble Lord because of his long-standing interest in the Rendlesham incident.

This decision is documented in an internal MoD minute dated 17 May 2001 - again obtained using the FOIA - where Turner writes to the Parliamentary Enquiry branch:

"The papers we hold on this incident have recently been released to a member of the public [David Clarke] who requested them under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. Although Lord Hill-Norton has not actually asked to see these documents, as they are in the public domain, it may now be appropriate to make them available to him."

A second copy of the file was subsequently sent to Hill-Norton by Baroness Symons on 16 May. Eight days later Hill-Norton, clearly surprised to suddenly receive the file which he had not asked for, wrote back to say: “I fear that my poor sight will not let me read the papers you sent me, but I shall pass them to a thoroughly reliable UFO researcher.”

The identity of the "thoroughly reliable UFO researcher" remains a mystery. But Linda Unwin later confirmed that when "other members of the public" learned the papers had been released - seemingly after a two month delay - MoD began to receive further requests for copies.

By then, of course, someone else (me) had done all the hard work for them.

Further MoD correspondence on the Rendlesham papers from 2001, released to Andy Roberts under the FOIA, include a copy of a fax sent by Georgina Bruni from a London address to the MoD on 9 July 2001. This was clearly around the time at which she first learned the Rendlesham papers had been released, two months after the date given in UK UFO Magazine. Her fax requested a copy of the file and added:

“I understand that Baroness Symons recently sent copies of this material to Lord Hill-Norton, and that the MoD has also released it to a member of the public”.

Although Georgina’s name is redacted from the fax, a little investigative journalism revealed the London telephone number it was sent from and this was confirmed by the MoD reply, dated 18 July, which opens with ‘Dear Ms’.

Georgina's book, You Can't Tell The People, was published in November 2000, six months before the release of the MoD file. But the book had been promoted as “the definitive work" on the Rendlesham incident. The urgent tone of the fax suggests the writer was a little peeved the papers had not been sent to her before publication.

Nevertheless, despite being aware of the true identity of the "member of the public" whose work actually led to the release of the file (from the article in The Guardian on 28 August 2001), both Bruni and her friend and writing partner Nick Pope henceforth continued to insist that I played no role in its release.

The afterword of the second edition of Bruni’s book, published in 2001, contained a new chapter, 'The Release of the Rendlesham file'. Again there was no mention of my role in the release, and Bruni was now taking full credit for herself. The chapter opened with this claim:

"I have no doubt that these [documents] were released because of pressure put on the British Government regarding the case presented in the hardback edition of You Can't Tell The People, which resulted in questions being asked in the House of Lords."

To this day, Nick Pope continues to promote this misleading version on his website. In an article called ‘The Rendlesham Forest Incident’, he writes: “I should first pay tribute to Lord Hill-Norton and Georgina Bruni whose tireless efforts over the last few years have culminated in the release of these documents”.

Later, for good measure, he adds: “...with the release of the Rendlesham files Georgina Bruni has achieved a significant breakthrough for UFOlogy.”

I'm not looking for medals or praise - just the truth, which is now out thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.

It would be a simple matter of courtesy, or good manners, to acknowledge the role I played, even in passing, or at least set the record straight now the facts are clearly documented under FOIA and indisputable.

Sadly, Georgina died in 2008 so is unable to explain why she felt it necessary to publish an incorrect version of her role – or more accurately, lack of – in the release of the Rendlesham file.

Stubbed Out?

2009-08-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

The 40^th anniversary of the moon landings brought fresh claims that NASA are covering up evidence of UFOs filmed by astronauts.

Images from shuttle missions posted on YouTube show various lights and objects zipping around in earth’s orbit juxtaposed with headlines such as: “Will the Government Finally Admit There Are Aliens?”

Canadian UFO buff Martyn Stubb modestly claims to have “directed, edited or shot” the images that he believes prove NASA knows aliens are regularly buzzing US spacecraft.

That might explain the total lack of interest displayed by the astronauts who actually made the films, or by ground control – naturally because they are all part of the conspiracy.

But in June two astronauts spoke out in a Popular Mechanics article to claim Stubb and others were selectively editing these films to make them appear mysterious.

