Britain’s Ministry of Defence ceased to collect UFO reports as of December 2009, because, as they put it, “…in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” However, the UFO files being released by the British National Archives contain cases that clearly should be of concern, and I am not alone in this opinion. In fact, the last batch of files includes correspondence between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and two high level military officials who were adamant that UFO cases should be taken more seriously.

Lord Hill-Norton (image credit: The Telegraph)

The highest ranking among those hounding the MOD about UFOs was Baron Hill-Norton, former Admiral of the Fleet (1970-71), Chief of the Defence Staff (1971-73), and head of NATO’s military committee (1974-77). Two years after his retirement in 1977, Peter Hill-Norton was made Baron and a member of the House of Lords. As you can see, Lord Hill-Norton was quite an impressive chap and known as a tough and aggressive leader. In other words, he didn’t take no crap.

At some point Lord Hill-Norton took an interest in UFOs, and was unsatisfied with the MOD claiming that they were of no concern. He badgered the MOD with questions, trying to get them to actively investigate important cases. There are over 300 pages of correspondence between Lord Hill-Norton and the MOD in the latest batch of UK UFO files.

Lord Hill-Norton took a particular interest in the Rendlesham forest case. In late December of 1980, several US servicemen witnessed UFO activity over a two day period near the bases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, both on lease by the US from the UK. The Rendlesham forest surrounds the bases. One of the witnesses included Deputy Base Commander, Charles Halt, who was ordered to forwarded a memo on the incident to the MOD.

In a response dated October 22, 1997 to Minister of State for Defence, Lord Gilbert, who claimed the Rendlesham sightings were not of interest, Lord Hill-Norton wrote:

My position both privately and publicly expressed over the last dozen years or more, is that there are only two possibilities, either:

a. An intrusion into our Air Space and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham, as described.

or

b. The Deputy Commander of an operational, nuclear armed, US Air Force Base in England, and a large number of his enlisted men, were either hallucinating or lying.

Either of these simply must be ‘of interest to the Ministry of Defence’, which has been repeatedly denied, in precisely those terms. They, or words very like them, are used again in your letter and I believe, in the light of the above, you would not feel inclined to sign your name to them again.

Further, Lord Hill-Norton pushed Lord Gilbert on the sensitive question of whether there were nuclear arms on the base, which would have been against their agreement with US. Lord Hill-Norton asked Lord Gilbert, “Whether they are aware of reports from the United States Air Force personnel that nuclear weapons stored in the Weapons Storage Area at RAF Woodbridge were struck by light beams fired from an unidentified craft seen over the base in the period 25-30 December 1980, and if so, what action was subsequently taken.”

Lord Gilbert responded, “There is no evidence to suggest that the Ministry of Defence received any such reports.” He continued that he intended “neither to confirm nor to deny where nuclear weapons are located either in the UK or elsewhere, in the past or at the present time.”

In 2001, Lord Hill-Norton asked that the MOD reopen its investigation into the Rendlesham forest incident. He was told, “No additional information has come to light over the last 20 years to call into question the original judgment by the Ministry of Defence that nothing of defence significance occurred in the location of Rendlesham Forest in 1980. Accordingly there is no reason to hold an investigation now.”

Clearly upset with this response, Lord hill-Norton replied, “I have now had time to have a proper look at your letter dated 22nd March, and I find it not so much disappointing as absurd. This for various reasons but mainly because you seem unable to grasp what we are arguing about.” Lord Hill-Norton continued, “There is a great deal more, now in the public domain which makes it beyond any possible doubt that the incident most certainly was of considerable Defence interest, and it is absurd of you to pretend otherwise.”

Ralph Noyes (image credit: Quartet Books)

Ralph Noyes, who retired as the Undersecretary of State in 1977, was another British government official whose letters petitioning that the UFO matter be taken serious can also be found in the UK UFO files. In 1969 he was head of Defense Secretariat 8 (DS8), and one of his responsibilities was to answer public questions about UFOs. He says he was not able to share his true opinions on the subject. In the files he states:

It is only since I left the MOD (in 1977) that I have seriously tried to consider what may possibly lie behind the ‘UFO phenomenon’. It was impossible to discuss it seriously within the Department: I would merely have ‘rubbished’ my working relationship with the RAF and scientific colleagues if I had disclosed the interest I felt in the better reports which reached us. What I retain from my MOD experience — greatly reinforced by much that I have since read — is that the ‘phenomenon’ is veridical and important

There is one more British official of note in the files, who also disagrees with the stance that UFOs pose no concern. Nick Pope ran the MOD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994. In a recent article by Lee Speigel of the Huffington Post, Pope actually apologized for having to play down the importance of UFO sightings when responding to public inquiries on the matter while manning the MOD UFO hot seat.

