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This Ministry of Defence file, released through The National Archives and published by The Black Vault, holds the MOD's 2002 handling of Dr David Clarke's requests for UFO documents under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. It includes the MOD's 9 December 2002 reply, which covered reports from 1976, 1980, 1993 and 1996 and charged £260. It also contains internal emails and file requisitions, plus Foreign Office and United Nations papers from 1978 on Grenada's proposal for UFO research.
“UFO Files”38 pages
Copies of report made by RAF Fylingdales, North Yorkshire, of unidentified objects tracked by the BMEWS on or about 13 September 1980, and reported to MOD. While ch~S8/75/2/5 Part B for the above, we will also search for a report from PC -on 28 November 1980 as requested. As we would be reviewing this file for the above mentioned report, there will be no additional charge for this search. 4. Copies of UFO reports made in the early hours of30/31 March 1993 by RAF and meteorological office personnel and by members of the public. We have not located any additional information to that contained in D/Sec(AS)12/7 since my letter of 16 September. We are however content to examine this file for the information you have requested. 5. Reports of unusual phenomena on radar in the early hours of 5 October 1996 reported by the SOC Neatishead and UFO reports made by Lincolnshire Police and Skegness coastguard. As I said in my previous letter, we have located one file which may contain relevant information. Given the above, if you wish us to pursue your requests regarding 2 to 5, I estimate that this would still require 23 hours to complete, four hours ofwhich would be conducted free, leaving 19 hours, which would attract a fee of£ 15 an hour, or a total of £285. I should inform you that while the files you may have seen in the PRO and,those older UFO report files that we have recalled from archives show that UFO reports were once filed in date order, this has not always been the case. Today (and we believe for a number of years) the reports have been filed in the order in which the Department has received them. The only way to identify the information requested is to search whole files covering the relevant period. Our estimate, therefore, takes in to account not only the cost of copying and removing personal details from any relevant papers found, but also the time taken to conduct these searches. This estimate indicates the largest period of time that might be required, clearly if the work can be accomplished in less time, the cost will be lowered accordingly. Please let me know if you wish us to proceed with your request. Finally, you asked if we keep a list of the files destroyed in 1990 and the reason for their destruction. It appears from our records that 18 files were destroyed in March 1990. These included four policy files, four parliamentary correspondence, seven report and/or correspondence files, one entitled "Solar Satellite Power Station" and the two House ofLords Debate files mentioned in my earlier letter. We have found no record of why these files were destroyed. I hope this is helpful. Yours sincerely,
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 492 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.