Close scrutiny shows the images lack context that can explain them.

For example, one short clip that appears to show a rotating, shape-changing UFO was actually filmed by Mario Runco during a May 1996 mission. He points out that just over two minutes have been lifted from days of routine footage showing a satellite launched by the crew as it reflected ambient light. Runco said if he really had filmed aliens there was no way NASA could stop him talking. “I’d want the credit, why would I want to keep it secret?”

Another astronaut whose films have been subjected to Stubb’s treatment added: “There’s no way to keep people from using public domain film for silly purposes.”

Source: Popular Mechanics, 1 June 2009

Lantern Alert

2009-08-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Chinese lantern craze fuelled a tabloid UFO campaign during last year’s silly season and this year they were back.

During the summer armadas of lanterns 100 strong were photographed hovering over Lincolnshire, Merseyside and parts of Holland. Newspapers saw the story as light relief from the tedium of MP’s expenses. Keen to keep the mystery alive the Mirror proclaimed: “These spooky orange lights in the sky have the country baffled” whilst the Mail headlined with “Invasion of the orange aliens” (4 July). The lanterns were everywhere.

In June they lit up the skies over the Glastonbury festival and shortly afterwards a spate of false alarms involving “red flares” along the south coast were traced to more lanterns. This led coastguards to urge beach party-goers to contact them before they liberated any more orange aliens.

In August contributors to The Guardian debated the alleged environmental impact of the lanterns, hinting that a ban might be on its way. Their sale has already been prohibited in Vietnam and in three German states following the death of a 10-year-old boy in a house fire sparked by a lantern. In a separate incident a couple celebrating their marriage set fire to two houses in Dieburg, causing £200,000 in damage.

A story published by The Independent on 28 July quoted the National Farmer's Union and RSPCA as raising concerns that cattle could be harmed by eating the metal wires that hold the candles in place after the lanterns fall to the ground.

But the managing director of Sky Lanterns, which has been selling the darned things for seven years, pointed out that as with any other product it was ultimately up to the customer to behave responsibly when liberating them.

Banning the sale of these mini-hot air balloons, which bring joy to many people and produce beautiful displays in the night sky, would seem to me to be a massive over-reaction. After all they were first used in China during the 3rd century and are still released in the Far East to celebrate special occasions and as a symbol of good wishes.

"Sky lanterns" have become increasingly popular in the UK since 2002, but here they have sparked a rash of tabloid UFO headlines of the "Flat Earth News" variety. The tabloid obsession began with one widely-publicised sighting by the crew of the South Wales Police helicopter, who reported a "near-miss" with a UFO last summer.

The "UFO", captured on the copter's camera, appears to be just a few inches in length and there can be little doubt it was from a flotilla of 30 lanterns released from a wedding reception nearby earlier in the evening.

When will the tabloid lantern bubble burst? Maybe it already has. The novelty factor the lanterns provided is now wearing paper thin. Last summer hardly a day passed without The Sun’s alien invasion headlines. This year the stories are fewer and attempts to suggest some "mystery" remained looked increasingly desperate.

Either the UFO fleet had returned home, or someone realized there was only so many times you can run the same story before the public loses interest.

John A. Keel (1930-2009)

2009-07-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

John Keel - the American journalist whose 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies was adapted into a film starring Richard Gere - has died in New York after years battling the effects of diabetes.

Keel's journalistic career began on a weekly paper in New York during the '40s and he, like me, was a keen fan of the works of Charles Fort. Keel was gripped by the flying saucer craze in 1947 and saw his first UFO in 1954 whilst visiting the Aswan Dam. One of his early books, Jadoo (1957) is a ripping yarn that describes his adventures travelling in India and Tibet, where he followed the tracks of the abominable snowman and saw demonstrations of the famous 'Indian Rope Trick.'

During the 60s and early 70s he produced a series of ground-breaking books on UFOs, crypto-zoology and alternative archaeology based upon the contemporary counter-culture zeitgeist. This view saw UFOs not as extra-terrestrial in origin but controlled by "ultra-terrestrials", nebulous powers from other dimensions who co-existed with us and loved to play games with humans.

