Here are some interesting passages from Nick’s first book: “Open Skies, Closed Minds”. Over time, as with most stories, the “truth” becomes a little different to what was first reported.
Extracts from pages 34 – 36
In my first weeks, as the new boy, I learned routines, mastered basics, familiarised myself with the department’s structure. There were systems to learn, files to grapple with, ‘old hands’ to talk to for advice.
The best place to start was to pore over the Ministry of Defence telephone directory. This huge publication, itself a classified document, it spells out chains of command in diagrammatic form and lists the names and job descriptions from the level of executive officer upwards. The executive officer is the junior managerial grade, the rough equivalent of an army captain.
Alongside one of these names was written ‘UFOs’. I think I chuckled when I read this. It hadn’t dawned on me that the department would deal with unidentified flying objects at all and I found myself wondering what the job entailed.
In the Ministry of Defence, tours of duty last between two and three years. After that, in order to provide a breadth of knowledge and experience, personnel are moved on. In the course of my ten-year career to date, I have been involved in the debate over women flying combat aircraft (we won that debate, and now they do); operational duties in the Gulf War and helping organise the commemorations marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
On 17 September 1990, I joined the division known as Secretariat (Air Staff) in the grim MOD headquarters building along Whitehall, opposite Downing Street. The division’s basic role is to provide advice to defence ministers and senior air force officers on policy, political and parliamentary aspects of a host of matters relating to RAF operations.
Many of these are outside the NATO area, and involve co-operation with foreign embassies, exercises and deployments, as well as aircraft accidents.
It was this division, which focuses particularly on Parliament and the public, that was responsible for UFOs, whatever that term specifically meant in civil service-speak, and an internal shuffle in July 1991 brought me straight to that office and straight into the most interesting job in the country.
My diary entry for Wednesday 17 July reads: ‘An interesting day today – was sounded out about taking Owen Hartop’s job.‘
Owen Hartrop worked for the section known as Sec(AS)2a – sometimes wrongly called AS2 by the UFO lobby. In what is possibly the most comprehensive catalogue of the UFO phenomenon, The UFO Encylopedia, John Spencer of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) includes this entry about it:
A department of the Ministry of Defence, the full title of which is Air Staff 2, which succeeded Defence Secretariat 8(DS8). These departments are alleged to deal with UFO reports made to the government, in fact a spokesman for that department described AS2 as ‘the focal point within the United Kingdom for UFO reports’.
I took the job. Thinking back, I had heard nothing about it in the six years since I had seen it listed in the directory. It was an odd post, because line management has no involvement in the subject, aside from a purely supervisory role. In other words, the desk officer was left to get on with it.
During the course of my tour of duty in Sec(AS)2a there were three different people in charge of the office where I worked. (Which doesn’t sounds like Pope was running a UFO project!)
Their opinions on UFOs ranged from complete scepticism to a more open-minded position. Perhaps because of his other responsibilities, my Head of Division took little interest in the subject. On a daily basis, I was a department of one.
For the first few days, I sat with Owen Hartop as he briefed me on the main duties As far as UFOs were concerned there were primarily two; to act as a focal point for all UFO sightings in the United Kingdom and to handle general policy questions that arose.
Owen moved to his new office after a lengthy and traditional celebration in the Clarence pub on the Friday. It was generally agreed in the years of the Cold War and the Troubles that if a bomb went off in the Clarence on a Friday lunchtime, half the Ministry of Defence would be wiped out.
But on Monday 29 July, I was on my own.
Extracts from pages 38-39
At first, I must admit, my new job was rather disappointing. There were no flying saucers, no aliens, and there was no dark and mysterious government involvement. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a Man in Black anywhere ……
A cursory reading of the files that were now at my disposal revealed nothing more than a handful of reports of vague lights or shapes in the sky which were likely to have been terrestrial aircraft. It was easy to ridicule, easy to dismiss. I became, I suppose, caught up in it all as I thoroughly immersed myself in the background. I was, after all, in a unique and oddly lonely position; the only official in the country specifically tasked with studying the UFO phenomenon. It was quite a responsibility. (There is some curious language here: “tasked with studying the UFO phenomena”. This could be interpreted in many ways!)
I went to libraries and bookshops. I read voraciously, familiarising myself with cases both celebrated and obscure. At the back of my mind was a sense of professional integrity, honour, call it what you will. It would do me and the department little credit if a UFO researcher, journalist, or member of the public asked me a question and I didn’t have the answer.
In this spirit of detailed study I went back to the files for a closer look, and my initial findings – that the files contained no more than sightings of weather balloons, lenticular clouds, bird formations and aircraft seen from odd angles – were now revised. There were a number of sightings that defied all rational explanation. Something very strange was going on. And clearly, I wasn’t the first in the Ministry of Defence to think so…..
Nick Pope Watch 