Nick Pope Revisited

Let’s start again. I was a little disturbed about the allegations slung at Nick Pope by Dr. David Clarke recently and that Nick Pope had not had the opportunity to respond to them. I also want to point out that I have no dog in this fight and was looking for a little fairness in all this. I expected some pushback, but, in this world today, who wouldn’t expect some pushback. I have now heard from a number of others about all this. First, I suppose, is to answer the question of why Dr. David Clarke would bring this up now, if the issue had been settled decades earlier. According to what he told me; the simple answer is that he didn’t. He was responding to a question asked by Martin Willis during Willis’ podcast.

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 11-30-20

Nick Redfern

Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

Second, all those who emailed me seemed to object to my use of the term “allegations” against Nick Pope. All who emailed me said that there had been no allegations, just statement of facts. One of those facts, an important one, had to do with Nick Pope’s duty at the MoD and whether or not he, Nick Pope, had conducted official UFO investigations. While serving in the MoD, Nick Pope had other duties and devoted only 20% of his salary to dealing with UFOs. In other words, the majority of his time went to other things. His UFO duties involved taking down the initial information about a UFO sighting and then passing it on to another organization. To quote Nick Redfern (and now you know why I kept saying Nick Pope), back in 1994, Nick Pope told Nick Redfern, “There is no specific ‘UFO budget,’ except the staff costs, i.e. around 20% of my salary, together with a tiny percent of some other salaries, reflecting my line management’s supervisory role.”

For those interested, here is a link to an article an Nick Redfern published a number of years ago that dealt with some of this.

That, of course, does not rule out Nick Pope having investigated UFO sightings. It suggests that there wasn’t much of a budget for any investigation. It could be said that the initial intake of information over the telephone is part of an investigation, though certainly not the most important aspect of it. However, there is additional information that is relevant to the discussion.

David Clarke noted in communication with me, “Sec(AS) [Secretariat Air Staff] where Nick worked 1991 – 1993 was not authorized or funded to investigate UFO reports.”

That seems to be fairly definitive but there is more relevant information. According to what David Clarke provided, “This is set out clearly in the attached policy document from 1997, written by Pope's line manager, that says any follow-up investigations that were required were carried out by the DI55 intelligence staff and/or the Royal Air Force.”

In still another document that came from official sources, and of which I now have a copy, it says:

Mr. Pope at one time served as EO (Band D) in the Secretariat Air Staff [a junior civil servant grade] ... [and] left Sec(AS) in 1994...and his knowledge of this issue, other than from publicly available sources, must be regarded as dated. Mr. Pope elected to describe his position as the "Head of the MoD's UFO Project", a term entirely of his own invention, and he has used his experience and information he gathered (frequently going beyond the official remit of his position) to develop a parallel career as a pundit on the topic, including writing several books, some purportedly non-fiction. Mr. Pope constantly puts himself forward in various parts of the media, solicited and unsolicited, as an "expert" (despite his lack of recent knowledge about the work carried on in the branch concerned) and seeks credit amongst other aficionados for having "forced" the MoD to reveal its "secret" files on the subject. The latter is far from the truth...

Finally, in what might be the final straw here, David Clarke provided the following, “In another document from the same period, the head of the Air Historical Branch (RAF) is even more forthright, saying ‘Far from accurately representing the Department's position, he [Pope] has sought to embellish the truth at almost every turn’.”

I suppose, that if you wish to be generous, you could say that taking the initial report and asking questions about it could be considered part of an official investigation. But that is really stretching a point and doesn’t accurately reflect the situation. The actual investigation into the reports that demanded additional work was carried about by other British government organizations and Nick Pope had virtually nothing to do with that.

But the real problem here is what Nick Pope published on his own website. Any errors, embellishments, alterations of fact can’t be blamed on the webmaster. Nick Pope approved the content. This biography said:

Nick Pope ran the British Government’s UFO project. From 1991 to 1994 he researched and investigated UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles and other strange phenomena, leading the media to call him the real Fox Mulder. His government background and his level-headed views have made him the media, film and TV industry’s go-to guy when it comes to UFOs, the unexplained and conspiracy theories.

Another aspect of this was that Nick Pope had apparently accused David Clarke of plagiarism and of being a needy, dishonest ufologist. The direct quote from David Clarke is, “Nick Pope has called me dishonest, a liar, a nut and a serial plagiarizer - despite providing absolutely no evidence for any of these things all of which are seriously defamatory.” But this particular allegation has been debunked by Hayley Stevens a post to her blog which you can read here.

I mean you can disagree with someone but this is unreasonable. There is additional information contained in this post that sheds additional light on the problem. Some of the sources or documents she mentions I have seen and have copies for verification.

I’m not sure if this is piling on, or if it is relevant information. As noted above, Nick Pope claimed that he had investigated claims of alien abduction, crop circle formations or animal mutilations as part of his job at the MoD. Philip Mantle supplied the following information: Just read this from UK documentary producer Matt Quinn. This was posted in the comments section of the martin Willis podcast:

From that reference Phillippe... "From 1991 to 1994 Mr. Pope worked as a civil servant within Secretariat (air staff). He undertook a wide range of secretariat tasks relating to central policy, political and parliamentary aspects of non-operational RAF activity. Part of his duties related to the investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena reported to the Department to see if they had any defence significance." This doesn't actually contradict what David Clark has said, and what has been 'common knowledge' for a very long time... it also completely fails to support in any way, Nick Pope's ridiculously-aggrandised claims... But in reality? I can only paraphrase Martha and the Muffins...

