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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Flying saucer spotted over Portsmouth

A photographer who stopped on a whim to take some pictures at night might have chanced upon a real UFO.

The picture appears to show a mysterious object in the shape of a flying saucer. UFO experts say it could prove the existence of the phenomenon

Hab Rahman, a keen photographer, was stunned to see the image in the background when he looked again at some pictures he had taken at night.

The 28-year-old, from Portsmouth, Hants, was driving home from work through thick fog when he decided to stop and get some snaps of the eerie setting.

He pulled up and went to take the shots from a car park near Commercial Road, Portsmouth, just after midnight.

It was not until he got home and transferred the shots onto his computer that he spotted the mysterious glowing object.

Mr Rahman said: "I didn't spot anything when I took the picture but then later on when I looked a bit closer and zoomed in, there it was.

"I've never really believed in UFOs but this is a bit weird and quite freaky.

"I'm not really sure what to make of it but I can't think what else it could be."

Mr Rahman stopped off at this car park in Portsmouth on his way home to take the pictures but it was not until he arrived home that he spotted the 'UFO'

Hilary Porter, from the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS), believes this sighting could be the real thing.

She said: "It would be very difficult to fake that photo and the UFO is at a tilt, which is the way they normally fly.

"You don't normally see that sort of UFO over this country, we generally get orange orbs, so the photographer who got this photo has got quite a coup."

The Ministry of Defence would not comment on individual sightings and said they could not check if there were any aircrafts in the vicinity at the time.

An MoD spokesperson said: "The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.

"Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported."

Click here to see Picture 1
Click here to see picture 2

Labels: BEAMS, British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society, Commercial Road, Hab Rahman, Hilary Porter, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Portsmouth, UFO

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MoD reveal the number of reported UFO sightings in the UK has risen

The number of reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in the UK has soared in the last year with people calling the Ministry of Defence with concerns about bright white lights, strange triangular-shaped objects and even alien abduction.

The MoD took details of 135 events in which mysterious objects were seen in our skies by witnesses including three pilots. Just 97 were reported in 2006.

In the last year, there have been reports of a flying saucer in Staffordshire, small stationary aircraft in Derbyshire and a fast moving triangular shaped object in West Yorkshire.

In the West Midlands in December, a woman was terrified when a UFO shone a light into her window. She said the UFO then "shot off fast at first to the North East and then started to move at a slow pace".

Meanwhile in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, on April 12, a witness reported seeing fifty objects, each with an orange light, assembling in the sky before ascending.

On another occasion, two pilots in different planes flying over Alderney in the Channel Islands reported seeing two bright orange aircrafts and another pilot reported seeing a strange "balloon-like" object when in the air.

Hilary Porter, from the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS) said she is not surprised by the rise in the number of UFOs reported to the MoD, as they have been inundated with similar reports.

"We have had call after call, from business people right down to ordinary folk in their cars. There have been some very close encounters that have been quite unnerving for the people involved. We have had other people reporting orb sightings."

Labels: Alderney, BEAMS, British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society, Cambridgeshire, Channel Islands, Derbyshire, Duxford, Hilary Porter, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Staffordshire, UFO, West Midlands, West Yorkshire

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Saturday, January 05, 2008

The truth is out: X-Files go public: UK

British UFO 'sightings' investigated by a secret branch of the MoD are soon to be revealed and officials are braced for a torrent of inquiries

Without warning, the orange UFO swooped toward them. The crew of the RAF Vulcan bomber banked hard and radioed they were being chased across the Atlantic by a large mysterious object. The incident was classified as a UFO sighting and the details were immediately locked away.

Now, 30 years later, the extraordinary encounter is among thousands of previously secret cases contained in the government's 'X-Files' that officials are to release in their entirety.

The cases, many from a little-known defence intelligence branch tasked with investigating UFO claims, will be published by the Ministry of Defence to counter what officials say is 'the maze of rumour and frequently ill-informed speculation' surrounding Whitehall and its alleged involvement with Unidentifed Flying Objects.

The public opening of the MoD archive will expose the once highly classified work of the intelligence branch DI55, whose mission was to investigate UFO reports and whose existence was denied by the government until recently. Reports into about 7,000 UFO sightings investigated by defence officials - every single claim lodged over the past 30 years - are included in the files, whose staged release will begin in spring.

