UFO Invasion At Rendlesham

I've now seen the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary UFO Invasion at
Rendlesham, and thought I'd offer a few comments, primarily for
those in the UK, where it hasn't yet been shown.

Overall I thought it was very good, not least for the obvious
reason that the length of the show allowed more material to be
presented in more depth than would have been the case with a
shorter documentary.

The producers used two main consultants, thanked in the credits:
Georgina Bruni and Peter Robbins. Accordingly, the documentary
drew heavily on material published in You Can't Tell The People
and Left At East Gate.  However, that's not to say that there
wasn't a lot of new material presented. After a brief overview,
I'll focus on this new material, and what I see as the key
points.

Georgina Bruni and Peter Robbins were featured throughout the
documentary, with other researchers such as Tim Good, Nick
Redfern and Rich Dolan also offering comments. So far as USAF
personnel were concerned, Halt and Penniston played the central
role, with Larry Warren also being featured a lot. Gordon
Williams, Monroe Nevels and Ray Gulyas gave what I believe to be
their first television interviews, and Edward Cabansag was also
featured a fair bit. Civilian witnesses included Gerry Harris,
and Roy and Marina Webb. No official USAF or MOD spokesperson
appeared, but Lord Hill-Norton and I were featured extensively
in a private capacity, giving our personal views on the
incident, the official investigation, and other relevant points.

I picked out the following as new or interesting pieces of
information:

Penniston said that Staff Sergeant John Coffey confirmed to him
that an uncorrelated radar target had been tracked immediately
prior to the first sighting.

With regard to the official USAF witness statements published in
You Can't Tell The People, Penniston said that he sanitised his
by choice. Cabansag stated that he was forced to sign his.

Penniston was filmed with his original notebook, on which he
said he'd made notes and drawings at the time of his sighting.
This merits further study. The sketch of the hieroglyphs, for
example, is rawer than the more tidy version that appears in You
Can't Tell The People.

Penniston, Nevels and Gulyas all said that photographs had been
taken during the various sightings, but that they came back
fogged.

Halt and Penniston disagreed over the location of the landing
site, and then concluded that two separate locations were
involved. Forester Vince Thurkettle (the original proponent of
the lighthouse theory) confirmed that the lighthouse would not
have been visible from this second site. That said, I wondered
whether Halt or Penniston could really be certain about the
locations so long after the event, given that the forest has
changed significantly, most notably as a result of tree loss
during the so-called Great Storm of 1987, and subsequent
replanting.

Halt went further than I've heard him go before in public on
promoting the idea that some aggressive debriefings were carried
out using chemicals and/or hypnosis, and that disinformation
techniques were used.

Penniston recalled (albeit under regression hypnosis) that two
people he described as agents of either C8 or DS8 had been
present during a debriefing involving an injection of Sodium
Pentothal. I was then filmed explaining that Defence Secretariat
8 had been the Ministry of Defence's lead department on the UFO
issue at the time. This division evolved into Secretariat(Air
Staff), where I worked, so I was a little unhappy at the
potential implication that my predecessors had engaged in such
an activity. I should point out that it was public knowledge
that the departmental lead for investigating UFO sightings lay
with DS8.

A few quibbles; some dates were wrong, including (crucially) the
dates of the incidents themselves, and the date that the MOD
released documents from the files on the incidents. An
interesting initiative involving environmental scientist Patrick
Davison checking the landing site for radiation fizzled out,
possibly because of confusion over the locations. And the point
about the then C-inC USAFE General Charles A. Gabriel (who died
on September 4, 2003) being given the tape recordings wasn't
really developed as thoroughly as it might have been.

The documentary is likely to be screened in the UK at some stage
this year, and I'll post further details of this when I know
them. In the meantime, Peter Robbins will be writing a detailed
critique of the show for UFO Magazine in the UK. This will
address, in particular, some issues relating to the portrayal of
Larry Warren.

The end credits finished with the following poignant message:

Dedicated to the memory of Graham W. Birdsall, Founder and
Editor-in-Chief UFO Magazine (UK), 7th April 1954 - 19th
September 2003. He will be remembered for his courage, sense of
humour, drive, and countless contributions to the field.

Best wishes and Happy New Year,


Nick Pope