Nick Pope:

Sure, well I only left the British Ministry of Defense last year, after a 21 year career. The way that one is attached to a post there, is what they do is, they move you around every 2 or 3 years to different posts. In my number of years there, I have done a number of different jobs there, all of them very interesting. The ones that I suppose that I am best known for were from 1991 through 1994. I was working in a division where my duties included researching and investigating into the UFO mystery. Although it wasn't in the formal term of reference, you can't run a UFO project without finding yourself on the receiving end of anything, so by default I got pulled in to things both weird and wonderful. So I got drawn in to other things like alien abductions and crop circles, ghosts and remote viewing, so that's my background.

Ken:

OK so now maybe you would let us know some of the books that you have written?

Nick Pope:

I have written two non fiction books, one called “Open Skies, Closed Minds”, that was an overview of the UFO phenomenon, the book concentrated on my own official research and investigation, and I also wrote the "Uninvited". And the only point in each was that they focused on alien abductions. I also decided to really speculate, I suppose, to combine some of what I learned about UFOs with wider issues of crisis management in a government environment. I decided to write two science fiction novels, based on alien invasion, called "Operation Thunder Child" and "Operation Lightning Strike" and those were really speculative novels and I was having a bit of fun with the content but the main thing is that they claimed to be a superior beings or life forms.

Ken:

Well I imagine that it must be quite frustrating to you when some people think that you have all the answers to the UFO questions and they just won't accept the answers that you give them. What was your most frustrating encounter?

Nick Pope:

Well yes, I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think some people have accused me of being part of the cover up myself. I've been portrayed, at least in the UK, of being a sort of real man in black type character. Yes you are quite right there are some people who think that I know all about the UFO phenomenon, they want an answer quick and they want a solution and they think that I know where the smoking gun is and when they hear the answer, certainly as far as I am aware in the UK that while the British government and the Air Force over the years has investigated thousands and thousands of cases, I'm sure we will get into that in a little while, some have been tracked on radar, some seen by pilots, we don't have the answer, we don't know what the UFO phenomena represents. Most are a case of misidentification of course, but we don't know what that unknown 5% is. The possibility does remain about those things being extraterrestrial and indeed that statement can be seen on the MOD's website, but we don't have any evidence that points to UFOs being extraterrestrial and we don't have any hard proof. There are no spaceships in hangers here in the UK.

Ken:

The disclosure project has been getting some press for the last few years and I saw your name mentioned in some of the articles on the site. Correct me if I am wrong, you spoke as a witness, didn't you?

Nick Pope:

Yeah, because I had written books on the subject. By the way I should clarify that I am in no sense a whistle blower. My book and indeed all my major activities have been cleared with the Ministry of Defence. Just as any former government or military or intelligence official wishes to write books and I am sure the situation in America and indeed all around the world is, that anyone who genuinely wants to write a book and wanted to draw on their official work to write a book after they left, that book has to go through a very detailed executive procedure to make sure that they didn't inadvertently disclose any classified information. I of course, because I take my oath of secrecy very seriously, I have of course followed that system to the letter. So in no way should I be called traitor or simply whistle blower, speaking out or spilling the beans type of thing. Yes, in fact, fine, to answer the question. That information is in the public domain about UFOs, that is in my book. I have no objection to having my name added to a list of witnesses. There were a number of other people on that list known to me, such as Lord Hill-Norton the former chief of defense staff, here in the MOD and much more senior than I and his name was there too, so I just felt that if it could help having my name on the list, somebody who's background could be verified through a trail of documents and that it could be verified that I am who I said I was, that I just felt that it would do some good and I put my name on the list.

Ken:

Do you think that they have a chance of succeeding in their mission of getting all the UFO documents declassified and gaining access to alien technology if indeed alien technology exists?

