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The Real British X-Files

Posted by timothy on from the welcome-to-june-people-of-england dept.

blakeharris snips from a site called The X-Journals: "Nick Pope used to work for the British Ministry of Defense and for 3 years headed up their UFO project. His remit was to investigate UFO sightings reported to the British government, looking for evidence of any potential threat, or anything judged to be of any 'defence significance.'" Some very interesting anecdotes in here, as well as some background on how certain files about these sightings came to be preserved in the first place.

1 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Lameduck release. RTFA carefully by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reading the article carefully? Amazing, your brain turns off at all the sections that would counter your conspiracy-theories.

    Some quotes:
    "I never authorized the destruction of a UFO file and following the 1967 ruling, nobody should."

    "The introduction of the Freedom of Information Act (passed in November 2000 and coming fully into force in January 2005) effectively reversed the default position and the presumption now is that information is released, unless any of the formal exemptions apply."

    Another interesting tidbit: they are so busy with FOI requests, they can't spare the time to investigate new incidents.

    You also say "What has been released are sightings that can be/have been proven to be false sightings". Now we could presume a huge conspiracy and alien underground bases dominating the British government, OR we could presume there really isn't much to see here... Occam's razor makes this an easy one. And that is if you consider that your statement is correct in the first place, which it isn't. Unless you can prove the following sightings to be false sightings (as stated in the article, which you "read so carefully")

    "Some of the more interesting incidents included: 26th April 1984: Members of the public report a UFO in Stanmore. Two police officers attend the scene, witness the craft and sketch it.
    13th October 1984: a saucer-shaped UFO is seen from Waterloo Bridge in London by numerous witnesses.
    11th September 1985: 2 UFOs tracked on a military radar system travelling 10 nautical miles in 12 seconds.
    4th September 1986: a UFO passes an estimated 1.5 nautical miles from the port side of a commercial aircraft.
    "

    Apparently you can prove them to be false sightings - I'd recommend you contact the British MoD and tell them the good news.