Nick Pope (left) with Rendelsham witnesses James Penniston and Charles Halt at a press conference in Washington DC in Nov, 2007. (image credit: James Fox)

In a recent Open Minds article on Ralph Noyes, Antonio Huneeus, suggested that some of the responses Noyes received from the MOD might have actually been authored by Pope. I emailed Pope to inquire about Huneuus’ suspicions, which Pope confirmed. He went on to write:

I had tremendous respect for Ralph Noyes, who I met on several occasions. He briefed me about his earlier UFO-related work at the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Defense. In many ways, we grappled with the same problem, albeit several years apart: we had official responsibility for a phenomenon that defied conventional explanation, but we faced a situation where we had to follow the official line that UFOs were of no defense significance. But this was Orwellian doublethink. How could it not be of defense interest, when our own radar systems were picking up these things, when jets were being scrambled and when both pilots and radar operators confirmed that these objects — whatever they were — were capable of speeds and maneuvers that defied conventional explanation? So we had a bizarre situation where we were telling the public that we weren’t interested, but behind the scenes, our scientific and technical intelligence specialists were desperate for data, hoping that solving the UFO mystery might enable us to make a quantum leap breakthrough in propulsion system technology, aerodynamics or a related field.

Pope continued to explain:

The ultimate irony was that it wasn’t just the public who were out of the loop. There were factions at the MoD on this issue. I was involved in work that led to the setting up of a highly classified study into the UFO phenomenon, codenamed Project Condign. But my successors didn’t enjoy the close relationship with the Defense Intelligence Staff that I’d had, and weren’t briefed on the study. When the final report was issued in 2000, it wasn’t copied to Directorate Air Staff, despite their being the division with the policy lead for UFOs! When the report was declassified and made public under the Freedom of Information Act, there was a farcical situation: it emerged that the people who had been sending out letters to the public saying that MoD didn’t investigate UFOs hadn’t been aware that, behind their backs, intelligence staffs had been doing the very thing that the civil servants had been telling parliament, the media and the public that we didn’t do.

Auriginy Trislander, similar to the one flown by Bowyer.

One of the most highly regarded UFO sightings in recent history was witnessed by the crew and passengers of two separate planes above the Channel Islands, in the English Channel, on April 23, 2007. The most recent batch of UK UFO files includes reports from the pilots of the planes, along with drawings of what they saw. One of the pilots estimates that the objects may have been a mile wide. Dr. David Clarke, a university lecturer on journalism and Ph.D. of folklore, serves as a consultant to the UK National Archives for their UFO file releases, and he says of this case, “This unexplained sighting remains one of the more intriguing puzzles in the MoD’s X-files.”

The first to spot the UFO was Captain Ray Bowyer, the pilot of a small 18-seat Trislander passenger plane for  Aurigny Air Services. The most detailed account of his sighting can be found in a report he wrote for the book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record, written by Leslie Kean. He says it was a clear spring afternoon with a low layer of haze. He was at about 4000 feet when he spotted a bright yellow object below. At first he thought it might be a greenhouse he was familiar with, but then realized that with the haze, he should not be able to see the greenhouse. He grabbed his binoculars and noticed that it was actually a large shiny cigar shaped object with a dark band to the right of the middle.

Bowyer UFO Drawing.

At first he estimated the size of the object to be as large as a 737 fuselage, and estimated the object to be at about 2000 feet. As he got closer to the object he noticed there was a second identical one just beyond the first. They didn’t appear to move, although later he learned they were moving slowly apart. He called the radar controller on the island of Jersey, to inquire about the objects, but they said they were not picking anything up. However, after Bowyer asked them to check again a few minutes later they were able to pick up two objects south of the island of Alderny. Seeing the object get larger as he flew closer, he felt relieved with this information as Alderney was his destination. Bowyer was not enthusiastic about flying close to these unknown objects with a cabin full of passengers.

As they approached Alderney the objects were visible to the naked eye. The Trislander aircraft does not have a separate cabin for the pilots, so Bowyer could hear passengers inquiring about what the objects were. He decided not to address their concerns in fear of frightening them. At this distance he could now see that the dark band on the objects was actually an area of sparkling blues and greens.

While descending into Alderney, they lost site of the objects once they dropped below the haze. Bowyer figured that no one from the ground must have been able to see the UFOs due to the layer of haze. Once on the ground he asked the passengers what they had seen and they confirmed seeing the same objects he saw. One of the passengers onboard, John Russell, who had seen the object along with his wife Kate, later told the press, “I saw an orange light. It was like an elongated oval.”

Bowyer reported his sighting, as required, and took a break before his next flight. He was a little worried that the objects were still up there. However, once he broke the haze on his next flight, the objects were gone.

Upon reflection of the distances, Bowyer felt that the objects must have been a lot larger than he first estimated. In fact he feels they must have been a mile long. He is still at a loss to what it was that he saw. He told the press soon after the sighting, “I’m certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I’m saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying.”

Ray Bowyer speaking about his sighting at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Nov. 11, 2007. (image credit: James Fox)

Later Bowyer found out that there had been another pilot who had sighted the object. At the time Bower was discussing his sighting with the tower in Jersey, Captain Patrick Patterson, was flying from the Isle of Man into Jersey. He had heard the tower report that they had a radar hit of an unknown, so he took a look to see if he could see something himself. In a report in the UK files, it states that Patterson reported seeing a cigar shaped craft yellow in color. He also estimated it at 2000 feet. However, because of the haze he was only able to see one object for about a minute.