" _From nine to five, he had to spend his time at work His job was very boring as an office clerk The only thing that helped him pass the time away Was knowing he'd be back at Echo Beach someday_ " As we're 'buying' UK government publications (when it suits) do a search with the UK's National Archive service... And I do very much encourage you to do your own legwork; don't just take my word for it. I can tell you (as a media professional) that when 'Open Skies Closed Minds' was published it was generally received by the press as highly entertaining bollocks... riding a wave that was well in motion at the time. Just a 'jolly japes' type romp through an over-egged fantasy world... Good copy, bit of a laugh. But Nick Pope always had more in common with Dilbert than Mulder. The woman who got Nick Pope's job after him is called Kerry Philpott, and is on record stating there was no "strange phenomena section" at the MOD and that whilst Nick had been an 'EO' - Junior management grade administrator - just as she now was, she wrote "neither he nor indeed am I the head of any 'UFO' section"...

There is a chap called James Easton who is fairly well known here in Scotland as something of a 'UFOlogist'. Way back in 1999 he wrote an open letter to the MOD which posed many questions about Nick's duties and the MOD's locus in relation to various 'Fortean' phenomena... The response he got was. “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.” I'm sure it's now well over a decade since David Clark put that information up on his own site - over 20 since James got the response he did from the MOD and I honestly cannot tell you of anyone (except the incredibly non-credible) to whom that was in any way, shape or form a surprise. David Clark hasn't lied. - You don't have to like the guy, or not be disappointed at Nick. But David hasn't lied.

This then, is the other side of the coin. I provided Nick Pope with a platform for his comments, and it is only fair that I supply the others with a similar courtesy. I’m inclined to say that the reader should take his or her own view of the material and decide what to believe. However, that is a somewhat weasel-worded claim for me to make. I waded into this swamp because I believed that Nick Pope should be heard, but now, having seen the other side, and although I think of Nick Pope as a friend (and can say the same about Philip Mantle and Nick Redfern), I must come down on their side of the fence.

What we see here is just another of the nasty fights that erupt in this field, though this one played out in the UK rather than here in America. If you care to comment, then you must be prepared for the consequences of that commentary. It had seemed to me, originally, that this was a bit of a fight over semantics, but it has, of course, ranged far beyond that. I don’t like the name calling or the allegations of plagiarism, having had that directed at me for a long time, but sometimes you just have to make a stand.

Here then, is what I believe to be the whole truth of the matter. And while I could say that I wish I had not involved myself in it, I would rather say that I think here is enough information that we all know the truth.

Following is one of those documents that seems to clarify the situation. I append it here for those who wish to see a little more of the evidence.

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

Did Nick Pope Investigate UFOs for the UK MoD?

UFO Experts Nick Pope And David Clarke – Rumble in The UK

British UFO Document Release Designed to Deflect Public and Media Interest Says Former Ministry of Defence UFO Specialist

UFO Files I Have Loved and Lost

Nick Pope Refutes Abduction Story, says, 'I've Never Even Seen a UFO!'

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Did Nick Pope Investigate UFOs for the UK MoD?

In the UFO community, there are always disagreements and sometimes allegations are slung that have no basis in fact. I have been called a shill for the Air Force, I have been accused of working for Hector Quintanilla and Project Blue Book, and that I am an anti-abduction propagandist who writes fiction. The only truth in all that is that I do write fiction including science fiction but does that really disqualify me from UFO investigation? Wouldn’t my background in the military and my training in various fields suggest I can bring some important insights to UFO investigation?

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 11-27-20

I say all this because Dr. David Clarke has again suggested that Nick Pope, sometimes described as Britain’s Fox Mulder (because the news media loves to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator) didn’t investigate anything officially. Clarke told Martin Willis, during Willis’ recent podcast, “There was a UFO desk when he was an incumbent for three years but he was just one of dozens of people who did that task and he didn’t actually investigate anything.”

Clarke went on to say that Nick Pope merely received the reports and that he then filed them. The people responsible for the investigations was the Defence Intelligence Staff, DISS. It was their job to conduct the UFO investigations that were believed to have some sort of military significance.

Clarke said, “I’ve interviewed most of the people who worked on this subject in DISS at that time and they tell me ‘well, Nick Pope didn’t have any involvement in this. We did the investigations, we didn’t share information with them because we didn’t trust them.” He meant that the civilian servants tended to leak information into the public arena which is why they didn’t trust them.

Of course, this really is nothing new. Clarke has raised these allegations in the past and Nick has refuted them in the past. This sort of thing seems to dot the UFO landscape. It doesn’t matter how many times the allegations are challenged; they seem to pop up again and again.

Philip Mantle, the force behind Flying Disk Press, and someone who can’t be seen as a skeptic, wrote to a number of UFO researcher around the world this last week:

Over the past few days social media has been buzzing regarding allegations made by Dr. David Clarke. Dr. Clarke was interviewed by Martin Willis on his podcast on the 18th of November. At around halfway through this one hour interview Martin asked David about Nick Pope. As most of you will know Mr. Pope claims to have run the UK government’s UFO project and had officially investigated UFOs, crop circles and alien abductions as part of his MoD job. Dr. Clarke publicly stated that his is not the case and that Mr. Pope undertook no such work and there never was nor is there a UK government ‘UFO PROJECT’…

Dr. David Clarke is not the only source of information regarding Nick Pope. Personally I have been making my own enquiries which are still on-going. Although my enquiries are not yet complete I have seen and heard enough to convince me that Dr. Clarke is indeed correct. As a result just yesterday [November 25] I removed Nick Pope’s foreword for the revised edition of my book “WITHOUT CONSENT”.

Of course Nick Pope denies these allegations but now the ball is [simply] in his court. Can Nick Pope provide any official documentation that states he ran the UK government’s UFO Project? Well the MoD also claims that he did no such thing. If he can’t then is this the beginning of the end of Nick Pope?

