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all levels of government. It’s still hard to believe that the Hudson Valley events slipped by, unnoticed by most of us—but in fact, that’s what happened. Of course, if our government had responded the same way the Belgian government did when that country was hit by a similar wave, everything would be different. And even more important, if we had set up an agency similar to the one in France, devoted to research for its own sake, even greater knowledge could have been acquired. The UK, our closest ally, had an office in place to receive UFO reports during the time of the Hudson Valley wave, and would have investigated. The U.S. government, albeit responsible for an enormous territory of land and sky in comparison to France, Belgium, or the UK, appears to be operating at one extreme in its ability to turn a blind eye to UFOs.

CHAPTER 17

The Real X-Files

by Nick Pope

The British Ministry of Defence set up its office for UFO investigations in the 1950s, at around the same time that the United States established Project Blue Book. However, the British kept their investigation going much, much longer. Nick Pope was the man assigned to head this government UFO project from 1991 to 1994. His perspective on the phenomenon changed radically during his years of intensive focus on investigations and access to “inside” government information on UFOs. Like the other contributors to this book, he would like to see more involvement by U.S. officials and intelligence agencies.

Pope has become one of the most active former government officials to speak about this issue, sought by media from around the world as a leading expert. He combines a keen analytical mind with a strong interest in the UFO phenomenon, both of which are leavened with a dry, uniquely British wit. He is yet another example of the many officials and military officers who, as they became acquainted with UFO investigations virtually by accident, flexed their skeptical muscles only to find themselves absorbed by the unexpected power of the evidence they had initially expected to disprove. Nick Pope had access to classified files and other highly sensitive information that he is not at liberty to share, which makes his insights and convictions even more intriguing. Still involved with the subject on a semiofficial basis, he recently worked with the British National Archives as a consultant for the ongoing program to declassify and release the MoD’s archive of UFO files.

I worked for the Ministry of Defence for twenty-one years, beginning in 1985. At the time, the policy was to move people every two or three years—either on level transfer or promotion—so that everybody gained experience in a wide range of different jobs: policy, operations, personnel, finance, etc. I’d completed two or three different jobs, and by the early 1990s, I was working in a division called Secretariat (Air Staff) and had been seconded into the Air Force Operations Room in the Joint Operations Centre. I worked there in the run-up to the first Gulf War, during the war itself, and in the aftermath of the conflict, as a briefer, preparing material for the key daily briefings to ministers and the service chiefs. My job was to collect raw data about Royal Air Force (RAF) operations, and pick out the key things that senior personnel needed to know: details of any casualties and losses, targets attacked, battle damage assessment, etc. It was while working there that I was approached in 1991 and asked whether, after I was released from duties in the Joint Operations Centre, I would like to work on UFO investigations—a post embedded in another part of the division. I accepted the invitation even though I knew little about the subject and I certainly had no belief in UFOs. So while I was open-minded in all my investigations, my start point was broadly skeptical.

The MoD had been looking at the UFO phenomenon since the early fifties and has received over 12,000 sighting reports to date. In all that time, the objectives haven’t really changed much. Back in 1950, the MoD set up the secret