The decision to release Whitehall's full back-catalogue of UFO investigations was taken last month after the Directorate of Air Space Policy, the government agency responsible for filtering sensitive reports, gave its permission to publish the biggest single release of documents in MoD history. Now the government fears a repeat of the unprecedented demand and the website crash experienced by the French national space agency in March when it released its own UFO files. Government IT experts are believed to have drawn up contingency plans to avoid a repeat scenario when Britain's dossiers are finally made public.

Among the first tranche of UK cases will be the official government files into the famous Rendlesham incident, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell' after the US incident when a flying saucer is said to have crash-landed in the New Mexico desert 60 years ago. On a foggy night in 1980 several witnesses reported a UFO apparently landing in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. Statements claimed the craft was covered in markings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics and aliens emerged from it.

Another case reported to the intelligence branch DI55 - Britain's version of the 'Men In Black' - chronicles a series of reports sent to RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, by the crew of a Vulcan bomber on exercise over the Bay of Biscay early on 26 May 1977. According to documents seen by The Observer, five crewmen, including the captain, co-pilot and navigators, watched 'an object' approach their aircraft at 43,000ft above the Atlantic. The mysterious craft then appeared to turn and follow their precise course from a distance of four miles.

Initially, the crew said the object resembled landing lights 'with a long pencil beam of light ahead' but as it turned towards them the lights suddenly went out leaving a diffuse orange glow with a bright fluorescent green spot in its bottom right-hand corner. Then, according to signals sent back to Scampton, the crew noted a mystery object 'leaving from the middle of the glow on a westerly track... climbing at very high speed at an angle of 45 degrees'.

The Vulcan's navigator recorded interference on his radar screen from the direction of the UFO which continued for 45 minutes as the plane headed back to Britain. On return to the UK, the camera film from the aircraft's radar was examined by RAF intelligence. They found a 'strong response' from the direction of the sighting. The UFO was captured as 'an elongated shadow' of a 'large-sized' object travelling at a similar height to the Vulcan. An intelligence report sent to the MoD the same day says the crew 'were unable to offer a logical explanation for the sighting'.

Although hailed as the complete disclosure of the UK's UFO files, questions are likely to remain over whether all available information will be made public. Despite the Vulcan sighting being investigated by DI55, no details remain in the file indicating what they found or what became of the radar film.

The disclosures are more likely, claim some experts, to lend credence to the theory that such UFO incidents were, rather than alien visitations, military activities such as missile launches, testing of prototype aircraft and other activities during the Cold War.

David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and author of Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy, said: 'Something was definitely going on, but really these files show that the government did not know either. This release will be a source of disappointment or vindication for some, and embarrassment for others.

Clarke, who has lodged hundreds of FoI requests, recently discovered that the government was considering destroying the 24 files created by DI55 because they were contaminated by asbestos. Not only were the UFO records polluted, but a total of 63,000 files estimated at between six to 12 million pages - most of them classified as secret - were facing the same fate. Having admitted the existence of the problem to Clarke, the MoD opted to instigate a £3m project digitally to scan the files before they were destroyed. Scanning of the 24 contaminated UFO files owned by DI55 was completed last year, although it is understood that names of officials in the reports will be removed.

Although the government remains reticent to discuss its intelligence work on UFOs, it is known that DI55 has been hot on the trail of flying saucers since the Sixties. Experts admit that they work closely with the security services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to collect and assess evidence of potential threats to Britain.

The decision by the UK to open its files could lead to the US government following suit. A group of former pilots and government officials recently urged the Pentagon to reopen investigations into claims of UFO sightings.

UFO claims

1980 Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. US servicemen claim to have seen an alien craft and its landing site.