The official statements of the Royal Air Force are also in the files, they questioned the radar contacts. They stated, “We believe the ATC radar at Jersey is secondary only and therefore unable to achieve primary radar contact (if the object was producing one). The contact was reported stationary again making radar detection unlikely…” They went on to wrap up their investigation with this final statement, “…no further reports indicated that the object had a heading towards the UK. Therefore, we concluded that there was no threat to the UK from this observation and will not be taking the investigation further.”

In other words, they disregard the radar evidence, and since the objects didn’t seem to be in British airspace, it is not their problem. Not everyone agrees that such a credible sighting of two very large objects near British airspace should not be of concern to their military.

Soon after the incident, Nick Pope, who once worked for the British Ministry of Defense UFO desk, had this to say, “While no witnesses are infallible, pilots are trained observers and less likely than most people to misidentify something mundane. The MoD’s UFO case files contain several reports from civil and military pilots, some of which were correlated by radar. This is the sort of sighting that is taken seriously and should be investigated thoroughly. While most UFOs can be explained as misidentifications of aircraft, weather balloons, satellites and suchlike, a small percentage are more difficult to explain. This is one of the most intriguing sightings I’ve heard about in recent years.”

Files:

The Channel Islands UK UFO Files in PDF

Channel Islands UFO CAA (FCC equivalent) summary in PDF

Ralph Noyes (image credit: Quartet Books)

One of the documents that has received some attention in the latest release of UFO files by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) is a long letter written in 1994 by Ralph Noyes, who headed Defense Secretariat 8 (DS8) in the early seventies, to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, in charge of UFO reports at the Ministry. The recipient’s name is censored but given the time frame it must be Nick Pope, who would later become one of ufology’s superstars. The letter discusses a number of UFO issues and attitudes going all the way back to 1952 and it’s not the only time that Noyes, who retired from the Ministry in 1977 with the rank of Under Secretary of State, would cross paths and sometimes criticize his former employer. This was particularly the case when both Noyes and former Admiral of the Fleet Lord Peter Hill-Norton challenged the MOD’s public stance that the famous December 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO incident was of “no defence interest.”

Who was Ralph Noyes?

Ralph Noyes passed away in 1998, but I still remember vividly a fascinating informal meeting of ufologists that took place at his flat in London during a visit to the UK in December 1991. Among those present were Timothy Good, who had reported some of Noyes’s revelations in his bestseller Above Top Secret, John Michell, the great Fortean author and longtime friend of Noyes, and a visiting Russian ufologist called Nikolai Lebedev, who was writing for Tim Good’s The UFO Report series of books. Much of the conversation dealt with crop circles, which were then becoming a major sociological phenomenon in England. Noyes himself was quite involved in that mystery, earlier that year editing The Crop Circle Enigma, one of the first books on the topic.

A Secret Property book cover (image credit: Quartet Books)

Noyes published in 1985 a novel titled A Secret Property, which was a spy thriller dealing with UFOs and inspired by the Rendlesham affair, as he himself acknowledged it in the book’s Afterword. The jacket provided a lengthy biographical profile of the author:

Ralph Noyes was born in the tropics and spent most of his childhood in the West Indies. He served in the RAF from 1940 to 1946 and was commissioned as aircrew, engaging in active service in North Africa and the Far East. He entered the civil service in 1949 and served in the Air Ministry and subsequently the unified Ministry of Defence. In 1977 he retired early from the civil service to take up a writing career, leaving in the grade of Under Secretary of State. He has since published several pieces of shorter fiction, most of them on speculative themes.

For nearly four years, until late 1972, Ralph Noyes headed a division in the central staffs of the Ministry of Defence which brought him in touch with the UFO problem. Since his retirement he has become increasingly interested in the subject, among others which lie on the fringes of present understanding. He sees speculative fiction as the ideal mode for grappling with these unusual areas of experience. But A SECRET PROPERTY is not only fiction but also ‘faction’ – at least to the extent of drawing on Ralph Noyes’s lengthy background in the Royal Air Force and the Ministry of Defence.

The MOD letter

Besides the 3-page letter by Noyes to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, dated January 25, 1994, outlining all the experiences in his official career which involved the UFO issue, the latest release of MOD files also includes the following attachments: “Ralph Noyes Speaks,” a lengthy transcript of an interview published in the British newsletter UFO Brigantia in May 1991; “The Majestical Mystery Tour,” an article by Noyes about his experiences at MOD published in 1988 in the British ufological publication Magonia; and a long letter by Noyes, “Some Properties of the Ministry of Defence,” published in the Fortean Times also in 1988. All these pieces cover basically the same territory, but there is one paragraph at the end of the Brigantia article worth citing, as it conveys perfectly the problem that many officials face —in Britain and elsewhere—when dealing with the UFO issue in the course of their careers. Ralph Noyes says:

It is only since I left the MOD (in 1977) that I have seriously tried to consider what may possibly lie behind the “UFO phenomenon”. It was impossible to discuss it seriously within the Department: I would merely have “rubbished” my working relationship with the RAF and scientific colleagues if I had disclosed the interest I felt in the better reports which reached us. What I retain from my MOD experience – greatly reinforced by much that I have since read – is that the “phenomenon” is veridical and important, and that the expert methodology developed over the past century by scholarly people in the field of the so-called “paranormal” may possibly be relevant… All I can be quite sure of is that we, in ufology, are dealing with transient and somewhat insubstantial events of a bizarre character, and that we are not alone in doing so. I think they matter. I also think that we and the “parapsychologists” might have some useful exchanges.

