Edition 54 - Nick Pope
Another Unexplained Exclusive Interview - This edition features British UFO investigatorNick Pope - who used to collate the UKs UFO reports for the Ministry of Defence in London.
Another Unexplained Exclusive Interview - This edition features British UFO investigatorNick Pope - who used to collate the UKs UFO reports for the Ministry of Defence in London.
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained. | |
Thank you for keeping the faith with the show. | |
Thank you for the incredible response to edition 53 with Edgar Mitchell. | |
Let me tell you that by a country mile, that show had more attention, more downloads, more interest and more response than anything else I've ever done anywhere. | |
And it is still getting thousands and thousands and thousands of hits. | |
And thank you for the nice, constructive things you've said about it. | |
And I will take everything on board. | |
Thank you for the many compliments I've had about it. | |
It took a long time to arrange. | |
Edgar is a gracious and highly interesting and very, very intelligent guest. | |
I'd love to be able to talk to him again at some point. | |
He is a fascinating man, truly, and I was very privileged, still feel that way to get him on there. | |
So wonderful. | |
Edition 53 still available. | |
And thank you, as I say, for your response to that. | |
Lots of emails coming in from every part of the world. | |
I will try and get back to you individually. | |
Wayne in Medicine Hat in Canada. | |
You didn't believe I was going to mention you, but hello. | |
And thank you very much. | |
You said, give me a mention. | |
I dare you. | |
So you dared me, and I have. | |
Now, the edition you're about to hear is one I wasn't planning to do right now because simply, until this morning, I didn't know about the information. | |
So literally, I'm rushing this out to you. | |
This is edition 54. | |
It's a special with Nick Pope, who used to work for Britain's Ministry of Defense, as a man who collated UFO reports. | |
Well, some of those UFO reports that he worked on have been put into the public domain this very day. | |
In fact, as I record this to you, as a journalist, I've been able to see these things a little in advance because that's what happens in the media. | |
But by the time you hear this, they will be in the public domain and everybody will be talking to people like Nick Pope about them. | |
Literally, this is the, I think, half-dozenth release of information by the British government of files on UFO reports from various sources, from ordinary individuals to RAF, Air Force pilots, to naval crews. | |
All kinds of people at every level in society over a number of decades are included in these reports, and some of them are highly interesting. | |
And as I think you're about to hear, one of them is particularly interesting. | |
So, just before we get to Nick Pope in London, England, thank you again for your superb response to the show. | |
Please keep your donations coming. | |
They are vital. | |
And, you know, I've been overwhelmed by your response to the last show and the fact that you think it's worth it. | |
Why do I need to ask for donations? | |
Because quite simply, at the moment, I support myself by working as a radio broadcaster and journalist. | |
I have to do some fairly long hours, and it's not enough to support what I'm doing outside. | |
But I believe in this show. | |
This is my labor of love, and I will continue to do it with your help. | |
And as long as you like what I'm doing, and as long as you support it, I'm going to keep doing it. | |
And I thank you very much. | |
As usual, the thank yous to Adam Cornwell, my talented webmaster at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, for coping with the pressure of demand for the Edgar Mitchell interview. | |
Well done, Adam. | |
You've been a real support and thank you very much. | |
Thank you to Martin for the theme tune. | |
I may have some enormous news about this show coming soon. | |
I'm not able to tell you yet. | |
Nothing is finalized yet, but it's going to be the biggest news yet, and it may be coming to you soon. | |
Watch this space. | |
But for right now, the Ministry of Defence in the UK has just released some new UFO files. | |
Let's get on the man who knows. | |
He used to work for them, independent UFO researcher, broadcaster, and journalist Nick Pope. | |
Nick, thank you. | |
Nice to talk to you again here on The Unexplained. | |
Thank you. | |
So here we have, what is it, the seventh release of Ministry of Defence documents and some pretty detailed stuff here going back 30 years or more. | |
But just going through it, and we will talk about the specific cases that are talked about here. | |
What do they add to the sum total of what we knew already? | |
Well, I think the first thing is the sheer volume of material. | |
There are 35 files. | |