1984 Minsk, USSR. Aeroflot pilots say they are pursued by a glowing shape.

1989 Bonnybridge, Scotland. Fire crew report objects rushing towards them before veering away at the last moment.

1990 Brussels, Belgium. Two F-16 fighter pilots recount being engaged in 75-minute mid-air chase with a UFO.

Labels: Bay of Biscay, Belgium, Bonnybridge, Brussels, David Clarke, Directorate of Air Space Policy, Lincolnshire, Ministry of Defence, Minsk, MOD, RAF, Rendlesham, Scampton, Scotland, Sheffield Hallam University, UFO

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Monday, August 06, 2007

UFO sightings published by MOD

A rotating silver pyramid, a “metallic spinning object” with green engines and a “mother ship with two smaller orbs” were among the bizarre UFO sightings reported to the Ministry of Defence last year, it has just revealed. On October 14 a resident in Sunderland reported spotting “a silver pyramid that was rotating at a low speed and off centre.”

Two weeks later “a black triangular UFO was seen, with three lights on it” hovering above nearby Hetton-Le-Hole.

Barlaston in Staffordshire was haunted for a week by a “mother ship and two smaller orbs”, one white and one orange.

And Eastleigh Cotswolds in Hampshire experienced a “metallic spinning object that had heat sources showing green”.

2006 Sightings

19 March, 6.35pm, Newquay, Cornwall

A bright disc was seen hanging in the sky. The object appeared to quiver, rather than move. Moved around and then just vanished.

8 May, 1.11pm, St. Tudwal’s Islands, Mid-Wales

The object looked like a black square hanging in the sky.

17 June, 9.45pm, Broadstairs, Kent

Five orange balls of light, going over one at a time, at about 10-15 minute intervals.
4 July, 10pm, Locherbridges, Dumfries

Dome shaped static object, with lights running up and down the dome, with another light swaying to and from beneath.

18 July, 4.15pm, Stevenage, Bedfordshire The object was oblong shape, and was also described as looking a bit like a scooter.

9 September, 9pm, Stamford Hill, London

There was a massive bang and then two large fire balls were seen moving from East to West. They were very bright.

29 November, 12.50am, Coatbridge, Glasgow

Triangular object which changed to a round shape, then became elongated. Had red lights on it. Plus a blue circle around it.

Labels: Barlaston, Bedfordshire, Cornwall, Dumfries, Hampshire, Kent, London Glasgow, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Newquay, Staffordshire, Stevenage, Sunderland, UFO

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Saturday, August 04, 2007

MOD LIFTS LID ON DERBYSHIRE'S REAL X-FILES

Derbyshire's real life X-Files have been opened for the first time to reveal more than a dozen UFO sightings across the county.

According to the Ministry of Defence, 14 unexplained sightings in the county have been investigated by the military since 1999, including one reported by a police officer in Derby.

Other sightings include one last year in Derby, when a witness described seeing "a bright, red light" in the sky.

"The light was moving too quickly across the sky to be an aircraft," the witness later told the MoD.

The year before, a witness in Matlock reported seeing a "descending white light" and "rotating beams of light going upwards from the ground".

Another person in Yeldersley, near Ashbourne, reported seeing a "missile-shaped" object, which was "turquoise in colour, metallic and looked reflective, and was the length of an estate car".

Other reports include "four bright lights, plus an outer circle of a round object" spotted in Derby in 2002.

Also in 2002, a witness reported seeing a "large triangle-shaped object, with a large, white light on the front, and, in the centre, a group of four, static, red lights".

Omar Fowler, from the Derby-based Phenomenon Research Association, said that the UFO information from the MOD came as no surprise to him.

He said: "It will be very interesting to see what they've recorded but I doubt they'll be able to tell us anything we don't already know. In that respect, I won't be expecting any surprising findings.

"It is, however, an interesting development that the MoD is publishing what is reported to them."

Labels: Ashbourne, Derby, Derbyshire, Matlock, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Omar Fowler, Phenomenon Research Association, UFO, Yeldersley

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NOTTS UFO FILES: COULD TRUTH BE IN THERE?

The Ministry of Defence has given a first glimpse into Notts' own 'X-files' on UFO sightings in the county.

Details revealed under the Freedom of Information Act show the MoD has recorded ten UFO sightings in Notts since 1999.

The most recent, in 2005, featured "two extremely bright, round lights" with a "lozenge-shaped" object nearby. The spotter reported the objects having "the speed of an arrow".

