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June 6, 2019 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
17:12
Special Edition - MOD UFO Files Released

Independent investigator and former MOD UFO man Nick Pope on the last batch of MOD UFO files being released...

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Hello again, it's Howard in London at the Home of the Unexplained.
I wanted to get this out to you before it appears on my radio show.
It's a conversation that I've just recorded here with Nick Pope, the former Ministry of Defence, UFO investigator and now independent investigator in the US, about this story.
It's been in all the newspapers here this week, and I'm sure it's been in the newspapers in the US.
The British Ministry of Defense has quietly released two final X files that detail the secrets of Britain's quest to understand the phenomenon of UFOs.
Over the past 11 years, the MOD here has declassified 60,000 pages, exposing the secrets of a government investigation into unexplained sightings over the UK.
In April, the last pair of files were published and made available to the public at the National Archives in Kew, near London, where they must be viewed in person because they haven't yet been digitised.
The latest files to be released don't contain a, quote, smoking gun, which proves the existence of aliens, but they reveal fascinating aspects of investigators' attempts to understand the phenomenon.
So let's speak to a man who worked not only at the Ministry of Defense, but also worked on the release of these documents, Nick Pope.
And I spoke with him just a few minutes ago here.
What we have here is, I suppose, the final pieces of the puzzle when it came to the question of how did we in the Ministry of Defense try to make our way through this?
How did we try to make sense of this phenomenon?
And what they actually reveal, I think the most interesting thing, is a sceptic versus believer dogfight about UFOs, but not out in the UFO community, actually within the Ministry of Defense as different directorates within the department jockey for position on all this.
And you worked there.
Were you part of that?
I was.
It was going on in my time.
Now, these two final files contain documents dating from after my time on the UFO program, but many of the issues are exactly the same.
And what we see is shortly after I left that section in 1994, there was a fundamental breakdown in the relationship between the policy division when it came to UFOs, which is where I worked, and the defense intelligence staff who provided us with specialist advice on scientific and technical matters.
And of course, we have to bear in mind the climate.
In the country at the time, most newspapers would ridicule stories about UFOs and stuff like that.
And a lot of people, I think, will be surprised that this was being debated and even, as you say, argued about seriously.
Yes, and it was particularly sensitive because, of course, we had always told the British Parliament, the media and the public, that we only really glanced at these reports.
We weren't particularly interested in the phenomenon and we didn't regard it as being of much defence significance.
What these two final files show, and within those files, by the way, there are several hundred pages of individual documents, some of which were classified secret UK eyes only at the time.
What these files show is that notwithstanding that public line of no defense significance, really there was a faction in the Ministry of Defence who wanted to do much more about this in terms of research and investigation, and who genuinely felt there was a proper phenomenon here, but that the Ministry over the years hadn't really gotten a proper grip on this.
So there were people at that time who wanted more investigation.
I think that'll be surprising.
Yes, I think absolutely.
Most people would think this is pretty much the time when the MOD was trying to disengage from the subject.
And there was certainly a faction that wanted to go down that road.
But yes, as you say, it will surprise people, I think, to learn that there were people who wanted to go the opposite way.
And I was one of them.
I was one of them.
And some of the things in these files really came about because of discussions that I was having with colleagues in the defense intelligence staff in around 1993 and 94.
And I think people will find these files interesting if they can get to read them.
I should say, by the way, the bad news in all this is that these two files have not yet been digitized.
So you will either have to physically go to the National Archives in Kew and sit in the reading room and go through them, or apply for them online and they, I think, may send them to you for a small fee.
But gone are the days when all this was put online.
When I came out of retirement to start helping with this program, I mean, this was way back in 2008 that we released the first files.
We thought it would take two to three years.
It's taken 11 years.
Back in those days, it was all free on the internet and all scanned in and digitized.
Not now, I'm afraid.
Is there anything sinister in that or is it just money?
I think it's two things.
The sinister side of it is obviously this started out as a good news story about open government and freedom of information.