That might not sound much, but when you actually count them up, just this latest batch of files contains over 8,500 individual pages of documentation. | |
So we know a whole lot more today than we knew yesterday. | |
But a question I've asked you before, and we have talked about this subject on other occasions. | |
There are those in this world, and you will hear this question from other people, who say that one great way of putting a smokescreen in front of the truth, if there is a truth about UFOs and aliens, is to simply release a lot of information. | |
And then through all that documentation, it's very hard for people to find the little nuggets that may or may not prove this. | |
Absolutely. | |
There's an old saying, the best place to hide a book is in a library. | |
But having said that, you're never going to satisfy everyone. | |
I mean, UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists are looking for some sort of smoking gun, something that will absolutely prove to them beyond any reasonable doubt that UFOs are real, they're aliens, we're being visited, and that the government's covering it up. | |
Well, self-evidently, you're not going to find that in the government's UFO files. | |
I say you won't find it because it's not there. | |
I mean, don't forget, I've worked on these files. | |
In fact, I've written some of them. | |
So I'm familiar with this material from my Ministry of Defence career. | |
But you see, the problem is when you release something like this, when the UFO community don't find what they want to find, what they believe in, they just say, oh, it's all disinformation. | |
Well, and it's easy to perhaps believe that may be the case because it is a great way to do this. | |
You release an awful lot of documentation. | |
None of it really adds up to anything. | |
I mean, I've only seen the summary of it, but, you know, there's nothing here that is a smoking gun. | |
So it's very easy for people to get disheartened and dissuaded by all of this, I would have thought. | |
Yes, but then that really gets to the heart of the central matter. | |
As I know from my own official research and investigation into this, it's not a case of the Ministry of Defence knowing some great secret about UFOs and keeping it from the people. | |
Actually, the Ministry of Defence doesn't know what the UFO phenomenon is. | |
Hence, you're not going to find some single bit of paper in any of this material which goes, this is the answer. | |
So in other words, these were a bunch of people, including yourself, who were there to collate reports and information, if I can say it, and documentation, but you weren't there to give the answer. | |
Well, if we'd have found an answer, we would have given one. | |
I mean, our brief was to investigate all the sightings reported to the Ministry of Defence. | |
95% of them we were able to explain in conventional terms, and that's fine. | |
But unknown means unknown. | |
It doesn't mean extraterrestrial. | |
So when you look at the small percentage of UFOs in these files that we couldn't explain, they're very interesting. | |
I mean, there are some fascinating cases, but there's nothing where you can say, well, that's extraterrestrial, and you can take that to the bank. | |
There's some really good stuff in here, having said that. | |
One report describing a so-called war of the world scenario in 1967, I have to say, I don't remember this, where for apparently a few hours at least, we were treating this as a potentially real invasion of the UK by something. | |
Yes, I mean, it should be borne in mind, of course, that this was at the height of the Cold War, so I think people were fairly jumpy. | |
But, I mean, what happened was that six small flying saucers had been discovered in various locations, forming a straight line. | |
And flying saucer fever was, of course, at quite a peak in 1967. | |
And what happened was that very, very quickly, the police and various intelligence personnel from MOD actually deployed to investigate all this. | |
Now, not necessarily because they thought it was alien. | |
I think the point is, with the Cold War, they thought it might be something to do with Soviet satellites or something like that. | |
As it turned out, this was a ragweek prank by a bunch of engineering students. | |
Oh, okay. | |
But there are other reports here. | |
I mean, the one that grabbed my attention, and the Press Association Newswire overnight in advance to the press released a lot of all of this stuff. | |
Of course, by the time this is heard by people who are hearing this, it will be in the public domain. | |
Was the case of a British warship where allegedly the crew had seen something, but the logbook of the incident was somehow lost. | |
That sounds fishy. | |
I can see how it would, and I'm very familiar with this case because I briefed Lord Hill Norton on it, who was a former chief of the Defence Staff. | |