UFOs, aliens, the sinister Men In Black and a host of other supernatural phenomena were incorporated into a bizarre but ultimately more satisfying theory which traced them to something Keel called "the super-spectrum". This was, as far as I could make out, some form of alternative reality from which they downloaded themselves into our three-dimensional world.

In retrospect, it's clear that Keel was actually constructing an updated medieval demonology carefully constructed for 20th century readers. I later learned the man himself loved playing games with his readers and had a keen sense of humour. Much of what he wrote in those books, he told me in 1992, "shouldn't be taken seriously."

By that time, however, my sense of disillusionment with Keel's writings was almost complete.

He will be remembered mostly for his1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. This charted his investigations of an outbreak of weird happenings in the tiny West Virginia town of Point Pleasant during 1966-67. It was a fast-moving account that combined horror narrative with straight reportage. The film adaptation that followed in 2002 - to mixed reviews - used the phrase "based on true events" that has since become a horror flick staple.

Nevertheless, for a teenager growing up in bleak '80s South Yorkshire, Keel's books were a source of inspiration and escape into a world where anything was possible, and indeed probable. Keel's accounts of his adventures in West Virginia, chasing the red-eyed winged monsters, sinister MIB in dark cadillacs and cool gentleman spacemen called Indrid Cold who descended from flying stovepipes simply blew my mind.

It was partly a result of reading Keel's UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (first published in 1970) and The Mothman Prophecies that a) encouraged me believe in six impossible things before breakfast b) placed me firmly on the flying saucer beat 30 years ago at the tender age of 13 and c) led me on the path to becoming a rookie journalist, so I could embark on my own adventures in the UFOlogical borderlands. The rest is history.

It's been said that one should never meet one's heroes in the flesh. But I did and have fond memories of showing the old buffer around the delights of Sheffield city centre when Keel spoke at the Independent UFO Network conference in 1992.

While his presentation was a bit of an anti-climax Andy Roberts and I did get to interrogate him during his three day stay in Yorkshire.

The result is a transcipt that runs to several thousand words (a copy was posted here on The Fortean Times website in August 2009).. But it does give a unique insight into the world of an eccentric, talented writer whose contribution will be sorely missed.

So soon after the passing of John Michell, it seems the UFOlogical generation I grew up with is finally coming to its end.

UFOs: the Inside Story of Real-life Sightings

2009-04-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

Copies of my new book based upon the Ministry of Defence's UFO files can now be pre-ordered via Amazon.

The UFO Files: the Inside Story of Real-life Sightings will be published in paperback during July 2009 by The National Archives. The recommended cover price is £12.99 but those who order early can obtain a discount.

The book has been specially produced to accompany the ongoing releases of MoD files via the TNA website UFO page.

The UFO Files showcases accounts of UFO experiences extracted from the entire TNA collection from the 19th century to the present day.

The first two chapters include official accounts of sightings and investigations of phantom airships, foo-fighters and flying saucers from the first half of the 20th century.

Later chapters cover classic UFO incidents featured in the Air Ministry and Ministry of Defence files, ending with the most recent material released under the Freedom of Information Act. The book concentrates upon primary documents and interviews conducted with key witnesses, much of which will be new even to seasoned UFOlogists.

Working with The National Archives has meant that some key historical documents have been made available for publication for the first time. The book will include over 70 original images from the files, including accounts collected by an Air Ministry investigation of strange phenomena sighted over London in 1921!

A summary of the contents, taken from the TNA new books page, follows:

Original records reveal how British Intelligence and the CIA investigated many Cold War sightings, from the Roswell incident of 1947 to ghost aircraft, Radar Angels to the RAF's confidential files. The book sheds new light on many famous cases, such as RAF Topcliffe, 1952; the Flying Cross in Devon, 1967; RAF West Freugh, Scotland, 1957; the Berwyn Mountains UFO crash and the Phantom Helicopter Mystery, as well as the notorious 'Welsh triangle' and the Rendlesham Forest incident. Dramatic witness statements and personal interviews - many undertaken by the author himself - combine with rarely seen photographs, drawings and newly available documents to bring these extraordinary experiences vividly to life. From aerial phenonema of the First World War to crop circles and a secret UFO study of more recent times, The UFO Files offers a unique guide to our most intriguing mysteries.

