Closed encounters of the third kind Expert's verdict on last batch of Govt UFO files to be made public

X Files ... MoD received more Freedom of Information requests on UFOs than any other subject after 2005

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THE last batch of UFO files from the Ministry of Defence is published today. It ends a five-year operation to declassify all the Government’s UFO documents and transfer them to the National Archives.

The MoD’s UFO project was axed in December 2009 – as revealed exclusively by The Sun.

The latest files reveal the plug was pulled because, alongside soaring numbers of UFO sightings, the MoD was being bombarded by Freedom of Information Act requests about alien activity. After the FoI act came fully into force in 2005, the MoD was soon receiving more requests on UFOs than on any other subject.

The files also reveal defence chiefs kept copies of The Sun when we reported apparent UFO incidents, like the one below.

Here NICK POPE, who worked on the MoD’s top secret UFO project, gives his verdict on these fascinating documents now available for public scrutiny.

IF you see strange lights in the sky or weird objects hovering overhead, don’t bother alerting the authorities — all recent reports of alien activity ended up being SHREDDED.

Sun story ... UFO sightings

Files out today show the Ministry of Defence destroyed any stories of extra-terrestrial sightings sent in after their top secret UFO project was axed in December 2009.

The MoD decided to make their UFO files Ex-Files because they were being snowed under with sightings of ET and his mates, while also weighed down with requests about alien sightings under the Freedom of Information Act.

So if anybody sent the Government PROOF of alien visitation after 2009, it would have gone straight in the bin.

Today, the tenth and final batch of real-life X-Files declassified by the MoD has been published.

It contains 25 files, comprising around 4,400 pages of documents, of incidents occurring mainly between 2007 and 2009.

Of course, the files contain many sightings reported by well-meaning members of the public that turned out to be simply weather balloons or light aircraft.

But among these are the inexplicable experiences of those who sincerely believe they have had, as in the 1977 hit film, a Close Encounter Of The Third Kind.

Revelations in the files include the fact that defence chiefs kept cuttings from The Sun when the paper reported on soldiers filming strange lights in the sky while on duty. It made the front page, above.

One email in the log says: “The Sun has reported a UFO sighting over Tern Hill Barracks in Shropshire at 11pm on June 7, 2008.

“It appears that a number of soldiers saw lights in the sky and made a video which they passed to the newspaper.”

Members of the public also urged the MoD to investigate a suspected UFO crash into a wind turbine, which was on The Sun’s front page in January 2009, an incident detailed on the right.

One of the most bizarre reports in the files is of a 2007 sighting near Cardiff. It states: “The witness saw spaceships then said one of them abducted his dog, car and tent, when he and his friends were out camping.” It does not reveal whether rover returned.

Fear of the unknown ... scene from 1977 movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

In another, a message left on the MoD’s UFO answerphone on June 24, 2008, states that a UFO was seen above the caller’s house in Carlisle and that he was “living with an alien”. On July 3, 2008, a woman reported seeing two orange spheres in her garden, a foot away from her. She was concerned that her dog may have been “contaminated”.

In response to a question about UFO technology, another document reveals that MoD scientists were aware of “anti-gravity and gravity modification research” and would “assess whether such technologies could be of any benefit to defence in the future”.

In tandem with the newly-released files, a new iPhone/iPad app — called simply UFO Files UK — is being launched to showcase some of the material, allowing people access to the once secret documents.

You can also find out about UFO sightings in your area.

The release of these files and their transferral to the National Archives has been a massive undertaking. The first batch was made public in May 2008 and further batches followed every six months.

In all, more than 50,000 pages of documents have been released, some of which are classified “Secret UK Eyes Only” — pretty impressive for a subject the MoD constantly told Parliament, the media and the public was of “no defence significance”.

In the early days of the UFO file-release programme, the documents seemed to support the MoD’s public line that the UFO phenomenon could be explained away as misidentifications of aircraft lights, weather balloons and Chinese lanterns, with a few hoaxes thrown in for good measure.

The files contain pages of material detailing mundane sightings of flashing lights over airports and UFOs seen by people leaving pubs at closing time.

But much more interesting material is hidden away among the pages.

There are incidents where military jets were scrambled to intercept UFOs and where UFOs were tracked on radar doing extraordinary speeds and manoeuvres.

There are sighting reports from police officers and military personnel, along with terrifying incidents involving near-misses between UFOs and commercial aircraft.

Some think the file release is part of a campaign to prepare for the day when the Government announces aliens are REAL. Others believe it is all disinformation, designed to allow the “New World Order” to fake an alien invasion, declare martial law and take over the world.