The story is basically that it's alleged that crew members on board HMS Manchester witnessed a UFO and tracked it on radar during a NATO Navy exercise that was taking place in 1999. | |
Lord Hill Norton asked defence ministers for any documents relating to this, and he was told that the ship's log for the period in question had been blown overboard by a freak gust of wind. | |
Now Lord Hill Norton, I mean, you know, Lord Hill Norton, of course, stayed on the active list all his life. | |
A five-star admiral of the fleet, you do. | |
So had, I think, 49 years experience in the Navy, served on about 25 or 30 different ships. | |
He said to me, this was quite simply impossible, couldn't happen. | |
Never heard of a case like that in all his years. | |
And frankly, he did not believe the Ministry of Defence. | |
Well, I can quite understand why he mightn't. | |
That almost sounds like the weather balloons over Roswell, doesn't it? | |
Well, even I have to admit it's quite a stretch. | |
It's quite a stretch that the one logbook that dealt with this, or for all we know, we don't know, of course, but dealt with this period, that one was apparently lost in this freak accident. | |
The ones before and the ones after, that's fine. | |
Which reminds me of another story in these files, which is going to get conspiracy theorists excited and then angry. | |
It relates to Britain's best-known UFO case, the Rendlesham Forest incident. | |
And it's been revealed in these newly released documents that some Defence Intelligence staff files on Rendlesham have been destroyed. | |
They've been destroyed or they've gone missing? | |
No, they've been destroyed. | |
Now, policy at the time was because of the public and media interest in UFOs, it's actually been policy since 1967 that all UFO files should be permanently retained. | |
And yet, the Defense Intelligence Staff file on the case, which is really of most interest to journalists and members of the public, have been destroyed. | |
And it's worse than that. | |
It's worse than that, because not only have the files been destroyed, but the little destruction slips where somebody has to sign their name and explain why the material have been destroyed. | |
Don't tell me they've gone to. | |
They've been destroyed, too. | |
Well, that means that you don't have a paper trail back to all of that. | |
You don't know who did this, you don't know when it was done, and you don't know what was in the documentation, so that whole incident disappears. | |
Absolutely. | |
It's extremely disappointing. | |
It certainly runs counter to the policy that I operated to. | |
I mean, I have to say, I believe that I've seen all the papers on this. | |
And I mean, of course, I liaised with the Defense Intelligence staff all the time. | |
So when I, for example, did a cold case review of this particular incident in 1994, I think I've seen those files. | |
So I don't think there is, again, I don't think there's any great revelation that we would have had. | |
Hang on, you don't think, I guess if I had been, you would remember it, would you not? | |
Well, if it was a smoking gun, yes, but if it was just another... | |
For example, talking about the radiation levels taken at the site where this thing landed, and the Defence Intelligence staff assessment of that was significantly higher than background. | |
But I know, you know, obviously my talking years After the event, about files that I saw is not going to satisfy people. | |
And quite rightly, too. | |
I mean, I share people's disappointment and indeed anger that this has happened. | |
It's not a good day for open government or freedom of information. | |
Well, it isn't. | |
It absolutely isn't. | |
This thing happened 30 years ago. | |
It did cause the biggest stir in the UFO community in this country because a lot of people still think that that is the one point at which we had contact at or near a U.S. military airbase on our very soil. | |
It is still being talked about. | |
It is still being discussed. | |
The 30th anniversary came and went at the end of last year. | |
There is a man in Liverpool who you've probably met. | |
I met him in Liverpool, Larry Warren, an American who now lives there, who says he was there at the time, was part of this, and along with a number of other people, were lent on by security services and asked not to tell what they knew for fear of paying the price. | |
Absolutely. | |
Well, Larry Warren was there, and indeed, of course, he was the first whistleblower on this incident. | |
I think the only thing that I would say in the MOD's defense is this. | |
If they really were part of some sinister cover-up, if this had been destroyed so as to avoid going public with something, they would not have confessed to this now by releasing this rather embarrassing admission. | |
They would have had to have said something, wouldn't they, Nick? | |
Because everybody knows this happened, everybody knows it's controversial, and everybody knows that they would have had a file on it somewhere. | |