Back to the 1994 letter to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, we reproduce it in full because of its important testimony regarding various events and attitudes that took place during Ralph Noyes’s long career at the Ministry. It all started in 1952 when he was the Private Secretary to the Vice Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane. British authorities seemed concerned with the flying saucer wave in the United States and particularly over Washington, DC in the summer of 1952, and this went all the way to the top to Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. However, wrote Noyes, “the PM was advised that there was nothing in the ‘UFO nonsense’,” and the relevant files dealing with this matter have been released in previous MOD batches. The letter then mentions “the Bentwaters/Lakenheath events of  August 1956, the events at West Freugh in the following year , and other subsequent events,” all of which “suggested to some of us that a ‘UFO phenomenon’ of some kind or other certainly existed.”

Ralph Noyes in his apartment in London in 1991. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Noyes’s career went on and in 1969 he was appointed head of DS8, which included in part “the responsibility of responding to the public (including, of course, UFO groups) on unidentified objects which had been seen in the sky.” A little later comes the key paragraph dealing with an event which has elicited some attention over the years since it was first published in Tim Good’s Above Top Secret. Sometime in 1970, he writes, “a small party of us were invited by (I think) the then D. of Ops (AD) to view some photographic material in the sub-ground cinema during the lunch break… We were shown some slides, purportedly from aerial photographs taken by air crew. The highlight was a couple of brief clips of what I understand to be gun-camera material obtained as far back as 1956.”

Although Noyes clarified that the footage was “on the whole unimpressive,” the fact that such a screening even took place is rather interesting. He provides some additional details and comparisons to other footage from civilian sources like that obtained in Norway’s Hessdalen Valley or by Dr. Harley Rutledge in the American Ozarks, noting that “the evidence for the persistence of an odd phenomenon (occasionally with very strange effects) is abundant in the serious ufological literature.” Noyes then concludes the section about footage with this interesting observation:

That said, I can’t help feeling that there must be at least a scattering of good photographic material of unusual aerial objects obtained by the RAF over the years, perhaps backed by radar evidence. This could be of scientific value if released for outside study. Moreover, as I’ve suggested above, the mere fact that a government department was known to be adopting a non-dismissive attitude to these unusual phenomena might assist in getting the resources for serious research (eg. in the universities) which the ufological groups are unlikely to succeed in obtaining for themselves.

Here is the full letter by Ralph Noyes.

Ralph Noyes letter. Click the image to view full PDF.

The files also include the January 27, 1994 response by Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a—almost surely our friend Nick Pope (the name has been censored)—to Ralph Noyes, in which he writes:

I was interested to hear the background to the gun-camera film saga, together with the more general insight that you gave me into policy and attitudes in previous years. The recent enquiries about the gun-camera footage presented me with a useful opportunity to look, more generally, into the whole question of what film and photographic evidence we might have built up over the years. It was unfortunate that this search failed to turn up any such material, but at least we can now say that we had a very thorough look.

This poses an interesting conundrum that has parallel stories in the U.S. and other countries as well. Here we have an MOD official making an in-house official inquiry for footage that was known to have existed some 20 years earlier, since the testimony of Ralph Noyes is absolutely trustworthy. And yet…nothing shows up, it’s as if the material—particularly when dealing with things like photographic or physical evidence—just vanished into the twilight zone! If the material existed at one time, it has to be stored somewhere since it’s very unlikely that it would just be destroyed. But where? There is not a good answer for this particular problem unless you consider a super-secret group within the governments that just scoops up these kinds of evidences, a group that is beyond the reach of normal government officials and freedom of information laws.

Noyes and the Rendlesham affair

Lord David Alton, former MP from Liverpool and current member of the House of Lords (image credit: http://davidalton.net/)

Previous releases of MOD UFO files dealing with the famous 1980 Rendlesham affair included the efforts by David Alton, a Member of Parliament for Liverpool Moseley Hill from the Liberal Party who is currently a member of the House of Lords, to get to the bottom of this mysterious incident involving both the British and American military. Alton wrote in May 1985 to then Minister of Defence Michael Heseltine, enclosing a letter he received from Ralph Noyes about this matter, adding that “it seems to me that the points he raises are quite reasonable and merit a reply.” Alton and everybody else who inquired with MOD about this incident received the Ministry’s standard reply that the Rendlesham case was “of no defence significance.” Noyes thought this line just didn’t make sense if one considered the facts about this case.