Other sightings logged by the MoD include one in Nottingham in 2002 which recorded eight objects which "joined into a circle, then separated."

In the same year, also in Nottingham, three "silver triangular objects" were reported as being seen in a triangle formation.

The log adds: "Was closely followed by a police helicopter."

Another sighting in Bingham on New Year's Eve 2001 reported seeing "one... object with lights that were orange, red, blue and white."

In January 2001, in south Clifton, an object the size of a helicopter, was seen.

The MoD log records: "Red and white stripes/lights, with wings like a Phantom [aircraft]... stationary, then darted about the woods."

Labels: Bingham, Clifton, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Nottingham, Notts, UFO

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Manchester's UFO encounter

UFOS have been spotted twice above Manchester in the past year.

Freedom of Information powers revealed that three silver unidentified flying objects hovering above Chorlton.

In the second sighting, an orange ball was spotted high above Irlam. According to witnesses, the ball was first seen low in the sky, but then gained height, moving very fast.

These were only two of the sightings of unidentified objects recorded by the Ministry of Defence's UFO section.

They were found using the Freedom of Information Act.

Reports from elsewhere in the north west included an incident in Crewe last year when very bright lights were seen for more than half an hour, hovering quite slowly from side to side.
Meanwhile, in Macclesfield, observers spotted a spinning object which appeared to have a triangular shaped part on either side of it.

They reported it as a grey, almost dull, metallic colour.

Among sightings nationally, there was `a mother ship' with two smaller orbs moving around it, in Barlestone, Staffordshire, and an object which was oblong shaped and `looked a bit like a scooter' over Stevenage, in Bedfordshire.

In one case, in Co Durham, a police officer reported seeing six lights travelling in a line, slightly staggered, from north to south.

As revealed in the Manchester Evening News, between the year 2000 and last year, air crews reported UFOs on 13 occasions.

Labels: Barlestone, Bedfordshire, Chorlton, Crewe, Durham, Irlam, Macclesfield, Manchester, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Staffordshire, Stevenage, UFO

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The Westcountry is a "hot spot" for sightings of UFOs

The Westcountry is a "hot spot" for sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, according to a secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) database.

In the last eight years there have been almost 80 unexplained sightings in the skies over the far South West, ranging from 300ft white spheres in Tavistock to spinning orange lights over Glastonbury.

The WMN has also learnt that since 2000, the MoD has stopped investigating reports of unidentified flying objects and the list of sightings has only come to light following a Freedom of Information request.

It means the list of UFOs, just released from the MoD archives, has never been properly investigated by defence experts.

The reports range from a traditional "flying saucer" in Bideford in July 2000 to the more extreme object, the size of a small room "spinning on its own axis", in Torquay in 2001.

The UFOs come in all shapes and sizes too, from a very bright "half-a-mile-long object" over Probus in Cornwall in 2001, to a "silver, cigar-shaped object, moving faster than a nearby plane" in Harracott, Devon in December 2000.

While some of the reports are incredibly vague, others are detailed in their descriptions. On April 7, 2003 a "craft" was spotted in Falmouth with three yellow lights on the port side and three red lights on starboard side. Its shape was "between circular and triangular, or delta wing size" - although the timing of the sighting, at 2.30am, might suggest the spotter was not as alert as they might have been.

Dave Gillham, who founded Cornwall UFO Research Group in 1995, said less light pollution made it easier for people in the Westcountry to see the airborne objects.

"There are only small towns, so once you get out into the country you can see more clearly," he said. "The UFOs are really coloured lights, so they stick out quite a bit in the dark. They come in from the sea and go around the coast. There's a lot going on at the moment. I don't think everything can be explained."

Labels: Bideford, Cornwall, Cornwall UFO Research Group, Dave Gillham, Devon, Falmouth, Glastonbury, Harracott, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Probus, Tavistock, Torquay, UFO, Westcountry

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Dossier reveals UFO sightings in the county

The truth is out there in Cumbria after government X-Files revealed a hive of UFO activity.

Witnesses claim to have seen circular flashing lights in Ulverston in August 1999.

And in February 2000, two bright lights were spotted above Bowness.