Still, there is some smoke, but is there any fire. I particularly liked the idea that Nick present some sort of documentation. I have had the same sort of requests made of me when people wondered if I had been completely honest about my background. I provided the documentation, though a couple of times it took some convincing for the controlling agencies to release the data. I always attempt to supply the information requested to stop the rumors.

I have also found that those who can’t provide the evidence tend to come up with the “I’m not going to dignify that request with any sort of response defense.” I’ve always taken that to mean that they can’t provide the evidence so they just dodge the question with this non response… Or they fall back on the old the records have been altered or have been destroyed. Huge red flags when dealing with these sorts of allegations.

I reached out to Nick Pope, who was, of course, aware of this latest brouhaha. Within minutes, I had an answer from Nick. He mentioned that this allegation had been around for years and it had been answered time and again. He pointed out that he had been interviewed on a number of high-level television, radio, and newspaper reporters and had appeared in numerous documentaries. He suggested that those reporters had vetted him and found his claims to be credible…

Well, given the state of journalism today, and knowing that documentary producers often have their own agendas, I wasn’t particularly swayed by that argument. Some might have checked, but I figure most hadn’t. They just believed what they were told because that was easier than doing any real investigation.

That wasn’t all he said. He provided a link to an official document that seemed to underscore what he claimed. You can read that here.

If you scroll down slightly, you’ll find a question that was asked in the British parliament that seemed to suggest that Nick did investigate UFOs. It is not a ringing endorsement, but does suggest that Nick was telling the truth about his involvement, officially, in UFO investigations.

So, to answer Philip Mantle’s question, it seems that Nick did supply an official document that states he ran the project. For those who don’t want to go to all that trouble, here is that brief statement:

From 1991 to 1994 Mr. Pope worked as a civil servant within Secretariat (air staff). He undertook a wide range of secretariat tasks relating to central policy, political and parliamentary aspects of non-operational RAF activity. Part of his duties related to the investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena reported to the Department to see if they had any defence significance.

As I say, not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it the same sort of endorsement we’ve seen for Louis Elizondo and the AATIP project he might have run. We are now in a world of secrets and bureaucracies and double speak so it is hard to define the truth. At the moment we have no real answer, other than Nick did supply official documents but it didn’t go quite as far as I would have liked.

That’s not all. Since the bar was set very low, it wasn’t very difficult to overcome. Other official documents show that Nick did investigate UFOs while serving at the MoD. You can see some of them here:

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/UK/defe-24-1972.pdf

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/UK/defe-24-2086.pdf

As a final bit of evidence, Nick was interviewed for a documentary and according to that documentary, was the spokesman for the MoD UFO program. For those interested, you can watch it below:

I will note, for those who don’t wish to watch the whole thing, that the relevant part begins at the fifteen minute mark. Nick also wrote, “I don't think there's rivalry between David Clarke and I. I remember Clarke from the British UFO Research Association, so we're not rivals - merely people who come at this subject from different sides of the fence: him as a ufologist, me as someone who's looked at the phenomenon as part of my government job. Obviously, it's frustrating when someone misunderstands or misrepresents my government work, but the lie that I didn't investigate UFOs for the MoD was nailed years ago, and obviously the official website of British parliament is an unimpeachable source. QED.”

This whole thing might just boil down to one man making claims about another and that man providing evidence that those claims are false. Given that this has played out long before, this might just be much ado about nothing.

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

UFO Experts Nick Pope And David Clarke – Rumble in The UK

British UFO Document Release Designed to Deflect Public and Media Interest Says Former Ministry of Defence UFO Specialist

UFO Files I Have Loved and Lost

Nick Pope Refutes Abduction Story, says, 'I've Never Even Seen a UFO!'

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

UFO Mysteries Unraveled: ‘Real-Life X-Files’ and a Top Secret UK Project

A former official at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding a secret government UFO study that was conducted during the 1990s.

By James Rogers Fox News 5-11-18

In 1996, the MoD commissioned a defense contractor to produce a comprehensive report on U.K. UFO sightings. The report was compiled at a time of huge public interest in UFOs fueled by the wildly popular “X-Files” TV series and 1997’s 50th anniversary of the purported UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico.

[...]

Code-named Project Condign, the report analyzed a database of sightings between 1987 and 1997 and was delivered to officials in 2000. The study, entitled ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region,’ found that that sightings could be explained by a variety of known phenomena, both man-made and natural. The incidence of relatively rare natural phenomena was also noted. “No evidence exists to associate the phenomena with any particular nation,” it said.

[...]

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

Project Condign: "In 2006, the British Ministry of Defence Declassified Its Three-Year study of UFOs..."

Has the British Ministry of Defence Released All of Its UFO Files?

Why Britain’s MoD Closed the UFO Files: Exclusive New Evidence

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Has the British Ministry of Defence Released All of Its UFO Files?

Robert Hastings says “No!” and Nick Pope Agrees

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2013

A new BBC online article, dated June 20, 2013 and titled “UFO sightings: Files explain why MoD closed down special desk”, discusses what I consider to be a calculated decision by the British government to feign a lack of interest in the UFO phenomenon, even as public sighting reports in the UK reached a very high level. At the conclusion of this article, former MoD UFO specialist Nick Pope comments, agreeing with my assessment. In response to the story, I posted the following comment:

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 5-10-18

“The U.S. Air Force used this same sleight-of-hand in 1969 to get the American public off its back by closing down Project Blue Book. Years later, FOIA requests forced the release of U.S. government files which proved that other groups, including the CIA and NSA, continued to secretly study national security-related UFO incidents in America. Hopefully the British public won't be duped by this ruse.” Were it not for a word-count limit, I would have added that the USAF’s Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) were also involved in sensitive UFO investigations, something not mentioned by the Pentagon during its Blue Book closure announcement.

