Interview with Nick Pope, by Michael Lindemann
Summary: From 1991 until 1994, Nick Pope worked the “UFO desk” at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defense. His job was to assess UFO reports for any possible defense significance. What he learned gradually convinced him that at least some UFOs were most certainly technological objects of unknown origin, potentially of great significance to the defense of Great Britain.
Nick Pope Says Mystery Craft Often Penetrate UK Defenses
[From 1991 until 1994, Nick Pope worked the “UFO desk” at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defense. His job was to assess UFO reports for any possible defense significance. He found that his predecessor had treated all UFO reports as automatically mundane and essentially trivial. But Pope, though not a “believer,” decided to do his job as if the true significance of any UFO report was actually unknown until studied. What he learned gradually convinced him that at least some UFOs were most certainly technological objects of unknown origin, potentially of great significance to the defense of Great Britain. In June of 1996, he published a book called “Open Skies, Closed Minds” which described his personal evolution as a UFO investigator and his views on the seriousness of UFO phenomena.
CNI News editor Michael Lindemann met with Nick Pope on November 17, 1996, during a UFO conference at Blackpool, England. Pope is 31 years of age, resides in London, and has worked as a civilian in various departments of the Ministry of Defense since 1985. He has not served in the armed forces. Though he left the UFO desk in 1994, he still works for the MoD and now pursues UFO investigations outside his regular job. CNI News thanks Celeste for transcribing the original interview tape.]
by Michael Lindemann
ML: In general, what does Secretariat Air Staff do?
NP: Secretariat Air Staff, a division of about 30 people, acts as an interface between the Royal Air Force and everybody else, like the press, Parliament, and the public. When things happen that you have to, for example, prepare a press line on, we are the people who interface with the military and translate the raw data into a user-friendly description of what happened. And, of course, in doing so, we try to allay people’s concerns.
ML: How did it happen that you were assigned to the UFO desk?
NP: I fell into the job by accident, really. I had been working in another part of Secretariat Air Staff in a job that I didn’t particularly like. Then, during the Persian Gulf War, I was working in the Joint Operations Center in the Ministry of Defense Main Building. While I was doing that job, I was working directly for a chap [who] worked in Secretariat Air Staff 2. He had a vacancy coming up and he said, “Look, after the Gulf War is finished, instead of going back to your old job, why don’t we do an internal reshuffle, and you can have the UFO job if you want it.” So it didn’t even go through the Personnel Section. I was never quizzed about my knowledge or beliefs on UFOs. It was simply the fact that he offered me the job, and I felt, Well, why not?
ML: Were you enthused about it?
NP: Part of me, if I’m being honest, was just so keen to get out of the old job that I would have jumped at anything. But, of course, I won’t say that I wasn’t a little bit intrigued to know why the Ministry of Defense was looking at UFOs.
ML: How would you characterize your previous interest or attitude toward UFOs?
NP: I would say that it wasn’t so much a question of being skeptical; I just didn’t know anything about it and had never really thought about it. In my entire life, as far as I can recollect, I had never read a complete book on UFOs.
ML: When you came to this job, to whom did you report, and what were you supposed to accomplish?
NP: The chain of command is quite complicated. Being a division which worked very closely with the military, there was a dual chain of command, so you would report up the political chain to somebody called Assistant Undersecretary Commitments, and ultimately up to Defense Ministers, the Secretary of State for Defense. And then we were partly accountable on the military chain, too, to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff and then the Chief of the Air Staff. But that’s typical at Ministry of Defense. As to what we were supposed to do, the brief, in a nutshell, was to evaluate the UFO reports that came to us, to [see] whether there was a threat of any sort to the defense of the UK. Now, the party line was that unless there was evidence of any threat, that’s where our involvement ended, and it wasn’t then our job to go on and actually investigate each and every report. I took the view that you couldn’t say there was no threat until you knew what these objects were that were being reported. So that gave me the hook upon which to hang my investigations. I inherited a situation where people were really doing little more than sending out letters. “Dear Mr. Smith, what you saw was probably aircraft lights, it’s nothing to worry about. Thanks for writing. Goodbye.” I didn’t think that was really good enough. I started off playing by those rules. But in the course of my three years, from 1991 to 1994, gradually my views began to evolve. As I got more and more reports, I became gradually convinced that there was more to this than just aircraft lights.
Read More – British MoD Expert Tells Why He Views Some UFOs as E.T.
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