British Government Looked for UFOs, Documents Show

Posted on Jul 12, 2012

Boris SV (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Newly released top-secret files reveal that Britain’s Ministry of Defense took seriously the possibility of alien contact and assigned “UFO desk officers” the task of monitoring potential threats from outer space.

Documents show that most officials did not take the project seriously, but the government continued its operations to appease members of the public who reported seeing extraterrestrial crafts and creatures.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly

The Guardian:

Thousands of pages of highly classified files document how officials in the Ministry of Defence were worried they would be accused by the public of not taking UFOs seriously enough, and how some thought there really could be someone out there. “It was important to appreciate that what is scientific ‘fact’ today may not be true tomorrow,” a defence intelligence officer warned in August 1993.

He pointed out: “It was only a few hundred years ago that ‘scientists’ believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe.” He added: “It was generally agreed until early this century that the atom could not be split.”

Sightings of alleged UFOs could be explained by very strange-shaped clouds, ball lightning, or US “black” (secret project) aircraft, the unidentified official suggested.

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