Reports of flying Toblerones, close encounters of the second kind, and attempted alien abductions in the latest batch of UFO files released today by the Ministry of Defence demonstrate that the British public's appetite for matters extraterrestrial shows no sign of abating.
More than 650 reports of UFO sightings reached the MoD last year – the highest for 31 years – before it took the decision to close its UFO desk, known as Air Secretariat 2A1, in December.
The latest files released at the National Archives cover the period from 1994 to 2000 when sightings were running at 200 to 300 a year. The MoD intends to make public the files for the last 10 years by the end of 2011.
The files show that most reports are filed by "overzealous ufologists", and for the first time officials have released files based on reports from those they call "persistent correspondents". Foremost among these was the Alien Acknowledgement Campaign, which alleged an MoD cover-up of alien visitations. Its particular target was a freedom of information campaign to release the files on an incident in Rendlesham forest, Suffolk, in 1980 in which US and British military personnel testified that at least one UFO was tracked on radar.
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Nick Pope, who ran the MoD's UFO unit from 1990-94, said: "The X-Files was hugely popular during the period covered by these files, but these are the real-life X-Files. Some sightings were explained and some weren't, some were funny and some were just plain weird. Of most concern were the cases where there were near-misses between aircraft and UFOs. There were serious air safety issues" for the MoD and Civil Aviation Authority.
He said that by this time the MoD was becoming increasingly irritated by the subject and tried to get rid of people wanting to report alien abductions by referring them to the police, saying that abduction was a criminal matter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/18/mod-records-ufos-encounter-absurd-kind