Similarly, the real situation regarding official interest in UFOs in the UK is far different than the MoD—and its de facto debunking spokesman, Dr. David Clarke—portray when discussing the topic in the media. For example, over the past five years, information has emerged relating to the famous Rendlesham Forest incidents, in December 1980, which confirms that a bona fide UFO was indeed tracked by both British and American radars in the area.

My 2007 tape recorded interviews with the two USAF air traffic controllers on duty at RAF Bentwaters during that time-frame may be read in an article at my website, which also contains a published statement by retired MoD UFO Desk administrator, Nick Pope, regarding former RAF radar operator Nigel Kerr’s independent radar tracking of the same unidentified aerial object.

Significantly, one of the USAF controllers, Ike Barker, told me that the UFO—which appeared as an orange-colored sphere, approximately the size of an F-111 fighter/bomber—had been spotted out the window of the air traffic control tower at the exact moment it was observed to be momentarily hovering on the tower’s radar scope. It then moved rapidly away in the direction of the base’s Weapons Storage Area (WSA) which contained tactical nuclear bombs, according to multiple USAF sources I have interviewed.

RAF Bentwaters’ American Deputy Base Commander at the time, then-Lt. Col. Charles Halt, has been on-the-record about the incident at the WSA since 1991, saying that while he was leading a security team in nearby Rendlesham Forest that night, investigating strange lights seen there, he had heard frantic radio chatter from Security Policemen posted at the bomb depot, reporting that the UFO was hovering near the facility and directing laser-like beams down into it.

While Barker’s testimony differs somewhat in the details, compared with Halt’s account, it does provide a general corroboration of a UFO presence near the WSA in the pre-dawn hours of December 28, 1980. (It may well be that the UFO made more than one pass near the facility, which would explain the discrepancies in their statements: Barker said the UFO flew extremely fast in a southwesterly direction, passing just to the west of the WSA; he did not see it hover nearby the bunker complex or send down beams into it, as the radio chatter heard by Halt indicated.)

So, according to a former USAF deputy base commander and a USAF air traffic controller, a bona fide UFO actually maneuvered very near the largest nuclear weapons storage depot in Western Europe, located in Suffolk, England. Moreover, Col. Halt says security personnel at the site reported that the aerial object apparently targeted at least one of the bunkers there with laser-like rays.

(In 1994, I interviewed another retired USAF colonel, whose identity must remain confidential, who confirmed the incident and further stated that two tactical nukes were subsequently removed from the Bentwaters WSA and flown aboard a C-5A cargo aircraft to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, for analysis. This individual said that the report he read about the event did not mention the technical findings resulting from that investigation and, therefore, he could not say whether the two bombs had been adversely affected by the beams.)

In spite of these dramatic revelations, the MoD officially claims that its records show no evidence of a UFO threat to the UK’s national security. Clearly, important facts about the Rendlesham Forest incidents are still being suppressed by the British government, despite its recently-hyped claim that it is being transparent with the public regarding its knowledge—or more accurately, lack of knowledge—about the UFO phenomenon.

Moreover, one of the now-retired USAF Security Policemen involved in the multiple UFO events at Rendlesham/RAF Bentwaters that week, Technical Sergeant Jim Penniston, says that Ministry of Defence personnel were present for his harsh debriefing following his encounter with a landed UFO in the woods during the early hours of December 26th. While their role may have been a passive one—leaving the questioning to two USAF officers who were not introduced and whom Penniston did not recognize—the mere presence of persons working for MoD's Air Staff secretariat DS8 hints at an interest in the events in Rendlesham Forest not reflected in the files declassified by the MoD's UFO Desk in the recent past.

In summary, it appears that what the MoD has been engaging in is the selective declassification of UFO-related files, whereby low-level, generally mundane documents are released with much media fanfare, while very sensitive files continue to be withheld from public view. The practice is commonly called “spin”. The purpose of this propaganda tactic is to alter the actual story of official interest in the UFO phenomenon, so that it appears as if there exists only minimal concern or none at all.

My comprehensive exposé on the MoD’s deliberate duplicity and debunker David Clarke’s witting or unwitting role in foisting this UFO disinformation on the British people, may be read at my website.

Robert Hastings adds:

Upon completion of this article, I sent it to former Ministry of Defence UFO Desk administrator Nick Pope, and requested his candid opinion regarding my contentions.
In particular, I asked Pope to provide his assessment of Dr. David Clarke’s self-created role as the authoritative interpreter of the reasons for, and significance of, the MoD’s release of classified UFO documents—a self-serving ploy that members of the British media seem to have swallowed unreservedly. As one will read, Mr. Pope puts things in their proper perspective.

Nick Pope responds:

Classified Documents in the MoD's UFO Files

Project Condign's final report was classified Secret UK Eyes Only, as were some of the supporting papers. Some of the minutes recording discussions relating to the setting up of the Flying Saucer Working Party were classified Top Secret. However, the UK's Freedom of Information Act contains wide-ranging exemptions covering areas such as defense, security and intelligence, among others.

All documents passed to the National Archives will have been reviewed by MoD before being sent out (this is one of the reasons why the release program took five years), so anything released to the public is either unclassified, or is now judged to be unclassified, whatever the original classification. Careful scrutiny of the released material shows plenty of documents have been redacted or withheld in entirety. And that's not including several of the more interesting files, documents, films and photographs that the MoD claims have been "inadvertently destroyed" or "lost".