Author of MoD UFO study to remain in the shadows

2009-04-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

The identity of an MoD intelligence expert who wrote a controversial report on UFOs must remain a secret, the Information Commissioner has decided.

Three years ago the Ministry released - under the Freedom of Information Act - a copy of a four volume report, code-named 'Project Condign', that was completed in 2000 and classified "Secret - UK Eyes Only."

Condign was the brainchild of a mysterious intelligence officer, working as a contractor for the MoD, who was given access to secret documents covering DI55's investigations of UFO incidents over three decades.

He was asked to produce the report because of his long experience as an advisor to the Defence Intelligence Staff on the subject of UFOs.

His study concluded that UFOs - or UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) - did exist but were most likely to be natural, but poorly understood, atmospheric phenomena such as ball lightning and dusty plasmas.

The report said there was no evidence that UAPs posed a threat to the UK and there was no information of intelligence value within the reports MoD had received.

As a direct result the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) decided to have no further involvement in the subject after 50 years of collecting sighting reports.

The existence of the Condign report was revealed as a result of 18 months of sleuthing by myself and my colleague Gary Anthony, which culminated in the FOI request and subsequent release of the papers to the international media.

A full discussion of the background can be found on my webpages - along with a detailed paper we prepared for the International UFO Reporter, published in 2007.

Since that time we have been pressing the MoD to release not only the name of the report's author, but also the names of the intelligence officers who briefed MoD on the need for the study, and of the person who ultimately commissioned it.

During 2007 Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker piled pressure on Defence Minister Adam Ingram on our behalf. He tabled a series of Parliamentary written questions on the Condign report and its author.

One of the questions asked "who the author was, what the author's qualifications in this subject were; to whom the report was circulated [and] what actions were taken on the recommendations of the report."

In response Baker was told the report cost the public around £50,000 but they would not name the author or say anything more about his background. "The author of the report was a contractor and was employed by the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) on a long-term contract," Ingram responded in Hansard, 19 March 2007. "Further details of the author, including the name, are being with-held under the Data Protection Act 1998 [Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act]."

Not satisfied with this answer, Gary and I requested an internal review of the decision to with-hold the names. We waited 11 months for a response from the MoD - a total of 190 working days, when the maximum recommended by the Commissioner is just 40 working days!

The response when it came refused to back down, citing section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (personal information).

Then we decided to complain to the Information Commissioner under section 50 of the Act. In our appeal we cited the Commissioner's own guidance on "personal information" (FOIA Awareness Guidance No 1), which says: "It is often believed that the Data Protection Act prevents the disclosure of any personal data without the consent of the person concerned. This is not true. The purpose of the Data Protection Act is to protect the private lives of individuals. Where an information request is about people acting in a work or official capacity then it will normally be right to disclose."

In our appeal we argued that in the context of the Condign author "there can be no question that a) the contractor paid to produce the UAP report and b) the various Defence Intelligence officers who briefed [MoD] on the need to commit public funds for a UFO study...were acting in a work or official capacity."

We added that "the authors and background context of public reports, released into the public domain, should be open and accountable to scrutiny. Without disclosure how can can members of the public, or indeed the scientific community, draw any valid conclusions as to the reliability of the conclusions reached, or to judge if public funds have been wisely spent?"

After two years we finally received our answer in an Information Commissioner Decision Notice dated 30 March 2009.

This says the Commissioner, Richard Thomas, investigated our complaint but ultimately decided to uphold the MoD's decision to with-hold the names under Section 40 of the FOIA. The Commissioner looked at the work and positions of all four individuals cited in our request. With respect to the report's author, he was clearly persuaded by the MoD's arguments against the release of his name.

The notice reads: "...the Commissioner understands that the report was commissioned and produced by the author with strict security guidelines; at the time the report was drafted it was a classified project with those involved being subject to the Official Secrets Act. Secondly, the MoD has explained that civil servants and contractors are given clear instruction that 'any association with intelligence, security or counter-terrorism work must not be disclosed.' Therefore, in the Commissioner's opinion given that the author, acting on instructions from the MoD would not have discussed his work on the draft report with those outside the DIS, it is reasonable to suppose that the author would not have expected his name, and moreover his authorship of the report, to be placed in the public domain."