I quoted briefly from the letter written on May 14, 1985 by Ralph Noyes to MP David Alton in the cover story about “The Rendlesham Forest Incident” published on issue 4 of Open Minds magazine in October/November 2010, in which he calls it a “puzzling and disquieting case.” The main gist of Noyes’s letter is his challenge to Lord Trefgarne, then serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at MOD and a member of the House of Lords, that Rendlesham was of  “no Defence interest.” Noyes wrote:

I cannot accept Lord Trefgarne’s view that there is no Defence interest in this case. Unless Lt. Col. Halt was out of his mind, there is clear evidence in his report that British airspace and territory were intruded upon by an unidentified vehicle on two occasions in late December 1980 and that no authority was able to prevent this. If, on the other hand, Halt’s report cannot be believed, there is equally clear evidence of a serious misjudgement of events by USAF personnel at an important base in British territory. Either way, the case can hardly be without Defence significance.

You can view the 2-page Noyes letter in full so that you can see all the arguments and issues he raises:

Letter from Noyes to David Alton. Click image to see full letter in PDF.

Ralph Noyes revisited the Rendlesham case in detail in a long essay published in The UFO Report 1990, a book edited by Timothy Good. The title of his piece, “UFO lands in Suffolk – and that’s Official!” is the same headline of the famous front page story published in October 1983 in the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World. That story introduced this case to the public, publishing for the first time the contents of the now famous January 13, 1981 memo on “Unexplained Lights,” written by Bentwaters Deputy Base Commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt to the MOD. Noyes analyzed in detail the Rendlesham affair in his essay, concluding the case was certainly real and making the following observation towards the end of the piece:

The Rendlesham case also confirms, at least for me, that governments and their official agencies are undoubtedly engaged in concealment and obfuscation – but that the cover-up is of ignorance and unease. (This was certainly the game which I felt it necessary to play, myself, during my own term as an official of the Ministry of Defence from 1949 to 1977.)

Noyes also dealt with both the Rendlesham case and other factual details of ufology in the Afterword of his 1985 novel A Secret Property, where he wrote:

The RAF Woodbridge case of December 1980 strikes me as one of the most interesting and important of recent years, anyway in this country – perhaps the most significant military sighting (or supposed sighting) since the celebrated events of 13/14 August 1956 near RAF Bentwaters and Lakenheath (both of which, are by an entertaining coincidence, quite close to Woodbridge in that much haunted county of Suffolk).

For an updated view of what happened at the Rendlesham Forest, you can consult the lecture given earlier this year.by retired Col. Halt at the International UFO Congress.

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

Pope divulged an insiders look at the government’s game of misleading people. He revealed one tactic used to downplay UFO reports was to refer to witnesses as “UFO buffs” or “UFO spotters” to make them sound less credible. They additionally used terms like “little green men” in reports to make the sightings seem silly, which would hopefully reduce the chance of the media picking up the story.

When Pope was with the MoD, he too was required to go along with the policy of deception. He told the Huffington Post, “I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defense, national security and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I’m deeply sorry.”

The website Allnewsweb.com posted the video to their website and YouTube channel, with an accompanying story suggesting that the extraterrestrial in the video could possibly be “a survivor of the Roswell UFO crash that occurred over sixty years ago in New Mexico.” Michael Cohen, the author of this story, further states that the video is “allegedly part of a much larger collection of footage that was filmed by government agents working on top secret UFO and alien matters between the years 1942 and 1969.”

The Alien Disclosure Group also claims to have received the video from an anonymous source, and they too posted it to their YouTube channel and their Facebook page.

But from whom did Cohen receive the details for his story? And who provided the video to these two sources?

The Source

After investigating the origins of this video, Grant Cameron of PresidentialUFO.com was able to determine that a woman by the name of Judy Fältskog claims to be the source of the video. She told Cameron that she “paid a lot of money for it and spent [two] weeks in Antarctica to arrange the sale of this video.” The video was posted to YouTube by Fältskog at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGvncwEg7oI (removed by source).

But who is this Judy Fältskog?

Through his investigation, Cameron determined that this Judy Fältskog is the same Judy Fältskog who, in 2010, claimed to be an astronomer working for NASA, and announced that she had intercepted and deciphered an intelligent signal from a nearby star. As Cameron points out, Fältskog’s credentials and claims turned out to be false. And research into Fältskog revealed interesting results including a history of hoaxing, identity changes, and even a sex change.

Members of the AboveTopSecret.com website investigated Fältskog’s history, determining that she had previously been James Van Greunen, a South African UFO enthusiast, who alleged involvement in the recovery of a UFO. After being exposed as a fraud, Van Greunen allegedly left South Africa, moved around the world, and had a sex change operation.

Fältskog told Cameron that “there is a lot more footage of this film to be released, [more than] 180 minutes of it as well as other more interesting footage.” But this person’s dubious background strongly supports the notion that this ET video is nothing more than a hoax. It also raises doubt that Fältskog is indeed the source of the video.

Fältskog and Cohen seem to have only uploaded this one ET video, while the Alien Disclosure Group uploaded a second video on the same day, which allegedly depicts the downing and recovery of a UFO and ETs by the air force. Both videos are similar aesthetically, supposedly making them from the same batch of “leaked” videos.

