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- April 21, 1996
-
- "The Sunday Times"
-
- Air force jets were scrambled for UFOs
-
- A SERVING official at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed yesterday that
- British jets were scrambled to intercept unidentified flying objects (UFOs)
- as recently as the 1980s, write Richard Woods and Steve Ball.
-
- Nick Pope, who has been called "the real Fox Mulder" after the investigator
- in the X Files television series, said RAF fighters had tried to intercept
- the UFOs but had failed to lock on to the objects, leaving open the
- possibility of error by ground-based radars.
-
- However, Pope, who was the MoD official in charge of investigating UFO
- reports until 1994 and still works for the ministry, said he knew of other
- credible reports that UFOs based on high technology had flown over Britain.
-
- Pope is publishing a book in June on UFO incidents and his experience at
- the MoD.
-
- "There is no cover-up or a lot of classified information about
- extra-terrestrials," he said at Unconvention, a conference organised by
- Fortean Times, the magazine about the paranormal. "What there is is a total
- lack of official understanding. This is not something that is a joke. Our
- air defences have been penetrated by structured aircraft."
-
- About 95% of UFO sightings could be described as ordinary mistakes, he
- said, but that still left dozens unexplained. In public, the MoD has always
- maintained a sniffy attitude to UFOs and aliens, saying they present no
- threat to national security.
-
- To date, the only evidence of its real response has been public records
- released many years in arrears. Documents from the 1950s and 1960s were
- released last year showing the MoD had scrambled jets to investigate UFOs.