Britain Agrees to Release UFO Documents

http://www.wkrg.com/national/article/britain_releases_files_on_ufo_sightings/13881/May-13-2008_11-41-pm/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355509,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/14/britain.ufos/index.html
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos/

(AP) -- The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm 
professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing 
their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.

No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object 
landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched 
down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that's what they 
reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984.

The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 
1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released Wednesday by 
Britain's National Archives. It is one of the few that was never explained.

The air traffic controllers' "Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon" was filed 
from an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England.

The men, each with more than eight years on the job, described how they were 
helping guide a small plane to a landing on runway 22 when they were 
distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without 
clearance.

"Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified," their report said. 
"SATCO (code name for a controller with 14 years experience) reports that 
the object came in 'at speed,' made a touch and go on runway 27, then 
departed at 'terrific speed' in a 'near vertical' climb."

The incident is one of the more credible in the newly public files because 
it was reported by air traffic controllers, said David Clarke, a UFO expert 
who worked with the National Archives on the document release.

"They were absolutely astonished," he said. "It was a bright, circular 
object, flashing different colors, and after it touched down it disappeared 
at fantastic speed. The report comes from very qualified people, and it's 
one of the few that remained unexplained."

But while there are some unexplained cases in the papers, there is no 
reported instance in which the Ministry of Defense found any evidence of 
alien activity or alien spacecraft, said Clarke, who nonetheless expects 
conspiracy theories about a UFO cover-up by the British defense 
establishment to persist.

"The Ministry of Defense doesn't have any evidence that our defenses were 
breached by alien craft," Clarke said. "They never found one, no bits of 
one. That's all we can say."

Clarke said the released documents, dealing with the late 1970s and early 
1980s, are the first batch in a series that will be made public in the next 
few years.

The National Archives is releasing the files because of numerous freedom of 
information requests seeking information about the government's UFO reports. 
Officials said that names of many individuals had been blacked out to 
protect their privacy and that the entire files had been reviewed to make 
sure their release did not compromise national security.

Ministry of Defense officials indicate in the files that UFO reports were 
only investigated to make sure no enemy aircraft had illegally entered 
British airspace. This was crucial during the Cold War when Russian planes 
posed a threat.

Officials said they did not try to solve UFO riddles once an enemy attack 
had been ruled out.

The vast majority of UFO reports come from members of the public who see 
strange things in the sky and jump to the conclusion that a UFO is involved 
even though there are logical explanations for what they observe, experts 
said.

"The most common things are aircraft lights, bright stars and planets, 
satellites, meteors, airships and things like that," said Nick Pope, another 
UFO expert who helped the Ministry of Defense investigate the phenomenon.

That was the case when a number of people leaving a Tunbridge Wells pub one 
night reported seeing a strange craft "with red and green" lights, according 
to the released documents.

Asked by police where the object seemed to be traveling, the pub crawlers 
said it appeared to be heading for London's Gatwick Airport. It didn't take 
a scientist to figure out it was a commercial plane making a routine 
approach.


-- 
If you are a hard skeptic then you haven't researched or questioned enough. 
If you believe something too much then you have the same problem.