For
those who might have missed the sad news, Nick Pope, onetime British Ministry
of Defence UFO expert has died. His wife, Elizabeth Weiss said, “My heart is
breaking. Nick passed away this afternoon (April 6) at our home."
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| Nick Pope at the Las Vegas Crash Conference. |
Inside
the UFO community, Nick was well known for his expertise on the subject and for
the insider information he offered. He was a cautious researcher who was bound
by his connections to official documents that often required him to protect
some of the information he had learned from classified sources. But his intimate
knowledge of the UFO phenomena provided him with an insight to many of the
important cases.
With
Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, he wrote what is one of the best books about
the Rendlesham Forest UFO sightings of late December 1980. His book, along with
that written by Charles Halt, who was the deputy commander at the time,
provides us with a greater understanding of that event.
I
met with Nick on several occasions and even shared a dinner table with him.
Quite naturally, our talk surrounded UFOs. Although we sometimes differed on certain
UFO cases, it was always a cordial conversation. His knowledge was extensive
and his contacts were many. He brought a clarity to the topic that others
failed to grasp.
Elizabeth
Weiss provided some of the medical details, telling us that Nick suffered from Stage
4 esophageal cancer that took his life at 60. It is always a sad note when
a colleague passes. We begin to think of what we should have done when we had
the chance. I wish his wife my best in this tragic time.
A sad day indeed. Deepest condolences to his family.
ReplyDelete"Inside the UFO community, Nick was well known for his expertise on the subject and for the insider information he offered." ....
ReplyDeleteD'ya really think so Kevin!
I'd like a list of anything he told us about the British UFO phenomenon that we didn't already know from the books of Timothy Good or Jenny Randles.
Hmmm...seems he always got a much smoother ride from the American UFO fraternity who bought into his "British Fox Mulder" persona much more willingly than we ever did...which is probably why he upped sticks and crossed the pond.
Nevertheless, a thoroughly nice chap.
The man had just died and I saw no reason to point to the controversies that surrounded him and, frankly, many of the rest of us in the UFO community. I was thinking about the heartbreak of his wife, having lost my wife to cancer so I understood the pain. If you wish to debate the topic, I think we need to wait a reasonable amount of time before we go to that level.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really know Nick, but the wife and I dined with him in Roswell in 2012 when we were both speakers. Being British, he liked his pint, as did my wife (very Anglo Saxon herself, so it came naturally). Nice person and very good company. He was only 60, which is too damn young these days.
ReplyDeleteI tried to pry a little information out of Nick about the UK MOD Condign Report, that concluded that UFOs were nothing but plasmas. (IMHO, mostly a bunch of pseudoscientific nonsense, particularly the parts about plasmas affecting peoples perceptions and memory.)
Who wrote it? He wouldn't tell. Was it one person? Yes. What was his background? He had one foot in the military and one in the technological, something like that. If that was true, another reason to be skeptical of such a report. One person reports on such a broad topic are apt to have a lot of blind spots, including opining on subjects outside their fields of expertise.
I have no opinion as to the controversies surrounding Nick and his stated responsibilities with the British MOD and investigation of UFOs. I just don't know that much about it and prefer to stay clear of the quagmire.
David,
DeleteI know this comment is a bit off-topic, but I don't think the conclusions of the report you're citing are entirely wrong. Of course, not every UFO sighting or close encounter can be explained this way. I believe the extraterrestrial hypothesis is definitely the best explanation for certain cases, but I suspect that others, especially sightings of light orbs interacting with the environment or instances of high strangeness, might have natural explanations of this sort. They could very well be the result of magnetic fields from self-generating plasmas interacting with the human brain. This doesn't account for every UFO case by any means, but I think it could explain some of them. Paul Devereux proposed a similar hypothesis in the 1980s and Albert Budden later expanded on the idea.
In any case, I'm very sorry to hear of Nick's passing. He will be missed. I wish all the best to his wife.
Rest in peace, Nick Pope, and deepest sympathies to your family and friends.
ReplyDeleteI always found Mr. Pope to be an interesting figure in the world of UFO studies because he (I assume) had access to classified information that allowed him to have a unique perspective on the phenomenon. I could relate to a small degree because I also had access to classified information for 35+ years as a member of the U.S. Army and then as an employee of 3 companies in the defense and national security industry. I never held anything higher than a U.S. Secret clearance, and much of my work was with electronic systems, things employed to support sensor and communications needs, often related to missile and air defense missions as well as tracking of objects orbiting the Earth. In all that time I did not see anything that was related to UFO’s. I am the first to admit that this means nothing as far as disproving the reality of the UFO phenomena.
That being said, I have a question to Kevin Randle and any others on this forum who have or have had access to U.S. classified information. This may be a stupid question, but what aspect of the UFO phenomenon would justify information being controlled as classified information? The different levels of U.S. security classifications are all driven by the amount of potential harm that could be done to the security of the U.S. by the unauthorized revelation of said data. In my experience working with various electronic systems, the determination of this potential harm was related to system capabilities and vulnerabilities. Since I assume the protection (aka alleged coverup) of information related to UFO’s means that some authority within the U.S. government classified that information, what was the harm to the U.S. security posture that could be posed by the often mentioned and wished for “disclosure” of the truth about the existence of UFO phenomena? And if that disclosure would be of information that is classified under the U.S. system, where are the prosecutions of those individuals who are making (I assume) unauthorized release of data protected under U.S. law.? My questions here will possibly seem ignorant to some, but in the classified realms where I worked for most of my adult life I can’t reconcile a massive coverup with the rules I followed for decades.