The UK Releases Secret UFO Files

[sherlew (Ret)]

Via the International Business Times

Link to article

UK Defense Ministry releases secret UFO files and videos


By IBTimes Staff Reporter | March 3, 2011 2:20 PM GMT

The Ministry of Defense United Kingdom has released thousands of files with details of UFO sightings and an "alien abduction." These previously classified files document sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) by the military and members of the public dating back to the 1950s.

The files contain around 8,500 pages mainly covering the period from 1997 to 2005 and include photographs, drawings and descriptions of flying saucer sightings, as well as letters the Ministry of Defence (MoD) sent eyewitnesses in response to their accounts, the Sky News and The Telegraph reported.

In a startling revelation made months before the September 11 attacks, 15 unidentified aircrafts were detected on radar approaching the UK and one was detected on the actual day.

Other disclosures in the 35 files include the story of a family capturing on film a flashing red and white lights zig-zagging their way through the sky during the early hours in 2003, Sky News reported.

The phenomenon of extra-terrestrials has fascinated people for centuries and the files also detail in full the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and letters from "persistent enquirers" that led to the MoD opening up its files for the first time in history.

Dr David Clarke, author of the book The UFO Files, told Sky News that information on the UFOs were the top three most popular FOI requests received by the MoD.

"You can see from the files that I wasn't the only one interested in the subject, with the phenomenon discussed at the highest level of government right across the globe," Clarke is quoted as saying.

The files contain pages of UFO sightings and reports, color photographs and drawings, UK Royal Air Force investigations, unusual radar detections, briefings to lawmakers and documents on the government's policy on UFOs discolsed for the first time.

[sherlew (Ret)]

Here's another one from Live Science

link to article


UFO Cover-Up? Britain's 'Roswell Event' Missing From Files

Benjamin Radford, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
Date: 04 March 2011 Time: 03:03 PM ET

The British Ministry of Defence recently released thousands of government documents related to UFO sightings and reports in the United Kingdom. As the public and UFO buffs pored over the information, there was one subject file (or series of files) that seemed to be suspiciously missing: the Rendlesham Forest Incident, better known as "Britain's Roswell."

BBC correspondent Neil Henderson noted, "The missing files relate to a report of mysterious lights from U.S. servicemen at RAF [Royal Air Force] Woodbridge in Suffolk in 1980. The disappearance came to light with the release of 8,000 previously classified documents on UFOs. Officials found a 'huge' gap where defense intelligence files relating to the case should be, the papers show."

Missing files on a famous UFO case? Call Mulder and Scully! Why are these particular files missing? Is it a sign of a conspiracy?

David Clarke, the author of "The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings" (The National Archives, 2009) who has been working with Britain's National Archives since 2008 to release the information, clarified the issue. "It is not the case that files on Rendlesham have been destroyed. What has been lost or destroyed are a series of Defence Intelligence UFO files covering the years 1980 through 1982," he told Life's Little Mysteries. While this would include information on the Rendlesham case, Clarke noted, the Ministry of Defence's files on the topic had already been released. "There is no evidence those files contained anything different to the contents of the actual 'Rendlesham file' released some years ago."

But is it suspicious that any files were destroyed? Perhaps they contained conclusive proof of alien visitation? Clarke doesn't think so: "Why were these files destroyed? The most likely answer is that, at the time, intelligence staff believed they contained nothing worth preserving. It's worth pointing out that some 95 percent of all U.K. government files are destroyed at first review. Many, many other UFO files have been destroyed, including most of those from the 1950s when the subject was regarded as having no historical significance (prior to 1967, the policy was to destroy all files on the subject at five yearly intervals). So while there's a tendency to see a conspiracy or hidden agenda, it's not as big a deal as is being made out."

Indeed, millions of official government documents are routinely destroyed each year. Some of the documents are secret, but most of them are merely useless and outdated—everything from 1950s-era passport applications and biographical intelligence dossiers on now-dead foreign leaders to sewage treatment plans for planned neighborhoods that were never built. Archiving and recording all official documents would be an impossible (and very costly) task, and some events only take on particular interest years or decades after documents on them were created.

Either the missing files (if indeed there are any missing) contained information so ordinary and mundane that they weren't considered worth keeping, or they contained information so dramatic and explosive that they needed to be covered up. The documents can be interpreted either way, but the former seems the more likely.

This article was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.com.

[pickinduck]

I was just looking around at youtube about this and it looks like they did the same thing about a year ago
Why didn't they release them all then?
Are they releasing them all this time?
Are there any good ones in the bunch?

[sherlew (Ret)]

I don't know. People do things for their own reasons.