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This MoD file, titled UFOs - Persistent Correspondence - Dr David Clarke, holds Dr David Clarke's Freedom of Information requests and emails to the Directorate of Air Staff from 2005 to 2008. Clarke asked for the DI55 report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region and for Rendlesham papers. He also sought records about Nick Pope. Other items include an internal review that released redacted passages on plasmas, the MoD's statement that it had no report of the 2008 South Wales police helicopter sighting, and a 2009 disposal form.
“Reading”16 pages
titled "UAP Policy", the third which was opened in December 2000 (the same month the findings were delivered) and closed in March 2004, and the fourth opened in March 2004 and which remains open. Could you explain why, if the DIS interest in this subject ended in 2000, and reports were no longer sent to them, that department continues to maintain files on the subject to this day? It appears somewhat contradictory that a department which professes to have no interest in UFOs/UAPs after 2000 continues to maintain a policy file on the subject. C3-C2-2CC6-114552- 7 Finally, I wish to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a paper copy of part, or whole, of the DI 55 Policy file D/D/DI55/108.15 Pt 4, which covers the period 1971-96. You may recall that I originally made a request for this file as part of an earlier FOI request in 2005. In your response dated 23 August 2005 you explained the file contains more than two hundred pages, some of which are classified. My request was rejected by DIS because it was deemed that the costs of copying, examining and removing sensitive, irrelevant or personal information from every page of their file would exceed the limit. I do appreciate how time consuming the processing of a document of this kind must be. However, Section 16 of the FOIA requires departments to provide an applicant with advice and assistance in cases such as this, especially where other options could be negotiated for the release of the information. 10 I would also point out that the UAP report itself, at more than 600 pages (double the length of the request I am currently making) also exceeded the 600 limit but nevertheless was processed because it was deemed to be in the public interest to make the contents available publicly. I hardly need to point out the considerable amount of public interest in the subject of UFOs, particularly in the wake of the release by MoD of the UAP report (which remains ranked in the top 5 documents in your 'Disclosure Log'). I believe the contents of this UFO policy file are equally of interest both to the public and for purposes of academic research, as the contents frame the background against which the UAP report was commissioned and produced. 12. I also believe it is important for the MoD not to be seen to be with-holding information on a subject of public interest, such as UFOs, which is often forms the ground, in itself, for baseless allegations of cover-ups. 13 Therefore I would like MoD/DIS to reconsider the decision to reject my request and/or consider one or more of the following options as a compromise response: a) release of part of the file within the £600 limit; for example, enclosures covering the period 1971 to 1990 (noting that the processing of the documents from the 1970s should not require much expense in redaction as they fall within the old 30
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 160 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.