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This Ministry of Defence file, released through The National Archives and published by The Black Vault, holds the MOD's 2002 handling of Dr David Clarke's requests for UFO documents under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. It includes the MOD's 9 December 2002 reply, which covered reports from 1976, 1980, 1993 and 1996 and charged £260. It also contains internal emails and file requisitions, plus Foreign Office and United Nations papers from 1978 on Grenada's proposal for UFO research.
“Reading”20 pages
UNCLW$£11fi'Jl6TED · --5. A small difficulty.haA( for purely tactical reasons unconnected with UFOs, acceded (with other countries) to a request by the Government of Grenada for a UN study group (at Grenadan expense) to monitor information on UFOs. The l'rording of that part of the draft speech has been supplied by FCO. 6. The general line adopted is that there really are strange phenomena in the sky, but there are perfectly rational explanations to account for them, so there is no need to introduce the highly questionable hypothesis of alien space craft. In other .words, Occam's Razor. 7. The broad line was put to Lord Strabolgi· at our meeting in December and agreed by him. Lord Strabolgi asked for further information about cosmic distances and the difficulties of space travel. I have not included this in the speech, because Lord Clancarty's "sky people" are evidently "paranormal" and can cross the light years in a trice; but some facts are included at the end of the background note. 8. Lord Strabolgi also mentioned the possibility of replying on any detailed cases produced by Lord Clancarty if the latt~r will give advance notice. I repeat the advice I gave in December: we should not attempt to argue these cases, which tend to be remote and elusive yet often cannot be refuted without very detailed examination; indeed ,..,e should not fight the battle on Lord Clancarty's ground at all. 9. DES have been consulted and are content. 10. You vTill no doubt confirm the time and place of the final briefine;, which CJ.t present \ve have dm·m for am i'lednesday 17 January.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 492 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.