Access to Classified Information

In government, access to classified information is a product of your security clearance and your 'need to know'. Thus, in a sense, you can never say for sure whether you're privy to all the information on any particular topic, because even if you're the "Subject Matter Expert", there may not just be specific things to which you're denied access, but areas the existence of which you're not even aware. Think of this in terms of 'unknown unknowns'. So while I had a Top Secret SCI security clearance for much of my MoD career and certainly believe I saw all the UFO files, I can't be certain: "I don't know what I don't know" is another way that those of us who have dealt with highly-classified material sometimes characterize this situation.

David Clarke

To clarify David Clarke's role, he's a ufologist, formerly with the British UFO Research Association. He's done some volunteer clerical work for the UK's National Archives on the Ministry of Defense UFO files and got to do a few interviews on the subject when each batch of files was released—generally when I was unavailable. In relation to the final batch of files he got a few more interviews than usual, simply because I now live in America and there were limits to what I could do with the UK media.

Having done as a government job what he did as a hobby, I can confirm that Clarke has never worked for the MoD or held a security clearance. MoD redacts the files before sending them to the National Archives, so he's only ever seen the same unclassified material as any other member of the public [Hastings’ emphasis].

One MoD document referred to him as a "UFO spotter"—a disparaging term used to describe somebody with a nerdish and slightly obsessive attitude to the subject. He's a folklore buff who's interested in fairies and goblins and I've been told he privately thinks some UFOs and alien abductions may represent "some sort of supernatural phenomenon". He keeps this opinion to himself, presumably because he's worried people would think he's a nut. So he's no sinister debunker—just a slightly odd hobbyist, reading out the government press release. Some people would probably use the term "useful idiot" to describe his parroting the MoD "no defense significance" sound bite, which was designed solely to keep Parliament, the media and the public off our backs.

Visit Robert's Web_Site ►

See Also:

One UFO at RAF Bentwaters Appeared on Radar: Skeptics Claim Witnesses Mistook a Lighthouse for a UFO but Two Air Traffic Controllers Say They Tracked an Otherworldly Craft

UFO-Spin in the UK

UFO-Spin in the UK: David Clarke's Rebuttal

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

No Time for Aliens: How the MoD Tried to Prove No One's Out There

Report collating a decade of UFO sightings in 1990s was intended to protect ministry from more X-Files inspired requests

It was 1997, the 50th anniversary of the suspected flying saucer crash at Roswell in New Mexico, and the heyday of the paranormal mystery series The X-Files. The English-speaking world was gripped by UFO-mania. But what seemed a delightful

By Damien Gayle The Guardian 5-6-18

mystery to some was becoming a headache for the spooks at Britain’s Defence Intelligence Staff.

Analysts at the DI55 office, the department lumbered with the UFO brief, were being peppered with requests from ufologists – and even parliamentary questions – for information on flying saucers, taking up time they felt would be better spent on terrestrial defence matters. So top brass decided to undertake a definitive study of the unit’s collection of reported UFO sightings to establish, once and for all, whether there was anything in them.

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

MoD Discovers 18 New UFO Files (Pt 1)

MoD Discovers 18 New UFO Files (Pt 2)

MoD Blocks Release of UFO Files

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

The Key to Britain’s UFO X-Files

“What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?” asked a curious Winston Churchill of his advisors in the summer of 1952. “What can it mean? What is the truth?”

The 77-year-old prime minister had good reason to feel inquisitive. It was the height of the Cold War, and the news had been filled by stories of odd lights and entities invading the sky above Washington DC.

By Richard Blackledge The Star 9-28-17

These sightings had re-ignited the ‘flying saucer’ phenomenon that began in earnest following the famous Roswell incident a few years earlier, in which a mysterious airborne disc - later explained away as a weather balloon - was believed to have crashed near a ranch in New Mexico.

The episode opened the floodgates to accounts of unidentified flying objects from the public and military personnel, leading the Government to set up its own ‘UFO desk’, as it became

popularly known, to examine reports that reached the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall.

People didn’t simply submit letters. For more than 60 years until the unit was scrapped in 2009, witnesses sent in photographs, drawings and even elaborate paintings of what they had spotted - the most remarkable of which are highlighted in a new book by Dr David Clarke.

[...]


UFO Drawings From The National Archives
click --HERE-- to buy a copy

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

Britain's UFO 'X-Files' Quietly Released

Britain’s Very Own X-Files and Their Space Slime Mystery

UFO Over Stonehenge? Britain Releases its Last Big Batch of X-Files | VIDEO

Britain’s X-traordinary Files

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

UFO Cult Leader Under Surveillance By Scotland Yard for Five Years

By Nick Gutteridge
www.express.co.uk
7-28-15

SPECIAL branch operatives tailed a UFO cult leader who said he was in telepathic contact with aliens, it emerged today.

     The bizarre high-level decision saw Scotland Yard’s finest infiltrating rallies and meetings of George King's secretive ‘space society’ amid fears it was a front for Russian spies.

The former London cabbie claimed he could communicate with an alien called Aetherius, who was orbiting Mars.

In another of his freakish outbursts he warned the public that space travellers from Venus were already living among them.

However, it has now emerged that detectives from the Metropolitan Police feared his zany antics may have been an elaborate front for Soviet moles.

They launched a five-year surveillance operation into his activities, which was revealed for the first time today after Scotland Yard unsealed top secret documents . . ..