Nick Pope:
I don't know. I can only of course speak with any authority and knowledge of the United Kingdom, I don't know what information still may or may not still exist in the U.S. that has not been released or declassified, so the honest answer is I don't know. I wish them well, maybe there is a smoking gun, but as I said earlier, if there is a smoking gun, it certainly is not in the U.K. Its not one that I have been briefed on.

Ken:

When you testified before the Disclosure Project you said, and I hope I am quoting this correctly, “And if, as governments consistently say when the politicians probe on this issue or when the media inquire, that there's really nothing to worry about, then okay, let's see all the data.” Does this mean that you believe that important UFO data is being withheld from the public?

Nick Pope:

No it doesn't mean...that quote is accurate, but what I mean by that quote is perhaps something slightly different from the way in which it has been interpreted. What I was really speaking about was freedom of information. I was speaking in the run up of the introduction of the British Freedom of Information Act, which many of your readers may not realize didn't really come into force until 2005, where I know that perhaps it was geared to the Americans. But er I was thinking about information which I knew was about to be released. I was really encouraging my colleagues, as it were, to embrace the Freedom of Information Act, to embrace the concept of open government, they have and at least recognize that there can be a huge degree of interest in information about UFOs and indeed my prediction proved correct. The British Ministry of Defence receives more Freedom of Information Act claims relating to UFOs than any other subject, including the war in Iraq. So my quote was really preempting the huge interest and indeed, the MOD had disclosed hundreds upon hundreds of pages of documents some of which were classified at levels of Secret UK Eyes Only, some of which were pretty interesting. None of that information though was obtained through an extraterrestrial presence. I mean there really is sort of something going on. The good evidence suggests something tangible such as UFO sightings and they are not all misidentification, hoaxes or delusions, but we don't know what they are.

Ken:

That is an interesting fact that you just gave me that there are more inquiries than on Iraq, I didn't know that myself.

Nick Pope:

Yes, it is just phenomenal interest, a lot of it from the media, some of it from the UFO community and from individuals who just want to use the Freedom of Information Act to read about it and perhaps check details of their own sightings and see whatever investigation may or may not have taken place. But yeah there is an absolutely phenomenal amount of requests on the subject that are coming in over the years and it is that interestingly, that has led to deciding in the last few months, doing what the French governments did earlier this year and saying rather than this piecemeal approach, just filling in the cracks, this reactive approach, just ruling on a case by case basis, do what the French did, posting the entire archive and that is currently under consideration.

Ken:

I wasn't going to ask this question, but since we got on to this topic, I saw a memo that is posted on the internet. Supposedly, the name is redacted, but it seems to come from somebody who is very high in the Ministry of Defence and it pertains to putting the data on the internet and it sort of suggests that one of the reasons they want to put all of the data on the internet is that if they don't put it all on, they can say to people that down the road its coming, do you know what I mean?

Nick Pope:

Yes I've seen that document. It is a very difficult issue. I don't think the person that was writing that was intending to do anything underhand. All the person meant was that under the Freedom of Information Act this information is about to be released, you can actually answer a request and say we are dealing with that file now. Rather than respond to your individual request, if you can wait a few weeks, the whole lot is going to be posted on the internet. It is much easier to get it from the internet than the National Archives, because the National Archives you have to visit. It is very difficult for someone who is not in touch. You know that once its on the internet, just about anyone with internet access can find it. The person was not trying to do anything underhand they were just saying that this is what the law says you can do. We had to find a way, given the volume of requests, to make this a bit more manageable. Quite frankly, my former colleagues there are absolutely sinking in a sea of Freedom of Information Act requests.

Ken:

I can imagine.

Nick Pope:

They are honestly not trying to be difficult about it but they just need someone to cut them a little bit of slack.

Ken:

Ancient UFOs seem to be a topic of interest with many people. Did the Ministry of Defence ever find any evidence of ancient UFOs or artifacts, that might indicate that UFOs may have landed on Earth some time in our past, or that some ancient race may have existed on Earth that could have had space travel capability?

