UK investigated UFO sightings into the '80s
Is there anybody out there? The Ministry of Defence, it seems, is taking no chances. Files containing hundreds of previously classified reports are being released today in the hope of persuading ufologists that there has been no cover-up regarding the existence of visitors from outer space.
Yet the files do show that the MoD conducted a rigorous investigation of every alleged sighting of a UFO until well into the 1980s. In a briefing note in 1979 the MoD wrote: “Her Majesty’s Government has never been approached by people from outer space.” But the Defence Intelligence Staff was given the task of following up sightings, interviewing witnesses, collating information and filing reports.
Unlike the United States, which decided in 1969 that UFOs did not present a threat, and that 90 per cent of sightings could be explained as natural phenomena, Britain kept the files open, and the hundreds of cases reported each year were examined by police and then passed to the MoD.
Read entire article at Times (UK)
Yet the files do show that the MoD conducted a rigorous investigation of every alleged sighting of a UFO until well into the 1980s. In a briefing note in 1979 the MoD wrote: “Her Majesty’s Government has never been approached by people from outer space.” But the Defence Intelligence Staff was given the task of following up sightings, interviewing witnesses, collating information and filing reports.
Unlike the United States, which decided in 1969 that UFOs did not present a threat, and that 90 per cent of sightings could be explained as natural phenomena, Britain kept the files open, and the hundreds of cases reported each year were examined by police and then passed to the MoD.