Another signficant paragraph reads:

"...the Commissioner must take into account the impact disclosure could have on the personal life of the individuals concerned. The Commissioner recognises that this area of work [UFOs] attracts a significant level of media interest and accepts the suggestion by the MoD that disclosure of these names is likely to lead to attempts to contact them and question them about their work for the DIS. In addition, the Commissioner has also given consideration to the fact that at least two of these individuals have retired. The Commissioner is mindful that retirement cannot be used to circumvent disclosure where necessary but when the individual has retired, possibly many years before the request was made it must be considered whether disclosure would have a detrimental impact on the private life of the individual concerned. The Commissioner considers that given the passage of time and the retired status of the individuals any attempt to contact and interview [them] could be deemed as having a detrimental effect on their private life. In other words, retired civil servants and a contractor could be subject to questioning, and potential criticism of decisions they took when employed by the MoD a number of years ago."

It adds: "the Commissioner believes that the likely intrusion is not justified by any pressing public interest in identifying the individuals concerned given their seniority, status and extent of involvement in the subject."

So there you have it folks.

We're only likely to discover the true identity of these spooky officials in another 50 or more years, long after they are dead and buried.

No doubt this will ensure that pesky journalists can't ask them any awkward questions that might embarrass them, and their employers.

The full text of the Information Commissioner's Decision Notice will be available on the IC website shortly.

SHU student makes headlines

2009-04-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Sheffield Hallam journalism student Darryl Curtis made the headlines this week with a story concerning a stolen Blackberry containing the personal details of hundreds of VIPs.

Darryl is in the second year of his journalism degree and is a keen student on my investigation and research skills module which looks at data protection issues.

Two weeks ago he came to see me with Blackberry he had bought from a homeless person in Sheffield City Centre. The person who offered it claimed it held hundreds of phone numbers and personal details of MPs, Cabinet Ministers, senior police officers and civil servants.

Darryl's nose for a good story paid off and we were amazed to discover the device appeared to have no password protection.

Scanning through the Blackberry we could see personal phone numbers of Children's Secretary Ed Balls, Foreign Secretary David Milliband, local Sheffield MPs David Blunkett and Richard Caborne along with several senior police officers including the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire, Graham Maxwell. There were also National Insurance numbers, home addresses and in one case computer passwords.

After handing over the phone to South Yorkshire Police we were informed the owner of the Blackberry had been traced. It appears that it belonged to former Sheffield City Council Chief Executive Bob Kerslake, who is now the Government's Housing Czar. His car was broken into two years ago, when he was still working in Sheffield, and a Blackberry was stolen.

This means the unprotected device, with its contents, had been on the streets of Sheffield for up to two years before it fell into Darryl's hands.

Darryl said: "I was shocked by what I found. Nothing was password protected and there was a wealth of information on there."

A spokesman for the the pressure group No2ID, Michael Parker, told The Yorkshire Post: "This isn't just a shocking lapse in security, it shows a complete absence of security...It shows how the civil service still has no idea of the value and importance of the personal information they keep. In this case it is personal details of careeer politicians, but in many other cases it's personal, bank and medical details of British citizens. This just shows why plans for a national database of information is a disaster in the making."

The story made BBC News online on 11 April after it was featured in The Yorkshire Post, Sheffield Star, Daily Mail and Scotsman.

Well done Darryl.

What do I believe?

2009-03-31T04:33:00.000-07:00

The key question that always crops up when I do media interviews about the MoD files and UFOs in particular is always a variation of: "Do you believe in UFOs?". As I explain in my biography, what they mean of course in not "do you believe that people see objects in the sky they can't identify?" (to which the answer is most certainly 'yes'); what they really mean is: "Do you believe we are being visited by aliens in flying saucers?".

After the yawn I usually refer them to Carl Sagan's response to this very question: "I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence." So - assuming it matters to anyone - what do I believe?