Well, they have. | |
I mean, but I think they would have gotten away with it, because, of course, files on Rendlesham have already been released, and they might have said there are no more. | |
I think what would have given things away to really meticulous researchers, and you're probably right, is serial numbers of files. | |
There would have been a missing number. | |
But, you know, I still think this is probably bureaucracy, not conspiracy. | |
And the MOD, to be fair, have put their hand up and said, well, this is extremely unfortunate. | |
And those are the two things that indicate that probably this is innocent, bureaucracy, not conspiracy. | |
And the fact that, you know, they put their hand up to it. | |
And there's perhaps a third factor. | |
A lot of people would have worked around this, including yourself. | |
Somebody would have known something. | |
And by this time, 30 years on, people are getting older. | |
Somebody probably would have broken ranks and said something. | |
Yes. | |
I mean, certainly we've got a lot of people. | |
We've got a lot of the United States Air Force personnel who witnessed this. | |
I mean, I'm talking about people like Larry Warren and others coming forward now and speaking out. | |
I mean, the Deputy Base Commander, of course, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt, Jim Penniston and John Burroughs from the first night, other people too. | |
What we haven't really got is whistleblowers within the MOD. | |
I mean, I'm certainly no whistleblower. | |
I commentate on this in the media just like you see, for example, retired military officers popping up and discussing, I don't know, Iraq or Afghanistan. | |
But yeah, no deathbed confessions yet. | |
What do you think of Paul Hellier, the former Defense Minister of Canada, who I noticed was in the newspapers here in the UK only a week ago, saying much the same as he said to me and a lot of the rest of the media about five or six years ago that he believes that there is more to aliens than meet the eye and it is certainly well worth investigation. | |
And he's pretty convinced there's something going on. | |
And he's back again, apparently saying this. | |
Well, it's certainly quite an extraordinary bold statement. | |
And of course, as a former Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, clearly his word has considerable weight. | |
As it happened, I was speaking at a conference with him in Phoenix just last week. | |
And indeed, I had dinner with him on Wednesday night. | |
So it's very much fresh in my mind. | |
He sent me a copy of his latest speech. | |
Yes, indeed, he is a passionate believer that UFOs, or some UFOs, are extraterrestrial. | |
And he believes that some people in the US government know more about this than they're saying in public. | |
What about Edgar Mitchell? | |
My last guest on The Unexplained was Edgar Mitchell. | |
It took me two months to get him on. | |
I found him truly fascinating when I talked to him. | |
He firmly believes that we have been visited, we are being visited, there are a number of species of aliens. | |
And I came out of the conversation believing that he did actually know more, not on the basis of perhaps what he'd experienced, but on the basis of what people might have told him than he can't pass on down the years. | |
What do you make of him and his testimony? | |
Well, again, he's, I suppose, in a world where the word hero is overused, he is a true life hero. | |
I mean, one of 12 men. | |
Yes, one of 12 men to walk on the moon. | |
I had the honor and privilege of meeting him and spending some time with him at a conference in 2007 in Washington, D.C. I mean, again, yes, he clearly has had a number of meetings, both with senior and retired military and intelligence personnel. | |
Many of them have spoken to him quite candidly, as you would expect. | |
An all-American hero, I mean, being an astronaut, being a moonwalker, opens a lot of doors. | |
So yes, he's certainly a believer. | |
Whether he's been told things in private and is keeping anything back, I don't know. | |
I find him quite forthright, so I'd be a little surprised. | |
On the other hand, I know he's an honourable man, and if he was told anything under the condition that this really was classified and he wasn't to speak, I'm sure he would have honoured that. | |
Well, he mentioned to me that there were people, or he felt there were people, in positions of authority who had perhaps knowledge, who may now be bound by confidentiality agreements, and perhaps the time may come, there are lots of mites and nays in what I'm saying, when they might be willing to say more. | |
And we're reaching critical mass now because a lot of these people are getting up in years, as they say in the U.S. And so if they're going to say anything in life, they have to do it now. | |
Well, I think there are two issues there. | |
