DEFE 24/2030 — MoD UFO Desk Correspondence 1990 (Calvine-era reporting)

Brief

DEFE 24/2030 is the MoD UFO desk file for 1990 — the year of the Calvine photograph and the Belgian wave — though the 18 pages provided consist of an administrative jacket and 2000-2001 FOI correspondence. Dr. David Clarke of the University of Sheffield submitted successive FOI requests seeking MoD UFO policy files from 1969 to the present; MoD initially refused under Exemption 9 (voluminous and vexatious) and Exemption 12 (personal privacy). Internal MoD notes reveal that UFO Policy file D/Sec(AS) 64/1 Pt B was still classified SECRET as of 2000, and that a 1968-1971 DIS policy file was destroyed in August 1984. Bundled with the FOI correspondence are printouts from flyingsaucery.com announcing Clarke and Roberts' discovery of DSI/JIC Report No 7 — the Flying Saucer Working Party's final report, described as the first and only formal British intelligence study of UAP, classified for roughly 50 years.

Metadata

Agency

UK Ministry of Defence / Sec(AS) / DI55

Release

2011-08-11

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

299 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED on release; active files noted internally at SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL

Programs

Flying Saucer Working Party, D/Sec(AS), DI55, Sec(AS)

Tags

Calvine 1990, Belgian wave 1990, MoD UFO desk, FOI correspondence, Flying Saucer Working Party, DSI/JIC Report No 7, UK policy, DIS files

Key points

• MoD UFO Policy file D/Sec(AS) 64/1 Pt B was classified SECRET and held by DAS 4a(Sec) as of 2000, revealing active classified UFO policy infrastructure a decade after the Calvine sighting.p.5
• UFO Policy file 55/40/9/1 Pt 3 (covering 1968-1971) was destroyed on 8 August 1984, predating any FOI regime and eliminating a decade of DIS policy records.p.4
• Clarke's initial FOI request for all UFO files from 1969 to present was refused under Exemption 9 (voluminous and vexatious) and Exemption 12 (privacy of an individual).p.4
• MoD acknowledged receiving up to 400 UAP sighting reports per year, and a comparable volume of public letters.p.7
• The UK Government's stated public position since the 1950s was that UAP reports had no implications for defence or national security, which Clarke used to argue no legitimate classification basis existed.p.11
• Flyingsaucery.com printouts in the file announce the discovery of DSI/JIC Report No 7 — the Flying Saucer Working Party's final report — described as the first and only official British government UAP study, classified for approximately 50 years.p.17
• RAF Wing Commander Myles Formby, one of the Flying Saucer Working Party's authors, confirmed that the report was never published but circulated at the highest level and used as a yardstick for future action.p.17
• Former minister Peter Kilfoyle expressed the view that there was no good reason for keeping UFO files restricted for 30 years, and MoD press staff told Clarke a review of the files was underway.p.9
• The D/Sec(AS) 64/5 Media Issues file — composed largely of newspaper cuttings — contained seven RESTRICTED-classified pages concerning a Daily Mail and Daily Express article about RAF Fylingdales from April 1998.p.5

Verbatim

• Since the 1950s, the UK Government's public position has been that reports of 'unidentified flying objects' have no implications for defence or national security.

  p.11

• I am more interested in studying the evolution of how the old Air Ministry, and later the MOD, dealt with these kind of inquiries, how policy on this subject was formulated, and how that policy has been influenced by specific incidents, Government policy, Parliamentary questions, scientific opinion and the media.

  p.8

• the report was never published but was circulated at the highest level and was used as a 'yardstick' for future action.

  p.17

• In 1955 and again in 1962 the MOD assured Major Patrick Wall MP in answer to Parliamentary Question that there 'had been no formal inquiry.' He was lied to.

  p.17

• I am undertaking post doctoral research into the socio-psychological aspects of belief in the aerial phenomena popularly known as 'unidentified flying objects', as an Honorary Research Fellow at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield.

  p.10

Most interesting

• The file jacket was opened in October 1990 — the same year as the Calvine diamond-shaped UAP photograph and the peak of the Belgian UFO wave, though the visible pages are entirely 2000-2001 administrative and FOI material.
• At least four simultaneous parts of MoD UFO Policy file D/Sec(AS) 64/1 existed at different classification levels: SECRET (Pt B), CONFIDENTIAL (Pts A and C), and UNCLASSIFIED (Pt D).
• A complete series of DIS UFO policy records covering 1968-1971 was destroyed in August 1984 — five years before any Freedom of Information legislation took effect.
• MoD staff were actively monitoring and filing printouts from researcher websites: the flyingsaucery.com pages bundled here are dated 22 October 2001, suggesting the department tracked external disclosure efforts.
• Clarke and Roberts located what they described as 'the final surviving copy' of the Flying Saucer Working Party's 1950 report while researching their book 'Out of the Shadows: UFOs, the Establishment and the Official Cover-up,' due from Piatkus in May 2002.
• MoD internally debated invoking Exemption 2b (harm to frankness of internal discussion) to withhold UFO policy files, rather than the more conventional national security or privacy exemptions.
• The flyingsaucery.com material identifies the Flying Saucer Working Party report as the basis for all subsequent UK government UFO policy — meaning the 1950 study, kept secret for roughly half a century, shaped every official British response to UAP.