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

Heaven’s Gate UFO Cult & Comet Hale-Bopp Twenty Years Later

When Facts Fail: UFO Cults, 'Birthers' and Cognitive Dissonance

Scientology Church Has Carved a Message to Aliens That Can Be Seen From Outer Space | UFO NEWS

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

‘How UFOs Conquered The World’ – A Critical Review

Tweet

"How UFOs conquered the world" - "In the eye of the beholder" UFO reality or UFO theatre

By Bill Chalker theozfiles.blogspot.com.au 7-13-15

I found David Clarke's new book entertaining, but he and I disagree about its significance. I see his book just catering to the UFO theatre aspects of the UFO controversy, rather than being a serious look at the real UFO reality. David Clarke clearly sees his book as contributing substantially to the full story of the UFO mystery. In other words in David's view "UFOs R Us" Real UFOs are not physically real. Its all misidentification, hoaxing, stories etc - the rich fodder of social scientists, psychologists, and folklorists - a perfect fit for the psychosocial hypothesis (PSH).

As I read David Clarke's book I was waiting for him to deal with the kind of UFO events and cases I have encountered in more than 40 years of UFO study, namely physical evidence cases. Instead we get a very light touch indeed and a dismissal that all such cases are not what they seem. There is no physical evidence for UFOs, according to David Clarke.

I couldn't disagree more. So I've decided to post the "book review" part of my "OZ Files" column that appears in the latest UFO Truth magazine (Check out the hyperlinks I have embedded at various points to give yourself further details on points I have made):

      David Clarke’s latest book How UFOs conquered the world – the history of a modern myth(Aurum Press, London, 2015) embraces the UFO experience and UFO theatre. To him it seems they are one and the same, just different manifestations of “the UFO syndrome.” He concludes his entertaining book:

"Myth or reality, UFOs have conquered the world. People say seeing is believing, but I disagree. All the evidence suggests the opposite is the truth. In plain fact, we see what we believe.”

David Clarke’s new book is well worth reading as it gives an excellent description of the psychosocial perspective. While there may well be unexplainable cases he clearly feels that they are not evidence for extraterrestrials visiting Earth. The answer to the mystery is of human origin (both psychological and social explanations), with diverse causes. Mankind created the UFO myth, in part to address the need to know we are not alone in the vast universe. The UFO myth is belief driven and evolving. No hard evidence is available to support the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).

The book is presented as his personal journey through ufology, but it seems clear that it is a cleverly framed exposition of the psychosocial hypothesis (PSH), with a personal perspective inserted in each chapter. He describes wanting to believe himself, but maturity and experience turned him to embrace the PSH – a comfortable fit for a researcher trained in folklore.

Here are parts of David Clarke’s journey through “the UFO myth” as described in his book. He connects with early ufology in Britain through an interview with Dennis Plunkett of the British Flying Saucer Bureau. The British press announced the end of ufology when it was claimed the Bureau was closing in 2001. Plunkett disputes the facts and tried to correct the error. Ufology had moved on.

David Clarke uses Allen Hendry’s excellent book from 1980 The UFO Handbookto argue that the UFO mystery is all about UFOs being reduced to IFOs, namely identified UFOs. Pelicans and Venus are big starters here. Pelicans carry the “badge of honour” for the PSH school, despite the fact that as an explanation for the Kenneth Arnold sighting back in 1947 it is far from proven. We don’t learn from David Clarke’s coverage that there did appear to be a ground based witness Fred Johnson, a prospector, in the same area at about the same time, who saw a number of disks, and even reported some possible compass effects, during the passage of several of the objects. Clearly magnetised pelicans with a powerful magnetic field! But the USAF listed the case as “unexplained”?

David Clarke states (pg. 70): “The misperceptions of pelicans and Venus that explain many UFO reports happen unexpectedly and without warning. Scientists do not know when they are going to occur so cannot observe and analyse them under controlled conditions.” Pelican behaviour and migrations and flight are pretty well understood. Their localities are generally known with some precision. Ask any bird watcher with a passion for pelicans. Venus – ask any astronomer or consult sky charts, Venus’ position, movements, appearance are well understood. Again plenty of opportunity for controlled observations and studies. The reality seems that the pelican/Venus explanatory nexus is vastly overstated as an explanation in compelling UFO cases. The behaviour and characteristics are well known and a bit of thinking usually sorts those sorts of cases out.

Warminster and the fake UFO photos associated with it (particularly David Simpson’s SIUFOP experiments) are used as a general template to reinforce the idea of the “will to believe” by uncritical witnesses or believers. The propensity of hoaxing the gullible is put forward extrapolating very broadly that "...every type of UFO evidence, from complex photographs to alien abductions, secret government documents and stories told by high ranking military officials about extra-terrestrial cadavers hidden in air force hangers, has at some point been unveiled as being invented. " (p.93.) This is really evidence of over reaching, as he falls far short on evidence for that statement. Perhaps he is arguing if you can prove one, it is reasonable to argue that all of this type of claimed evidence should be treated the same and therefore there is no need to bother with any other evidence.

David Clarke is on surer ground when he uses his impressive work on helping bring official British government UFO files out into the open. There is a lot of interesting material particularly in his interview with psychologist Alex Cassie who was involved in the MODs investigation of Angus Brooks’ intriguing but strange “craft” sighting in 1967. The invoking of a “lucid dream” initiated by a “floater” in the eye seems a stretch, particularly given the long duration of the claimed event. Cassie’s team investigation was a particular standout because it was detailed. The majority of MOD investigations were far less impressive and could be easily called limited at best. I saw the same pattern in Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) investigations - some standouts, but hardly representative of the true picture. Most investigations were inadequate. In fairness many cases really didn’t call for detailed investigations, but when impressive cases didn’t get much attention nor anything approaching a serious and adequate investigation, it is difficult to give much credit to official investigations as sources of “gold standard” conclusions.