The first is deathbed testimony, which is, interestingly enough, legally admissible in the States. | |
So there is the possibility that I mean we've had some already of course from some of the Roswell people, but no smoking guns, no absolute final definitive solution. | |
But we may get something. | |
We may get something from a very senior official whose position and word would be almost beyond dispute. | |
So that's a possibility that something will come out from somebody who wants to get it off their chest before they die. | |
The other point is amnesties. | |
There is quite a body of feeling in America that the President or the Secretary of State for Defense or whoever should issue a blanket amnesty and say to anyone who has got any information on UFOs that you are no longer bound by your security oath. | |
And if you were told not to talk about something, you now can. | |
See, the issue there is UFO enthusiasts say, well, look, if the American government says there's nothing to this, you've got nothing to lose by making that statement because there'll be no information to release. | |
Yeah, but it's a hell of a leap to get to a stage where the American government might say that. | |
Why would they? | |
Well, it did happen in relation to Roswell. | |
As I recall, the Secretary of State, or the Undersecretary of State for the Air Force, as I think we approached the 50th anniversary of Roswell, did actually offer an amnesty. | |
But it was very carefully worded. | |
And a lot of people in the UFO community think that there should be a sort of catch-all amnesty offered. | |
Because, for example, one option, one thing that you hear quite a lot is people saying maybe if there's a secret being kept on UFOs, it's not actually in government at all. | |
It's actually in the private sector, which, by the way, would be an excellent way to take it outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. | |
So how will we ever find the truth if it's buried within the private sector? | |
And if you want to be a real conspiracy theorist, you would say, well, it's all part of the military-industrial complex. | |
That's a phrase that Edgar Mitchell used. | |
I'm sure you've heard him use it. | |
If that's where it is, how will we ever get to know the truth? | |
Well, I think if the president said that there is an amnesty, public or private, somebody who was sitting on something but felt that they were bound by some sort of oath or confidentiality agreement would say, well, if the president says it, then it's okay to talk. | |
Back to these files that have been released. | |
We've both seen, haven't we, in our lifetimes, and the files actually reveal that, that there seem to be spates of these things, whether it's human nature, whether it's just people's psyche and consciousness that are played with at particular times. | |
But, you know, like January 1979, according to these files, during what they called the winter of discontent in the UK, where there was a lot of political and industrial unrest here, there was also a flurry of activity with UFO reports. | |
Yes, there do seem to be peaks and troughs in the statistics over the years, but I think it's a very, very complicated situation. | |
You'd probably need a social scientist to get to the bottom of it. | |
The Cold War might play a part, economic recession, science fiction might also have some part to play. | |
I mean, there's been previous speculation about UFO sighting reports peaking when a big sci-fi movie comes out. | |
I suspect it's rather more complex than that. | |
Well, 1979, I think, was a year or two after Close Encounters of the Third Kind. | |
Indeed. | |
But I think it's more complex than that. | |
I mean, I think sometimes you'll get... | |
Let's take that example for you. | |
It doesn't... | |
But what it might do is encourage people who've had a sighting, who might otherwise have kept quiet, to speak out and come forward. | |
So it's not necessarily more UFOs being seen, but a higher proportion of them being reported. | |
Okay, but doesn't that mean that, say, you were in a world where the only car that you'd ever seen was a blue VW, and if you came to London, there were lots of blue cars, and you saw a blue car, you would say, it has to be a VW because that's all you know. | |
So you see a movie that tells you these things, and you see something in the sky one night and you say, oh, I've seen that movie. | |
It's got to be a UFO. | |
Well, I think there's a world of difference between seeing a vague light or shape in the sky and saying, seeing, for example, the sort of mothership that you saw in close encounters. | |
I don't think there's much grey area there. | |
It's either something very mysterious or not. | |
One of the other great reports in here was the RAF Tornado Jet Crew. | |
Of course, the Tornado aircraft are very much in the news at the moment with the situation in Libya. | |
They're talking about perhaps using them for peacekeeping, but these are very powerful planes. | |
