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By Root 916 0

I found. I discovered a series of additional mistakes that had fatally flawed the first investigation: failure to cordon off the landing site, search it with metal detectors, or take soil samples; delay in reporting the incident to the MoD; failings in information-sharing between the MoD and the USAF. If the investigation had been handled differently, we might know a lot more today about the strange object that landed. While delay and poor information-sharing were arguably human errors, the root of the problem was confusion about jurisdiction and whether the British or the Americans should lead the investigation. My own view is that both had jurisdiction but that the UK authorities had primacy and should have led. In fairness, the difficulties were compounded by the unprecedented nature of the incident. There was simply no standard operating procedure to cover a situation like this. I rechecked the assessment of the radiation readings, this time with the Defence Radiological Protection Survey, and they confirmed the original analysis.

I have spoken with the key witnesses in this complex case on many occasions. I am convinced that they are being truthful, and while recollections vary in some instances, this is to be expected given the time that has passed and given the fact that events occurred over several nights, with different people being involved at different locations. Indeed, I would be suspicious if everyone told exactly the same story, because in my experience this would suggest improper collusion between the witnesses.

But the simple fact that this is a multiple-witness event, where those involved are military personnel and where there is physical evidence, makes this one of the most significant UFO sightings ever.4

The late five-star admiral Lord Hill-Norton, the UK’s former Chief of the Defence Staff (the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States), though retired at the time, often asked me to brief him on the UFO phenomenon and draft material for him on the subject—a fearsome task for a middle-ranking government official. He was particularly outspoken on the Rendlesham Forest case and felt strongly that the MoD’s line on the incident (that the events were of “no defense significance”) was entirely unacceptable and at odds with the facts. In a letter that he wrote to a UK defense minister, which he copied to me, the admiral summarized his views on the case as follows:

My position both privately and publicly expressed over the last dozen years or more, is that there are only two possibilities, either:

An intrusion into our Air Space and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham, as described. Or:

The Deputy Commander of an operational, nuclear armed, U.S. Air Force Base in England, and a large number of his enlisted men, were either hallucinating or lying.

Either of these simply must be “of interest to the Ministry of Defence,” which has been repeatedly denied, in precisely those terms.5

Project Condign

On May 15, 2006, under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, which is broadly similar to the U.S. FOIA, the Ministry of Defence published a formerly secret report on UFOs. Much information about UFOs had already been released, both at the National Archives and on the Ministry of Defence’s website, but the release of this latest study was different and totally unprecedented. The study was classified “Secret UK Eyes Only” and only eleven copies of the report were ever made. It ran to over 460 pages and was given the code name Project Condign. Work started in 1996 and the final report was not published until December 2000.

Interestingly, the timescale is broadly similar to the semiofficial COMETA Report from France, which was initiated in 1995 and released in 1999. There was no link between the two projects, and the high classification and extreme sensitivity of the UK study precluded liaison with any other country.

The report represented an attempt to undertake a proper, in-depth scientific study that was going to look at all the evidence