Ministry of Defence may have deliberately ignored UFO sightings, expert claims

UFO fans love the idea of secret government documents – but are often bitterly disappointed by the real thing, as there’s no ‘smoking gun’ proving that aliens are real.

But Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University claims that there might be a very real reason why there is no ‘smoking gun’ in the Ministry of Defence’s ‘X-Files’.

 

Clarke says that government efforts to investigate UFOs in 1997 deliberately focused on other explanations – and that officials deliberately destroyed files after a report which discounted the possibility of alien sightings, the Guardian reports. Messages between analysts and the Defence Intelligence Service said that investigations should focus on foreign powers and technology, and that it ‘It shouldn’t be driven by a UFO thesis’.

The report, completed in 2000, gave the Ministry of Defence grounds for a new policy where it no longer accepted reports of alien sightings.

But Defence Intelligence Service officials then destroyed the database, Clarke discovered after filing Freedom of Information requests.

Clarke said, ‘They always say that the public gets the wrong idea about UFOs, but they’ve actually encouraged that themselves by destroying the files. They’ve actually encouraged conspiracy theorists through their own paranoia.’

 Rob Waugh

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