The crew of this plane apparently so stunned when a UFO appeared in front of them that they failed to lock their radar into this. | |
This apparently happened off the UK. | |
They were flying out of a base in Germany, weren't they, over the North Sea? | |
Yes, this was 1990. | |
I remember that very well. | |
In fact, I remember seeing the pilot's report, and it talked about almost being casually overtaken by one of these UFOs. | |
I can't recall whether I spoke to the pilot or not, but I've certainly seen the report. | |
As far as I recollect, they said, well, maybe it was a stealth fighter, but I think that was more because they couldn't really think what else to say. | |
And apparently it was as big as a C-130 Hercules plane, and they're pretty big. | |
That's not a stealth fighter. | |
It's not. | |
And I think, again, having either spoken to the pilot or seen some documents, I'm afraid I can't recollect which, I don't think that was put forward as anything other than a sort of rather lame speculation because they felt that they had to say something. | |
And as I recall, the particular pilots involved had actually seen stealth before, so should have been able to differentiate. | |
I think, as I say, they were slightly reluctant, and that is another interesting part of this, to use the phrase UFO. | |
As any pilot, I guess, would be. | |
Those pilots who come out and report these things are very brave people because they don't know they're going to find themselves With a black mark on their record. | |
One of the most interesting cases that we had in this country, Nick, that you and I have talked about before, and still baffles me, is that pilot near the Channel Islands a few years ago, private pilot with, I think, Orinyi Airlines there, who was very shaken by something that he saw in the sky and did talk about it to the media. | |
He talked about it to one of the commercial television stations out there. | |
I tried to get hold of him, and he didn't want to talk about it anymore. | |
And as far as I'm aware, he still doesn't want to talk about it. | |
That will forever baffle me. | |
Yes, it's a fascinating case. | |
There is a small MOD file on this, which I've read. | |
Ray Boyer is the pilot concerned. | |
Again, I've met him. | |
I've spent some time with him. | |
I've spoken to him about this. | |
He's extremely sincere. | |
And he described two UFOs. | |
And he said, extraordinarily, both of them seem to be over a mile in length. | |
Very interesting point was that when he contacted Air Traffic Control, Air Traffic Control confirmed that they did indeed have an unusual, uncorrelated return on their radar. | |
Ray Boyer is one of the brave people who did say, I have seen a UFO, and made an official report, and to start with at least was happy to talk about it in public. | |
I think going back to the last, going back to, for example, the RAF pilots who see these sorts of things, they're rather more cautious. | |
And what's very interesting when you look at the UFO files is actually the military pilots, if they report these sorts of things at all, they bend over backwards to use phrases like unusual aircraft as opposed to UFOs. | |
And those in the know know what they mean. | |
If I ever got told by a pilot I've seen an unusual aircraft, I knew exactly what they meant. | |
He meant I've seen a UFO, but he just did not want to use that phrase. | |
As we say over here with a nod and a wink. | |
Absolutely. | |
All right. | |
So this is the seventh lot of UFO files. | |
This is an era of cutbacks in the UK. | |
We've just been hearing in the House of Commons today about the scale of defence cuts in this country, and they're also talking about cutbacks in policing budgets and just about everything else here because of the financial mess we got ourselves into. | |
That said, do you think we will see the Ministry of Defence here spending the money on collating these documents and releasing them some more? | |
The MOD, of course, axed its UFO project from which most of these files originate in December 2009. | |
And in the current economic climate, I can't see that being reinstated. | |
Although, I suspect behind closed doors, if a pilot sees something, if an air traffic controller picks something up on the radar, it will be looked at, but outside of a formally constituted UFO project. | |
And as I say, people will use phrases like unusual aircraft, uncorrelated target, unidentified aerial phenomena, that sort of thing. | |
So I'm sure some things will be looked at, but probably not sightings from the general public, which is a shame. | |
The release of the files will continue. | |
That's the good news. | |
There are going to be one or maybe two more batches of files to be released. | |
And the process, as far as I understand, though it obviously depends on other work strands at the Ministry of Defence and the National Archives, but the final lot should be released either late this year or very early next year. | |