But to add to the mysterious origin of the video(s), a YouTube user by the name of Ivan0135 uploaded the ET video a day earlier—on May 1st—and the UFO video was uploaded on April 13th. Interestingly, “South Africa” and “Kalahari Desert” are among the string of descriptive keywords attached to the ET video uploaded by Ivan0135. This suggests a connection between Ivan0135 and Judy Fältskog.

The UFO video uploaded by Ivan0135 adds to the confusing origin of these two videos. That video begins by showing a blurry logo with black bars blocking out text above and below the logo. Another video on YouTube that claims to show footage of an alien autopsy in Russia displays the same logo at the beginning, without the black bars. We were informed by Croatian radio host Giuliano Marinkovic that this logo is a KGB logo. So this adds the question: Why would a video alleging to show a U.S. military chase and recovery of a UFO begin with the KGB logo?

Fuzzy logo from the UFO video on the left, clean KGB logo on the right

The mysterious and questionable source of the video isn’t the only red flag indicating a hoax. Several technical elements within the video elicit skepticism. For starters, there are multiple versions of the video floating around the internet. The video posted by the Alien Disclosure Group is completely silent, while the video posted by Allnewsweb.com and by Fältskog has an almost comically loud clicking sound, supposedly from a projector. First of all, film cameras of that era didn’t record sound. Secondly, while it has been suggested that the camera was filming a projector screen, it seems unlikely that an audio recording would have been made and added to the film when the only audible noises are those from the projector.

The AboveTopSecret.com user VParanormal1 analyzed the film’s audio and, based on the clicking sound, determined that the assumed projector was moving at a speed of twelve frames-per-second. He points out that projectors from the period of which the film supposedly originated (1940s) generally operated at speeds of eighteen frames-per-second and faster. This would indicate that either the speed of the videos has been reduced for some reason, that the noise is of something other than a projector, or that the projector noise was added from another source for effect.

The Krasnogorsk-3 16mm wind-up camera (credit: k3camera.com)

Interestingly, another variation of this video was posted to YouTube on May 2nd by Vernon James. At the end of the video, James claims to have added the “projector” sound to the video to make it more interesting than a video with no audio. However, the Ivan0135 video was uploaded to YouTube on May 1st, complete with the odd “projector” sound.

Improperly formatted time code in lower left

The vertical 'scratch' line over the number 6

The various versions of this video are another peculiarity. The video posted by the Alien Disclosure Group appears to have been edited by the group to remove the projector sound and to add their own titles, including a “Thanks for watching” message at the end of the video. Additionally, the Alien Disclosure Group’s version of the video has an extra eleven seconds of the alleged ET added to the end of the video. But looking at the time code reveals that this “extra” footage is simply the footage from the beginning of the video, but oddly in reverse for some reason.

The Hoax

Nick Pope examining the video (credit: IVN)

“This video isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. Believers will go on believing. Skeptics will go on thinking it’s a load of nonsense. If anything, a film like this is going to polarize people’s beliefs. Those who believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials will say, ‘This proves my point. I was right all along.’ Skeptics are going to say, ‘It’s such an obvious fake.’”

There are many red flags indicating this video is simply a hoax. The purpose of the hoax is unknown at this point. But with the flood of extraterrestrial-themed Hollywood movies, television shows, and video games, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the video is part of a marketing campaign for some upcoming release. With the overly-aged film look, the upcoming J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg movie Super 8 might seem a likely candidate. But after reviewing analysis of the Super 8 movie trailer done by others, it appears that the extraterrestrial in Super 8 is some sort of shape-shifting, more animal-like creature than the Roswell “grey” extraterrestrial depicted in the YouTube video.

The creator of the video, and the purpose behind it, may never be identified. But then again, so much about this video was already discovered within twenty-four hours of its release. It is unfortunate that so many people fall so quickly for videos like this without taking the time for close examination. Sadly, hoaxed videos are quite common, and therefore a degree of skepticism is essential when watching any UFO or ET video.

If history is any indication, it is only a matter of time before the mainstream media latches onto this story, running with few details, and performing minimal research.

The newlyweds are applauded as their marriage is announced at the UFO Congress banquet. (image credit: Peter Beste)

Nick Pope, an international man of mystery and as close as it gets to a real life Fox Mulder in England, held true to his role by getting married during a UFO Conference last month.

Pope, an author and journalist, worked for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP) from 1991 to 1994. The FSWP was started in 1950 by the MoD’s chief adviser, Sir Henry Tizard, who suggested that the matter of UFOs be taken seriously. When Pope initially joined the group, he, however, did not take the matter serious, thinking the whole thing “complete rubbish”. Although, given time and having researched the UK’s extensive files, Pope eventually changed his mind. Now he lectures around the world on the subject, believing that UFOs are a real phenomenon and one that does pose a threat to national security.

Pope still serves as an adviser to the British government, most recently aiding in the release of the British UFO files by the UK National Archives, an ongoing process which garnishes media attention every time a batch is released. Earlier this month a group of files were released and headlines are still popping up worldwide regarding their revelations. More on the UK’s UFO X-Files can be seen in Open Minds Magazine Issue 5.