David’s conclusions about the so-called Condign report are not that far from my own. It had poor foundations in terms of poor case data (large amounts of MOD data with very limited information & little investigation) meant it couldn’t be relied upon as a basis for viable analysis. It did serve a purpose as the basis of disengagement for the MOD from UFO “investigations.” It was interesting to see that David Clarke had clearly established who “Mr. Condign” was and that he had witnessed a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) during a secret mission. While it may have made the man a good fit for compiling the report, it didn’t validate the report as credible.

I’m sure UFO Truth editor Gary Heseltine will address his interview that is mentioned in David Clarke’s book, but I was struck by the proclamation made in the same chapter that, “for all its talk about evidence, ufology was not an empirical discipline. In order for it to survive it had to close itself off from the scientific method." (p.145) With my science background and as someone who researches UFOs I take issue with that statement. Sure there are many “UFO researchers” who fail the basic critical thinking test, a basic template for a scientific investigation, but there are many more that apply reasonable scientific methodology. There are many aspects of reported UFO activity that thrive on the application of scientific method in the pursuit of evidence. For example instrumented field studies of UFO “flap” areas – that is, potentially utilise “repeatable phenomena” – a mainstay of scientific method.

As I used David Clarke’s conclusion chapter title “In the eye of the beholder” in my “gonzo” take on the Bonsall “UFO theatre” I’ll return to the substance of his conclusion and his “ten basic truths” and insert some comments:

1). There is no such thing as 'the UFO phenomenon' but there are lots of phenomena that cause UFOs.

Richard Hall, author of the 1964 “UFO Evidence” undertaken for NICAP, and the 2000 “UFO Evidence” follow up (“A thirty-year report”) provides impressive evidence of repeatable patterns amongst a wide selection of UFO data. Basic pattern replications in 2 separate studies more than 30 years apart, argues powerfully for a phenomenon of some validity. In other words a real “UFO phenomenon.” IFOs help calibrate our methodologies and interpretations of the data. Force fitting of ill-fitting “explanations” or ignoring “inconvenient data” in order to make explanations fit in compelling cases happens repeatedly within the ranks of PSH thinking. The Battelle “Stork” study back in the 1950s isolated “unknowns” by virtue of their lack of correlation with IFOs, which led to some limited UFO modelling of types. That didn’t stop the USAF misrepresenting the data.

2). There is no such thing as a 'true UFO.'

Again Battelle had a crack at it as above and isolated compelling data. David Clarke’s book spent most of its pages addressing what I refer to as “the UFO theatre” and infrequently engages with compelling cases studies. Try the 1968 Minot case as one example.

3). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Extraordinary investigations are also required. “Operation Prato” in Brazil is an intriguing example. The Bigelow funded “Skinwalker Ranch” might be but without more detailed access to data certainty is not there. The CAIPAN 2014 Workshop highlights the kind of thing that can potentially be done. Philippe Ailleris “The lure of local SETI:Fifty years of field studies” (2011, and its follow ups) provide a good template for further study.

Without these sorts of investigations being the “norm” rather than limited exceptions, “extraordinary evidence” is going to be limited and uncertain.
Lots of worthwhile databases and studies of case types like physical traces, “EM-car stop” cases etc argue for compelling trends and data.

4). Accounts of UFO experiences form the core of the syndrome, but stories do not constitute 'evidence.' They are folklore.

Again the 1968 Minot case is good example. David Clarke writes, “Pilots are experts at identifying aircraft but their pilot skills are no better than anyone else’s when it comes to unexpected close encounters with stray balloons or flocks of pelicans.” This is ridiculous, however David Clarke doesn’t cite anything credible, such as a lot of compelling cases in the NARCAP database. I’ve interviewed pilots who have reported engine power loss in the presence of nearby UFOs, hardly the stuff of stray balloons and pelicans.

5). Culture - not experience - creates the UFO interpretation but some experiences are independent of culture.

Provided we can limit our embrace with “the UFO theatre” that David Clarke is preoccupied with, the “endless feedback loops” that are encountered in more compelling case studies, that seem scarce in this book, would mean one would encounter loops of appropriate levels of investigation, research and analysis. There is already a lot of that material, but “the UFO theatre” preoccupations of PSH promoters instead see loops of anecdotes, poor enquiries and folklore – the consequences of a skewed focus.

6). The UFO syndrome fulfils the role of the supernatural "other."

The argument that this “fulfils a deep emotional need” is a “cop out.” It could be argued that its nothing new. The technological ETH model could be viewed as a western imperative. “Sky being” lore is very widespread in ancient and native cultures. So it could be argued the ETH’s growth and diffusion around the world is not a triumph of western imperialism, but rather a shift (or technological upgrade) of existing beliefs in worldwide indigenous cultures. A “modern myth”- perhaps not. It could be just as easily argued for a complete inversion of that perspective. The modern US rendering of the “UFO myth” is just an inevitable technological reframing of an existing worldwide “myth” system with very deep roots. Perhaps a reframing might have western culture catching up, belatedly reframing an existing long held belief system.

7). The extra-terrestrial hypothesis and other exotic theories cannot explain UFOs.

The ETH in its simplest form suggests that a technologically advanced based phenomenon is visiting Earth. What is disprovable (and hence potentially scientific)? Well the hypothesis that there is no advanced technology is evident in UFO reports? Science and sceptics have been arguing that for years (e.g. The flawed Condon report) – that there is no evidence for advanced technology.

In fact the contrary view may very well be provable . There are lots of potential discoveries and useful insights in UFO data, none of which can be found in David Clarke’s book.

