<img class="alignleft alignnone size-full wp-image-1790" style="float: left; border: 0; margin: 8px;" title="ufo" src="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ufo.jpg" alt="ufo" width="278" height="170" />

As my book <a href="http://www.constablerobinson.com/?section=books&amp;book=mirage_men_9781845298579_paperback" target="_blank">Mirage Men</a> (the dummy cover – not the image left!  – and subtitle will be changing soon) finally makes its first steps towards publication in July 2010, the MOD announce that not only are they closing their UFO hotline, but they will <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/7336622/UFO-reports-to-be-destroyed-in-future-by-MoD.html" target="_blank">destroy any future UFO reports</a> 30 days after receiving them.

The indefatigable Dr David Clarke and Joe McGonagle have obtained the relevant documents through a FOIA request, and David discusses them over at his <a href="http://drdavidclarke.blogspot.com/2010/02/mod-endgame-new-ufo-reports-destroyed.html" target="_blank">blog</a>. As David points out, the situation is analogous to the US Air Force's closure of Project Blue Book in 1969, an attempt to wash their hands of the UFO problem.

Of course, this didn't stop the UFOs from coming – world sightings would peak with the release of <em>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</em> less than a decade later – and, as I show in <em>Mirage Men</em>, certain departments of the Air Force may have deliberately staged some 1970s UFO incidents and, by the mid 1970s, were certainly encouraging people to believe that UFOs were both real <em>and</em> extraterrestrial in nature.

What will result from the MOD's recent decisions only time will tell, but I agree with David that it may well turn out to be a 'somewhat short-sighted policy'.

PS. As an aside, my favourite aspect of the<a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/434.htm" target="_blank"> latest batch of MOD UFO releases</a> is that part of what was blacked out on the documents was not Top Secret information about the alien menace, but <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8526871.stm" target="_blank">insults about the civilians making the reports</a>. This surely says more than anything else about official MOD attitudes towards the UFO problem.

via <a href="http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/" target="_blank">David Clarke</a>