UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (27 page)

This may not provide a complete answer, but it touches on the profound nature of the UFO taboo, which manages to keep us in the dark even about events in our own backyard. This primarily psychological phenomenon, set in motion by the Robertson Panel in the 1950s, operates here with much greater strength and tenacity than it does in other countries. It infused the improper management of our Air Force agency, Project Blue Book, until its eventual demise. Then the taboo became integrated and accepted, affecting all levels of government. It’s still hard to believe that the Hudson Valley events slipped by, unnoticed by most of us—but in fact, that’s what happened. Of course, if our government had responded the same way the Belgian government did when that country was hit by a similar wave, everything would be different. And even more important, if we had set up an agency similar to the one in France, devoted to research for its own sake, even greater knowledge could have been acquired. The UK, our closest ally, had an office in place to receive UFO reports during the time of the Hudson Valley wave, and would have investigated. The U.S. government, albeit responsible for an enormous territory of land and sky in comparison to France, Belgium, or the UK, appears to be operating at one extreme in its ability to turn a blind eye to UFOs.

CHAPTER 17

The Real X-Files

by Nick Pope

The British Ministry of Defence set up its office for UFO investigations in the 1950s, at around the same time that the United States established Project Blue Book. However, the British kept their investigation going much, much longer. Nick Pope was the man assigned to head this government UFO project from 1991 to 1994. His perspective on the phenomenon changed radically during his years of intensive focus on investigations and access to “inside” government information on UFOs. Like the other contributors to this book, he would like to see more involvement by U.S. officials and intelligence agencies
.

Pope has become one of the most active former government officials to speak about this issue, sought by media from around the world as a leading expert. He combines a keen analytical mind with a strong interest in the UFO phenomenon, both of which are leavened with a dry, uniquely British wit. He is yet another example of the many officials and military officers who, as they became acquainted with UFO investigations virtually by accident, flexed their skeptical muscles only to find themselves absorbed by the unexpected power of the evidence they had initially expected to disprove. Nick Pope had access to classified files and other highly sensitive information that he is not at liberty to share, which makes his insights and convictions even more intriguing. Still involved with the subject on a semiofficial basis, he recently worked with the British National Archives as a consultant for the ongoing program to declassify and release the MoD’s archive of UFO files
.

I
worked for the Ministry of Defence for twenty-one years, beginning in 1985. At the time, the policy was to move people every two or three years—either on level transfer or promotion—so that everybody gained experience in a wide range of different jobs: policy, operations, personnel, finance, etc. I’d completed two or three different jobs, and by the early 1990s, I was working in a division called Secretariat (Air Staff) and had been seconded into the Air Force Operations Room in the Joint Operations Centre. I worked there in the run-up to the first Gulf War, during the war itself, and in the aftermath of the conflict, as a briefer, preparing material for the key daily briefings to ministers and the service chiefs. My job was to collect raw data about Royal Air Force (RAF) operations, and pick out the key things that senior personnel needed to know: details of any casualties and losses, targets attacked, battle damage assessment, etc. It was while working there that I was approached in 1991 and asked whether, after I was released from duties in the Joint Operations Centre, I would like to work on UFO investigations—a post embedded in another part of the division. I accepted the invitation even though I knew little about the subject and I certainly had no belief in UFOs. So while I was open-minded in all my investigations, my start point was broadly skeptical.

The MoD had been looking at the UFO phenomenon since the early fifties and has received over 12,000 sighting reports to date. In all that time, the objectives haven’t really changed much. Back in 1950, the MoD set up the secret Flying Saucer Working Party, composed of specialists within scientific and technical intelligence, to investigate and assess the numerous UFO sightings being reported in the media. In 1951 the group recommended that investigations should be terminated “unless and until some material evidence becomes available.”
¹
But that policy was reversed a few years later following a series of high-profile UFO sightings involving the military. Two Air Ministry divisions—S6, a civilian secretariat division on the Air Staff, and DDI (Tech), a technical intelligence division—then became actively involved in investigating UFO sightings. Their brief was to research and investigate the UFO phenomenon, looking for evidence of any threat to the UK.

That policy was still in place when I came on board in the 1990s. UFO sightings were to be investigated to see whether there was evidence of anything of any defense significance, any threat to the defense of the UK, or information that may be of use to us, scientifically or militarily. Having a UFO project in no way implies a governmental belief in extraterrestrial visitation. It simply reflects the fact that we keep a watchful eye on our airspace and want to know about anything operating in the United Kingdom’s Air Defence Region. Many other countries have similar research efforts.

I had access to all the previous UFO files, some of which had been very highly classified, so I had a vast archive of data to assess. This enabled me to undertake various research projects, looking for trends, etc. But the bread and butter of the job was investigating the new sightings that were reported on a virtually daily basis. We used to receive 200 to 300 reports each year.

The methodology of an investigation is fairly standard. First, you interview the witness to obtain as much information as possible about the sighting: date, time, and location of the sighting, description of the object, its speed, its height, etc. Then you attempt to correlate the sighting with known aerial activity such as civil flights, military exercises, or weather balloon launches. We could check with the Royal Greenwich Observatory to see if astronomical phenomena such as meteors or fireballs might explain what was seen. We could check to see whether any UFOs seen visually had been tracked on radar. If we had a photograph or video, we could get various MoD specialists to enhance and analyze the imagery. We could also liaise with staff at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales, where they have space-tracking radar. Finally, on various scientific and technical issues, we could liaise with the Defence Intelligence Staff, though this is an area that I can’t discuss in any detail.

