<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7398108.stm" target="_blank" title="_44652691_saucer_.jpg"><img src="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/44652691_saucer_.jpg" alt="_44652691_saucer_.jpg" align="top" border="0" height="272" hspace="8" vspace="8" width="423" /></a>

The British Ministry of Defence has made public the first eight of about 200 previously secret UFO files. You can get them <a href="http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>, along with an accompanying research guide by Dr David Clarke, whose team are primarily responsible for convincing the MOD to declassify the material.

There's some fascinating stuff here, including observation of an apparently structured object by three police officers in Stanmore, London in 1984, official documentation of the hotly contested <a href="http://rendlesham-incident.co.uk/" target="_blank">Rendlesham Incident</a> in December 1980, and some entertaining discussion from the early days of the crop circle craze. A 1985 formation (by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley) is described as looking "as if a plank had been put with one end at the centre and then swept round in a complete circle." So they got that right!

The above image is from the wonderful 1983 encounter of <a href="http://www.ufocasebook.com/burtoo.html" target="_blank">Albert Burtoo</a>, 77, who was fishing on the Basingstoke, Hampshire, canal in the early hours when a flying saucer landed nearby. Burtoo entered the craft only to be told by the occupants that he was too old to be of any use to them. "The first thing I did... (on leaving the craft) was to pick up my cold cup of tea and drink it," he recalled. "And then I heard this whining noise, just as if an electric generator was starting up, and this thing lifted up then took off at a very high speed."

The MOD files won't provide many answers but they do reveal that, as many UFO researchers had always suspected, the Ministry, despite repeated denials, did take an active, low-key interest in UFO reports and was, and probably still is, just as puzzled and intrigued by the phenomenon as the rest of us.

The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7398108.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a> has a good story on the release, including a Newsnight piece featuring original <a href="http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/shop_fieldguide.html" target="_blank">crop circle maker</a> Doug Bower.

And this just in from <a href="http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/news2.htm" target="_blank">David Clarke</a>.