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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.
“The Advance”16 pages
~ A-Ops+Pol1 To: Dl ISEC SECT AD Subject: FW: Code of Practice Request I sent the message below beforep lQlli~'@J~S and would be happyo dfscu s ifequired. -+Pol1 -----Original Message----- From: DAS-LA-Ops+Po11 Sent: 03 September 2002 10:22 To: 01 ISEC SEC4 Subject: Code of Practice Request - and have had an out of office reply. I need to answer this request you could find someone else to deal with it in~nce. I am I have received a request for some more documents under the Code of Practice on Access to Gover Information, from Dr Clarke who you may remember recently published a book about MOD Policy on since 1947. One of the five sets of documents he has asked for is as follows; "Copies of UFO reports made in the early hours of 30/31 March 1993 by RAF gnd meteorological office personnel and by members of the public, from a number of locations including RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury. In addition copies of assessment made". We have a file on these events, but I know DIS also have a file D/DI55/108/15/2 Part 1 - Cosford Incident. DG Info tell me that unless the person requesting the information specifically says "records held by DAS" a request should be taken to mean a request to MOD and should include any material known to be held by any branch. We will, therefore, need to include your file in this request. Under the Code, Dr Clarke has been charged for his previous requests requiring more than four hours work and he has asked that before we proceed with this request, we provide an estimate of the time and cost of providing this information. The way we ususally estimate this is the number of enclosures on the file X 2 minutes per enclosure to search, photocopy any relevant papers, remove any personal data (under the Data Protection Act) and anything else which needs to be removed under an exemption of the Code, and photocopy again. Dr Clarke is entitled to the first four hours work free and every following hour (or part of) is charged at £15 per hour. Based on the above, I would be grateful if you could give me an estimate of the time it would take for DI staff to search the above mentioned file and providing the information requested by Dr Clarke. You do not need to worry about the cost because I will calculate that when I have assessed his whole request. I need to answer Dr Clarkes letter by 19th September, but I will be on leave from the 16th, so would appreciate a reply by 9 September if possible. If you have any questions, please give me a call. 1
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 492 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.