“Take me to your leader”

JENNY RANDLES asks whether governments would ever share their UFO secrets with the public

If an alien were to land in the UK and speak the words beloved of cartoonists for decades, they would have a bit of a problem right now. The request “take me to your leader” would probably elicit a response of “Good luck with that one, ET!”

Not so in the USA, where President Trump has made his thoughts on flying saucers crystal clear as only The Donald can. On 15 June he spoke to ABC News in response to questions about recent footage of UFOs witnessed by military fighters after guidelines created to report “unidentified aircraft intrusions”. Here is what the President said with his usual clarity:

“I think, it’s probably – I want them to think whatever they think. They do say, and I’ve seen, and I’ve read, and I’ve heard. And I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they are seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”

So, the leader of the free world has strong views about possible aliens. And if you can work out what they are from the above send answers on a postcard, please. Pressed on whether he knew if alien life had been detected, he replied: “Well, I think my great pilots would know… We’re going to see. We’re watching, and you’ll be the first to know.”

But how seriously can we take President Trump’s insistence that if alien life were to be discovered we, the people, would be the first to know?

Interestingly, the first comment by a world leader on such things was made 106 years ago. To be clear, he was only a Defence Minister at the time; but Winston Churchill, who became British Prime Minister 27 years later, is probably the only person to speak publicly on the subject of UFOs twice, four decades apart. In 1913 he was forced to explain strange lights over the east coast of the UK. It was feared they might be advanced German zeppelins and Churchill gave the usual bland assurances so common in more recent similar UFO sightings. On 28 July 1952, as Prime Minister, Churchill wrote to his Secretary of State for Air following UFOs seen during a NATO exercise asking: “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?” His words led to the creation of Ministry of Defence investigation units – and questions that remain unresolved. Alien invaders may have been supplanted by more down-to-Earth possibilities, but the secrecyminded nature of defence bodies the world over remains the same. We still know only what they want us to know – which means it’s reasonable to doubt what Trump would reveal if and when he finds the “truth” about UFOs.

Ralph Noyes, who went on to head the MoD department collating UFO data, was, following his retirement, willing to talk with those of us involved in the Rendlesham Forest case and assisted in the promotion of the 1984 book Sky Crash by Brenda Butler, Dot Street and myself. I had many fascinating discussions with him about how UFOs were handled by defence agencies and their protocols on what to say about them. Noyes believed that, misperceptions aside, some form of energy was involved and that was key to why the MoD was interested and insisted on such secrecy. Even if UFOs turned out to be nothing stranger than a high-tech rainbow – a comparison he used – the consequences of it being exploited either defensively or offensively could completely change the balance of world power.

Noyes reminded me not long before he died that any information released to the public is only what ‘they’ want us to see – we should always ask what they do not want us to see, and why not. In recent years, the MoD has steadily released its UFO files – apparently everything it has, bar the odd item that went astray over the years. However, is it everything? We know that files on pre-1962 cases were supposedly destroyed before the 1967 UFO wave led to retention. It seems extraordinary that in the 10 years after Churchill’s memo many crucial cases were “routinely disposed of” in that purge. Noyes had been sent north in 1952 to investigate the NATO exercise sightings and was baffled. Churchill heard enough about his findings to create covert departments, and Noyes was involved in them at a high level over the next 30 years. He told me of things he saw in those files, supposedly destroyed just a decade later: these included gun-camera footage taken from RAF planes, reports into radar visual sightings at RAF bases, and encounters by experienced pilots during midair missions. He found it extraordinary that these would be destroyed – and so do I.

I suspect this material exists somewhere, as I have recently assessed how many cases I received from RAF aircrew, military personnel, police officers or radar operators in that decade following Churchill’s memo. These witnesses all said they submitted reports or were debriefed by intelligence staff. They assumed that when the MoD released files, theirs would be among them. But they were not. Indeed, even cases beyond the 1962 cut-off seem to have vanished, including the November 1980 close encounter in Todmorden by PC Alan Godfrey in his patrol car. A file on this was certainly created, as it was seen in 1982; nobody knows where the file is now.

So can we really share President Trump’s belief that if the truth about UFOs, be it alien or mundane, emerges then we will be the first to know? After all, two previous US presidents said the same before becoming President. In 1966, Gerald Ford told the Armed Services Committee, “I think there may be substance in some of these reports” and called for “the greatest possible enlightenment” as “we owe it to the people to establish credibility”. He derided “flippant answers” given by the military. But, of course, when he became President, the flippant answers continued. Perhaps he learned the truth: that there was nothing to it. Or perhaps the truth was that it was not the kind of thing that even presidents get to reveal. Jimmy Carter was equally forthright, even reporting a UFO sighting while Governor of Georgia. But again, when he became President there was no follow-through on his words – not even an affirmation that he had been wrong and that the investigation into his sighting had found the truth.

One of the things Ralph Noyes wrote about the UFO cover-up before his death was an extraordinary novel, A Secret Property, a dramatised version of his theory about the Rendlesham incident. As the title suggests, he saw unresolved cases as of scientific interest yet protected by essential secrecy because of their weaponisation potential, and he wrote knowingly of international power struggles over such material being made public. His story ends with the British PM choosing to do a Trump and reveal the secret behind UFOs. She invites British researchers from national groups like ‘UFORA’ to Wembley Stadium, where she promises to reveal all before the cameras. It does not end well.

I am not expecting an invite to such an event any time soon: explaining the secrets behind the UFO phenomenon will not be quite that simple...