Pope recently spoke to a group of influential business men in Saudi Arabia. Along with respected colleagues, such as Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallee, Dr. Michio Kaku, and Dr. Zafghloul El Naggar, they addressed the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation as a part of the forum titled, Contact: Learning from Outer Space. The conference was encouraging out-of-the-box thinking as a way of enhancing global competitiveness. Some of the influential speakers of this summit included former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Pope’s most recent adventure is his marriage to American Physical Anthropologist at San Jose State University, Dr. Elizabeth Weiss. Pope was in town to speak at the UFO Congress in Scottsdale, Arizona when he and Elizabeth snuck off to a courthouse in Phoenix, Elizabeth’s parents in tow, to join in Ufological matrimony. This is Pope’s first marriage and the glowing newlyweds were certainly a nice addition to a great conference. Nick was gracious enough to provide us with some picture of the marriage.

An interesting post script to this story is that the night of the International UFO Congress Awards Ceremony, just after the Popes’ marriage was announced, confirming the already circling rumors, door prizes were handed out. The luck of the draw had it that the first winner was Elizabeth Pope, and the prize was a sculpture of an alien baby, which was actually kind of cute as bizarre as that may sound. Unfortunately, Pope did not send me a picture of the sculpture to prove my last statement.

We congratulate Nick and Elizabeth and wish them the best!

Nick and Elizabeth at the Court House. (image credit: Gisela and David Weiss)

Nick places the ring on Elizabeth's finger. (image credit: Gisela and David Weiss)

Nick and Elizabeth with her parents, Gisela and David Weiss. (image credit: Nick Pope)

The happy couple were caught outside donning their ever present newlywed smiles. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

You can find more information about Nick Pope’s talk at the IUFOC here.

UFO forum panelists on stage in Riyadh. (image credit: GCF2011)

In late January 2011, business leaders from around the world met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the 5^th annual Global Competitiveness Forum and of the many issues tackled UFOs and extraterrestrial life was one of them. Now they have put videos of the event on YouTube for all to see. You can view them below.

World Leaders such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton attended the conference, although they did not attend the UFO portion of the event. Leaders in UFO research were on hand to discuss its validity and potential for the advancement of global business. Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist, venture capitalist and long-time UFO researcher was among the speakers, as well as physicists, Dr. Michio Kaku and Stanton Friedman, author and journalist, Nick Pope, who worked for the UK Ministry of Defence investigating UFOs, and  Dr. Zaghloul El Naggar, an accomplished and well respected professor of earth sciences. The UFO section of the event was called Contact: Learning from Outer Space, and was moderated by Harvard business professor, John Quelch.

The website for the event describes the UFO portion as:

Psychological and socio-cultural assumptions and preconceptions constrain us to a large extent, and shape our views of the universe so that we are inclined to find what we are looking for, and fail to see what we are not. Using knowledge gained from research in the fields of Ufology and the search for extraterrestrial life, what might we possibly learn about hindrances to innovation in other areas of inquiry?

The sponsor of the entire event, by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), describes itself as the “guardian angel” of business in Saudi Arabia. An impressive and important event, their website describes the event as:

The Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF), the only event of its kind, is an annual meeting of global business leaders, international political leaders, and selected intellectuals and journalists brought together to create a dialogue with respect to the positive impact organizational and national competitiveness can have on local, regional and global economic and social development. It was founded in 2006 by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), and is held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia under the patronage of HM King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

Jacques Vallee's presentation. (image credit: GCF2011)

Here are videos of the UFO portions of the event.

Jacques Vallee: General Partner, SBV Venture Partners

Michio Kaku: Professor of Theoretical Physics, City University of New York, Host of Sci Fi Science on the Discovery/Science TV Channel

Nick Pope: Author, Journalist

Stanton Friedman: Nuclear Physicist, Lecturer, Author

Zaghloul El Naggar: Professor of Earth Sciences

For more on the GCF you can visit their official website here. To watch more videos from the event you can visit their YouTube page here.

The Global Competiveness Forum logo (credit: gcf.org.sa)

The Global Competitiveness Forum‘s (GCF) website calls the event “the only event of its kind,” and describes it as “an annual meeting of global business leaders, international political leaders, and selected intellectuals and journalists brought together to create a dialogue with respect to the positive impact organizational and national competitiveness can have on local, regional and global economic and social development.”

So why would an international business forum feature a session about aliens?

Stanton Friedman (credit: StantonFriedman.com)

Exopolitics/UFO scholar Dr. Michael Salla surmises, “The GCF appears to be interested in learning about how information and/or technology has been constrained in the past, and what this means for the future business investment. With UFO expert Stanton Friedman as one of the speakers at this session, the topic of reverse-engineered alien technology will likely be discussed—an issue that would obviously affect economic competitiveness.

Dr. Michio Kaku (credit: MKaku.org)

The 5th Annual Global Competitiveness Forum will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia January 23-26.

With such an increase in reports, why would the MOD shut down their investigation? According to the website that used to direct Britain citizens to the UFO hotline, it was shut down because “…in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” It goes on to further state that spending resources in this area is inappropriate and “diverts MOD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence.”