Personally, I think there's every chance there is life elsewhere in the universe. This is suggested by the recent discoveries of planets circling around distant stars, and the presence of water on Mars. This is a view shared by many astronomers, particularly those identified with the SETI programme (Search for ET Intelligence) - who, as a byproduct of their public statements, have tended to encourage the public to believe in the existence of intelligent aliens.

However, there is a great and significant difference between 'life' and 'intelligent life'. Most scientists agree that the appearance of intelligent life on Earth was the result of chance and an incredible series of circumstances that might be unique to our planet and solar system. What are the chances, then, that intelligent life has evolved elsewhere, and what's more that it has been able to visit us frequently and surreptitiously, for thousands of years, evading detection in the last 50 years by our powerful radars and telescopes?

Therefore, although opinion polls suggest that between one third and one half of the population "believe we have been visited" - the evidence that aliens have come here in UFOs or flying saucers is actually slim or non-existent. And just because lots of people say they believe in something, dosen't make that something objectively real. If it did then we would, for instance, have to accept that the Devil and the Satanic pact with witches was real, simply because thousands of people believed that particular myth during the Middle Ages.

Back to the MoD UFO files. Some commentators are disappointed by the content and are growing tired of seeing tedious bits of paper containing reports of lights in the sky. Where are photographs showing 'structured craft of unknown origin' that would provide clear and unambiguous evidence of the ET presence on Earth? The evidence we've been told the Government has on file, but isn't sharing because we would all panic?

Well, there can only be two answers. Either these photographs aren't in the files because no such evidence exists, or they have been removed by the global conspiracy to hide the truth and salted away somewhere else. This answer is unprovable and takes us nowhere - only into the realms of paranoia.

The answer has to be that no such unambiguous evidence exists. The file contents make it clear MoD's interest in UFOs was purely from a defence point of view. They check to see if sightings reported to them have any "defence significance" (i.e. are they hijacked aircraft, spy planes, enemy missiles?). When those possibilities are ruled out, the reports are simply filed away and forgotten - as anyone can now see from the contents of the released files. Unfortunately, MoD are not funded to scrutinise their UFO reports for their scientific content. They say they remain open-minded about the possibility that ET life might exist, only they have never found any evidence to support the theory.

My opinion is that any genuinely open-minded person who spends a few hours skimming through the contents of these files can only agree with the MoD's conclusions. 90% or more of the reports they received could be explained (if they had bothered to investigate them). The few that remain might be unidentified but unidentified does not necessary mean = alien visitors.

Of course conspiracy mongers will say these papers are a whitewash and the real top secret files are being hidden away somewhere else. But in my experience you cannot have a rational argument with people who have preconceived ideas about cover-ups and conspiracies.

YouTube UFO video hits the spot

2009-03-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

Well what a week that was!

The release of the third collection of MoD UFO files at The National Archives made headlines both in the UK and across the world. Some of the best coverage appeared in the UK's Sunday broadsheets, particularly the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and Observer. All these newspapers drew heavily upon background material, including a detailed summary of highlights, that I had prepared for the TNA press office in advance of the release.

Items also appeared on Sky News and BBC News Online, including one story that followed up the still unfolding saga of the UFO photographs from Calvine. On Monday, leading articles also appeared in London’s Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Sun.

Once again the coverage was largely serious in tone with media attention concentrating on the MoD’s interest in spy planes and foreign technology as opposed to nebulous alien forces. As I was quoted by BBC Online:

"The vast majority of reports are ordinary things seen in extraordinary situations. So many things can be interpreted as unusual, you've got to eliminate all that noise and see what's left. I don't think there's any solid evidence [contained in these files]...to suggest that we have been visited by intelligent life but I don't think you can rule that out."

It remains to be seen whether this level of media interest will be sustained later this year when further collections of UFO files are released by the MoD. Some 70 or more files have been earmarked for transfer to the TNA before the end of this year. This will take the chronology from 1993 to 1999 and, in the process, add some tens of thousands of pages to the ongoing process of disclosure.

But by far the biggest success of the week was the podcast I recorded, which – complete with animated images and X-files style background music – was uploaded to YouTube last Sunday.

