The Audio Will Be On Part III

Ken:

I can't help but believe that since there are so many sightings, that they can't all be secret aircraft, or even explainable objects. Do you agree with this?

Nick Pope:

Yes I think so. Most of these things, in percentage terms, do turn out to be misidentification. But consistently there are too many sightings from reliable observers, too many sightings that are tracked on radar performing speed and maneuvers that we can't match. There is too much of that sort of thing to write it all off as misidentification. As I said earlier, prototype aircraft and unmanned vehicles, yes we have them, but they are tested in very clearly defined test areas. We can differentiate between those sorts of things, certainly those of us in government could.

Ken

Some ufo witnesses talk about lights that seem to separate and then join together into one large light. Have you had any experience with this type of sighting?

Nick Pope:

Absolutely and then again one has to only look at the classic Bentwaters case in 1980 to see that Colonel Halt reported something almost exactly like that. Now some of these sightings, particularly over the last ten and fifteen years are attributable to lasers and search lights, which again are used increasingly at various outdoor events, concerts, things like that. The search lights and the lasers very often reflect off the low clouds and do patterns where they pan out and come together at a central point. Clearly that is not what Colonel Halt was seeing. Again there is a kind of real phenomena and then there is a kind of prosaic explanation that explains some of it, but certainly not all of it.

Ken:

Well I know that the U.S.and probably your country have been working on anti-gravity propulsion for years and Boeing even hired the leading Russian scientist in the field. Do you have any indications that some of the craft spotted may have been a new type of anti-gravity craft, that we have manufactured, such as the markings on them or anything like that?

Nick Pope:

I don't know. I am certainly familiar with the Boeing project. I am familiar with the fact that NASA has dabbled in this. British Aerospace, here in the U. K. has dabbled with it, we have something called project Green Glow, where certainly the challenge went out for all sorts of exotic technologies that people thought that they could get to work and there was certainly research and development money available if anyone had anything to bring to the table. Whether any of this made it past the theoretical point and made it into the testing, I don't know. I kind of hope so, I hope these technologies exist. I have yet to see any direct evidence that it goes beyond theory.

Ken:

Have you noticed that many witnesses to ufos state that there was a very bright light? Have you ever wondered what the connection was?

Nick Pope:

Well I guess many ufo sightings inherently involve bright light. Again many abduction reports start with the idea of a beam or a spotlight. Certainly I am familiar with many cases from the British Government's files, where people talk about beams. Maybe this is some sort of searchlight and it is just illuminating something on the ground, looking for something, or maybe it is something else. Again, the honest answer is I don't know.

Ken:

Is there any indication that there might be a secret investigation going on by any government agency into any of these ufo sightings?

Nick Pope:

I don't think so. In the U. K., to the best of my knowledge and I speak as somebody who was on that project, we had one research program with the Ministry of Defence having the lead. Of course you can't prove negatives, so you can't rule out the idea that has been put forward by some people of a sort of shadow project, standing behind us, that we were unaware of. I see no evidence of it beyond speculation on blogs and websites and things.

Ken:

Isn't it ironic, that for a while it seemed that ufo activity had fallen off? I know that several news outlets were reporting that some ufo clubs might have to close in early 2005 for lack of sightings, had you heard of this?

Nick Pope:

Yes, there was one British group, but it was a very, very small group and even I think the report of it's closure was not entirely accurate. I think what actually happened is that a couple of skeptics and a couple of journalists, sort of got together and thought, this is a story ufology is dead. Of course as I said right at the top of the interview, ufology is event led and you have to only look at some of the things that have been happening, not only in the U. K., but of course we had the Chicago O'Hare sighting in the United States, we had the Stevensville sightings. This is event led and there is certainly no question of this subject being dead, as a matter of fact quite the opposite.

Ken:

It has been claimed that computer analysis has shown that certain areas are avoided by military flights at certain times and these areas have a lot of ufo sightings and that people are saying that this proves that the world's governments are being contacted by ufos and told not to fly in certain areas at certain times. What do you think of that statement?

Nick Pope:

I am not familiar with those particular claims, so I can't comment other than to say that in the U. K., at least in generic terms, military low flying takes place in certain areas and for very good reasons of trying to avoid disturbing people. They generally avoid flying over major population centers, but other than that, I really can't comment.

Ken:

A rumor on the Internet states that the Ministry of Defence actually has to investigate several ufo sightings every year, even though the official stance is that they only do this if there is a threat to aviation. Do you know if this is true?

Nick Pope:

Well it is a very difficult situation. The Ministry of Defence's position is that it looks at ufo sightings in order to satisfy itself that the U. K's. air defense region hasn't been penetrated by foreign military aircraft activity, or indeed something else of any defense interest and defense significance.This is where it gets difficult to define, because particularly since post 9/11, anything flying in our airspace has got to be of interest to the government and to the military. If there is any evidence, be that evidence from reliable witnesses, pilots, or be it radar evidence of some uncorrelated target in British air space, then that will be looked at.

End Of Part II