Videocast transcript, July 2012

Dr David Clarke discusses the newly released UFO files at The National Archives
This is the 9th collection of UFO files to arrive at The National Archives in Kew and this
consists of 25 separate files and somewhere around 7000 pages of information.
So the papers that have been released today talk about the motives behind an
intelligence study that was carried out, what kind of things did they reveal?
Well, the intelligence officer was really keen to have this study commissioned. There are
some very interesting papers in the policy file from 1993 where he is briefing on the
subject and he is saying it is not because he talks to little green men every night, it‟s just
that he thinks this is a subject that the DI55 and the MoD should take seriously because
no study had been conducted. During his brief he lists a number of possibilities about
what UFOs could possibly be. One of them is mass hallucinations and we can rule that
out, some of them are hoaxes. There is a lot of nonsense that is written about the
subject but despite that, there are still a large number of sightings by credible observers
such as military pilots, air traffic controllers, police officers, that type of thing. One thing
he says is that some of these sightings could have been caused by secret aircraft -
black project aircraft - perhaps piloted by the Americans or even by the Russians or
Chinese which can‟t be ruled out.
He then goes into all the possible natural explanations such as clouds and ball lightning,
meteors, and he has to consider the possibility that some of them could be extra-
terrestrial life forms. He says that that is possible, but there is no direct evidence. Now if
any of those possibilities such as the extra-terrestrials or the black project aircraft were
true there are implications for national security. And he says that the national security
implications are considerable because we have many reports of strange objects in the
sky and we have never investigated them.
If they are American then there is probably no threat to national security although it
would be most alarming if they were flying around without clearance in our airspace. If
the aircraft were Russian or Chinese then there would be a threat to national security
and we would urgently need to establish the nature of the craft and its capability. And
then we return to the possibility that they could be alien or extra-terrestrial and he states
that “if the devices are not of this earth then their purpose needs to be established as a
matter of priority”. He says “there has been no apparent hostile intent” but the other
possibilities are: military reconnaissance, scientific or even tourism. So they would be
coming here as we would go to another country or a national park, they are coming
across the universe to visit us.
He then adds another little interesting thing which turns up in the file report which was
produced, he says, “if these reports are taken at face value then devices exist that do
not use conventional reaction propulsion systems and they have a very wide range of
speeds and are stealthy” and he suggests that we could use this technology if it exists.
If we could capture one of these things it could probably be used as some kind of
battlefield weapon or new technology.
As with previous releases there are several sightings reports in this collection of
files, could you tell us a little bit about some of those?