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MOD file DEFE 24/2032/1

The Black Vault · 492 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 40 …But, unlike with the aircraft reported by the noble Earl, I have never seen one. I…
  • p. 46 …It is not quite enough to explain the earthquakes. It does not mean that the mystery…
  • p. 47 …explain the black holes about which we talk. We are talking of mysteries that we never…
  • p. 53 …I should believe merely that I had seen it---something that I could not explain; and…
  • p. 58 …On the contrary, we welcome something we cannot explain because it is a new phenomenon which…
  • p. 59 …l should lib:1 have never seen ball lightning, but the 1 to go into the…
  • p. 112 ..~ say that in the Air Force, for tne moment, they have never seemed to come directly…
  • p. 161 …anomalies on the r~dars, of the elements which ~fair defence does not manage to explain…
  • p. 177 …informed that 11so far the military have never found anything of an~~gressive nature from the…
  • p. 192 …Let me assure this House that Her Majesty's Government has never been approached by people…
  • p. 214 …Let me assure this Rouse that Her Majesty's Government has never been approached by people…
; UFOs - DRAFT CLOSING ADDRESS
-There ~re three e;rains of truth upon \'thich the e;reat
myth of ufology is built.
FIRST:
SECOND:
THIRD:
intelligent life could exist else,-There in the- _,
universe. \•lith 100,000 million stars in our own
galaxy alone, it is probable that there are many
planets capable of supporting life.
the technical difficul·::ies of inter-stellar
travel are stunning.~ven at the speed of light
it would take 4 years to reach the nearest star,
and 100,000 years to cross our galaxy. But it
would be a brave man who said there could never,
ever,be manned inter-stellar travel.
~here really are strange phenomena in the skies,
arui. many are reported by cool and intelligent
people.
2c But it is a far cry from this t~o the proposition that there
have been great numbers of sightings of UFOs - implying alien space
craft - sometimes claimed as running into hundreds of thousands.
Her ~ajesty•s Government is not in the least impressed with the
idea that t~ere is anything worth investigating in the information
offered by ufologists.
3.· On the one hand, there are perfectly simple explanations
for the phenomena; on the other, the explanations offered by
ufologists are most unconvincing. These explanations are un-
convincing when they relate to space craft from other stars: they
are even more unconvincing when they claim that UFOs come from
another space·- time d.t't1\.tn.s;er-n J from a hole in the earth, or the
depths of the sea, as Lord Clancarty has suggested.

Cases discussed

About this file

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.