The UFO Scam

I saw the other day that so called ‘MoD UFO Expert’ Nick Pope had passed away. The fact that his passing attracted so little attention from the mainstream press speaks volumes as to how the whole world of UFOlogy is regarded in serious circles.  Not that this should surprise anyone in view of the circus that the whole field- of which Pope’s writings represent a microcosm – has become. Now, while my condolences obviously go to his family, I feel that I need to reiterate that all of Pope’s supposed insights into the UK MoD’s ‘UFO Files’ were absolute bollocks.  There has never been a ‘UFO Desk’ at the MoD – there is simply some poor desk officer to whom falls the task of dealing with the various nutters who write in with their supposed sightings of aliens.  Pope and I were near contemporaries in the MoD – he had left just as I joined – and, on a course, I once met the guy who had taken over the ‘UFO Desk’ from him.  He confirmed that the UFO aspect was only a tiny part of his responsibilities and that all that happened when a report came in from the public was that a form letter would be sent out and a report filed and forgotten, (usually in the bin).  The letter explained that the MoD’s only interest in unidentified flying objects was when they posed a clear threat to the UK’s defences.  Which none of the unsolicited reports seemed to suggest. To be clear, I’m not saying that such reports weren’t investigated somewhere in the MoD, (I’m assuming that the RAF would have run their own investigations as a matter of routine), but they weren’t going on at the ‘UFO Desk’. But Nick Pope clearly saw an opportunity and was able to conflate his MoD experiences into a whole media career.  I have no idea whether he was a UFO enthusiast before he did that job, whether it ‘converted’ him to the cause, or whether he simply saw an opportunity to make some money.

Whatever the case, everything he came out with on the subject were a load of old bollocks.  Which it would have to be – like me, he signed up to the Official Secrets Act, (actually, we’re all, as UK citizens, subject to it, but crown servants handling sensitive information have to sign a declaration stating that they fully understand how it impacts on what they can say about their work), meaning that if he really had learned anything really sensational from his job, he wouldn’t have been able to report it.  If he had referred to genuine official materials in any of his books, for instance, then he would have faced prosecution. Which he never did, meaning that, basically, he made it all up or simply relied upon cases of alleged alien encounters already in the public domain.  I once had the misfortune to read one of Pope’s books, (or tried to read it, I can’t remember if I finished it, I do recall that I threw up on it, which wasn’t a judgement upon its quality, but rather a reflection of my New Year’s celebrations), and, as I recall, it was just a rehash of various well known alleged UFO incidents.  His conclusions seemed baffling to me, defying logic.

But hey, I’m not here to trash Nick Pope’s memory, but I can’t help but always come back to the fact that, in my opinion, he was a complete bullshitter, a feeling reinforced by the various TV appearances on those whacked out TV shows that clog the schedules on Blaze that he made.  I was always somewhat disturbed by the way in which he would ignore the obvious and omit any anomalous (anomalous to his ideas, that is) facts in order to whip up a conspiracy theory.  Basically, what Pope and the other ‘experts’ do on these shows is pounce on some alleged UFO sighting then weave some complex narrative around it, a narrative that has no factual basis other than some unsubstantiated ‘eyewitness’ accounts.  These narratives, having been established as ‘fact’ are then used to drag all manner of other stuff into their conspiracy.

In one episode I saw, for instance, they managed to conclude that a now defunct RAF establishment, based around an old country house, was somehow the epicentre of the British ‘Area 51’.  ‘The house is now abandoned by the RAF, so why can’t we access it?  Why are there security fences around it?’  Well, probably because it is still a valuable piece of Crown Estate and they don’t want it vandalised.  The fact that it was once the HQ of the RAF’s ‘Provost and Security’ organisation was held up by Pope (yes, he was inevitably involved) as ‘proof’ that it must have been used for secret and sinister purposes.  Really?  I would have thought that, as a former MoD employee, he would be well aware that this was simply the official name for the RAF Police, the Air Force’s equivalent to the Military Police who are simply responsible for the security of RAF bases, investigating criminal activity by RAF personnel and arresting drunken air men.

He then tried to link it with the ‘CCC’ an underground government complex several miles away, which was also, apparently, the home some kind of sinister government organisation. (‘CCC’ actually stands for ‘Corsham Computer Centre’, which apparently processes data in connection with the Royal Navy – it is perhaps significant that the Navy’s design offices are based in nearby Bath). Again, as he was, like me, an ex-MoD employee, then he knew as well as I did that it was all tied in with the Naval design bureau, (which needed a fair amount of computing power to design warships).  Like I said, an opportunistic bullshitter.  But heck, he made a living out of it, which is fair enough – if people are gullible enough to swallow this sort of nonsense, then that’s their problem. But it is, nonetheless, important to grasp that, far from being an ‘authority’, he was just another bollocks-spouting grifter.  In my humble opinion.

Doc Sleaze