However, the reports released by the MOD today tell a different story. In May of 2009 a pilot reported a 20-30 foot “shiny black flying cylinder” that flew 200 feet above his airplane. In August a Royal Navy Air Traffic Controller reported seven silent lights that emitted an orange light. They traveled at 100 knots, and took a right hand turn. In November, an Ex-Royal Navy Commander reported seeing an orange orb moving at a “substantial” speed.

These three cases are some of the best examples of witnesses with “relevant” occupations. Other sighting reports contain more strange objects moving in ways which conventional aircraft would not.

The British government has been releasing documents for the past year. One of the reports that made the most worldwide headlines was regarding a US fighter pilot who was ordered to shoot down a UFO while he was stationed at the Manston Royal Air Force base in 1957. This report and others appear to provide evidence of a threat to British airspace. Intuitively it would seem that unidentified aircraft should be considered a potential threat until identification can be acquired. It would seem ridiculous for any agency seriously concerned with the safety of its airspace to ignore reports from its citizens.

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

Nick Pope, who worked at the MOD’s UFO desk, had this to say about the close of the hotline, “Indeed, I am sure that as is almost certainly the case in the US, sightings from pilots and uncorrelated targets tracked on radar will continue to be looked at by someone, albeit outside of a formally constituted UFO project.”

For now you can judge for yourself. Below are some of the more interesting reports released today, and links to the full report and the MOD’s UFO reporting website.

Date: 15-Feb-09
Time: 00:15
Town/Village: Winwick
Area: Warrington
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police Officer
Description: Two orange lights in the sky that hovered over the old hospital site.
The lights were not together but were stationary. They made no noise. They then moved off in a southerly direction.

Date: 03-May-09
Time: 15:50
Town/Village: Otmoor
Area: Oxfordshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: A shiny black flying cylinder, 20-30ft long at about 4700ft which was 200ft above the pilots aircraft. Although the pilot sighted the object. Air Traffic Control forwarded details to the UFO Desk.

Date: 03-May-09
Time: 21:30
Town/Village: Ammanford
Area: Dyfed
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: Seven orange orbs that suddenly disappeared. They were on a North-South trajectory. Witness contacted Cardiff Air Traffic Control who had nothing on radar.

Date: 02-Jul-09
Time: 22:20
Town/Village: Blackwood
Area: Gwent
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-test engineer for Hawker Siddley (Aircraft Company)
Description: A bright orange light seen through the tree line. It turned and cleared the tree line. The other side of the object appeared to be a large rectangle shape of fire red/orange. It was silent. The object slowly climbed in the direction of Gloucester.

Date: 04-Jul-09
Time: Not Given
Town/Village: West Grinstead
Area: West Sussex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Part-Time Pilot
Description: 12-15 objects. Not like normal fixed wing aircraft, more like bright orange lights. Moving West at indeterminate height. Objects entered cloud then turned around.

Date: 01-Aug-09
Time: 03:42
Town/Village: Preston
Area: Lancashire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police
Description: Bright object in sky, very large.

Date: 01-Aug-09
Time: 22:57
Town/Village: Michell
Area: Coldon
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police
Description: 17 UFO’s above village. Red and green lights, no sound.

Date: 07-Aug-09
Time: 22:45
Town/Village: Newport
Area: Shropshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Retired RAF (Royal Air Force)
Description: Two yellow lights one above the other in the sky. On arriving home five minutes later watched the lights disappear behind a narrow cloud bank.

Date: 11-Aug-09
Time: 23:00
Town/Village: Thorpe-le-Soken
Area: Essex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Amateur astronomer
Description: Saw a meteor shower which contained something he could not explain.

Date: 13-Sep-09
Time: 20:25
Town/Village: Shepton Mallet
Area: Somerset
Occupation (Where Relevant): RN (Royal Navy) Air Traffic Control
Description: Seven silent objects emitting a bright orange light. One group of three and then singles. Travelled at about 100 knots then turned right.

Date: 17-Sep-09
Time: 21:40
Town/Village: Findon Valley
Area: West Sussex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-pilot
Description: Saw an extremely bright star like light in sky. Continued flying then started to climb vertically no change in speed the dimmed and disappeared to a faint light.

Date: 19-Sep-09
Time: 21:01
Town/Village: West Wickham
Area: Kent
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: Series of 30 or more orange lights which then disappeared after moving at speed.

Date: 27-Sep-09
Time: 20:40
Town/Village: Northolt
Area: Middlesex
Occupation (Where Relevant): RAF (Royal Air Force)
Description: Saw two UFOs. Looked like balls of fire. As they approached RAF
Northolt the fireball went out. However, the craft was still visible and was in the shape of a jelly fish dome.

Date: 07-Nov-09
Time: 21:59
Town/Village: Peterborough
Area: Cambridgeshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-RN (Royal Navy) Cdr (Commander)
Description: Orange sphere 30 degrees above eastern horizon speed substantial, no noise no normal navigation lights just eerie orange glow.

Ministry of Defence UFO Hotline

Ministry of Defence UFO Reports

Nick Pope’s website