Other sightings include a bright metal star with no jet stream seen in Keswick in October 2000, a bright star moving around like a kite in Storth, near Milnthorpe, in May 2004, and a UFO over Kendal in 2005.

The most recent was on September 13, last year, in Whitehaven at 9.45pm.

It is recorded as “a triangular object with lights. One green, one red and the other two amber. There was a strange droning noise as it passed overhead”.

The dossier of information was revealed by the Ministry of Defence, under the Freedom of Information Act.

Every year more than 100 UFO sightings are reported to the MoD, which are detailed in the information just published.

A Barrow family claimed they had a close encounter with a possible UFO while enjoying a takeaway in April.

Janice Jackson of Devon Street, Barrow, saw bright lights in the sky lasting about 15 seconds, before the light show passed overhead and on towards Roose.

In 2005, we reported how Sharon Debenham, of Sycamore Avenue, Ulverston, caught on camera a strange silver shape in the sky, which she believed was a UFO.

Labels: Barrow, Bowness, Cumbria, Kendal, Keswick, Milnthorpe, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Roose, Sharon Debenham, Storth, UFO, Ulverston, Whitehaven

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Sunday, July 15, 2007

UFO seen above Hungerford...again

A Swindon taxi driver recently added to the growing list of supernatural occurrences spotted by locals in the district.

Having just dropped off a fare in Hungerford, Neil Whitby spotted four bright orange shapes in the sky.

Drifting silently across the sky at what he believed was a fairly low altitude, the lights began to flicker before suddenly disappearing.

A few weeks earlier, a man from Newbury rang the Newbury Weekly News claiming to have spotted circles in the sky the size of four football pitches hovering above Henwick Fields in Thatcham for five minutes. He said his son had also seen the lights.

The inexplicable phenomena are the latest in a whole string of local UFO sightings dating as far back as 1909, when an organist from St Michael’s Church in Lambourn spotted a shape coming from the East that he said intermittently let off loud explosions.

Three years ago locals in Hungerford were left baffled by a giant fireball attached to a solid cigar-shaped structure (pictured above), which some saw plummet to earth before rising into the night sky again.

People said pets were behaving strangely twenty minutes before the fireball appeared and police even dispatched helicopters to look for debris while firefighters scoured the area in search of a point of impact.

The mystery was never explained and a man even saw a similar ball of flame above Thatcham a year later.

In September 2006, a triangular-shaped formation of glowing lights was seen drifting across the sky above Greenham Common.

Some witnesses said the lights formed a V shaped formation, hovering over the com-mon for three minutes before disappearing into the night sky at lightning speed.

The MOD and Met office were left scratching their heads, unable to explain the Greenham sightings or the power cuts and bright flashes that accompanied them.

In the summer of 1968, a Newbury man was drawing his curtains when a huge circular object flashed across the horizon at break-neck speed. On the same evening, two policemen in Kent spotted an object of a similar description also travelling abnormally fast.

Fifteen years earlier the same man spotted a large cigar-shaped object moving through the sky while he was walking his dog in Love Lane.

In 1971, after two sightings, the man was so impressed that he founded the Newbury-based South-West Aerial Phenomena Society (SWAPS), members of which made it their mission to record and investigate UFO sightings in West Berkshire.

One of the club’s first investigations into the bizarre night time phenomena was to set up a “skywatch” to chart the movement of orange lights seen by people in May 1972.

SWAPS sent investigators to the home of Wickham actress Coral Atkins, who had told the Newbury Weekly News: “I saw a ball of orangey white light coming towards me. It seemed to come straight through the window and into my head.

“It was very painful but for a few seconds it seemed as if I was standing back from the world and I could see everything as it should be.”

The next recorded sightings occurred in February 1972 when two UFOs were spotted above Kintbury and Brightwalton on the same night.

Witnesses who chased the mysterious oval-shaped objects on scooters until they vanished into the night sky said the UFOs had beams of light radiating from them and red diodes flashing sporadically.

Labels: Brightwalton, Coral Atkins, Greenham Common, Hungerford, Kintbury, Lambourn, MOD, Neil Whitby, Newbury, SWAPS, Swindon, UFO

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Friday, June 22, 2007

UFO Reports 1999-2006 in the UK

UFO Reports 1999-2006 in the UK, showing dates and times, location and a brief description of sighting.

