From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 08:16:06 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 08:16:06 -0500
Subject: Britain's X-Files Said UFOs Were Waste Of Time




Source: The Times of London - UK

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1469190,00.html

02-04-05


How Britain's X-Files Said That UFOs Were Just A Waste Of Time

By David Charter

Secret committee dismissed reports of flying saucers more than
50 years ago

The truth is out there somewhere... but it has taken the
Ministry of Defence 54 years to release secret papers ruling out
the existence of UFOs.

Minutes of the Government=92s Flying Saucer Working Party have
finally been made public in answer to the ultimate request under
the Freedom of Information Act =97 do aliens exist?

In the document, marked "Secret" and "Discreet", officials
rejected sightings of UFOs by RAF personnel as well as a series
of reports of "luminous bodies" by members of the public.

The working party concluded: "We consider that no progress will
be made by attempting further investigation of uncoordinated and
subjective evidence and that positive results could only be
obtained by organising throughout the country, or the world,
continuous observation of the skies by a co-ordinated network of
visual observers, equipped with photographic apparatus and
supplemented by a network of radar stations and sound locators.

"We should regard this, on the evidence so far available, as a
singularly profitless enterprise. We accordingly recommend very
strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious
aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material
evidence becomes available."

With that, the Flying Saucer Working Party dissolved itself in
June 1951, never to meet again.

But in the absence of any details of its deliberations, UFO
sightings have continued unabated over Britain as shown by the
recent release of reams of reports from members of the public.
The latest MoD document shows that 91 sightings were recorded
last year in places as far afield as Peterborough in
Cambridgeshire ("four dull red lights"), Paignton in Devon
("long single black cylinder") and Honley in West Yorkshire
("looked like a jellyfish flying in the sky ").

Last September was a busy month for UFOs, with a "silver disc"
in Glossop, Derbyshire; a "bright light at first then looked
like a box kite" in Barry, South Wales; "two silvery objects
pulling apart and moving together" in Holywell, Flintshire; and
"a great bright light like a big ball of fire" over Iwerne
Minster in Somerset.

The area with the most frequent mysterious activity has been
West Kilbride, on the southwest coast of Scotland. The MoD
received a dozen reports during the year of increasingly
dramatic visitations, from "one sphere" on April 2, "five bright
spheres" on May 30 to "at least 25 yellow spheres flying in
groups of five" on November 26.

None of them would have passed the stringent examination of the
Flying Saucer Working Party, however, which was quick to dismiss
the flurry of reports in 1950 which followed early publicity
surrounding an original "flying saucer" in the United States in
1947.

Although the group praised a "careful and accurate" observation
by a locomotive fireman of a luminous body travelling at high
speed over Derby, it was "undoubtedly a meteorite".

The evidence of a Flight Lieutenant Hubbard, an experienced
pilot, was also discounted in trenchant terms. Hubbard reported
"a flat disc, light pearl grey in colour... executing a series
of S-turns and oscillating". But the working party concluded:
"We conclude that Flight Lieutenant Hubbard was the victim of an
optical illusion or that he observed some quite normal type of
aircraft and deceived himself about its shape and speed."

Britain=92s UFO spotters are as unimpressed with the Government=92s
disclosures as officials were then with Flight Lieutenant
Hubbard. Judith Jafar, the chair of the British UFO Research
Association, said: "It is a pointless exercise because the
Government is not going to release any files that are
contentious in any way. The files they are releasing now are not
going to take us anywhere that we have not been before."

However, in a letter accompanying the release of the report, the
MoD states: "The MoD does not have any expertise or role in
respect of UFO/flying saucer matters or to the question of the
existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about
which it remains totally open-minded."