After investigation, around 80 percent of UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of something ordinary, such as aircraft lights, satellites, airships, weather balloons, or planets. In around 15 percent of cases there was insufficient information to draw any firm conclusions. The remaining approximately 5 percent of sightings seemed to defy conventional explanation. The sorts of cases that got into this latter category included UFO incidents where there were multiple witnesses, or where the witnesses were trained observers such as police officers or military personnel; sightings from civil or military pilots; sightings backed up by photographic or video evidence, where technical analysis found no signs of fakery; sightings tracked on radar and sightings involving structured craft seemingly capable of speeds and maneuvers way ahead of even the most advanced aircraft.

Generally speaking, because my terms of reference limited my investigations to sightings in the United Kingdom Air Defence Region, I did not liaise with other nations on this issue. However, on occasion we raised questions about the phenomenon in general or about specific sightings with other countries, through the respective British embassy. I have also met officials from other countries in a private capacity who have been involved in government work on this subject, such as Jacques Patenet from the French CNES GEIPAN unit, and Colonel Aldo Olivero from the Italian Air Force. In the course of these discussions it was clear that our terms of reference and methodologies were broadly similar, as were our conclusions.

The Cosford Incident

On March 30 and 31, 1993, there was a series of UFO sightings in the UK involving over a hundred witnesses, many of them police officers and military personnel. The UFO also flew directly over two Air Force bases. What follows is the extraordinary story of what has been dubbed the Cosford incident.

The first sighting took place on March 30 at around 8:30 p.m. in Somerset. This was followed by a sighting at 9:00 p.m. in the Quantock Hills. The witness was a police officer who, together with a group of scouts, had seen a craft that he described as looking “like two Concordes flying side by side and joined together.” The reports came in thick and fast, and when I arrived at work the following morning I received a steady stream of them. It was soon clear that I had a major UFO event on my hands.

One of the most interesting reports came from a civilian in Rugely, Staffordshire, who reported a UFO that he estimated as being 200 meters in diameter. He and other family members told me how they had chased the object in their car and got extremely close to it, believing it had landed in a nearby field. When they got there a few seconds later, there was nothing to be seen. Many of the descriptions related to a triangular-shaped craft or to lights perceived as being on the underside of such a craft. Indeed, in an apparent coincidence, these sightings occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in Belgium that led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO tracked on radar.

The UK UFO was seen by a patrol of Air Force police based at the RAF station in Cosford, 150 miles northwest of London. Their official police report (classified Police In Confidence) stated that the UFO passed over the base “at great velocity … at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet.” It described two white lights with a faint red glow at the rear, with no engine noise being heard. The Air Force police report also contained details of a number of civilian UFO sightings they had received in the course of making enquiries with other military bases, civil airports, and local police.

Later that night, the meteorological officer at RAF Shawbury—the base that provides advanced training for helicopter aircrew, air traffic controllers, and flight operations personnel for all three of the UK’s armed services—saw the UFO. He described to me how it had moved slowly across the countryside toward the base, at a speed of no more than 30 or 40 mph. He saw the craft fire a narrow beam of light (like a laser) at the ground and saw the light sweeping backward and forward across the field beyond the perimeter fence, as if it were looking for something. He heard an unpleasant low-frequency humming sound coming from the object and said he could feel as well as hear this—rather like standing in front of a bass speaker. He estimated the size of the craft to be midway between a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and a Boeing 747. Then he told me that the light beam had retracted in an unnatural way and that the craft had suddenly accelerated away to the horizon many times faster than a military aircraft. Here was an experienced Royal Air Force officer who regularly saw aircraft and helicopters, telling me about something he said was quite unlike anything he’s ever seen in his life. The MoD party line about UFOs being of “no defense significance” was looking decidedly shaky. What was I supposed to say to him, I wondered—“Don’t worry, it was probably just a weather balloon”?

For a number of reasons UFOs are notoriously underreported. The two main factors here are fear of disbelief and/or ridicule, and the fact that many people do not know who to contact with details of their sightings. While there were standing instructions that UFO reports sent to military bases, civil airports, and police stations should be forwarded to the MoD for investigation, this national reporting system did not always work. The case file on the March 30–31, 1993, UFO incident makes it clear that there were many more sightings than ever reached the department. One throwaway line from a police report of a sighting in Liskeard, Cornwall, stated that the object was “seen by other police officers throughout Devon and Cornwall.” We can only guess at the number of sightings that went unreported that night.

Because of the similarity between these reports and those repeatedly filed in Belgium in 1989 and 1990, I asked the Defence Intelligence Staff to make some discreet enquiries to the Belgian authorities through the British embassy in Brussels. As I recall, our air attaché was able to speak to General De Brouwer and the two F-16 pilots. It was clear that De Brouwer had done an excellent investigation under very difficult circumstances.

Like De Brouwer, I launched a detailed investigation into the Cosford sightings, the main difference being that the Cosford incident was not a “wave” but a one-time event, as are most UFO cases. I worked closely with the RAF, colleagues in the Defence Intelligence Staff, and personnel at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales. One of the first things that I did was order that radar tapes be impounded and sent to me at MoD Main Building in Whitehall. The radar data was downloaded onto standard VHS video cassettes and arrived shortly thereafter. I watched it with the relevant RAF specialists, who told me that there were a few odd radar returns, but that they were inconclusive. Radar is not an exact science, and in certain circumstances, false returns can be generated. Later, a more formal assessment of the radar data was made. Unfortunately, one of the radar heads was not working on primary radar during the reporting period, so only aircraft working secondary surveillance radar could be seen. But with this and with other checks, we were able to build up a picture of all aircraft and helicopter activity over the UK, so that we could factor them into the investigation and eliminate them from our enquiries if appropriate.