But I'm hoping that it might be end of 2011. | |
You used to work for them. | |
You know what's in a lot of them. | |
This lot of files and the next lot, do you get to see what they're about to release in advance? | |
Do they tell you? | |
Yes, I do. | |
So you knew this was coming? | |
I knew this was coming. | |
I mean, firstly, of course, I've seen a lot of this material anyway when I was at the Ministry of Defence. | |
But even files that I didn't see, for example, if they were after my time on the UFO project, you know, I get forewarned by the National Archives that these files are going to be released. | |
Because, of course, I'm invariably contacted by numerous TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers asking for interviews and comments about all this. | |
As indeed you are doing at the moment, I know. | |
Has the media's approach to it changed? | |
I've always been interested in this stuff, and I've always loved it, and it will fascinate me to my grave, I know. | |
Journalist colleagues don't seem to have changed much in the time that I've been a journalist, and that's more than 20 years, in their approach to it. | |
A lot of them are very skeptical, but I'm just interested to hear from you how they approach you about it now. | |
I have noticed that since the first batch of these files were released back in May 2008, there's been a gradual shift. | |
And yes, you'll still get some silly season stories, a lot of X-Files music played, a lot of references to little green men. | |
But I think that some news editors, producers, journalists have looked with fresh eyes at this and said, wait a minute, you know, now they've got to see some of the things that the MOD was doing. | |
They've said, wait, you know, we're missing a trick here. | |
There are sightings from pilots. | |
There are UFOs tracked on radar. | |
There are sightings where there are police witnesses. | |
And I think we have seen, it's still, you know, a mixed bag, but I have noticed more serious mainstream coverage of this, playing it quite straight. | |
Plus, of course, the journalists now are younger, and they come from a different generation. | |
They're more open-minded. | |
They've had more education. | |
They understand spirituality more. | |
Maybe they think more about stuff going on around them. | |
So that bodes well, I think. | |
That's maybe a reason for hope. | |
Yes, I think so. | |
I would agree with that. | |
Do you think we're reaching critical mass? | |
Are we any nearer to getting closer to whatever the truth might be? | |
Or do you think we're just going to run around in circles for a few more decades? | |
I don't know. | |
I mean, it's possible that some event might happen that will, I don't know, put this beyond reasonable doubt, but you know, the modern UFO mystery started in 1947 and we still haven't got to the bottom of it. | |
I have a feeling that when I'm old and grey, we'll still be having this conversation. | |
One final question: something that remained unresolved for me, although I did investigate it, and so did many other people. | |
Those lights in the sky over Norway at the end of 2009, I think it was December 09, there were some strange spirals of light over Norway, and everybody said this is some kind of extraterrestrial message, or maybe it was something that some military power was doing, but the general consensus was that it might well be from outer space. | |
Do you know any more about that now? | |
I'm afraid I don't. | |
I mean, the skeptical theory was always that this was a Russian rocket going out of control and sort of spiraling around. | |
And, you know, there are various videos you can see of malfunctioning missiles on sites like YouTube where you can sort of see how that effect might be generated. | |
But, I mean, of course, you know, believers say, oh, that's just disinformation. | |
And sceptics say, well, you just want to believe too much. | |
So we'll probably never know. | |
Oh, Nick, we'll have this conversation again. | |
Thank you for making time for me because I know it's been very, very busy for you this last 24 hours or so. | |
Nick, thank you. | |
Thanks. | |
Nice again to talk to my friend Nick Pope in the United Kingdom. | |
This edition of The Unexplained has been very frantically raced together, so there might be a few rough edges in it. | |
I don't think there are, but thank you for persevering with it. | |
It literally has been put together on the spur of the minute, which just goes to show that in this modern world, all you've got to do is turn the equipment on, sit right down, and talk. | |
Maybe that's the essence of what we do here. | |
Thank you again to Adam at Creative Hotspot for creating the website and getting the show out to you. | |
Thank you to Martin for the theme tune. | |
And above all else, thank you very much to you for listening to and supporting The Unexplained. |