MOD file DEFE 24/2032/1

COVERING CONFIDENTIAL
From
Djrectorate of Air Staff (Lower Airspace)
Operations & Policy 1
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
Room 6/73, Metropole Building, Northumberland Avenue, London,
WC2N 5BP
Telephone
CHOts
E-Mail
(Direct dial)
(Switchboard)
(Fax)
(GTN)
DAS-LA-Ops+Pol1
das-laopspol1 @defence.mod.uk
and Commonwealth Office
Records and Historical Department
Hanslope Park
Your Reference
Our Reference
D/DAS/64/3/11
Date
7 November 2002Milton Keynes
Buckinghamshire
MK19 7BH
Dear
I would be grateful if you could provide some assistance with a request we have received for
access to papers held on a Ministry of Defence file, some of which originated in the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office.
This office is the focal point within the MOD for correspondence concerning 'unidentified flying
objects'. One of our regular correspondents has made a request under the Code of Practice on
Access to Government Information (the Code) for any documents the MOD may hold which were
used as briefing material for a House ofLords Debate on UFOs, on 18 January 1979.
On examining our files we have discovered a number of documents which were sent to the MOD
from the FCO towards the end of 1978 concerning a proposal by Premier Gairy of Grenada to the
United Nations to establish an agency or working group for research into UFOs. This was
mentioned in the House of Lords Debate so we have every reason to believe that they were sent to
the MOD as background for the Defence Minister's reply and are therefore relevant to this request
for information. I enclosed a copy of these documents and as you will see some are classified
Restricted and some Confidential, and they contain remarks about why the UK and other UN
nations would not support this proposal. In this suite of papers there is also one from the United
Nations General Assembly and one from the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations, the
later of which came to us via the UN Department of the FCO.
I would appreciate your advice as to how we may consider the release of these documents or
alternatively whether they should be withheld under one of the exemptions of the Code. If it is
considered that they should be withheld, there are two exemptions which seem to be appropriate.
Exemption 1b - Information whose disclosure would harm the conduct of international relations
COVERING CONFIDENTIAL