Here are a few suggestions he might like to follow up:

Dr. Myrabo’s seems to modify his “light craft” technology ideas (NASA related) in response to viewing and examining evidence in a UFO event filmed by Ray Stanford (see Chris Lambright’s “X-Descending”); try reading Paul Hill’s “Unconventional Flying Objects – a scientific analysis” which is based in part on his own sighting and examining a lot of UFO data in his capacity as an unofficial UFO “clearing house” at NASA; Auguste Meesen’s 3 papers in the 2012 PIERS electromagnetics Research Symposium – each using UFO data to support various arguments & hypotheses related to propulsion and effects; Claude Poher’s analysis of evidence for possible advanced propulsion in the UFOs imaged in the radar photos from the 1968 Minot B52 incident.

8). The idea of a super-conspiracy to hide the truth about UFOs is unfalsifiable.

I suggest that instead of concentrating on the unproductive study of the collision of “UFO theatre” with conspiracy belief, why not focus on what governments have really done. For example read “UFOs and Government” by the UFO History Group.

9). The common denominator in UFO stories is the human beings who see and believe in them.

Why not study the data that has emerged and is emerging from instrumented studies, physical evidence, forensic evidence (even in stranger areas like alien abduction claims. For example see my book "Hair of the Alien: DNA and Other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abductions"). Once again the 1968 B52 radar visual case with photographic evidence from the radar screens is a good place to start. The evidence already strongly suggests that UFOs are more than just a human creation.

10). People want to believe in UFOs.

Arguing that UFO research and evidence is all about belief and no evidence is once again evidence for skewed perspectives emerging from PSH promoters. I know many UFO researchers that approach the subject from an evidence based perspective. They assume that most sightings are probably IFOs and let the quality of the data argue that it might be a UFO.”

I argue that UFOs are about evidence and there is plenty of it, if one can avoid the pitfalls of playing in the PSH sandpit, which seems far too preoccupied with “UFO theatre” rather than a really serious deep engagement with the UFO phenomenon. David Clarke says he long ago abandoned his own list of “best cases” as “a singularly pointless exercise.” My experience has been the complete opposite. I have long examined by own local “best cases” list constantly revisiting the data and arguments about them. Equally I could easily list many other cases that could qualify for that list. I’ve not experienced any crisis of confidence with my own list and my own constant re-evaluation of it and its consistency and robustness for me, are powerful endorsements of the UFO phenomenon. I’ve written extensively about that process and my best cases.

To conclude I thank David Clarke for an excellent book on the psychosocial perspective and his own personal pathway to it. For me it informs me about “the UFO theatre” and not about the UFO phenomenon. As I have argued here in response to the book, there is a real UFO phenomenon with a lot of compelling data, which argues a strong case that it ought to be the focus of a well-funded and extended scientific study. It’s all about “the eye of the beholder.”

One of the mantras that comes out frequently in David Clarke's book is the argument that Kenneth Arnold's watershed sighting of "flying saucers" in 1947 did not involve "saucers" and given that people went on to report "saucers" everywhere, then that re-enforces that people just reported "saucers" because they were influenced by the "flying saucer craze."

Well, one thing researchers are surely aware of (well maybe PSH advocates are an exception, when it suits them), is that UFOs (or UAPs) come in all shapes and sizes. While "saucers" are popular, people were reporting a variety of things, not just "saucers".
Here is a nice quote that gets into that very point, a newspaper report from 1954 (Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January 1954):

“The most remarkable feature of this interplanetary pageant has been the great variety of shape, size, speed and colour attributed to the extra-terrestrial craft.

They have been round, square, oblong, spherical, hemi-spherical, faceted like diamonds, smooth like a billiard ball. They emit orange, green or scarlet jets. They have the approximate dimensions of baseball bats or battleships.

It is becoming increasingly clear to Melbourne citizens that the Martians are people of infinite variety. When it comes to spaceships, they are not content with routine stock models.
“Probably they have the same jealous individuality with their craft as terrestrial women have with hats.

* Special Thanks To Bill Chalker

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

How UFOs Conquered the World

How UFOs Conquered the World

The UFO Files - The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings
A Review By Stanton Friedman

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

UFO Experts Nick Pope And David Clarke – Rumble in The UK

Tweet

UFO Experts Nick Pope And David Clarke Have One Thing In Common: They Hate Each Other

By Lee Speigel The Huffington Post 7-11-13

     Last month, the British government released 4,400 pages of previously unreleased documents. It's the last of the so-called UFO files that had not been available to the public.

But is the public really being told the truth? The answer depends on who you ask.

Britain's top UFO authorities are hardly in agreement. In fact, the only thing they have in common is disrespect for one another.

In one corner, we have Nick Pope, the former Ministry of Defense (MoD) employee who worked on the official UFO desk in the early 1990s.

In the other corner, we have David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, who has been the official consultant to the National Archives for its just-concluded five-year program to release more than 50,000 pages of MoD UFO files.

Gentlemen, let's see a fair fight. Keep your gloves up. Let's see no shots below the belt. In case of a knockdown, go to a neutral corner.

The recent slugfest began with Pope's comment on the UFOs and Nukes site: "Some people would probably use the term 'useful idiot' to describe [Clarke's] parroting the MoD 'no defense significance' sound bite, which was designed solely to keep Parliament, the media and the public off our backs."

Clarke's response: "Pope's condescending description of me as a 'useful idiot' is not only personally insulting but gross hypocrisy, coming from a man who has himself 'parroted' the official MoD line on UFOs whilst employed by them until 2006 and even continues to do so today when it suits his purposes and/or his audience. Therefore, by his own definition, he was a useful idiot but more likely is now just an idiot," Clarke told The Huffington Post in an email. . . .

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

British UFO Document Release Designed to Deflect Public and Media Interest Says Former Ministry of Defence UFO Specialist

UFO Files I Have Loved and Lost

Nick Pope Refutes Abduction Story, says, 'I've Never Even Seen a UFO!'

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE