Life in Manchester

Nick Pope famous ufo investigator: Mr. Nick Pope worked for the Ministry of Defense in the U. K. He was in charge of ufo investigations for three years. He is the author of several ufo books and has appeared in various documentaries and tv programs.

Ken: Webmaster of About Facts Net Internet Magazine.

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Ken:

First of all I want to thank you for the interview, I really appreciate it and I thought that maybe, since I have a mixed audience, there not all ufo buffs, I thought that you might like to go into your duties at the position you had at the Ministry of Defence at the UK and maybe tell us about the books you have written?

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 lifeforms.

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