Spies admit it: there are no aliens out there

Guardian Unlimited ^ | nov-4-2001 | Guardian Unlimited

[green team 1999]

Observer | Spies admit it: there are no aliens out there Spies admit it: there are no aliens out there

Paul Harris
Sunday November 4, 2001
The Observer

Britain's spies have given up looking for aliens after more than half a century of fruitless monitoring of thousands of UFO reports.

Ever since the early 1950s reports of sightings of unidentified flying objects by members of the public and military personnel have been logged by the Ministry of Defence and passed on to its intelligence branch.

But the Directorate of Intelligence, Scientific and Technical, has now abandoned the quest for ET. The directorate specialises in scientific espionage and analysis of advanced technologies but documents seen by The Observer show it asked last year that it be sent no further reports of UFO sightings. 'These records, whether from members of the public or service sources, have not proved valuable,' the department concluded.

The decision ends five decades of army intelligence experts investigating UFO sightings from all over Britain, including many from Royal Air Force pilots. 'They are essentially saying they have wasted their time for 50 years and they want nothing more to do with it,' said Dave Clark of the National Centre for Folklore Studies at Sheffield University and a leading UFO researcher.

Britain's official search for UFOs began in the late 1940s and peaked with a top-secret government study into the 'flying saucer' phenomenon, commissioned in 1951. That study, details of which were published for the first time in The Observer two weeks ago, concluded that no UFO sightings were genuine but attempted to hush up the reports to avoid creating panic at the height of the Cold War.

Clark believes the Government is finally willing to admit that studying UFO sightings is pointless. He said modern radar systems have become sophisticated enough to explain the vast majority of sightings as being aircraft or atmospheric conditions. 'They have looked at the subject and they have simply decided there is nothing in it,' he said.

However, the Ministry of Defence will maintain its small internal UFO desk, which logs and reports all sightings reported to it by members of the public. 'They are not shutting down entirely, but their intelligence experts don't want to know any more. The operation is now just a PR stunt to keep the public happy,' said Clark.

UFO enthusiasts are not likely to be satisfied at the lack of interest shown in the possibility that aliens might be visiting Earth. Graham Birdsall, editor of UFO Magazine, said: 'I find this decision extraordinary. If people are seeing unusual things in the skies of Britain, I am sure the intelligence officials will still want to know about it.'

There has been media speculation that the UFO phenomenon is on the wane. But Birdsall said UFOs were still being seen in their hundreds and that it would be a mistake for the Government to stop investigating sightings.

'The phenomenon is still as intense and busy as ever. The fact remains that UFOs continue to be seen, continue to be reported and continue to be videotaped,' he said.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

[Paradox]

Waitasec, first, the EarthGov knocks off Bill Cooper, and now, they claim they are gonna stop investigating UFO's!

A likely story.... suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure...

[general_re]

Everything is going exactly according to plan

That's what you think...

[Joan_of_Argghh!]

'They have looked at the subject and they have simply decided there is nothing in it,'

So I can save my tin-foil hat for the U.S. government conspiracy/spy/mind control threads?

[Shermy]

For a start, go to TouristGuy.com

Read the "origin" and "news".

[John Locke]

No one would have believed in the last years of the twentieth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.

No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

And early in the twenty-first century came the great disillusionment....