To our surprise this quickly became the 70^th most viewed video on YouTube UK this week, with almost 30,000 viewings recorded along with dozens of comments.

My favourite is the comment posted by ‘jordanj008’ relating to the strange drawing of a banana-shaped UFO which appears among the UFO images in the video: “…British intelligence has to work hard to protect people from banana attacks [sic]. Are bananas friendly or aggressive? Should I be afraid of bananas? Do overripe bananas develop limbs? If I eat bananas will their family revenge me? Are all bananamen blue or are there more primitive ones that are yellow? Can anyone answer my questions, I am getting paranoid!”

To watch the video click here!

NATIONAL ARCHIVES RELEASE UFO FILES #3

2009-03-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

UFOs, THE MoD AND ME

A third collection of UK Ministry of Defence UFO files can now be downloaded from the The National Archives’ dedicated website at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos

Once again I’m working as consultant for the TNA’s UFO Project. I have prepared a detailed summary of the contents for the national and international media. This has been used to bookmark significant documents within the files, as navigating around the hefty pdfs can be a confusing experience. In addition, I have recorded a short podcast summarising the most important themes.

All these features can be accessed via the TNA’s ‘UFO landing page’, along with archived files from the last two releases. There is also an updated version of my briefing document that provides historical context for all the UFO records held at TNA.

This tranche consists of seven files containing more than 2,000 pages of material. Six of the files contain UFO reports copied to the MoD’s secretive Defence Intelligence branch DI55, between November 1987 and April 1993. During this period 1200 individual sightings were reported to the authorities.

The release of these papers is in itself a victory for open government. For as recently as ten years ago the British Government refused even to acknowledge the existence of DI55, let alone comment upon their role in the investigation of UFO reports. The arrival of the Freedom of Information Act in 2005 brought this ludicrous situation to an end. But even then for at time it appeared unlikely we would discover anything further.

It turned out that most of DI55’s historical UFO records had been destroyed long before FOIA could intervene. And, worse still, the two dozen files that had survived – dating from the late 1970s – were among a group of records stored in the Old War Office building that had been exposed to deadly asbestos dust. Initially, it appeared these files might also end up in the incinerator. But when news leaked out a campaign was launched to save the files, which eventually led to this release.

The contents of this and the last tranche of files make intriguing reading. For me, working on this project has been like taking a trip down memory lane. In 1987 I was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Sheffield University with an interest in journalism. In-between lectures and propping up the bar I joined a UFO group based in northern England and managed to find time to investigate UFO reports that were flooding into newspapers in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

Amazingly, one MoD file in this tranche contains a complete copy of a report that Gary Anthony and I produced covering our investigation of a “flap” of UFO sightings in the Midlands during August 1987. On 27 January 1988 I sent my 27-page dossier to Clive Neville, who was UFO desk officer at the MoD, asking if any of the reports could be explained. I also offered to send him further dossiers, enclosing with my letter another detailed report prepared by Philip Mantle. This contained a set of photographs which appeared to show a “flying saucer” skimming rooftops in Barnsley (later, using an American photo analyst, we proved these were fakes).

In reply I received the standard “no defence significance” letter used by the MoD in response to all public UFO inquiries. But little did I know at the time, Neville had copied our reports to the Defence Intelligence Staff with a note that reads “they are quite detailed and of a better quality than I expected”. Praise indeed! During its travels along spooky corridors my “August report” was heavily annotated by someone with detailed knowledge of a subject that MoD publicly claimed to be of little or no interest to them. What’s more, it’s clear from the scribbles visible on these papers that details of the individual sightings they contained were entered into a computerised database which DI55 were secretly using to search for patterns in sighting data. (See DEFE 31/176/1, pages 337 onwards). I hope to post more on this topic later.

THE CALVINE PHOTOS

2009-03-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

One of the key themes to emerge from these papers is the curious Aurora spyplane saga. This is linked with a little-known set of colour photographs, apparently taken in the Scottish highlands, which appear to show a large diamond-shaped UFO shadowed by military jets.