As the public face of the file-release programme, some believe I still secretly work for the Government. I left in 2006.

To the fury of many, it seems much of the best material has not been released.

Defence Intelligence Staff files on the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, detailed on the right, have been “inadvertently destroyed”. Old gun camera footage taken from jets sent up to chase UFOs back in the Fifties and Sixties has been “lost”.

UFO photos sent to the MoD in 1990, showing an alien craft in Scotland, have been “misplaced”. And a ship’s log that might have contained details of a UFO seen during a NATO exercise was blown overboard by a “freak gust of wind”.

Ultimately, the release of these files is unlikely to change what people think about UFOs.

The conspiracy theorists will continue to believe that my colleagues and I hid proof of an alien presence for decades. As one angry letter in the new files states: “Some UFOs are of ET origin. You know this.

“I hope you make the correct decision and disclose this information before they make themselves known in a big way.”

Keep watching the skies — the truth is still out there.

Rendlesham was Britain’s Roswell

A FREEDOM of Information request reveals that documents on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident were held in an amazing 109 separate files.

Personnel from RAF Bentwaters claimed to have seen a spacecraft landing and other UFO activity over three days.

The MoD received so many requests for information on the incident that case officers dubbed it “Britain’s Roswell” in reference to America’s famous “captured flying saucer” believed to contain an extra-terrestrial, which crashed near a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Extra-terrestrial attack on turbine

Exclusive ... Sun story on turbine

IN January 2009 the MoD was asked to comment on our story suggesting that damage to a wind turbine in the Lincolnshire Wolds was due to a collision with a UFO.

The files quote the MoD as saying: “We are not aware of any substantive evidence to suggest the turbine was hit by a UFO. Unless we receive clear physical evidence... we do not intend to investigate.”

UFOs caught on RAF radar

AN account by a retired RAF flight lieutenant who witnessed the tracking of a UFO on radar at RAF Lyneham, Wilts, in 1993, notes the phenomenon was also seen by two members of a security patrol.

In another file, a former national serviceman recalls an unidentified blip on radar near Beachy Head, East Sussex, in 1953.

It moved at four times the speed of jet aircraft from the time.

Another blip appears to cross the path of an airliner near Portsmouth in December 2007. This sighting was referred to the MoD by a NATO official for investigation.

Near collisions with choppers

A SIGHTING of a small object that flew close to a South Wales Police helicopter was reported to Cardiff Airport in June 2008.

Nothing was seen on radar and the MoD said they had received no formal report from the police.

Another near-collision with an “unidentified aircraft displaying non-standard lights” was reported by the crew of a police helicopter on patrol over Birmingham city centre.

It was the subject of a formal investigation by the flight-safety watchdog, the UK Airprox Board. The inquiry was unable to explain the incident.

Sightseers came from outer space

Stone me! ... snap of historical site Stonehenge shows UFO

THIS grainy photo of Stonehenge was one of a series emailed to the MoD in January 2009.

The sender said: “I didn’t see anything in the sky at the time because I was focusing on the stones.

“But upon uploading them to my computer, I spotted the discoid shapes in the background.”

Additional reporting: TIM SPANTON

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4978170/expert-gives-verdict-on-last-of-governments-ufo-files-to-be-published.html#ixzz2WrJ8YGzE

UFOs and the Inner Sanctum

For years, UFO researchers have focused a wealth of attention upon the classified, UFO-related work of the ultra-secret U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which has its base of operations at Fort Meade, Maryland. Less well know, however, is the sheer extent to which Britain’s own equivalent of the NSA – the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), at Cheltenham, England – has also been implicated, to an astonishing degree, in the secret investigation of UFO activity. However, thanks to the industrious research of a spirited UFO researcher named Robin Cole, we now know that the GCHQ-UFO link is far greater than many have previously realized.

 

Created only twelve months after the Allied victory over the Nazis in the Second World War, GCHQ has the daunting task of supplying numerous agencies and departments within both Government and the military with intelligence data. It is also involved in various foreign and domestic eavesdropping operations – including the monitoring of emails, faxes and telephone conversations. Born and bred in Cheltenham, Robin Cole has been fascinated by UFOs since childhood and, in the latter part of 1996, found himself plunged into the murky world of GCHQ, following a spectacular series of UFO incidents that occurred off the east coast of England.

It was shortly after 3.00 a.m. on 5 October 1996 when all hell broke loose in the skies over Norfolk and Suffolk, England. Multiple objects of unknown origin manifested themselves in British airspace, and, what’s more, they were seen by credible sources, including serving police officers. They were tracked on ground-based military radar and were viewed out at sea by the crew of a tanker named the Conocoast.

