U.K.'s real-life version of the "X-Files"

`Spaceship' sketch creating crop circles released by Britain's National Archive

The British government has released 8,500 pages of previously classified documents detailing its decades-long effort to respond to public's insistence on the existence of unidentified flying objects.

Among other disclosures, the files reveal that the House of Lords held the only full debate on UFOs in the history of the British Parliament on the topic and that the country thought it was possibly facing an alien invasion in 1967.The papers also include messages from the British Government to the Prime Minister of Grenada responding to that nation's attempts to sponsor a debate on UFOs at the United Nations in 1977-78.

The documents also  detail how the British Government began making official inquiries into UFOs starting in 1950 after receiving a number of flying saucer sightings. At the time, Britain's Ministry of Defense set up a secret working group called "The Flying Saucer Working Party" to monitor the sightings.. The existence of the group remained under wraps until 1988 when correspondence between Winston Churchill and the Air Ministry got opened.

"What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? Let me have a report at your convenience," Churchill wrote to his air defense chief at the time. A six-page report that was subsequently issued by the secret panel found no evidence to suggest anything out of the ordinary. It chalked up the UFO reports up to mistaken sightings of ordinary objects, hoaxes and psychological delusion.

But the British documents also reveal that that report relied heavily on CIA and U.S. Air Force information supplied to the UK. It notes that U.S. policy at the time "was to debunk the subject and restrict the release of information to the public about UFO sightings made by the armed services."

On the morning of Sept. 4, 1967, the authorities received a number of calls reporting six small "flying saucers" across Southern England. The UK responded by scrambling its defenses as well as police forces. But it turned out to be a false alarm: According to the report, engineering students from Farnborough Technical College had concocted "a rag-day hoax."

Over the following years, the British government logged thousands of UFO sightings. However, standard policy until 1967 " was to destroy UFO files at five yearly intervals as they were deemed to be of `transitory interest."  A summary released along with the new documents conclude that "a large number of records dating from the period before 1962 have been lost."

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UK's real-life version of "X-Files"

Between 1959 and 2007, Britain's Defense Intelligence branch has logged "more than 11,000 UFO reports." But during a 1979 Parliamentary debate, the government's spokesman, Lord Strabolgi, said that "there is nothing to convince Her Majesty's Government that there has ever been a single visit by an alien spacecraft...As for telling the public the truth about UFOs, the truth is simple. There really are many strange phenomena in the sky, and these are invariably reported by rational people. But there is a wide range of natural explanations to account for such phenomena."

A briefing document accompanying the new files  notes that investigations found "ordinary explanations" for most UFO reports. At the same time, however, it allowed the existence of "some cases on record where no common explanation can be found. For the Ministry of Defence, these types of report remain 'unidentified' rather than 'extraterrestrial'."

Among other highlights:

• British defense officials dismissed claims made by retired US Colonel Corso in a 1997 book "The Day after Roswell" noting that Colonel Corso was not a reliable source of information.
• When RAF pilots were scrambled in response to reports of approaching Warsaw Pact airplanes, there was "no evidence to suggest that any of these scrambles have taken place against anything other than man-made aircraft."
• UFO sightings have dropped from peak of 609 in 1996-97 to an average of 130 per year between 2001 and 2006.
• The number of UFO reports in 1996-97 increased by 50 per cent in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident.

[micky766]

The information they have released is not that interesting but if you want to see some really interesting information check out this blog.

http://truthfullookufos.blogspot.com/

The first video is a really interesting press conference with ex military guys giving testiomies and then being interviewed by the press.

[rf35]

I notice how this article (and many others I've seen) confuses alien spacecraft with unidentified flying objects. Of course unidentified flying objects are real! Anything moving in the air that one sees and cannot identify is an unidentified flying object. Doesn't mean it's an alien, just that it's not identified!

[superdem1]

And yet the U.S. military is rife with people who believe in God, the greatest tale for which absolutely no empirical evidence exists anywhere. People believe in God because they want to believe in God, there is no other reason. There is absolutely NO independent empirical evidence whatsoever. None. It is myth and legend, nothing more, science provides no evidence at all, quite the opposite, science reveals everything on earth is a natural phenomina or product of natural forces either here or from space. And yet there are churches, temples, and every sort of shrine in every nation on earth. Life on earth is testament not to a divine creator, but to the likely natural rise of life elsewhere in the universe. Logic decrees that there is probably life on other planets, and the extreme numbers of stars in the universe makes it likely that life exists elsewhere, even if it is only mold, algae, or bacteria. Like it was here when life began. As advanced as we are, we are knuckle draggers who burn sticks while the sun's energy blows by us into space, we can't bear each others' existence, so why couldn't a more advanced species exist and have come here ? It is much more likely than some virgin having a devine half-god half-human baby, who will raise the dead, or such nonsense. No one laughs at such stories, quite the opposite - you can't get elected unless you "believe." So primitive.

[greensboro78]

I think that fact the the U.K. is confirming the United States had a policy to debunk the subject and restrict the release of information to the public about UFO sightings made by the armed services is very telling. The fact that the government is trying to debunk the subject tells me they don't want us to believe in UFOs. Why would they debunk something thats not suppose to be real anyway? There is too much evidence surrounding this subject that UFOs are real. Our ancient ancestors saw them. They described them as gods and angels. There is a detailed UFO encounter in the Holy Bible. In the Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel describes seeing a "glowing metal wheel" in the sky and in these wheels are "creatures" with the likeness of man. Ezekiel even gives a description as to how this wheel moved in the sky. He says it moved "back and forth like a flash of lightening". Thats the exact flight description of a modern day UFO which is metal and shaped like a wheel.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

Well, maybe aliens found there was life on this planet and decided to watch us. What do you think that we would do if/when we find life on another planet...likely we are going to send satellites in to observe and learn about them.

[CarloCaraluzzo]

My question is SIMPLE. WHY did the US government not try a balanced approach, the scientific approach, and look for evidence of BOTH fraud and reality, instead of only looking for ways to debunk the sightings?

[rf35]

I imagine it might be a bit embarrassing to the US military to admit that there are these craft flying about over our airspace and they can't do anything about it. Is there really are aliens here I can see why they'd be a bit paranoid about stopping by the White House to say "Hi!"

[Unsilent_Majority]

Einstein...its called the scientific method and its rooted in the idea that all plausable explainations be explored and accounted for when attempting to explain unknown phenomena.

[maistir]

Lord Strabolgi? That's better than fiction. Do you have a photo?

[rf35]

Of course not. Vampires can't be photographed.