Saucer scandal: UFO cover-up!

DRAWING on newly declassified documents, two journalism teachers have unearthed a bona fide UFO cover-up at the British Ministry of De fence, which went out of its way to conceal ongoing investigations of reported unidentified flying objects. No, the Brits didn't have a flying saucer and three reptiloid spacemen on ice beneath Big Ben. They just didn't want people to know how little the sleuths had actually accomplished.

The documents, uncovered by David Clarke and Andy Roberts of Sheffield Hallam University, depict an underfunded sky-watching unit dubbed D155. "These documents don't tell us anything about UFOs," Clarke told The Guardian, "but they do show how desperate the [Ministry of Defence has] been to conceal the interest which the intelligence services had in the subject."

A 1980S effort to create a computerized database of UFO reports was shot down on the grounds that "this could be very embarrassing for us.... It is exactly what we (and Ministers) have been saying for years we do not do, and could not justify!" One memo, dated July 1995, declares that there was "no reason for continuing to deny that the [Defence Intelligence Service] has an interest in UVOs. However, if the association is formally made public then the [Ministry of Defence] will no doubt be pressured to state what the intelligence role/interest is. This could lead to disbelief and embarrassment since few people are likely to believe the truth that lack of funds and higher priorities have prevented any study of the thousands of reports received."