Nick Pope:

No, I have never seen any research done on that matter. Very much the terms of reference that we were operating under were very much geared to the current situation. In other words, investigating UFO reports as they came in to see whether there was evidence of a threat or evidence of a safety threat, as it were. I could do research, but historical research was frowned upon, it would have been outside the frame of reference. Frankly I was getting two or three hundred UFO reports each year, that had to be my priority.

Ken:

I guess that kept you kind of busy?

Nick Pope:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm aware of course of the literature of all sorts of people, Von Daniken, Velikovsky and many many others, Graham Hancock. Its an interesting area, but its not something that I have looked into and its not an area that interests the MOD as far as I am aware of.

Ken:

I would like to ask you a personal question, it has to do with the question I just asked you. There are cave paintings and ancient statues that some have interpreted as depicting men in space suits. There are also bones of giant people that have been found in tombs in different locations, do you believe that our ancestors might have met people from other planets, or that we ourselves may have come from other planets and settled on Earth?

Nick Pope:

I'll give you the honest answer again, I don't know. I've seen some of those cave paintings and at first glance they certainly look very interesting, but I also know that skeptical people say that we really don't understand the psychology of our ancestors. Some of these images might not be visual, they might be allegorical. They could represent someone with a space helmet on, but they could just as easily represent some archetypical demon from a dream or nightmare.

Ken:

What famous UFO sightings occurred during your watch and what made them so much more interesting to you than some of the other UFO sightings?

Ken:

As we know, a lot of different satellites have the capability of looking down and also the space shuttle has the capability of taking pictures both looking down and looking out into space and the United States has taken some pictures of some unknown objects. Were you ever involved with any project with the MOD where sightings were taken through satellites, of UFOs?

Nick Pope:

No I have not been involved in anything like that, having said that, what I did do, an organization that I did work with was an air force base called Fylingdales which was part of the ballistic missile early warning system. Fylingdales of course had a network of space tracking radar and were part of a system to track about 8 thousand objects, in space like satellites and a spanner dropped by an astronaut and when I was doing my UFO investigations with the agency, there were two staffers at Fylingdales. That is just an area that I can't go into in great detail.

Ken:

I understand

Nick Pope:

Having said that, I'll tell you an anecdotal story that you just might find interesting. I just had to check the capability that we had with one of my colleagues and he said, well yes we sometimes see very strange things here. Like things traveling at speeds of 15,000 or 20,000 thousand miles per hour, or something like that. We call them all fireballs.

Ken:

Can I stop you for one second and ask you one quick question?

Nick Pope:

Sure.

Ken:

Have they ever seen anything that they thought might have hit the speed of light or exceeded the speed of light?

Nick Pope:

No. They were talking speeds of 15,000 to 20,000 miles per hour. They said yeah, we call them fireballs. Well I said sorry, but how do you know that they are fireballs? They said because they go very fast. So it was a kind of catch 22. A lot of government UFO research is like that, it can be quite frustrating. You don't really get all the answers, because every time you answer a question, you get another one.

Ken:

Did you have any access to any other UFO records, such as European records or records from the United States?

Nick Pope:

In terms of reference we were very much limited to the United Kingdom, however on occasion we used to get reports from elsewhere, you couldn't really investigate them because you didn't have jurisdiction. But what I did do on occasion was a little bit of liaison, in particular with the Belgians. There was a very famous wave of sightings over Belgium in 1989 and in 1990. I immediately, when I investigated Cosford, I immediately recognized the parallel with what happened in Belgium. Not the least was the staff who say I'm linking the main Belgium sightings of 30 31^st of March 1990 and the Cosford incident itself was 31^st of March 1993. See that in itself is interesting as was the fact that we are dealing with large triangular shaped craft that are capable of maneuvering at a very quite rate of speed. So I contacted our air attache at our British embassy in Brussels and he had said that a call was made to two pilots of the Belgian Air Force and they had scrambled and tried to intercept the UFOs, and a call was made to Major General De Brower, the Belgian officer who after those incidents gave a press conference on all this. Yes this was a major news story.