“We can see a strange red-and-green rotating light in the sky directly south-east from Skegness,” reported police on the East coast, continuing: “It looks strange as it is stationary and there is [sic] no aircraft in the area.” Equally unusual things were afoot at RAF Neatishead, Norfolk, as the following statement made to the Coast Guard by staff at Neatishead makes amply clear: “We had a report from [RAF] Northwood that a civil flight had also reported strange lights in the area. They fit exactly what was seen from the ground: multi-colored, flashing, stationary lights.”

For its part, the Government was very quick indeed to play down the events in question. So-called misperception, atmospherics and electrical storms were all the order of the day, although certainly not everyone agreed with that assertion. Via a contact that he enigmatically describes as having a “close association” with GCHQ, Robin Cole learned that during the early hours of the morning of 5 October 1996, two senior civil servants were ordered to report to GCHQ to carry out “a full analysis of the situation.”

 

“I know their occupations and I even have their names now,” Cole told me. “But, the problem is, if I give out too much information, I’ll identify them. At this stage I don’t want to do that, but I can tell you that one was an extremely high-up civil servant who looks at different situations which the Government finds itself in almost the point of view of a sociologist, saying: ‘How are the general public going to perceive this position that we find ourselves in?’ and things like that.”

But as Cole delved further into the hidden world of GCHQ, he learned that their involvement in the UFO subject did not solely center on the events of October 1996. He also discovered that GCHQ’s library holds a number of books on the UFO subject. “Again,” he stated to me, “I don’t want to reveal too much about the source of this information, but they, too, have a close association to GCHQ. GCHQ has this very extensive library of books and manuscripts, and the employees are apparently allowed access to it. But I was most interested when somebody from GCHQ asked me if I had a copy of the U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigation study, Project Blue Book. When I said ‘no,’ they said that they had a copy at work. It turns out that GCHQ has 15 or 20 UFO books in its library.”

Cole elaborates further about GCHQ’s role in the study of the UFO phenomena, saying: “One GCHQ source lives literally across the road from a friend and colleague of mine. They got talking about UFOs one day, and this person said: ‘I know nothing compared to what other departments know. But, yes, occasionally we did track objects that defied all rational explanation, and I know that the speed and agility of the objects is just unbelievable.’” That same source also confided that those within GCHQ tasked with examining such data were convinced they were dealing with an alien technology infinitely more advanced than that of 20th century mankind.

 

Surely the most bizarre story to reach Cole, however, came from a woman whose job involved analyzing Signals Intelligence data at GCHQ: “The woman came home from work one afternoon and said to her brother: ‘Look, I’ve got something really serious to tell you, but you’re not to tell anybody else. We’ve known for years that we’re at war with these beings.’ She didn’t really say much more than that, apart from the fact that the UFO issue was a very serious one.”

Despite the seemingly incredible nature of the data imparted to Cole, there is demonstrable evidence to show that his research hit a very raw nerve within the secret world of officialdom. Having obtained an extraordinary body of information linking GCHQ with UFOs, in 1997, Cole put all his findings together into a self-published report: GCHQ and the UFO Cover-Up. He takes up the story, saying: “Just after my report was published, I was interviewed with regard to its contents by Central TV. Then, the following morning the phone rang and it was a Detective-Sergeant from Cheltenham Special Branch. He made it clear that he wanted to interview me.”

Cole continued that shortly afterwards two police-officers arrived, and the questions took a curious turn: “Who do you work for…what’s your interest in the UFO phenomena…what do you do?” Eventually, the pair departed, apparently satisfied with the answers that Cole supplied. Fortunately, prior to the arrival of the officers, Cole had the presence of mind to clandestinely hide a tape-recorder in the room, and duly recorded the entire conversation, without the knowledge of the pair, but utterly confirming its reality.

 

The apparent official interest in Cole’s activities continued, however. On several occasions, he had seen an unusual-looking van parked outside his second-floor flat – right next to the telephone junction-box. This could, of course, have been entirely innocent – were it not for the fact that a trusted, insider contact was able to track the ownership of the vehicle (via its license-plate) to a British Ministry of Defense post-office-box address in the English county of Wiltshire. As a result of probing into the top secret links between UFOs and GCHQ, Cole had apparently attracted the attention of Special Branch and elements of the MoD.

To this day, Robin Cole is unsure what to make of the GCHQ-UFO connection, but of one thing he is certain: “The British Government states that UFOs are of no defense significance. I would say in response that as far as UFOs are concerned, the government can offer us no significant defense.”

 

Source: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/04/ufos-and-the-inner-sanctum/