From the late 1980s the British press was buzzing with rumours about a stealthy, cutting-edge aircraft that some experts believed was an advanced US ‘black project’. Codenamed Aurora, the spy plane was said to be capable of hypersonic speed. Alleged sightings frequently made headlines in UFO magazines and in aviation weeklies such as Janes’ Defence. But the US Defence Department always denied such a project existed and two decades have passed without any real evidence that it ever did.

And these DI55 papers show just how easily the intelligence services can accept such exciting speculation as fact. DI55’s main responsibility involves the collection and assessment of intelligence on ICBMs and cutting-edge aircraft. Judging by the contents of these and other files during the 90s some of its personnel clearly did think it was possible, indeed probable, that someone – possibly the US – was flying an advanced black project aircraft within the UK Air Defence Region.

The most intriguing linked incident occurred at 9pm on 4 August 1990, at Calvine, a remote hamlet on the A9 near Pitlochry in Scotland. According to the scanty details released by the MoD, two men saw a large diamond-shaped UFO hovering for about ten minutes before it disappeared upwards at great speed. During the incident military aircraft were seen making a number of low-level passes. One of the men had a camera and obtained six colour photographs showing both the UFO and at least one of the jets. The negatives were sent to the RAF Pitreavie and the Scottish Daily Record who passed them to the MoD.

The images were scrutinised by the MoD who identified the jet as a Harrier. They were also able to spot a second Harrier, but were unable to identify the large object clearly visible on the prints. Two poor quality photocopies can be seen in the file DEFE 31/180/1 on pages 37-38. This story was treated very seriously, as a defensive press line was prepared in anticipation of questions from the media, which strangely never materialised (this can be read in DEFE 31/179/1: pages 157-8). The briefings states that inquiries had failed to identify the Harriers shown on the photograph, as records suggested none were airborne at the time.

In the event, it appears the Daily Record decided not to publish the story. As a result the true significance of the photographs has remained unclear until the opening of these DI55 files. Nick Pope was the civilian opposite number of the DI55 desk officer during this period (1991-94) and he was the first to publish a brief account of the incident in his book Open Skies Closed Minds (1996). Pope described the photographs as “one of the most intriguing [UFO] cases in the MoD’s files”. He also describes how he kept an enlargement of one of the Calvine pictures on his office wall until it was taken down by his head of department.

In July 1996, prompted by Pope’s account, Don Valley MP Martin Redmond, tabled a parliamentary question on the Calvine photograph. In reply, MoD said: “A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by staff responsible for air defence matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defence significance the negatives were not retained and we have no record of any photographs having been taken from them.” (Hansard, written answers, 23 July 1996).

Negatives may not have been retained, but it appears that further secret work was carried out on the prints that were retained by the MoD’s Defence Intelligence Staff. In January 1992 – long after the negatives had been returned to the photographer - they tasked a RAF unit to produce detailed line drawings of the unidentified object. The task sheet notes that “sensitivity of material suggests very special handling.” (see DEFE 31/180: pages 55-57). From that point the paper trail goes cold.

Many questions remain. Who was the photographer and how can we be sure his story was genuine? Why did the Daily Record decide not to publish the photographs in 1990? If they really were taken on the date stated, then why were the MoD unable to trace the origin of the Harriers clearly shown in the print? And why, almost two years later, did someone decide to request, in secret, further investigations?

All we have is the usual rather bland statement that MoD decided the incident was unexplained but of no defence significance: case closed. As a result, this report was added to a long list of others, including the notorious Cosford incident, that helped to convince some of the more imaginative MoD staff that someone was flying an unidentified stealthy craft over the UK.

Nick Pope’s brief account of this case notes that “neither the experts nor I accepted the Aurora theory [for the Calvine photos]…even if it exists, it is most unlikely that Aurora could function in the way described in the encounter.”

But this is faulty logic and puts the cart before the horse. Surely the first question any investigator should have asked was: does the story itself stand up to scrutiny? Sadly, there isn’t any evidence in these files to suggest the MoD ever spoke to the photographer, let alone asked any critical questions about his story.

Now documents only tell part of the story. To quote Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

As the WMD farce proved the spooks can and are fooled by faulty intelligence - especially when they want to believe something is true.