Secret documents: The Truth about MoD's UFO files
'Soon they will have no paperwork at all'
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Following an announcement by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that it will no longer keep files of reported UFO sightings, it has emerged after painstaking detective work that - in fact - it is no longer doing so.
The shock move by the MoD was revealed at the weekend by Blighty's foremost UFO expert and talking head, Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam uni, after he obtained "a formerly secret MoD document" using the Freedom of Information Act.
This document was drafted at the time of the MoD decision last November to close its UFO desk - manned by a single case officer - and to cease keeping files of reported UFOs. Amazingly (to Dr Clarke at least) it appears that indeed this is being done: all UFO reports received by the MoD are nowadays answered with a form letter and then thrown in the bin after thirty days. The "Hotline" phone number no longer exists.
Meanwhile there has been a policy of transferring the existing, vast piles of filed reports to the National Archives, which then makes them public. Thus the MoD has managed to rid itself of a tiresome chore and some minor expense at a time when it has little cash to spare.
But Dr Clarke is understandably cross:
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 ... by the end of the disclosure programme MoD will retain no further paperwork on UFOs.The disclosure of this document makes it evident this is the endgame as far as the MoD are concerned.
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.
Although he belongs to the "sceptic" wing of the UFO community, Dr Clarke plainly loves UFO files for their own sake and considers taxpayers' money well spent on collecting and filing them.
But there may be a tiny crumb of comfort for the doc and other frustrated UFO fanciers. They can no longer expect to while away pleasant hours trawling through vast MoD files and pestering hapless civil servants with FoI requests: but there will still be UFO files of a sort. The fabulous soaraway Sun, as everyone knows, has pledged to take on the task of running the nation's UFO files from the MoD.
We wish Dr Clarke all good fortune in his future - and no doubt extensive - dealings with the Currant Bun. ®
COMMENTS
Possible explanations for MoD lack of interest in UFOs
(1) Aliens no longer see Earth as a good vacation spot. Hence no more UFO sightings.
(2) Aliens no longer land UFOs on Earth, they just sit back in orbit (with popcorn) waiting for the huge fireworks display from the LHC when we (finally) crush the planet into a Black Hole.
(3) The lizard people have already taken over the MoD and Government and so no longer need to record their own UFO movements.
(4) The concept of UFOs was just a PR smoke screen used to ridicule any reported sightings of early stealth aircraft experiments, so no longer any need to keep up the pretense.
(5) I'm an alien who is playing with your mind and don't bother taking me to your leader, for I am your leader!
You'd better pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space...
... because there's bugger all down here on Earth!
- Monty Python.
I don't want to put a title here
The only reason the RAF/MoD were ever interested in UFO sightings was if they were actually Soviet aircraft probing the UK's air defences, as they did on a regular basis in the 1990's and still do to a much, much lesser extent. Anything that didn't seem to suggest a Russian incursion was just ignored, not investigated as some form of X-Files event.
The MoD were only ever interested in the threat from the East and had/have no interest in investigating reports of little green men in the absence of any scientific proof of their existence (and no, "we can't explain it therefore it is proof" doesn't count as scientific).
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