It's kind of segued into a story about delay and bureaucracy.
And nobody probably wants to highlight the fact that different parts of the MOD were at war with each other over this issue.
Having said that, I don't want to sound too conspiratorial.
Yes, money and resources is always a factor.
And I understand from the National Archives, and I've spoken to people there just literally in the last few days, there is an aspiration, there is an intention to digitize these last two files, and indeed some of the previous ones that haven't yet been digitized.
But it's probably a long-term intention.
So don't hold your breath on that.
Okay, now lest we be accused of skipping over anything, the fact that there was a debate, and in some cases a heated debate, is that telling us that there was something to debate?
In other words, there were people like you saying, well, look, I've got a whole raft of reports here that really need further investigation and you're not doing it.
Why?
Is that the kind of drama that was playing out?
That's exactly the drama that was playing out.
And of course, that view, maybe at the time, it was seen as something of a minority report, I suppose.
But now, with events in the US, we see a total vindication of that situation.
And it's interesting to see, with some of the things going on here in the US now, in terms of congressional interest in this subject, in terms of the upsurge in sightings from the US Navy and the consequent response from the Pentagon, we can see the British influence in some of this, and not least in terms of just use of the language, terms like UAP.
We were using that in the Ministry of Defence back in the 90s when we were having that debate and when we were saying, look, we don't necessarily have all the answers, but there are serious defense and national security issues here.
We should be researching and investigating this more.
And that now seems to be exactly the view here in the US.
You said the Brits had an influence, not only in the language, I guess.
Were we a restraining influence on them?
Did we keep them from being perhaps more forthcoming or was it the other way around?
I don't think of it in those terms when I'm talking about influence.
I'm just talking about some of the, I suppose, cross-fertilization here in the fact that the language UAP is something that was clearly adopted within the U.S. military and intelligence community when discussing this phenomenon.
And indeed, I think over the next few months, we will find, because there are still further revelations to come about the Pentagon's ATIP program, I think we will find out fairly shortly, for example, that the Rendlesham Forest incident and the declassified intelligence study that we've discussed before, Project Condine, this was something that was on the radar of some of the U.S. intelligence personnel looking into this.
Right.
And how seriously was Rendlesham Forest being taken here?
If it was on their radar, it must have been on ours.
Well, yes, absolutely.
I think many of us realized that this was a serious case.
This was whatever it was, something had landed.
And look, there's no middle ground with something like this.
Frankly, there are only three theories.
Either it's our own tech being secretly tested on one part of the government by another, which would be pretty scandalous given what happened next.
Or it's foreign military hardware, probably Russia or China, maybe others, but probably Russia, China.
I'm struggling to think of anyone else with the tech to do some of the things that are reported in terms of the operational parameters of these things.
And the third option is that we're dealing with something truly exotic.
And of course, those of us who looked at this within government didn't rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
And look, whichever of those theories is correct, I mean, clearly, this is something the government needs to get to the bottom of.
Do you think we're reaching some kind of semi-critical mass now?
Yes, I think so.
I think we're pushing on an open door after years of denial, after years of downplaying this subject.
Now it's being discussed quite openly.
We have pilots speaking out on the record in increasing numbers, along with radar operators.
We have former intelligence and security personnel who've directly been involved in these sorts of programs now speaking out.
We have congressional interest.
So absolutely, there hasn't been a time when this subject has been more mainstream.
There hasn't been an opportunity like this before really to get to the bottom of this question.
What is going on in our airspace?
And it's a question we need to get to the bottom of.
People have been talking about UFOs since the 1950s and before.
There have been various flaps over the years.
Why do you think we're where we are now?
Why is it getting so hot?
Well, I think two things.
Firstly, it's always been an events-led phenomenon.
If nothing particularly spectacular happens, sure, there'll be a lot of speculation, but we won't actually have the hard cases.
There has been, by the U.S. Navy's own admission, a dramatic upsurge in the number of incidents.
And listen, look at the language that they're using.