UFO Report 2006 PDF [14.0 KB]
UFO Report 2005 PDF [18.0 KB]
UFO Report 2004 PDF [13.4 KB]
UFO Report 2003 PDF [16.5 KB]
UFO Report 2002 PDF [15.0 KB]
UFO Report 2001 PDF [24.9 KB]
UFO Report 2000 PDF [33.8 KB]
UFO Report 1999 PDF [37.2 KB]

Labels: Ministry of Defence, MOD, UFO, UK

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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Lights prompt UFO reports

More than 10 separate UFO sightings across the West Midlands have been reported to military bosses in recent years it has emerged.

Reports have been lodged with the Ministry of Defence from places across the region including Dudley, Wolverhampton, Lichfield, Barlaston in Staffordshire, Walsall and Oldbury. And they may have prompted military chiefs to check whether they were a threat to the UK’s airspace.
One report from Walsall in March 2006 described “a UFO doing funny sharp turns over a field.” Another unexplained sighting in Dudley, reported in December 2006, simply described “a white light”.

Back in August 2005 someone in Lichfield reported that they had seen “an object that was circular with a dull orange colour/light that was the size of a medium aircraft.” And in Wolverhampton an RAF sergeant reported seeing “two triangular shaped objects” in 2003.

Labels: Barlaston, Dudley, Lichfield, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Oldbury, Staffordshire, UFO, Walsall, West Midlands, Wolverhampton

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Friday, May 04, 2007

UK: MoD opens its files on UFO sightings to public

The Ministry of Defence plans to open its "X-Files" on UFO sightings to the public for the first time. Officials have not yet decided on a date for the release of the reports, which date back to 1967, but it is hoped to be within weeks.

The move follows the decision by the French national space agency to release its UFO files in March, the first official body in the world to do so.

UFO buffs will be keen to find out what officials knew about some of the UK's most famous sightings and whether any action was taken. One celebrated event - at Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980 - has been dubbed "Britain's Roswell" after the UFO incident in the US in 1947.

At Rendlesham there were several witness reports of a UFO apparently landing. The released files should support or discount claims that radiation was detected at the site after the event.

David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and author of Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy, said opening the MoD's files would make it harder to sustain the idea that evidence for the existence of aliens has been suppressed. "The more of this stuff that they put on their website or put in the national archives, the less it will cost the taxpayer, because at the moment people are writing in about individual incidents and they are having respond," said Dr Clarke, referring to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents due for release are witness reports of apparent UFO sightings, many by civil pilots and military personnel. Most were simply collected and filed by a small, secret unit within defence intelligence called DI55. A few are thought to have been investigated further by the military, but the details have never been made public. There are 24 files due for release, each containing 200-300 reports of sightings, plus internal MoD briefings and correspondence.

Labels: David Clarke, DI55, disclosure, Freedom of Information Act, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Rendlesham, Sheffield Hallam University, UFO

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Wales' history of UFO

Wales has had its fair share of UFO sightings over the years.

In the '70s an entire class of primary school children in Broadhaven, West Wales, claimed to have seen a UFO landing and aliens get out.The pictures they drew of what they had seen - a cigar-shaped object - appeared uncannily similar.

In October 2005, the Ministry of Defence admitted they had investigated 28 UFO reports in Wales in the previous three years.

They included a giant black object seen over Rhyl, a flying disc with legs seen over the Rhondda and a flying disc seen over Newport.

Labels: Broadhaven, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Newport, Rhondda, Rhyl, UFO, Wales

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Friday, October 13, 2006

UFO menace ‘not a threat’

The Defence Ministry acknowledged that has received 714 reports of unidentified flying objects in the last six years.

Junior defence minister Derek Twigg said yesterday that of the 714 reports since 2001, only 12 had been 'deemed to be worthy of further consideration'.

Mr Twigg's comments were in reply to Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green.

He added that: 'Reports (of UFOs) are analysed solely to consider whether there is any reason to believe that UK airspace has been compromised by the reported activity.'

