Nick Pope
"I concentrate on the science. I'm interested in
the UFOs seen by the police and military witnesses. I'm interested in the near
misses that pilots report, where their aircraft nearly collide with these
things. I'm interested in the visual sightings backed up by radar. I'm
interested in the military bases that are overflown by these things. I'm
interested in the cases where you have radiation readings on the ground. These
are no lights in the sky. These are not misidentifications of fantasy prone
individuals. This is a cutting-edge technology being reported by reliable,
trained observers, and it is something that goes beyond what we can do. That to
me suggests that if it is not ours, it belongs to someone else. If that
technology is better than ours, then the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems to me
the best explanation."
"Certainly when I socialized with my RAF colleagues, I
would find that they were a little bit more receptive to the idea of UFOs--and
by that I mean perhaps even an extraterrestrial explanation for this -- than you
might have supposed. One of the reasons for that was that so many RAF pilots had
actually seen things themselves. Many of them have never made an official
report. I had one chap tell me that he had seen something over the North Sea. I
asked him why he hadn't reported it, and he said, 'I don't want to be known as
Flying Saucer Fred for the rest of my career.'"
"We were asking the Americans, 'Are you operating a
prototype aircraft in our airspace?' That, of course, was nonsense. You simply
would not do that from a diplomatic and political point of view. It would
undermine the entire structure of NATO if you were putting things through
someone else's airspace, particularly a close ally, without seeking the proper
diplomatic clearance. But we had to ask. And the Americans, having had similar
reports, I guess, since the Hudson Valley wave [New York state, mid-1980s], had
been quietly asking us if we had some large, triangular shaped object that could
go from 0 to Mach 5 in a second. Our response was that we wished we did. This
was the bizarre situation: that we were chasing the Americans, and the Americans
were chasing us."
"The official line from the Ministry of Defense is,
'Yes, this happened. No, we don't know what it is, but we say that it is of no
defense significance.' How can it possibly be of no defense significance when
your best jet is left for standing by a UFO? And, again, how can it be of no
defense significance when your air defense region is routinely penetrated by
structured craft?" Excerpts are from a taped interview. Pope headed up the "UFO desk" at Air
Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defense from 1991-1994, and has served in
other departments of the Ministry of Defense since 1985.
Lord Rankeillour
"Many men have seen them [UFOs] and have not been
mistaken. Who are we to doubt their word?... Only a few weeks ago a Palermo
policeman photographed one, and four Italian Navy officers saw a 300-foot long
fiery craft rising from the sea and disappearing into the sky... Why should
these men of law enforcement and defense lie?" Lord Rankeillour was a Member of the House of Lords.
Air Marshall Nurjadin Roesmin
"UFOs sighted in Indonesia are identical with those
sighted in other countries. Sometimes they pose a problem for our Air Defence
and once we were obliged to open fire on them." Air Marshall Roesmin was Commander-in-Chief of the Indonesian Air Force,
1967.
Wilbert Smith
"The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist. Their
modus operandi is unknown but a concentrated effort is being made by a small
group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush. The entire matter is considered by the
United States authorities to be of tremendous significance." Smith was a Senior radio engineer with the Department of Transport, headed
Project Magnet, the first Canadian government UFO investigation in the 1950s.
Earl Alexander of Tunis
"There are of course many phenomena in this world which
are not explained and it is possible to say that the orthodox scientist is the
last person to accept that something new (or old) may exist which cannot be
explained in accordance with his understanding of natural laws." Earl Alexander was British Minister of Defense.
Jean-Jacques Velasco
"There are cases which remain unexplained... Let's say
simply that the events which were registered and measured, particularly at
Trans-en-Provence, but also in the case of l'Amarante [a CE-II on Oct. 21, 1982]
and two others, allow us to suppose that there are phenomena which escape our
understanding completely. I must say that this permits us to suppose that there
is an intelligence behind the phenomena. But I believe it would be largely
speculation to go beyond this point."
Velasco, the last head of GEPAN and director of SEPRA at CNES Headquarters in
Toulouse, in an interview with the French magazine Phénomèna. Velasco also
stated that SEPRA's primary task was tracking "satellite re-entries, which are
more and more numerous, and secondly, to continue the activities of GEPAN,
stopped in 1988.
Dr. Felix Y. Zigel
"The important thing now is for us to discard any preconceived notions about
UFOs and to organize on a global scale a calm, sensation-free and strictly
scientific study of this strange phenomenon. The subject and aims of the
investigation are so serious that they justify all efforts. It goes without
saying that international cooperation is vital." (Zigel, F., "Unidentified
Flying Objects," Soviet Life, No. 2 (137), February 1968.) Dr. Felix Y. Zigel, Professor of mathematics and astronomy at the Moscow
Aviation Institute, father of Russian Ufology: "Unidentified Flying Objects,"
Soviet Life, February 1968