Incursions into military airspace, intrusions into restricted areas.
We must find out who's doing this.
We must take action to prevent this.
This is strong talk.
And just in case anyone thinks, well, they're just talking about aircraft, missiles, and drones.
No, they absolutely then put that beyond debate by coming out with the phrase UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena.
That's the recognized intelligence, community, military, government terminology for UFOs.
But you know, the second thing is this.
Our tech is getting better and better in terms of detection.
And it's no accident, perhaps, that it's this USS Nimitz incident, actually dating back to 2004, that really seems to have started this in recent years.
And that, it just so transpires, is a time when the US Navy was trialing some really interesting new integrated radar, command and control, communications equipment.
So if there are things out there in our skies, but if they're generally speaking stealthy, very, very hard to pin down, small drones, incredible speeds and maneuvers, we are just now, for the first time, perhaps, certainly something we couldn't do in the 50s and 60s.
We're just now getting a handle on it in terms of being able to track them better.
But it is interesting, isn't it, that you know how secrecy works, and we are a very secretive nation.
So is the US.
Let's be fair about this.
Maybe every big nation is.
If both of our great nations had wanted to keep a lid on all of this coming to a head Now they probably could have, and yet it is well.
That is an absolutely fascinating point because you're quite right.
Here we have almost within the same week new extraordinary statements from the US Navy really reigniting this whole debate just as the thing was in danger of dying down.
It's almost as if for the first time the US government itself is throwing gasoline onto the fire.
It's almost as if for the first time they are actively promoting discussion, debate, belief in UFOs.
And here we have at exactly the same time, the British government releasing these two final files, putting that out there as if there's almost a sort of element of us too with this.
You know, the Brits are in the game here too.
You know a lot about the workings of the MOD because, as we say, you were there.
What hasn't been released?
Give me an idea of the sorts of things that would have been redacted or not put out to the public.
Well, I think the most sensitive parts, obviously, some of the redactions are fairly routine things, just like names and addresses of witnesses under data protection.
And that's as you'd expect.
But the more sensitive things are, I think, areas of either active liaison with other countries, which may or may not include the United States.
Obviously, I can't discuss material that the government itself has decided not to release.
Because you signed the Official Secrets Act.
I signed it and it binds me for life.
But clearly, you can see, when you look at these files, and I was, because I've been directly involved in this release program, and I guess I've been the public face of it, I received advance copies of these two files, and I've had them for months.
And, you know, that's another story, I guess.
But because I've got these files, I can see, as those people who go to queue and read them for themselves will be able to see, you'll be able to see what parts of the Freedom of Information Act have been quoted to keep the information back.
As I say, sometimes it's just names and addresses, but other times it's what we know about what other countries either know about this phenomenon or what they are doing about this phenomenon.
And that's allies and not so friendly countries.
But boy, they've admitted that there is a phenomenon.
We just simply don't know what it is or we're not saying what it is yet.
Do you think, since you've been involved in all of this now, and you were involved in the MOD during the time when it was all going on, if our government becomes part of an international disclosure at some point, if governments decide, okay, we've got to tell people the truth now because there's a critical mass being reached and we have to do it, would you be part of that process?
Would they call you in?
Probably, yes.
I suspect I would have a sort of spokesperson role, which in one sense is what I've had with the release of these MOD UFO files.
I came back out of retirement, made the official announcement at the start of the program.
I've probably given several thousand interviews over the past 11 years as we've progressively got more and more of this material out.
Yes, if there was some ratcheting up of that and something even more tangible, I suspect I would be asked to do something on that.
And I would gladly play my part.
So you would be the voice of information.
You know that every time I put you on the radio, I get a lot of emails from people saying, nice to hear Nick Pope again, and a few emails saying this man is the voice of disinformation.
Well, I think I would be one of the voices of this.
I'm not so arrogant to suggest that I would be the only voice.
I think we know full well that, of course, in the US there are people like Luis Elizondo, like Christopher Mellon, and some others who would be voices too.
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