A great example of misinformation

News wires are heating up with another example of the ultimate non-story released today, the story of the latest release of UFO files from the UK Ministry of Defence group the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) the group that advises military and political groups on threats to British defensive capabilities. We have known about the role of DIS in administrating British UFO reports and sightings for a number of years. A former member of this group Nick Pope has been openly speaking on the UFO circuit since his retirement from the group in the 1990's and indeed the group itself closed its UFO desk in the late 1990's as far as public reports were concerned at least. I'm sure many people will be reading these news reports and getting tremendously excited about the highlights like Prime Minister Tony Blair being briefed on UFO's in much the same way that thirty years ago when a document from Winston Churchill asking to be briefed some people took it as proof of UFOs and extraterrestrials, so why have I started this article by saying that it is a non-story? Well there are a few reasons. Firstly these documents, 6,700 in number were actually released in August 2011, but have only been made available online through the National Archive today, so serious UFO researchers have been studying them for almost a year already, and there has been little if any new information of any significance.

Then we need to consider that these documents had been declassified before that point which suggests strongly that they do not relate to any threat to national security, which any genuine sightings almost certainly would. It should also be noted that although there are a huge number of documents, these are not the complete set of documents for the period. They represent approximately 78% of the total with the remainder still be too highly classified to be covered by Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. It should also be noted that these documents have been released under FoI rules which exempt many classes of official document which are considered security or commercially sensitive. Lets also look at the Tony Blair connection. The documents suggest that all Prime Ministers are briefed on UFOs but this should be expected as they are likely to be asked at public events as was the case when UFO researcher Richard D Hall posed the question of the release of information to David Cameron at a public debate. It would be extremely remiss of government advisers to leave a politician of this stature with no answer to such an obvious question. It is not evidence of UFOs per se, just a matter of expediency.

Also to be considered is that these documents were released initially to UFO researchers and the documents reveal that part of the role of the DIS was to maintain links between UFO research groups and government. This strongly hints at the possibility of disinformation, particularly in light of recent cases of media and police disinformation policies and the use of selected economists to present positively spun government finance figures. Whatever these documents are, in terms of evidence of British government seriousness about UFOs they are in no sense any new evidence, nor do they move the debate over whether UFOs are real or not any further forward. To date there is no evidence of UFOs, whether you chose to believe that or not, it is a statement of fact. That is not to say that such information doesn't exist, nor that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. There is every possibility that any real evidence would be kept secret as suggested under American and UK policy for dealing with UFO evidence laid out in the 1960's.

What is of interest is the way in which the media is reporting these files, and the impact that this has on how the alternative media is portrayed when viewed with a cynical eye.

The misinformation conspiracy

From our former intelligence misinformation agent :

For a number of years I was employed with the intelligence service of a European country to create media engagement in specific esoteric subjects particularly UFO, paranormal phenomena, alternative therapies and conspiracy theories. In the execution of my duties I investigated and researched a number of stories, embellished and adapted them, and fed them to media contacts. I also arranged for “witnesses” to be interviewed. In over 10 years in this role I did not feed a single genuine story to my media contacts, the role requiring the dissemination of lies to distract attention from genuinely unexplained phenomena. In order to be certain that the information that was passed on was credible yet not accurate it was essential that I had access to all genuine investigations. In order to allow this I was granted DV level clearance and was considered to be seconded to military intelligence whilst being employed as a civil servant in the Home Office.

Through my own investigations and research I discovered that the reports available to the media and public, including the “secret” documents released by the government, were limited to events that had already been fully explained. In this way the government retained the option at any point to completely debunk any conspiracy theory based on this evidence. This is a planned option with a timescale of 2015. This is not to say that all reports are explained. There are a number of unexplained reports that have not, and will not be released. Included in these are reports of sightings of a UFO over large parts of the West Wales coast in March 2011. The UFO was seen to rise out of the sea off the coast in the area around Cardigan Bay, the object being estimated at 250mtrs in diameter, spherical in shape and emitting a low hum. It rose from the sea at 4.23am sighted and reported to the local police station by two holidaymakers who had been stargazing from their beach front holiday home.

They observed the sphere for over 30 minutes as it tracked inland at a speed not exceeding 50 mph before passing out of site behind hills behind the town. Further reports were received from three farmers along the route the sphere took, as well as two local police officers who responded to the report. A report was also made to the local newspaper. To give an example of the way in which the intelligence community operates, within 45 minutes of the initial report contact had been made by the UK security agency to the local police arranging for all subsequent reports to be treated as secret, eyes only. Contact was also made with the local media and a D notice enforced. With 55 minutes minutes visual contact was made with the object by two helicopters from the nearest military base, a former weapons evaluation station along the coast now run by Qinetic. The helicopters observed the sphere for a total of 86 minutes from a range of 300 mtrs before the craft accelerated vertically and disappeared. Reports from the helicopter pilots were made directly to UK intelligence.

Within 2 hours of the initial sighting all members of the public and local law enforcement had been contacted and given an acceptable response, and no further action was expected. Further investigation by UK intelligence confirmed the sighting as an unknown of non-terrestrial origin. The sightings and reports were not reported by any news agency, and no further action was taken by local police. In this way a genuine sighting was blocked. The cover story was of the launch of an atmospheric condition monitoring balloon from an offshore weather station, and this story was accepted by witnesses. This is a similar scenario to several other sighting across the UK and Europe which have been considered to have defence significance within national and international military communities.

There is little doubt that there are genuine cases of unexplained phenomena, but that these are considered national and international security sensitive and as a consequence are routinely covered up. The truth is indeed out there, but it will never be released.