This
week I spoke with Nick Pope, he of the UK’s Ministry of Defence UFO desk. This started
because I had seen a couple of posts on the Internet suggesting that Nick was
some sort of dupe or shill hiding the real UFO program. He was an agent of disinformation.
I have been accused of much the same thing, so we talked about that briefly
before moving onto more exciting aspects of UFOs. You can listen to the
interview here:
One
of the things that I wanted to clear up, at least in my own mind, is just how
big was the UFO investigation when he was there. According to him, he had a
small staff, much like that at Project Blue Book, but he had any number of
subject
matter experts he could query when he needed them. It seemed, from what
he said, that the attitude, at least around him, was a little less rigid than
that at Blue Book. In other words, they weren’t pressed to provide a solution.
They could say, “I don’t know.”
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| Nick Pope. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. |
I
did ask about some of the best of the cases out of the UK. He provided some
details about sightings that involved multiple witnesses to a triangular object,
one with a pilot seeing a huge object that did have some radar confirmation,
and a brief discussion of the Rendlesham Forest landing in 1980.
For
me this was an interesting discussion because I had faced some of the same
criticisms that Nick had faced. He said he had been criticized for writing science
fiction, and that, as a former member of the intelligence community, he was
often met with comments about hiding the real information. We did touch briefly
on some of the misconceptions about work in intelligence.
On
future shows, I hope to learn more about Calvin Parker’s second encounter, a
discussion of Project Blue Book the
television show with someone who didn’t care for it, and about skepticism and
proper UFO research. There are many other shows dealing with paranormal
subjects that can be found at http://xzbn.net/.
3 comments:
Glad the podcasts are back. I am a total UFO skeptic but I usually find the blog and the podcasts interesting. I haven't listened to this one yet but probably will on a drive to Dallas this afternoon.
Mike
I'm not surprised that Nick Pope has been called a disinformation agent. This seems to be the constant claim against those who work officially in any sort of government department. The claim is always made by those who insist a great cover-up is going on, and doubtless applies to officials in other countries as well as the US and UK. It is all part of the UFO 'story' and we are stuck with it, probably forever.
Pope is only relevant to the UFO scene because he just happened to land this rather exotic sounding job at the MOD.
OK, so he had this job for a (very) few years. Logging reports, absolutely no investigation of them (office clerk stuff really)...and at first he was considered to potentially be the great white hope of the UFO whistle blowers.
But no...we have learnt nothing from Pope...zilch...now't...sod all...not a bean. We could probably have gleaned more from the MOD UFO desks "Mrs Mop" or the "tea wallah" than we have from him.
Every utterance from Pope has been something that was already out. He's basically lived off the back of commentating on UK stories published in Jenny Randles and Tim Good's books.
STILL...We all have to put steam on the table!
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