Ken:

I think that this was televised.

Nick Pope:

Yes and certainly I had it confirmed to me by the embassy. Yes, everything you read about this and it was on tv. Please bear in mind that the Belgian Air Force, the Belgian government, the pilot, and the general air defense staff and the Belgian Air defense headquarters, all believe that the craft was a real solid object and there was an almost funny and humorous anecdotal story at the end of this. It was, well thank goodness that they were friendly, because if they hadn't have been, we really couldn't have done much about it.

Ken:

that's for sure.

I know that you have discussed this many times, but I am under the impression that you consider the Rendlesham Forest UFO case to be one of the most important. Is that correct?

Nick Pope:

Yes indeed. Although it happened in the 1980s before I joined the Ministry of Defence. I was soon getting questions about that. Members of parliament were asking questions about it, military were asking about it, UFO people were asking about it. So of course, one of the first things that I did when I took up my post at the UFO project, was to pull the file up. At first, of course, I was extremely interested because you had a report of a landed UFO We had numerous United States Air Force witnesses. We had radiation readings taken at the landing site. We had a defense intelligence staff of experts who stated that radiation readings had been “significantly higher than background” and again there is another file, another case file that is on the MOD website for people to see. Once I got beyond my interest, I became a little concerned, I don't ever like to criticize my former colleagues, it is just a matter of loyalty and professional courtesy, but I do have to say the investigation, the original investigation, was not handled, shall I say, the way that I would have handled it.

Ken:

Many people feel that way, yeah..

Nick Pope:

A number of fundamental things that I think should have been done, were not done. The most logical thing that should have been done, that wasn't done, was the immediate cordoning off of the landing site, post guards on it and protect it from decontamination. Another thing that wasn't done was the taking of soil samples and of control samples from immediately outside of the landing zone. Perhaps worst of all, we effectively had two parallel investigations. The United States Air Force were busily interviewing the various witnesses and taking statements and details of the craft, detailed sketches and descriptions, right down to the hieroglyphics seen on the side. The Ministry of Defence was busy sending the radiation readings, getting intelligence on the craft, getting an assessment on the radar tape, but no one person was in charge. No one single person was making sure that all this data was shared, so you had a bizarre situation where the Ministry of Defence knew that the radiation readings were significantly higher than the background, but failed to give that fact to the United States Air Force. The United States Air Force failed to pass the witness statements to the Ministry of Defence, for example sketches of the craft with the markings on the side, so that is just to start, I could probably write a much more detailed critique that would probably go on for pages. Those are some of the errors.

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References:

The Disclosure Project - A group of concerned people from all walks of life that are trying to get the US government to release all UFO data and alien technology, if any.

Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident - In December of 1980, a UFO landed in the woods outside an air force base in Britain, It was manned by Americans who saw the craft and investigated the landing along with the British.

Project Blue Book - An Air force project to explain UFO sightings.

Gordon Williams - A British General that was rumored to have said that he talked to aliens during the Rendlesham Forest incident.

Malmstrom Air Force Base - in 1967 a UFO was over this US base in Montana when several missiles were taken off line unexpectedly.

Giorgio Bongiovanni - An Italian who was allowed to interview a Russian General about UFOs The KGB were also present.

Bob Lazar - A person who claims to have been an engineer at Area 51 who said he saw a UFO there and was employed to reverse engineer them.

Shag Harbor - A UFO incident that occurred in Canada in 1967 where a UFO was said to have crashed into the water only to be followed by a second one.

Gary McKinnon - A famous British hacker that hacked into NASA and the US military. He was caught and claimed that he found important secret UFO data.

Remote Viewing - A technique that was used during the cold war by the US, Britain and the Soviet Union to see into places while remaining at a location. It was said to have no limit as far as distance was concerned.

Jamie Maussan - A famous Mexican tv news reporter that specializes in UFO reporting.

Area 51 - A secret US Air Force Base.

Nick Pope Website