Former Ministry of Defence Official Says UK Gov is Secretly Investigating UFOs

Article by Cameron Frewon                                          March 24, 2021                                  (unilad.co.uk)

• To mark UFO Week on BLAZE tv, former Ministry of Defence official Nick Pope was interviewed by British media company UNILAD. For three years during the 1990s, Pope held a position within the MoD’s ‘UFO program’. The program ended in 2009. But Pope says that he has it on good authority that the British government is secretly ‘still looking at this’ UFO phenomenon. But Pope insists that he is not a ‘whistle blower’. “I take my security oath seriously,” says Pope. “The only reason I can talk about this is because the government has declassified and released a lot of my old case files.”

• In 2017, it was revealed that in 2012 the US military had budgeted $22 million for the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP). In 2017, the US military allowed three grainy UFO videos to be publicly released. When asked how much UFO information the US military has shared with the UK government, Pope remains tight-lipped, wary of crossing a line beyond what’s permitted.

• Pope noted that military authorities stopped calling the phenomenon ‘UFOs’ and changed it to ‘UAPs’, or ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’. Now they’re probably calling it something else says Pope. (Editor: Yes, ‘UAV’ or ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’) There’s also a suspicion that much of the UFO investigation has been relegated to the private sector in order to put it outside of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

• Today, the US Department of Defense admits to a UAP Task Force set up in the Office of Naval Intelligence, which is basically the AATIP under a different name. Pope says that the US government program has indeed shared some of their UFO findings with the other ‘Five Eyes’ nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK. “So GCHQ (UK Government Communications Headquarters) probably got to see some of this stuff on secure servers and things.”

• A US Congressional Senate committee has asked the military for an unclassified UFO investigations report, which is due to come out around World UFO Day on July 2nd. But the public and the media may still only get a summary of the unclassified report, “where the good stuff is going to buried”, says Pope.

• Pope says that, “There is close military and intelligence… collaboration (between the US and the UK). There’s intelligence sharing across a range of issues. There’s joint exercises. … [T]here’s been UK participation in some of the testing of cutting-edge technologies. But when we get into UFOs, that’s still a bit of an unknown.”

• Philip Mantle, director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association, described the Pentagon’s UFO footage as a ‘turning point’, not just because of the videos themselves, but the legitimacy with which they were released. “What was interesting is what colleagues have been saying for years… that the US authorities are studying UFOs somewhere,” said mantle. “And of course, they were proven right. …You then ask, ‘if the Americans are doing it, then who else?’ The answer is we don’t know.”

• So what are these craft seen in the grainy US military ‘Gimbal’, ‘Go Fast’ and ‘Tic Tac’ UFO videos? “Some of these things are going to be secret, prototype aircraft missiles and drones,” Pope said. “I don’t rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis. … [A]pparently, in these interim reports [from the UAP Taskforce], they’ve not ruled out the extraterrestrial hypothesis.’

• Whether more videos are released to the public in the wake of the impending Senate committee report, to say those three Pentagon clips are just the beginning would be an understatement. “They must surely have more than three videos. There’s been little hints dropped here and there, more will surface at one point,” Mantle said.

• Pope claims to know “many people who…knew there’d been hundreds of these sorts of (UFO) incidents over the years. That’s another misconception about this; we’ve seen these three videos, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.”

The UK government is secretly investigating UFO sightings, according to a former Ministry of Defence official.

In 2017, America’s very own X-Files-esque team was revealed by The New York Times: up until 2012, $22 million in defence funding went to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Three years later, amid leaks and speculation, the Pentagon officially released three declassified videos of UFOs – no aliens, but an emphasis on ‘unidentified’.

‘About time’, was the reaction of Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD). Out of his 21 years in government, three were dedicated to a fascinating post that no longer exists. Well, officially, that is.

In an interview with UNILAD to mark UFO Week on BLAZE, Pope sat down with me to chat about his past experiences, investigations and thoughts on the earth-shattering Pentagon footage, as well as what to expect from the intelligence agencies’ report on aerial phenomena as part of the COVID-19 relief bill.

‘The irony is it could possibly come out on World UFO Day. They’ve asked for an unclassified report. If the media and public get any of this, that’s all they’ll get. Not

even that, maybe just a summary of it. It can have a classified annex, and that’s where the good stuff is going to buried,’ he said.

‘There’s a debate whether AATIP is still in existence or if it’s running under a different name now that people know about it. What the Department of Defense (DoD) did admit is they have something called the UAP Taskforce, that’s set up in the Office of

Naval Intelligence,’ Pope said.

He added, ‘There was a leak… saying they’ve shared some of their interim findings with other Five Eyes nations [in the intelligence-sharing alliance made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US], so GCHQ probably got to see some of this stuff on secure servers and things.’

The position Pope once held in the ‘UFO program’ was cut at the end of 2009. ‘But I have it on multiple well-placed sources that somebody, somewhere in government is still looking at this,’ he said.

Pope continued, ‘Definitely not calling it UFOs anymore, nor UAP now it’s out of the box – probably calling it something else.There are still question marks whether there’s active liaison between the UAP Taskforce and anyone in the MoD. There’s also a suspicion that you put it out into the private sector, to put it outside the scope of the Freedom of Information act. So that’s something else to throw into the mix.’

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