Earlier this year, another junior defence minister, Don Touhig, denied that the MoD had ever run a 'UFO project' – in other words, that any co-ordinated attempt was made to determine if UFOs were alien spacecraft. Rather, he also claimed that they were merely checked by desk officers to rule out the possibility that they – whatever they are – were violating British airspace.

Labels: Derek Twigg, Don Touhig, Lynne Featherstone, MOD, UFO

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Monday, September 25, 2006

MoD tried to cover-up secret UFO investigation unit

The Ministry of Defence went to extraordinary lengths to cover up its true involvement in investigating UFOs, according to secret documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The files show that officials attempted to expunge information from documents released to the Public Records Office under the "30-year rule" that would have revealed the extent of the MoD's interest in UFO sightings.

In particular, the ministry wanted to cover up the operation of a secret unit dedicated to UFO investigations within the Defence Intelligence Staff. UFO conspiracy theorists have likened the unit, called DI55, to a sort of "Men in Black" agency for defending the Earth against invasion but the released documents show this is far from the truth. One 1995 memo from DI55 to the MoD's public "UFO desk" said: "I have several books at home that describe our supposed role of 'defender of the Earth against the alien menace' - it is light years from the truth!"

The files were made public following FOI requests by David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and his colleague Andy Roberts.

"These documents don't tell us anything about UFOs but they do show how desperate the MoD have been to conceal the interest which the intelligence services had in the subject," said Dr Clarke.

The trail begins with a request, in 1976, from a UFO enthusiast called Julian Hennessy for access to the MoD's records on UFO sightings. A note from the UFO desk to the MoD's head of security on March 23 shows that officials intended to refuse him access on the grounds that the files contain confidential information and "very little of value to a serious scientific investigator".

But the note continues: "This is not to say that the investigation is not taken seriously. The branches have their own methods - and [the public UFO desk] has no 'need to know' about them - but we are aware that DI55 for example sometimes makes extensive inquiries.

"It is undesirable that even a hint of this should become public and we are currently consulting the [Air Historical Branch] on ways of expurgating the official records against the time when they qualify for disclosure [at the Public Records Office]."

Hearing of the background to his fob off 30 years ago Mr Hennessy, who is a local magistrate, was not surprised. "Everything led me to believe there was a major cover up going on," he said."They didn't want to let the public know just how interested they were in these phenomena."

Attempts to alter the public record went on into the 90s. In a note dated April 28 1993 from DI55 to the public UFO desk the unnamed author argued the unit's involvement should be excised from records due to be released under the 30-year rule. But the cat was already out of the bag. A clerical error in 1983 had meant that the distribution list was incorrectly left on a publicly released UFO-related document, so UFO enthusiasts were already asking questions.

"Since then they have obviously been bombarded by people saying who is this DI55, what do they do, what is the extent of their involvement," said Dr Clarke.

Eventually, DI55 decided to allow its involvement to be made public. A note from DI55 to the public UFO desk on 5July 1995 said: "I see no reason for continuing to deny that the [Defence Intelligence Service] has an interest in UFOs. However, if the association is formally made public then the MoD will no doubt be pressured to state what the intelligence role/interest is. This could lead to disbelief and embarrassment since few people are likely to believe the truth that lack of funds and higher priorities have prevented any study of the thousands of reports received."

At this point someone, presumably from the public UFO desk, has scribbled "ouch!" in the margin.

"The lengths they went to to remove any mention of the Defence Intelligence Staff's central role in investigating sightings suggests they had something to hide," said Dr Clarke. "But what they were hiding was not evidence of ET visits but embarrassment at the fact they were never allowed to spend public money on investigating the subject in any depth." The full extent of DI55's involvement has subsequently been made clear by a report released to Dr Clarke in May and reported in the Guardian. That threw up a 500-page document which brought together everything the unit knew about UFOs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) as the MoD prefers, including more than 10,000 sightings. It said the existence of UAPs was "indisputable", but blamed the most vexing sighting on airborne "plasmas" formed during "more than one set of weather and electrically charged conditions", or during meteor showers.

Labels: Andy Roberts, David Clarke, DI55, Freedom of Information Act, Julian Hennessy, Ministry of Defence, MOD, Sheffield Hallam University